White Hat, Black Hat

THE INFORMANT!

Steven Soderbergh is an interesting filmmaker. Though I can't say he's one I particularly "follow" the way I do, say, the Coen Brothers, Aronofsky, or Nolan, I've seen a good deal of his filmography: sex, lies, and videotape, Kafka, The Limey, Erin Brockovich, Traffic, Ocean's Eleven (and probably one of the sequels too, I don't remember; I can't really tell them apart, honestly), Full Frontal, Solaris, Che. I don't actively seek him out, but I like most of what I've seen from him. His filmography is one that's hard to pin down; it seems all over the map not only in its subject matter, but more generally in a roughly even divide between the mainstream (not meant as a criticism) and the art-house. It seems strange to me that the director of sex, lies, and videotape, Solaris, and Che is the same as the director of Out of Sight, Erin Brockovich, and the Ocean's series. Though he can't exactly write his own meal ticket in Hollywood, I have a hard time believing it's just a matter of making multiplex fare in order to finance his more off-beat passion projects. Or maybe I'm completely wrong. I'll have to ask him the next time we hang out.

This isn't just an example of stream-of-consciousness blog-posting, the above paragraph does have a point. The point is that his most recent film, The Informant! (trailer), seems to have one foot in each of the two halves of Soderbergh's filmography. On the one hand, it's a general-release comedy with one of the biggest stars in Hollywood; on the other, it goes in some rather unexpected places and offers some interesting insights into the human condition.

The Informant! tells the true story—more or less—of Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), a mild-mannered senior executive at the agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland. (The film tells us that we've probably never heard of ADM, but of course I have, as a viewer since childhood of The NewsHour, whose corporate sponsor is none other than the "supermarket to the world.") For reasons that remain ambiguous even by the film's end, in 1992 he tells the FBI about his company's illegal price-fixing schemes with competitors overseas and spends years gathering and reporting information to bring his colleagues down. Eventually, however, the tangled webs Whitacre's woven while trying to play both sides of the fence begin tripping him up more and more catastrophically.

The film's got a great mixture of intelligence and a rather goofy sense of humor. Though Whitacre's the chief source of the humor, Damon plays him with enough humanity to keep him from being a cartoon simpleton; he's often ridiculous, but also too much of an everyman for us not to see real people we know (and maybe a little of ourselves) in him. We're privy to Whitacre's thoughts—really a series of largely irrelevant stream-of-consciousness non-sequiturs—thanks to a voiceover, one of the best uses of voiceover outside of Woody Allen's body of work. It's got a breezy, light-hearted tone, reinforced by a wonderful, whimsical score by Broadway and film composer Marvin Hamlisch (A Chorus Line, The Sting, Sophie's Choice); when Whitacre's voiceover mentions a Mexican restaurant, I could swear I heard the score go a little mariachi-esque for a second.

I would be remiss in my duties if I didn't say a few words about the cast. Wow. Scott "Quantum Leap" Bakula, Joel "The Soup" McHale, Tony "Buster Bluth" Hale, Melanie "sexy/heartbreaking stripper-dance in Away We Go (or, going further back, adolescent friendship with Kate Winslet ending in tragedy in Heavenly Creatures)" Lynskey, Paul F. "Mr. Show" Tompkins, Patton "Comedian of Comedy" Oswalt, Clancy "the Kurgan, Cpt. Hadley, Sgt. Zim, Kelvin Inman, really, take your pick" Brown, Tom "Biff Tannen" Wilson, Andrew "Eastbound and Down" Daly, and, last but not least, Tommy and Dick "the Smothers Brothers" Smothers. I think that speaks for itself.

— CORN GOES IN ONE END AND SPOILERS COME OUT THE OTHER —

Where The Informant! manages not just to be "Abbott and Costello Meet The Insider" is its examination of human psychology. Beneath the superficial layer of wholesome, middle-American, "awe shucks and golly gee" simplicity, Whitacre is a whirlwind of mixed motivations, slimy underhandedness, and self-deception of Shakespearean proportions. About halfway through, Whitacre admits to his FBI handlers that he's been embezzling millions of dollars from ADM through fraud, forgeries, and kickbacks; the film then largely shifts gears from ADM's wrongdoing to Whitacre's and its repercussions on the ADM case and Whitacre's life. His status as a government witness becomes compromised, and he becomes the subject of an investigation of his own.

This, of course, goes completely against Whitacre's own idealized conception of himself, according to which he's the good guy—0014, "twice as smart as 007"—battling the corporate thieves straight out of the Grisham and Crichton novels he mentions. He says at one point that there are "white hats" and "black hats" in the world, good guys and bad guys. This stark dichotomy is obviously belied by his own behavior, claiming to act solely out of a sense of decency while raking in ill-gotten gains and expecting to take over ADM once his colleagues are gone. We eventually see that telling lies comes just as naturally as telling the truth when it coincides with his flattering self-image, from arranging FBI stings to setting up off-shore accounts, falsely accusing an FBI agent of battery, and even telling people that he was an orphan (which he had heard made people more sympathetic). The almost childlike naïveté he projects disguises a savvy that no doubt largely accounts for his meteoric rise at ADM. (The way he deftly handles an unexpected crisis during a sting, when someone wants to move the meeting from the bugged suite to a larger one, by pretending to call the hotel front desk and casually carrying on half a conversation definitely raised a red flag for me that this guy wasn't what he seemed.)

Instead of just giving us a comedic version of the boilerplate whistleblower drama, Soderbergh crafted a film that examines the lies we tell others and, perhaps even more importantly, ourselves. Mark Whitacre may be an extreme example, but as I said above, the Whitacre type is quite recognizable. The fact that a pathological liar and guilt-free swindler rose to senior management in a respected "Fortune 500" company may be the film's most damning indictment of corporate culture, even more so than the ADM price-fixing around which it ostensibly centers.

Past, Present and Future

PUBLIC ENEMIES. There are a few reasons why I was drawn to watching this movie, but I will have to admit the a major reason came from what I thought was a pretty kick-ass trailer. It seemed Johnny Depp, in a rare departure by not playing a pirate or Tim Burton character, was perfect for the role of John Dillinger, it looked like a slick Michael Mann project that fit his strengths well, and it looked like a interesting movie visually. So I saw the movie last weekend with family in part because the women in my family happen to be a little, shall we say, infatuated with Mr. Depp. So I can say it didn't seem to be quite as good as the trailer (truly one of the better crafted ones I've seen lately) but did make me think a bit both positively and negatively.

So I titled this post the way it is because I found that although it does span more than a few years after Dillinger escaped from jail and when he went through the last few jobs of his life before being gunned down by what was becoming the FBI (I guess I should have issued a spoiler alert, but is that really appropriate when it is a rather well-known true story?). In relation to the past, it was quite obviously a story set in the 1930s, in the still early years of the Great Depression and also had a side-story on the creation of the FBI featuring a rather sleazy, although noncross-dressing, J. Edgar Hoover played by Billy Crudup. I wouldn't say, however, that it's a historical movie since it seems to have decided to tell its story partly as a love story (which, in case you were wondering, did not really make sense to me either).

In the present, I found myself thinking of how the actions of the movie relate to our current era and there were a few moments that seemed to have been a bit of a wink to us, including a negative view of banks, and a bit of a hint toward the idea of torture as a result of compromised ethics more so than necessity. It could have been a candidate for a movie to explain our current era. However I would say that it does fail a bit if that was what Mann intended of this movie, which is not really what I think was the case. It seems like he was making this movie and the collapse of the economy and its tie to the greed of banks just kind of fell upon his lap. The movie focuses on romance and action with hardly a reference to the desperation of the depression -- they reference that Dillinger might be popular but never give much to explain why. I expect it is because they assume we know about the depression and that's not what it is about, which is fine. It does end up being a bit of a missed opportunity to explore the idea of morality in a time of desperation. As much as I like Marion Cotillard, I would have found that to be a better background to Dillinger's story than that of him falling in love.

On the topic of the future, I found it to be relevant to the visual style of the movie, which was indeed as my first impression from the trailer suggested, filmed digitally. I saw it at Cinetopia specifically to take advantage of the digital projectors so as to see it without a transfer to film. This is going to be a technique used more in the future but as of now is a bit rough. On the negative side, I found certain aspects to be a bit disappointing, like the fact that I could see the male actors' makeup -- especially Christian Bale, who at times kind of looked like a cheap hooker, which I didn't find particularly appropriate for an FBI agent. There is also a bit of a difference in the depth perception that I find a bit distracting at times but that might just be because I am not used to it. It does, though, seem to fit this particular story well in that the digital method comes across as more documentary style and the crispness of the picture fits the stylized filming style Mann often utilizes. Much like Steven Soderbergh, he seems like a good choice to be more of a pioneer in this arena.

So if you haven't seen it, it's rather worthwhile. It's a good movie to watch, if not necessarily appreciate.

Just a Little Bit of History Repeating

PERSEPOLIS

Whether the history will be Tehran in 1979 or Beijing in 1989 is still up in the air, however.

I have to confess, I haven't been following the recent events in Iran all that closely. I haven't really followed the news in general that much since moving to DC, since I haven't had a daily paper handy, and I've never been in the habit of poring over news or news-aggregating websites. Honestly, my main source of news is the "In the news" section of Wikipedia (my homepage), so I generally stay abreast of major events, but don't necessarily know every detail as it appears on CNN.com or The Huffington Post.

(The exception to this is when I'm in the news myself . . . or almost in the news, as was the case Monday with the DC train wreck. I was on my way home when it happened, only a couple stops away; I was heading the opposite direction, so luckily there was never any danger of my being on one of the trains that crashed. But I did have to sit on my train between stations for forty minutes or so, while they periodically told us there was an "electrical problem" up ahead. They finally took us back to the last station we passed and let us off, and I took a (very crowded) bus home. It wasn't a pleasant evening for sure, but I'm still counting my blessings considering what happened to a lot of other people.)

I have seen Persepolis (as you can see by perusing my Honorable Mentions of 2008), and I think it did a wonderful job of giving one person's ground-level view of major historical events. I also liked how the focus was almost solely on Marjane's life, of which the revolution was only one part; that ensured its human perspective rather than making it just an historical pageant. And I too loved the animation; while Pixar's been firing on all cylinders both artistically and narratively for almost fifteen years straight, it's nice to see some films buck the CG bandwagon, especially when they do so in a particularly abstracted and expressionistic (i.e., non-Disneyfied) way. I too have seen Waltz with Bashir and Linklater's Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, all of them very good. (And if you like that style of animation, I'll make sure to show you some Frisky Dingo when you move here.) Also, on my Netflix queque (though currently in slot 85, so don't expect a review any time soon) is Azur and Asmar (trailer), a French CG children's film with such a distinctive and intriguing visual style that I have to check it out.

To add my two historical cents (as opposed to cinematic), frankly I'm astounded by how this revolution seems to parallel the one thirty years ago. In particular, the fact that the military seems to be largely sitting by the sidelines while the regime and the protesters vie for power. In 1979, the fact that the military didn't come to the Shah's defense spelt the end for his regime. But another lesson we should take from 1979 is that once a power vacuum is created, it isn't always filled by the people who did the leg work of removing the old regime (i.e., the liberals who'd been demonstrating against the Shah throughout the late '70s; similarly, it wasn't the Bolsheviks who brought the tsarist regime down in 1917, though they ended up being the beneficiaries).

I would say that I hope that things in Iran turn out well in the end, but I remember the line from Watchmen (in both the comic book and the film): "Nothing ends. Nothing ever ends."

Hoping for a sequel

PERSEPOLIS. Since I have not been a particular punctual movie-goer lately, I figure I can at least be timely in another way. Perhaps like me, you have been glued to -- well, your computer lately to follow the news of what is happening in Iran. As this is not a political blog I will not get into the issue to much except for the context to which it affects a reviewing of Persepolis (TRAILER), a film that I found on my mind a lot lately and as I watched it again, I found the context to be uncanny. This film, based upon autobiographical comic book (or graphic novel if you prefer) by co-director Marjane Satrapi, tells the story of growing up through the Iranian revolution of 1979, the clerical crackdown that followed, and the alienation of leaving her homeland to find freedom.

I assume you have seen the movie, and if not -- go see it. Today. Stop what you are doing because it is available on Netflix Watch it Now. First and foremost, it is a beautiful movie. Many movies have attempted to recreate comic books on film but this one really nails it. Very few animation movies are made without aid of computer-generated images, and as great as some of the Pixar movies have been, there is something particularly appealing in true animation. The design of the nearly all black-and-white movie mixes the realism of telling a true story with the imagination of a creative girl and young woman caged by an restrictive regime. There are many images that caught my eye and the one that comes first to mind is the first scene after the new religious law and showed a group of schoolgirls as white faces against a black backdrop and then moves perspective so show the back background is really the black veil that causes them all to blend together. Also it is great to see the growth of animation being used here and in works like Waltz With Bashir and the work of Richard Linklater (I note this is among MANY others, including a lot of Japanese works, which I admit I am not as familiar with) to explore more serious subjects than adventure and princesses or toys.

We discussed earlier in our blogging endeavor the topic of realism in movies and I expressed my disdain for movies that do not truthfully represent actual events. This movie is an example of why I feel this way. To say that something is "just a movie" does a great disservice to the medium. Watching this movie certainly adds to my understanding of what I am seeing on the streets in Tehran right now as I could easily see Marjane throwing on a green scarf and joining. Sure I would not count on the little history lesson given in the movie as my only historical background to what is happening there, but I would certainly say that providing a perspective that helps a viewer be transported to a different reality and comprehend a different perspective is powerful. Having already seen this movie and read Reading Lolita in Tehran (which one could certainly argue is the Oprah Book Club school of history), what was happening on the streets over the last couple of weeks seemed to make sense because they helped me understand the people in the country do not en masse fall in line with their rulers but instead are more liberal -- especially in regard to the role of women -- than the clerics and, for the most part, many of their neighbors.

One of the fascinating aspects of this Iranian uprising has been that we will have different record of what has happened there through the ability of those inside the country to get their own voice heard. Instead of films made 25 years after a revolution, we have video being shot and distributed now directly from Iranians. There is probably nothing I have watched in quite some time that shook me as much as that of the death of Neda Agha-Soltan, which I'm guessing you have watched or at least heard of by now. I will not embed or link to the video here, but those who have not seen it should do a Google search and find it. The memory of watching the life leave Neda's eyes is something I will never forget, but it still will not be able to reach me or many others in a way that a film has a particularly effective ability. While the video of Neda gives immediate historical context, a movie like Persepolis is able to take a broader picture using art and storytelling. The movie ends with Marjane's mother putting her on a plane to leave Tehran and telling her not to come back, and I found myself wishing the movie would continue and I could see her come back. So many Iranians out there who, like Marjane deeply love their country, are trying to help turn it into a country where people like her will not want to leave. Although the movie never goes that far, I can see Marjane standing among those crowds and her story helps me understand why they are there. And it makes me want to see a sequel where she returns to an Iran where she has the freedom that caused her to leave.

To the Nines

9

NINE

While I await your next post on Lost (or whatever else you want to talk about), I thought I'd say a word about two upcoming movies that, I must admit, I'm pretty intrigued by.

The first is 9 (trailers), whose trailer I saw in the sidebar, inspiring this post. (Keep in mind, watching the trailers was the full extent of my research for this post, so everything that follows may be completely wrong.) In a post-apocalyptic future (with a retro-futurist aesthetic), a group of small, walking, talking rag dolls must survive and defend themselves against the machines that've taken over and destroyed the world. Though Tim Burton was only a producer, it displays a very Burton-esque sensibility and visual style—charming but dark, gothic, with mixed time-period/technology cues (Matrix-esque machines and spinning-newspaper newsreels). In a world where even a Terminator movie gets toned down to a PG-13 rating, I'm impressed that the makers of 9 were willing to make an animated film featuring cute, merchandizing-ready characters with PG-13-level "violence and scary images" (according to the MPAA); I don't think anyone who's seen 9's trailers would think they'd be walking into The Care Bears Have Tea with Rainbow Brite, but I'm sure they were still under some pressure to make it more child-friendly and mainstream. I can't say for sure if they were able to resist that pressure or not, but the trailers seem to display a rather unique, and uncompromising, vision. Plus, I'm loving the cast they've assembled: Elijah Wood, John C. Reilly (even if you don't like Walk Hard, you gotta love Dr. Steve Brule), Martin Landau, Crispin Glover, Jennifer Connelly, and Christopher Plummer (Captain von Trapp!); my only regret is not being able to see them all actually acting together, live-action-wise.

Also coming out this fall is Nine (trailer), a musical film based on a stage musical based on a play based on Fellini's film 8 1/2 (trailer) based on Fellini's life. I saw 8 1/2 for the first time not so long ago, and though I found it arresting and intriguing in many ways—first and foremost visually—I think I need to watch it at least once more. (As is often the case with watching a film, reading a book, etc., for the first time, I think I was too focused on trying to follow what was going on plot-wise; I read somewhere recently that when Nabokov taught Anna Karenina, he started by telling his students the ending so that as they read they'd focus on Tolstoy's literary craftsmanship and not on "what's gonna happen.") Nine sounds like an intriguing idea (at least on paper) and has some impressive talent involved—the late Anthony Minghella and Michael Tolkin writing the screenplay, starring Penélope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Dame Judi Dench, Nicole Kidman (hopefully starting to atone for Australia), Sophia Loren, and Fergie (!)—but I have to say that the factor most likely to get me in the theater when it comes out is Daniel Day-Lewis. Not only would I see one of those Movie movies if DDL were in it, but (at least based on the trailer) he seems eerily to capture and embody Mastroianni's performance (though since this is DDL we're talking about, I'm sure we're going to get much more than just a Mastroianni impression). I'm certainly not anti-musical, but they aren't often films I anticipate months in advance; Nine is.

P.S. — You said earlier that you'd been watching a British mini-series that you might post on. What was it? I ask because I too have been watching a British mini-series, the 1981 ITV production of Brideshead Revisited with (among others) Jeremy Irons, Sir John Gielgud, and Sir Laurence Olivier. (When the film with Matthew Goode and Emma Thompson came out last year, even the most favorable reviews said, "It's good, but the mini-series was better," so I decided just to watch the mini-series; it's taken it this long to get to the top of my Netflix queue.) I'm still working my way through it (eleven hours total), and so far it's not exactly action packed—the last episode I saw mostly just consisted of Sebastian being a mopey alcoholic the whole time and everyone else worrying about this—but the compelling story and fantastic performances make it one definitely to look into.

Movie potpourri

Sorry I've been incommunicado for a while, the spring semester's drawing to a close and things at school are getting a little busier. I don't have any detailed, structured analyses to post at the moment, so this will mostly just be a mish-mash of thoughts about things you've written recently.

Regarding your comments about The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, I agree that the life of the historical Kaspar Hauser makes an excellent basis for exploring the themes of identity and society in which Herzog was interested. And I think that Herzog's interest in exploring those very themes, instead of just giving an artistically dead itinerary of the events of Kaspar's life, goes a long way toward making the film as great as it is. But when art and fact are mingled, the greatness of the art doesn't erase or blanket over the fact. I know I might seem to be talking out of both sides of my mouth regarding historical accuracy, but sometimes accuracy is a hindrance, while sometimes inaccuracy is a distraction. Long story—and several posts—short, the question of historical accuracy vs. artistic vision is a thorny one, some inaccurate movies can get away with it while others can't, and it really seems to be something that requires a case-by-case look.

As for I'm Not There, I haven't seen it yet, though I've meant to (where's my Portland pride?), but I see what you're saying. While This Is England avoided historical-accuracy problems by taking elements of actual events to make a fictional story, I'm Not There, while implicitly depicting Bob Dylan at various points in his life, changes it so much that no reasonable person could take it as accurate (not least of all by having several different people playing the same (?) role). It sounds interesting, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays out. And well done mentioning Einstein's Dreams; not only is that a good example, but I'm impressed at your recall of books from Mr. Joy's sophomore English.

Though one last comment (or parting shot, if you want to take it that way) I'd like to make about historical accuracy is that I don't think that depictions of earlier historic events have less of a obligation to factuality (to the extent one exists, not to go back to that discussion) than do those depicting more recent events. I mean, is a movie with Caesar fighting his assassins in an awesome action sequence less troubling than one with Kaspar Hauser as part of a carnival freakshow, or one with Cuba Gooding, Jr., shooting down Japanese planes with a battleship machine gun, because it's depicting earlier events? After all, "the past isn't dead, it isn't even past," and I'd say earlier events are often more significant than later ones, as their implications multiply and magnify over time. Alright, I'm done, consider this nit picked.

And I have indeed seen The Believer, and it's really extraordinary. Ryan Gosling is amazing, and its story is so fascinating and challenging. Not just one of the most interesting depictions I've seen of anti-Semitism, but of Judaism as well. But a view of the skinhead subculture isn't complete without This Is England's broader, more historical perspective; like I said earlier, I didn't previously know that "skinhead" is more than just a synonym for "white supremacist." (The Believer is also an example, like This Is England, of using a kernel of historical fact as the basis for a work of fiction.)

As for your Duplicity-vs.-Bond post, I don't have a whole lot to say. I haven't seen Duplicity—in fact, I had no intention of seeing it before reading your post—and I'm not all that into the Bond franchise. I've seen some of them (Dr. No, Goldfinger, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, GoldenEye, Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace), and I've found stuff to enjoy it most of them (though honestly, Dr. No bored me to tears; bad guy pulls a gun on Bond, they talk for 20 minutes, Bond judo-chops him and takes his gun, they talk for 20 minutes longer, repeat till Owen falls asleep), but I just don't care that much about them one way or the other. Seriously, the Bond product that's made the biggest impact on me has been the GoldenEye videogame. But though your comparison of Craig's Bond with Jason Bourne is apt, I don't necessarily see that as a criticism or as a sign of the Bond franchise's irrelevance. It's always been flexible enough to adapt to nearly fifty years of history and popular culture; the early films fed on Cold War anxieties, Moonraker responded to the Star Wars phenomenon, and Licence to Kill is practically a microcosm of the '80s (a Latin American drug lord straight from Miami Vice or Magnum, P.I., a televangelist, the Contras). So to answer your question, I'd say that "what good is James Bond anymore" is those fifty years of history and mythology he's accumulated, his status as a multigenerational icon rather than a time-and-place-specific protagonist. Today's incarnation merely reflects today's movie culture, which includes the Bourne trilogy, but I don't think that necessarily makes him any less relevant than Moonraker necessarily did. I'm not saying they're great movies, I just don't think the Bond concept is fully played out.

Adaptation and Accuracy

THE ENIGMA OF KASPAR HAUSER

THIS IS ENGLAND

The issues we've discussed about historical accuracy, the filmmaker's role as adapter, and whether the combination of history and art creates propaganda remind me of two movies I saw recently. In The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (trailer), Werner Herzog tells the true story of a young man who appeared in 1828 in the town square of Nuremberg, Germany, without the ability to speak and barely able to walk. After learning to speak, Kaspar related how he had lived his entire life in a small, windowless cell, tied to the floor and brought food while he slept; until he was suddenly released in 1828, he had never seen another human being or anything outside the cell, and had never heard speech. Why he was imprisoned, by whom, why he was released, and his ultimate fate remain much debated mysteries to this day.

As a film, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser is stunning. Kaspar is played by Bruno S., a Berlin street performer with no acting experience, who touchingly conveys Kaspar's mixed sense of fear and wonderment at the world he's never seen before. (No doubt this was partly thanks to the fact that Bruno's own early life in some respects paralleled Kaspar's, having been savagely abused by his prostitute mother at a very young age and grown up in a series of orphanages and mental institutions.) Herzog underscores the unsettling and, well, enigmatic nature of the events depicted with scenes of haunting, dreamlike imagery seemingly unrelated to the story. His eye for strange, beautiful visuals is on full display; the cinematography is characterized by stillness, natural beauty, and expert composition.

Herzog's always been interested in people outside of normal human society and experience, so it's easy to see why he wanted to tell Kaspar Hauser's story. Although in most regards the film stays close to historical events and even directly quotes Kaspar's own words several times, it is at least as much an expression of Herzog's creative desire to explore themes that interest him as it is a straightforward depiction of the actual events. A clue to his intent may be found in the film's title in German, Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle, "Each for himself and God against all"; Kaspar is depicted as radically cut off from everyone around him and often feeling threatened and confused by what he sees. Having never interacted with other people or seen any of the world prior to his release from captivity, he's developed his own ways of seeing and thinking about things (a good example of that here). This clearly interests Herzog very much, as he underscores it with a wholly invented scene of Kaspar interacting with a logician. In another unhistorical scene (seen in the trailer), Kaspar is put on display in a carnival freakshow. Though these scenes add to the film as a piece of art by illustrating the themes of social and mental isolation and the socialized, even unnatural, character of normal human understanding and experience, they make the film's role as a depiction of a real man's life somewhat murky by infusing that depiction with the artistic vision and interests of a filmmaker living over a hundred years later. I don't think that detracts from the film as a piece of art (and a great one at that), but it introduces a tension based on that contradiction, one that can be alleviated but never fully resolved.

The approach to factual accuracy taken in This Is England (trailer) contrasts with that taken in Che and The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser. Screenwriter and director Shane Meadows tells the story of Shaun (Thomas Turgoose), a twelve-year-old working-class kid in the economically struggling '80s English Midlands who recently lost his father in the Falklands War. He's befriended by a group of skinheads, but trouble arises with the appearance of Combo (Stephen Graham), representing the new nationalistic, white-supremacist element in skinhead subculture in conflict with the apolitical, racially inclusive old-school skinheads represented by Shaun's friends. The group is forced to pick sides, and Shaun falls in with Combo, who assumes the role of father figure missing in the boy's life. The film is both moving and intense, depicting the warmth of Shaun's new friendships and the anxiety, animosity, and eventual terror that Combo brings. All the performances are excellent, especially first-time actor Turgoose who perfectly conveys Shaun's adolescent uncertainty and longing beneath his tough-kid exterior. If nothing else, I learned a lot about skinheads, namely that they originally had nothing to do with racism and in fact were influenced early on by Caribbean music and culture (the Jamaican rude boys). This movie is powerful in every possible way.

What makes This Is England relevant to this topic is the fact that Meadows based it on his own childhood, with Shaun acting as his stand-in. However, he never makes the claim, even implicitly, that there is any one-to-one relation between the film and the events of his own life. In this way it avoids the dilemma in which Che and, to a lesser extent, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser find themselves. Meadows is freer than Soderbergh or Herzog to include only those elements of fact that assist the film as a piece of art, without the nagging questions of whether to compromise the art by adhering to fact or compromise fact by adhering to art. As I mentioned in the second paragraph of my previous post, perhaps changing names and events, thereby definitively divorcing art from fact, is the way to avoid these contraditions. As someone who likes history-based movies I don't really like that solution, but it may be the only one that resolves the dilemmas of historical accuracy, the propagandistic aspects of art, and artists' responsibility to things other than art itself.

Art as Propaganda, and Vice Versa (pretentious, I know)

CHE (PARTS ONE AND TWO)

So, it only took three posts for our blog to fall victim to Godwin's Law. It was inevitable (that's what makes it a law), but three posts and one day after its founding must be some kind of record. (To be honest, though, I was thinking of Godwinizing the blog even earlier; in my first post about Che, I considered comparing the film's lionized treatment of Che to a two-part film about Hitler that depicts only his WWI military service and his building the Autobahn.)

The question of whether, and if so to what extent, a filmmaker has a "responsibility" (for lack of a better word) to history when dealing with historical topics is a thorny one whose implications obviously aren't solely artistic. On the one hand, a filmmaker in the end is creating a piece of art whose merits and faults are independent of how closely it hews to history. (For example, the famous and powerful "Odessa steps" scene in Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin has virtually no basis in fact.) On the other hand, when a filmmaker creates a film ostensibly based on history, he represents his film as a relatively accurate portrayal of that history, whether he wishes to represent it as such or not. The fact that Soderbergh and countless other filmmakers have felt the need to tell people that their history-based movies are works of fiction is evidence of this. It's only natural for the first reaction of audiences who see a film called Che with characters named Che Guevara, Fidel and Raúl Castro, etc. to be, "Oh, I guess this is pretty much what actually happened and what those people were actually like." If Soderbergh wanted to avoid this and be completely free to pursue his own artistic vision, he could easily have changed names and events and presented the film as unrelated to historical facts. Since he didn't do that, he and his film are stuck in the creatively ambiguous limbo between fiction and nonfiction, art and history.

Now, given that an artist has to make certain decisions in how to depict his subject—what to emphasize, what to downplay, what to leave out altogether—there's really no way for a film like Che not to have some propaganda aspects. Soderbergh couldn't possibly have shown every facet of Che's life and personality, so his life and personality necessarily become simplified when they become the basis for a piece of art—maybe not as simplified as a face on a T-shirt, but moving in that direction nevertheless. However, I think Soderbergh goes beyond mere artistic license or inevitable simplification, and into the direction of propaganda, in the one-sidedness of his Che. Though he said, "I'm just an artist," his artistic vision evidently didn't include an interest in showing any shades of gray in his main character. This goes so far as his decision in filming to avoid close-ups, to complement his subject's "hard-core sort of egalitarian socialist principles." This truly is reminiscent of Riefenstahl's filmmaking for the Nazis, for instance her depiction in Olympia of a field of athletes in perfect rows doing push-ups in unison, their individuality replaced with machine-like regimentation and uniformity in keeping with the Nazis' collectivist ideology. I agree that Soderbergh doesn't go nearly as far as Riefenstahl—in the opening of Triumph of the Will she referred to the Nazis' rise to power as "the start of Germany's rebirth" (about 0:01:10 in)—but his interest in using the film to paper over its subject's complexity, rather than to explore it, is disappointing and troubling.

I think these kinds of issues are fascinating and important. As you know, I'm a bit of a history nerd, so inaccuracies in the way history is depicted tend to set my teeth on edge. But I also realize that there are often compelling artistic reasons to deviate from pure fact—expressing one's creative vision, trying to convey a "deeper truth," or simple storytelling economy. How much a piece of art depicting actual events belongs to the artist, and how much it belongs to those events and should adhere to them, is often a tough call. And then there's also the distinct but related question of films adapted from a fictional book or play and how much they should adhere to their source material. I'm planning on looking at some of these issues a bit more in the near future with other films I have in mind.

And to answer your question, I think we should hold off on renaming the blog "Owen and Matt Talk Che" for now—at least until we get an advertising deal from one of those Che T-shirt outfits.

P.S. — And thanks for paying forward Soderbergh's use of "philistine"; now all I can think of is Billy Baldwin's "philistine" character in The Squid and the Whale. Come to think of it—and maybe it's just a product of talking about Arrested Development recently and watching Lost tonight—what do you think are the odds that Billy Baldwin in The Squid and the Whale ("Hey, mah brothah, who taught you these junkyard strokes?"), Buster Bluth ("Hey, brother!"), and Desmond Hume ("Aye, bruthah.") were separated at birth? Eerie, I know.

Triumph of the Che

CHE (PARTS 1 AND 2).

Meta Question 1: Is it lame to start two posts in a row with reworked film titles? Subquestion, does it make me sound illiterate to refer to Long Day's Journey Into Night as a movie even though it is much more famous as one of the great American plays?

Meta Question 2: Should we rename this blog Owen and Matt Talk Che?

As promised, my second posting on Che, although this one is more about what Steven Sorderbergh said, especially in relation to some of the topics you brought up. OK, perhaps I am giving you more credit than what is due since I was planning this all along, but I'll give you some credit if for nothing more than your reference to Lawrence of Arabia put my Ray allusion to shame (that's what I met when I called myself a philistine, my choice of references). Also, I want this to be my last time referencing Ray on this site. Ever. So I should go ahead and say that your comments about a biopic that is not just an impersonation is exactly what the problem was with Jamie Foxx in that movie. He's the prime example there -- especially in comparison to the immensely talented Don Cheadle who put Foxx to shame in Hotel Rwanda that same year. But I digress.

So to the topic at hand: Che and Steven Sorderbergh. I've teased it enough so here is the story: I found what he had to say a bit troubling. I used hyperbole in the title for this post but I did so to emphasize the point that what he said mirrors to a much smaller extent the arguments used in defense of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. I should back up a bit because what I just wrote is a bit, um, inflammatory? Most of the talk with Soderbergh was quite fascinating as he talked about he process of making the film and give little tidbits about details of the movie (like why the people put sticks in their mouth before the explosion -- they do that to prevent their eardrums from bursting). However he became most animated when asked about his decision to portray Che Guevara in a positive light -- probably because that is the question he gets most frequently. First of all, he denied it, which we both find inaccurate. What I found troubling, however, was his statement that it is not his job to make a judgement on Che and as an artist it is his job to portray the man through his eyes. As a filmmaker he wants people to not be surprised to find out other details of the person but, he said that he does not think it is his responsibility to create balance. There was a lot of "I'm just an artist."

The reason I bring up Riefenstahl is because of his comments about the filmmaker not having any responsibility to tell anything more than their own story as they choose to see it. Riefenstahl, as I'm sure you know, created her film as Nazi propaganda and did some very amazing things that pushed the medium forward. But it was Nazi propaganda. She later claimed in her defense that she was just making art and that she did not buy into the Nazi message. I knew from a interview I had just read in the Portland Mercury and other articles on Che that Soderbergh says he did not know much about Che when he agreed to make the movie, but I don't buy that. I find it hard to believe that a man as seemingly intelligent as him would not know Che is a questionable figure historically and that the Cuban revolution did not necessarily turn out all that well. (Side note: All viewers of this movie should be required to watch Before Night Falls with Javier Bardem, a brilliant movie that explores the dark side of the Cuban revolution.)

What's more, Soderbergh talked about all of the research he did into the movie that I found quite impressive. He certainly knows his stuff -- the good and the bad. He referenced multiple times La Cabana, the site where Che was in charge of purging enemies of the revolution. I should be clear that I am not comparing Soderbergh to Riefenstahl in the work that the created -- although I think Che is one-sided, it is certainly no Triumph of the Will. I also am not sure I would pass judgement on Che himself being completely worthy of scorn: Would Cuba have been worse with Batista? It's certainly possible if not probable. What I take issue with is Soderbergh arguing that a filmmaker has no responsibility to create context and, by extension, the truth. I don't think the movie should have been point-counterpoint, but I also cannot agree that when making a film about an actual person there is no responsibility to put that person in context. He exploits the drama of actual events and politics in the movie and to say that there is no need to represent a more complete portion of that history than what is convenient for him is irresponsible and bad filmmaking. Triumph of the Will cannot be separated as art from its existence as Nazi propaganda just as Che cannot be separated as art from its existence as a film about a man whom some consider a hero and some consider a war criminal.

Alright, that's it. On a high note, since my SAT word lately has been philistine, I will admit that the word was put into my head again by Soderbergh (although admittedly it will probably always make me think of Jeff Daniels in The Squid and the Whale). He mentioned that people think of Americans (or, as he corrected himself, North Americans) as philistines when it comes to film, but this is the only country in the world that will accept films with subtitles. Every other country requires a movie to be dubbed into the native language, but the United States shuns movies that dub. It is also the only country in the world where a distributor would actually present the movie in theaters with both parts. All the other countries required it to be cut up.

OK, so that's what I got here. If you ever get the opportunity to go to a screening with a filmmaker, I recommend it if for nothing else then to give you the opportunity to get pissed at him (or her if the case should be). I think judging from your earlier post, you might agree with my assessment of the lack of context in the movie but I'm curious to hear your take on Soderbergh's assessment of the lack of filmmaker responsibility.

Che / Counter-Che

CHE (PARTS ONE AND TWO). My comments shouldn't be as long as yours; I agree with you to a large extent, so that would be redundant. These'll just be some thoughts and reactions.

First off, I definitely know what you're talking about in terms of the venue. I don't think I've ever seen a four-hour movie at Cinema 21, but even a two-hour movie there can be a sitting endurance test. It's a shame that so many of those great, old-timey neighborhood theaters—Cinema 21, the Hollywood Theater, the Clinton Street Theater—feel like they still have the same seats that they had five decades ago. Maybe serving beer will boost their popularity (I know the Clinton Street started serving a few years ago), so they can afford some updated seating. I saw it at the E Street Cinema in Penn Quarter, which is pretty new and a lot more comfortable.

On the other hand, I didn't get to see Soderbergh. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a filmmaker at a major release. Werner Herzog didn't show at that advance screening of Rescue Dawn we went to, and I didn't find out about an appearance by Aronofsky at a screening of The Wrestler here in DC until it was too late. Though it wasn't a "major release," I did go with my dad to a screening of Bill Plympton's Hair High attended by Plympton and Keith Carradine (my favorite Carradine, and star of my favorite Ridley Scott film, The Duellists), who voiced a role in the movie; Plympton and my dad were friends back in the day, both part (though to different degrees) of Portland's '70s art/animation scene.

Uh oh, this post is turning into one big digression. Now, as for the film itself. I agree with a lot of the points you made. The movie (or movies) is strengthened artistically by Soderbergh's decision to focus only on two specific periods of Che's life, the successful revolution on Cuba and the unsuccessful revolution in Bolivia. When it comes to biopics, the hedgehog approach (focusing on one thing, and knowing and understanding it very well) generally works better than the fox approach (showing a wide range of things without really fleshing any one of them out). This can, however, lead to problems, which I'll discuss a couple paragraphs down.

I also agree that it was magnificently shot and stunningly acted. Though I honestly can't say I know what Che was really like, I nevertheless got a sense that del Toro really lost himself in the role; partly due to his fantastic performance, partly due to his physical resemblance, and partly due to great filmmaking on Soderbergh's part, it seemed like I was watching Che himself and not just an actor doing a Che impression (a failing of a lot of, it not most, biopics).

A strange choice (it was in the version I saw about six weeks ago, but maybe they've change it since then) was the little geography lesson at the beginning of each part, first for Cuba and then for South America. Now, I very much believe that it's important to provide context for movies dealing with historical subjects, but that context should be necessary or relevant. Do we really need to know the provinces of Cuba (only one or two are mentioned in the film) or each and every country in South America? Maybe they were supposed to be like the overtures at the beginning of some of the '60s epics, like Lawrence of Arabia and Cleopatra. If they were there solely to convey information, then I think that's just about the most self-important thing they could possibly have done, essentially annoucing from the beginning, "This isn't mere entertainment! This is agitprop! We're educating and enlightening you!"

That brings me to another problem with the film, one you already mentioned, its hagiographical aspect. If Soderbergh intended to present a well rounded depiction of Che, he clearly failed. He's presented as dedicated, courageous, morally incorruptible, and limited only by his own physical weaknesses (namely his asthma) and the failures of those around him. To bring up Lawrence of Arabia again, Soderbergh's treatment of Che starkly contrasts with Lean's treatment of T.E. Lawrence. Lean's Lawrence is a realistic mixture of good and bad; his heroism and magnetism are balanced by his inconstancy and egoism. By depicting the good almost exclusively—despite Che's mention of "executions," the U.N. portions seemed to show his underdog-like defiance and determination rather than his failings—Soderbergh ends up showing us only half a man.

I wonder if this one-sidedness is a result of the decision, otherwise a good one, to depict only two relatively short periods in Che's life. The first part shows us his David-like victory against seemingly insurmountable odds over the Goliath of the Batista regime and, by proxy, the United States, ending with the revolutionaries' moment of triumph. The second part shows us his Christ-like struggles, suffering, and martyrdom in the face of even greater odds in Bolivia. (We even see a "sanhedrin" of sorts in the Bolivian and American officials conspiring against him.) However, most of the things for which people criticize and condemn Che happened between these two periods, namely his overseeing the trial and execution of the new regime's enemies in 1959 and his prominent role in turning the regime from a coalition of anti-Batista groups into a one-party Marxist-Leninist state. So focusing the film only on Che's glorious rise and tragic fall ends up not telling us enough of his story.

Just a couple more points. Though a lot of the scenes of Che and his comrades doing revolution in the jungle (especially in the second part) don't necessarily move the plot forward, I don't think I'd call that "indulgent filmmaking." The film shows us the repetitive, day-to-day trials and turmoil in creating a revolution, probably only one percent of which involves dramatic battles or clashes of personality. Soderbergh said he "was interested in making a procedural about guerrilla warfare," and I think that's exactly what he made.

And finally, if we're going to be pitting Che biopics against each other, I think The Motorcycle Diaries was the better film. Though no less hagiographical than Che, it wasn't as hampered by that, maybe because it depicted a less world-historic period of Che's life. It's one thing to depict some middle-class roadtripping teenager as passionate, humane, and idealistic; it's another to depict him that way once he's become one of the most significant figures in the twentieth century, and has already begun to fail to live up to some of those ideals. The Motorcycle Diaries makes less of a claim to being a definitive telling of his life than Che does, so its positive depiction of him is more understandable (or at least more excusable). That, in addition to its breath-taking cinematography and outstanding performances (maybe Gael García Bernal's best), pulls it into the lead. On the other hand, I'm just glad Soderbergh's making something other than another Ocean's Whatever movie.

And finally, I was awake and comfortable through the whole four hours. Though I probably have to give as much credit to the E Street Cinema's seats as to the film's quality and my own stamina.

Long Night's Jouney Into Revolution.

CHE (PARTS ONE AND TWO). It seems to me that Che (trailer) as a movie is much like Ernesto Che Guevara, the manwhose life it portrays: There is much to like and there is much to critique. First of all, let's get one thing clear: Cinema 21 is not the best place to watch a 4-and-a-half-hour movie. No theater that is that uncomfortable and has that tiny of a restroom should house a movie that has an intermission. Nor should one see that long of a movie because by the end I was having to constantly change positions and move my feet to keep myself from nodding off. On a bright note, they had beer! Only three varieties -- Stella Artois and then an IPA and an amber. $4.50. At the end of the show Steven Sorderbergh talked about the movie for about a half an hour or so, which was definitely worth staying for. Although like the movie itself, I will split this into two pieces with the second being a response to some things he said that I found a bit troubling.

Aside from the difficult involved in watching the movie, there is so much that I could say. I'll have to start with what struck me from the beginning: this movie was beautifully shot. Soderbergh shoots his own movies much of the time and did so with this on new, ultra-portable, hi-res digital cameras and it was a great choice. Hand-held cameras get overused and can seem cliche, but here I thought the way the camera followed them through the jungles and the fighting made me feel like a viewer as if I was there. Because of that intimacy, at the end I could feel the sense of failure that was surrounding Che and his men in Bolivia. From the very beginning of the movie, though, I knew I was in for a great-looking movie as one of the first shots of Che smoking in black-and-white sixties portion was breathtaking. It goes from his mouth to his eyes in such a graceful sweep that really seemed to go right into his personality. It didn't hurt that Benicio Del Toro really poured himself into that character. Soderbergh said afterward that it was an example of the rare occassion when you just have the right actor at the right time playing the right role and it is magical. He was certainly right here as I didn't think Del Toro did not have any emotional stuff to work with in order to connect to Che but did a phenomenal job of channeling his motivations so no matter what he was doing, everything made sense.

The movie also scores twice for my personal preference when it comes to biopics. I prefer that they focus on one element of a person's life instead of trying to tell the whole story, which often seems to lack a focus. It's the difference between a good movie like Capote compared to a weak movie like Ray. Or, to connect it to Che, a phenomenal movie like The Motorcycle Diaries, a film that explored a trip a young Ernesto Guevara took through South America that formed the worldview that spawned a revolutionary. In this movie it happened twice with the first part being pretty focused on the Cuban revolution and the second his failed guerilla war in Bolivia. Although I did feel like there was more that I could know about Che, the story that Soderbergh told was complete.

So why is it not a complete success? Like nearly every movie from last year, it is deeply flawed. The greatest flaw from my view is how indulgent it is, both in the character and in the filmmaking. To take up the latter first, it was too long. I don't say that becuse I sat through it all at once but becaues at times the scenes in the jungle were sapped of their drama by following the details of their training and movement too much. I do not want to see all of this removed, but in both movies I think the editing could have been tightened and we could have easily lost a half hour or so at least from the total length. Now I'm not saying to cut it all down and make it one movie. You will probably note that much of that minutia is what made the movie great, but you can have too much of a good thing. Also indulgent was the treatment of the character, which I think did fail to place him in context. It was seen as if anyone and anything against Che were either ridiculous or exploitive. Soderbergh claims the negative side of Che is supposed to come out in the UN portions of the first movie, but I thought that exactly the opposite happened and it portrayed those who opposed him as either hysterical protestors or out-of-touch diplomats. It was not a deal-breaker here for me, but I thought the movie could have used more context so as to not put it at risk of being inaccurate.

That's what I thought. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on it and also how well you did staying awake and comfortable for the whole thing. Also, The Motorcycle Diaries or Che? Which one would you pick?