First off, I should explain that while the words in quotation marks in the first paragraph of my last post were intended to quote what you'd said after we watched the film, I intended the quotation marks around "happy ending" in the third paragraph as scare-quotes, not (for lack of a better word) quotation-quotes. I guess I could've made that clearer. (Though in your last post you did write that the ending seemed to avoid "something that could be perceived to have a negative message"; maybe there's a difference between that and a "happy ending," but I'm honestly not seeing it.)
Secondly, I think our disagreement about the ending of Platoon stems from the fact that we simply see what the film is about somewhat differently. I agree that Taylor's "education," the various points that the film conveys about war can do to people, is an important element. But I think that to see that as the film's only purpose is to see it too narrowly. Platoon's not just about Taylor's learning the "moral of the story," so to speak—"the primal nature that can exist," "becoming what you loathe," "the experience of war can make any man a killer,"* etc.—but more about his Vietnam experiences as a whole and how they shaped his young life. It makes sense that Stone would look at it this way, since the events are partly based on (or at least inspired by) his own experiences in the war, with Taylor in many respects standing in for Stone himself (who came from an upper-middle-class family, dropped out of Yale, and enlisted at the age of twenty-one for combat duty in Vietnam). Taylor's more than just a character in a story whose role is to move the narrative along and illustrate certain issues, or at least that's how I imagine Stone saw him when he made the film. After all, nearly two decades of his life had already passed since Stone had served in Vietnam, so it would be natural for him to spend a minute or two reflecting on his fictional soldier's post-Vietnam life.
Taylor isn't a mere cipher to convey the film's lessons, to serve a narrative purpose and then disappear; he's a broader embodiment of the Vietnam experiences of Stone and veterans like him, experiences that they carried off the battlefield and that shaped their post-war lives. Those experiences included saying goodbye to friends, returning to "the world," mourning the dead, and reflecting on what it all meant and how one should move forward with the rest of one's life. So I think that Stone intended the film's ending as a nod to those aspects of veterans' lives—indeed, to his own life. As a matter of fact, I think that it makes the film more "fulfilling," giving it a broader scope and meaning, rather than encapsulating the events we've just seen with an abrupt ending on the battlefield. Just because it isn't The Deer Hunter or Born on the Fourth of July doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't touch on post-war life in addition to depicting combat. (And besides, I have a hard time seeing a film that depicts an American N.C.O. as a homicidal psychopath, and most of the rest as brutal, cruel, or indifferent, as making much of an effort to pander to veterans.)
And such themes, issues, and messages aside, I stand by my assertion that ending the film as soon as Taylor kills Barnes would have been less stylistically and tonally appropriate than ending it as it does, which eases the audience out and offers a chance for reflection.
I should mention that my support for the ending doesn't mean that I think Platoon is flawless in all respects. My main criticism would be that it doesn't really convey Taylor's claim during the epilogic voice-over that he was "born of those two fathers," Sgts. Barnes and Elias, that they were "fighting for possession of his soul." Other than that line and an earlier one (in the scene when Taylor attacks Barnes in the tent) when Rhah reminds Taylor that he (Taylor) used to admire Barnes, he seems to be entirely on Elias's side throughout the film and disgusted with Barnes. Maybe there are cut scenes of Taylor looking up to or identifying with Barnes, I don't know, but in the cut we watched those two lines seem really out of place, obliquely hinting at an aspect of the film that we never actually see.
* On that point, we should remember that Sgt. Elias had been in Vietnam for three years and was an excellent soldier, but never lost his decency or humanity. So the moral deterioration that Stone generally depicts among the characters as a result of their war experiences isn't really universal or inevitable.
In your recent post about my somewhat offhand comments about Platoon, I think you may have put words in my mouth a little bit. As a student of journalism I should scold you for putting quotes around words I never said. Who do you think you are, Aaron Sorkin?
Spoiler alert as well here folks, which should be obvious since this is a response to another spoiler-heavy post. But I imagine one can never be too safe about preventing the spoiling of a 24-year-old movie.
My feeling was not that the movie had a "happy ending" by any stretch of the imagination -- Taylor is shown clutching a grenade and contemplating suicide and then we watch helicopters en route to military hospitals depart from land being made into mass graves. My quibble was with what I called a sentimental ending. The only purpose that the last few minutes served to me was to show how Taylor had a lot of emotion on leaving Vietnam and it did not seem that was what the movie was about prior to that ending. I saw the movie as following Taylor's education as a man and discovering through war the primal nature that can exist. That scene with Barnes was so powerful because it was the end of his education: He does exactly what he loathed about the sergeant and discovered that no matter how much he thought he was better than Barnes, at heart the experience of war can make any man a killer. It was a powerful movie about how a man loses enough of himself to become a warrior, not how a man becomes sorrowful about war. What it came across as was Stone felt he had to make an ending that was a bit of a tribute to veterans more so than a fulfilling part of the movie.
The slightly half-baked idea I mentioned at the end of the movie may not have been exactly how the film should have ended. It did not need to be a Sopranos style closing. But I stand by my observation that Stone would have made a stronger finish had he made that scene the final one. Instead that last moments had the smell of something a studio usually tacks on to make a particular group (veterans in this case -- not that I think it was anti-veteran but that's a whole different subject) or Academy voters who do not like to see something that could be perceived to have a negative message.
Matt, after watching Platoon a couple nights ago, you said that you didn't like how Oliver Stone ended the film; specifically, you said that the fact that we see Taylor (Charlie Sheen) being evacuated from the battlefield and saying goodbye to some of the survivors from his unit meant that Stone didn't have any "stones" (in the parlance of our times), and that film would have been much more "effective" if it had ended with Taylor shooting Sgt. Barnes (Tom Berenger). I disagreed at the time, but hadn't had the chance really to articulate why (beyond the fact that we wouldn't have gotten that great final epilogic voice-over). Now that I've had the chance to think about it a little, I'd like to explain why I think the right ending for Platoon is the ending it has.
Platoon is told in a realistic style, and its tone is reflective and mournful. You see this in its straightforward structure and visual style, in the voice-overs, and in the score. That being the case, it makes sense to follow Taylor off the battlefield, into the beginning of his post-Vietnam life, as he reflects on what the experiences we've just witnessed meant to him, easing the audience out of the film. Ending it with a sudden cut to black (or something like that) after he shoots Barnes would have been completely out of place in terms of the tone the film had established. Something like that would have been more fitting for a film like Natural Born Killers, with its much more stylized . . . well, style, and its shocking and aggressive tone. Ending the film that way would have had a jarring effect that the rest of the film just wasn't going for. (Of course, a lot of the events depicted are shocking and jarring, for instance Barnes's shooting of the Vietnamese woman, but the way they're depicted is not, in terms of editing and photography.) It would be much more in keeping with what would become Stone's signature visual and editing style in later films of his like The Doors, JFK, and the aforementioned Natural Born Killers, or with Kubrick's nearly contemporaneous Full Metal Jacket, which, from its opening shots of conscripts having their heads shaven to the strains of "Hello Vietnam," informs the audience of its more over-the-top and satirical tone. Ending Platoon as he did was perfectly in keeping with the seriousness and realism that Stone had spent the prior two hours establishing, and so was quite effective.
I certainly don't see the ending as a sign of Stone's chickening out by giving the audience a more upbeat ending than the ending you suggested. First off, it's not really much of a "happy ending": Most of the unit is dead (either from the North Vietnamese or the napalm bombing), we see bulldozers pushing mounds of corpses into mass graves, and our protagonist weeps as the voice-over talks about how he carried the war's emotional scars for the rest of his life. Moreover, we don't need those final scenes to know that Taylor was probably going to make it off the battlefield: He was obviously wounded badly enough to be hospitalized, but not so badly that he would die before U.S. troops found him (as they almost certainly would, since they'd beaten off the North Vietnamese assault (however pyrrhically) and would then search the battlefield for survivors and collect the dead). Even if the film had ended as you suggested, it wouldn't have been any more or less a "happy ending," except for its jarring emotional effect, which, as I explained above, would have been inappropriate.
In any number of other films, the ending you suggested would have been great. But it would have been tonally and stylistically out of place in Platoon.
In his first film since 2003's Paycheck, and his first Chinese film since 1992's Hard Boiled, John Woo recounts, in grand, old silver-screen style, an episode from ancient Chinese history, relatively unknown in the West (if I'm any barometer) but as celebrated in the Far East as Washington's winter at Valley Forge or Robin Hood's struggles against Prince John.
In the early third century, the great Han Dynasty is in decline, and the tyrannical prime minister Cao Cao (Zhang Fengyi) effectively rules in the emperor's name. In southern China, numerous warlords have risen up to resist him, including Liu Bei (You Yong), who struggles to shelter refugees fleeing from Cao Cao's forces. Hope for resistance lies in Sun Quan (Chang Chen), the most powerful warlord but inexperienced, who hasn't yet openly breached with Cao Cao. To bring Sun Quan into alliance against Cao Cao, Liu Bei sends his brilliant strategist and diplomat Zhuge Liang (Kaneshiro Takeshi) to Sun Quan's court; he succeeds, and Zhuge Liang joins Sun Quan's great lieutenant, Viceroy Zhou Yu (Tony Leung), at his encampment at Red Cliff, strategically guarding the Yangtze River, to defend the south against Cao Cao's vast advancing army and navy. Complicating matters is the fact that Cao Cao harbors a love for Zhou Yu's beautiful wife, Xiao Qiao (Lin Chi-ling), and may be using the war to obtain her at last. (Hope you're paying attention, because this will be on the final. Seriously, though, it makes a lot more sense while you're watching it.)
All this just sets the stage for the main body of the story, Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liang's defence of Red Cliff against Cao Cao's approaching army and his navy sailing down the Yangtze. Amidst this, there is a multitude of strategies, counter-strategies, personality clashes, and setbacks over the film's two and a half hours. (The version of Red Cliff released in Asia was released in two installments totalling four hours and forty minutes.) Basing his account on the third-century Records of the Three Kingdoms, Woo has created an epic historical romance with sweeping scope, intense action, and enough room left over for tender moments shared by Zhou Yu and Xiao Qiao, the growing respect and friendship between the brawn of Zhou Yu and the brains of Zhuge Liang, and even a little humor. The first comparison that came to mind watching this was Peter Jackon's The Lord of the Rings; both have huge scope but keep the focus on the individuals bringing all of it about, while doing so in a grand, old-fashioned, ripping-yarn way. Zhou Yu is Aragorn, the noble-hearted hero fighting for country and love; Zhuge Liang is a younger, less magical Gandalf, the strategic mastermind uniting all the forces of good; Sun Quan's sister Sun Shangxiang (Zhao Wei) is Éowyn, the man-hearted princess who insists on joining the fight. Basically, if you liked The Lord of the Rings and aren't adverse to reading subtitles or learning a little about Chinese history along the way, Red Cliff should be a good time.
(The story is told in media res, covering only a few months in late A.D. 208 and early 209, so you don't really find out what happens after the Battle of Red Cliff. Zhou Yu died of natural causes about a year after the battle; unfortunately, the Latin-alphabet Wikipedias don't say anything about Xiao Qiao's fate. Cao Cao returned to the north, where he continued to rule until his death in 220; his son Cao Pi succeeded to his position, forced the last Han emperor to abdicate, and became the first emperor of the Wei Dynasty in northern China. Liu Bei, as a distant relative of the deposed Han, then declared himself emperor as well, founding the Shu Dynasty in southwestern China's Sichuan Basin; he died in 223. Zhuge Liang continued to serve Liu Bei and his new dynasty as chancellor, waging several wars against Cao Cao and his successors before dying in 234. After wavering between allying with and fighting Cao Cao and the Wei, in 229 Sun Quan declared himself emperor of the Wu Dynasty—the third of the "three kingdoms"—in most of southern China; he ruled, first as warlord and then as emperor, for more than a half-century, dying in 252. Eventually, the Wei defeated Liu Bei's son and conquered the Shu, then the Wei were deposed by the Jin Dynasty, which then conquered the Wu and reunited China in 280 after sixty years of division. Thank you, Wikipedia.)
— — — — —
By an interesting coincidence, the discovery by Chinese archeologists of the tomb of the film's villain, Cao Cao, was just announced. Excavations have been going on since last year on the partially subterranean mausoleum in the village of Xigaoxue, in the Province of Henan. According to tradition, Cao Cao wished to be buried very simply, which reportedly is borne out by the fact that the tomb contains little in the way of precious artifacts. However, tradition also tells that Cao Cao had seventy-two tombs built in order to thwart robbers, so hopefully they have the right one.
On second thought and sober reflection, that's a really dumb post title. Oh well, it stays.
Though I haven't seen the original Danish version of Brothers (and my time machine's in the shop, so I haven't seen the American remake either), you raised some interesting points in your last post that I'd like to address.
To remake or not to remake. Whether 'tis nobler to introduce great stories from foreign films to wider American audiences, or just to say "No, sorry, sometimes watching a great work of cinema means having to read a little." It's kinda a tough call. My first instinct is to condemn remakes, updates, reboots, etc. and to encourage people to embrace the original instead, even if it's in another language, in black and white, or doesn't have any actors you recognize from the covers of People, Us Weekly, or Tiger Beat. But that would make me a hypocrite, wouldn't it, since only a couple posts ago I was gushing over a trio of great remakes. There have been plenty of good, even great, remakes of older foreign films, from The Departed, which you mentioned, to The Good Thief (based on Melville's Bob le Flambleur), Twelve Monkeys (based on La Jetée), A Fistful of Dollars (based on Kurosawa's Yojimbo), and, of course, Star Wars (based on The Hidden Fortress, also by Kurosawa). (Here is a handy list of English-language remakes of foreign films. Of course, this kind of influence is a two-way street; for example, two of Kurosawa's films, Throne of Blood and Ran, are based on Shakespeare, Macbeth and King Lear respectively.)
One particularly interesting example, discussed previously, is Funny Games, originally made in 1997 in German, remade in 2008 in English. Both were directed by Michael Haneke (who won the Palme d'Or at Cannes last spring for his most recent film, The White Ribbon), using the same script and all the same shots; the only differences were the actors and the language. I suppose Haneke did this to expose a wider audience to the ideas in the original; I doubt he was just trying to cash in on the American market, since there are a lot more audience-friendly stories out there if you're just trying to make a buck. Regardless of his motivation, it almost can't be considered a remake, since there's virtually no creative difference between it and the original; except for the actors' performances, you might as well be watching a dubbed version of the original.
The main reason why this issue is of interest to me is the forthcoming American remake of the 2008 Swedish film Let the Right One In (trailer), my number 2 film of that year. It has fantastic, understated performances, particularly on the parts of its child-leads, Kåre Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson; its cinematography and music create a beautiful, almost dreamlike atmosphere; and the story has a mixture of innocence, uncertainty, and fear that's particularly appropriate for a film about adolescence. Oh yeah, and it has a deathless minion of Hell damned to feed on the living for all eternity, so basically it's the total package. It's been out on DVD for a while now, and I would've bought it in a heart beat, but the English subtitles in the DVD version are significantly different, and vastly inferior, to those in the theatrical version. Why they would do that I have no idea, but it breaks my heart; I'm almost tempted just to learn enough Swedish to avoid the subtitles altogether. The North American distributer, Magnolia Films, has said it would release a version with the theatrical subtitles, but I haven't seen it yet. This isn't the first time I've been burnt by shoddy subtitles to the foreign films I love; I saw Park Chan-wook's Oldboy twice in theaters, and I'm positive the subtitles in my DVD are different. Seriously, this crap make me pull my hair out.
To get back on topic, the American remake is scheduled for release next year, with Matt Reeves (The Pallbearer (a David Schwimmer vehicle—I didn't even know there was such a thing), Felicity, Cloverfield . . . ugh) directing. Some casting news came out recently, with Kodi Smit-McPhee (soon to appear in the adaptation of The Road) and Chloë Moretz (recently in (500) Days of Summer, also in the upcoming adaptation of the comic book Kick-Ass) as the two kids and Richard Jenkins as the girl's "guardian." It's good to see they're keeping the kid characters young (Smit-McPhee is 13, Moretz 12) instead of going the more bankable, less squicky route of teen actors, as is Oscar-nominee Jenkins's involvement. There had previously been noises that Philip Seymour Hoffman would get that role, but I won't lose any sleep over Jenkins getting it instead. Hoffman would've captured the sad-sack-schlub aspect of the original's character (I'm imagining his roles in Happiness and Synecdoche, New York), but Jenkins can evoke a tired, forlorn quality (seen to such great effect last year in The Visitor) that I think would work great as well.
Though the casting seems promising, other elements—in addition to Reeves's filmography—are less so. First off, it may get a different title, "Let Me In" or "Fish Head." The former refers to a particular scene in the film, but in a slightly more obvious way than "Let the Right One In" does; as for "Fish Head," I haven't the slightest clue. Also, the original's director, Tomas Alfredson, made the good point that it doesn't make a lot to sense to remake what is already a fantastic film, especially so recently afterward. It threatens to distract from the original people who might otherwise see it, offering in its place a work that, even if as good as the original, is merely piggy-backing on its ideas.
In a move that may work for or against his film, Reeves apparently wants to hew more closely to John Lindqvist's novel. (Of course, he's already failing to do that by changing the setting from Sweden to the United States, isn't he?) I mention this because it's good to keep in mind when discussing remakes that the original film isn't always a canon from which any deviation is necessarily wrong; originals are themselves often based on their own source material, deviation from which may help or hurt them. So we'll have to see what impact that has.
Another reason the remake leaves a bad taste in my mouth is that it seems a bit like a cashing-in on the explosion of all things vampiric in popular culture right now. (A few years ago it was zombies, starting with Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later in 2002; the zombie renaissance seems to have mostly burnt itself out by this point, except for the occasional film like Zombieland that takes a slightly different approach from the well-worn "motley crew of survivors spend the running time killing the undead in gruesomely creative ways, most of them dying themselves along the way" template.) Since Stephanie Meyer's Twilight novels started making big bucks, it seems like you can't walk ten feet without seeing a new vampire-themed film or TV series, be it the films Twilight and New Moon, True Blood, Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant, Daybreakers, the inexplicable continuance of the Underworld franchise, etc., etc., etc. On the one hand, Reeves has some of the best source material—cinematic and (presumably) literary—that one could hope for; on the other, he is apparently going in a more "accessible" direction. As long as he doesn't have his young vampiress sparkling or playing baseball, I guess that'll be some kind of victory, at least.
Anyway, that's what I have to say about American remakes of foreign films (at least until I see either version of Brothers and can comment directly). I also agree that there doesn't seem to have been any high-quality films about the Afghan or Iraqi wars other than Kathryn Bigelow's outstanding The Hurt Locker this summer. I don't have a whole lot to say on this point; honestly, I think The Hurt Locker is the first I've seen because, well, the others weren't supposed to be that great. Maybe it's a matter of needing a little more distance from the subject matter, maybe it's just the fact that, regardless of subject matter, a lot more crappy movies are made than good ones. Keep in mind that it took a while for films like The Deer Hunter (1978), Coming Home (1978), Apocalypse Now (1979), Platoon (1986), and Full Metal Jacket (1987) to come out; prior to that, it had mostly been the Duke kicking VC ass in The Green Berets.
Oh, blog...did you miss me? I realize that I have not been supportive and giving you the attention you so richly deserve for all the you have done for me, but I swear to God I haven’t been seeing any other online authoring tools. I mean I was moving and starting work at a different place and preparing for the LSAT -- yes, yes I'll stop -- I know they're just excuses and you deserve better. I just want you to know that it’s not you; it’s me. And if you just take me back, I swear I’ll make it up to you this time. I can change -- really I can. And no, those colors don't make your pages look fat.
Well, now that is out of the way so I can get back to the less important stuff....
BRØDRE (aka BROTHERS). Now give me some sympathy in my analysis here, please, because I did watch this about a month ago on the train as I was making my move to Washington. I do want to get this written to talk about not just the movie itself, which I did find noteworthy, but also the idea of American remakes of foreign films. So I'm going to start with the movie (trailer) first and then rip on Tobey Maguire and American film.
This Danish movie follows one of the oldest subjects in film: war. Like many such movies, especially those post-Vietnam, this one looks and the psychological affects of warfare both on the people serving and those that are left at home. As the title implies, there are two siblings in this telling, but unmentioned there is the one woman who is just as significant to the story and completes what because an uneasy triangle of family emotions and tension. Michael (Ulrich Thomsen) is the mature, elder brother who, as the movie commences, is preparing to be shipped off to Afghanistan and leave behind our female lead, his wife Sarah, who is played by the Danish actress Connie Nielsen. Interesting tidbit about her is that despite her background, she built her career in American movies such as Gladiator and Rushmore, with Brothers marking her Danish-language debut. The third major character is the flaky, younger brother Jannik (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) that grows closer to Sarah and her two daughters after Michael leaves. OK, so the trailer and everything about the movie I saw beforehand gives this plot point away, but it is a minor SPOILER ALERT, and if you don't want to know any more, skip to the end of the paragraph. Now that enough space should have passed for those not wanting to find anything out can leave, I will say that Jannik and Sarah become especially close as they both mourn Michael, who is incorrectly declared dead. This creates new complexity when Michael eventually returns home, especially with the raw wounds and possible PTSD (my diagnosis, not the film's) related to the events we see happen to him in Afghanistan. Giving away those events as well as how the story evolves would give away too much, but it is enough to say that everything becomes stretched toward the breaking point.
What I found worth writing about in this movie was the delicacy with which the director, Susanne Bier, handled her characters and situations that delve into much more dark, raw areas than we often see in film. Although war is not a new subject for film, she used a lot of the documentary-like methods used frequently in films of this generation to try and capture a realism of living those experiences. I don't necessarily mean the battle locations, but more the mundane, daily activities that one goes through as one tries to go one with a life that has been drastically altered by the absence of spouse or sibling. There are certain scenes in the movie that are longer than what one might expect and instead of cutting to the next shot, we often get a couple of seconds more of, say, Sarah's face that allows us to see not her instantaneous reaction, but how something settles into her visage. There is a lot of lingering -- mimicking, one might say, the way that Sarah's life is in a suspended state. About halfway through the movie there is a scene that I cannot describe in too much detail, but those who have or will see the movie likely know what I'm talking about when I say that one of the more dramatic shots goes on for an excruciatingly long period of time. It went on long enough for me to first think, "Gee, I think there should be a cut in here," and then eventually realize as it continued that by not cutting, the director was putting me in the head of the character and making it probably the most effective shot of the film. When it finally did cut, I found myself both mesmerized and horrified at the same time. Also, probably what the character felt.
I was also pleased to see the topic of Afghanistan -- a mission more closely tied to the United States than Europe but that has yet to yield a particularly memorable narrative film in this country. Perhaps that is why it has been remade as an American film and is being released this winter. Americans like a lot of the themes for war films brought up in this movie -- the idea of exploring the trauma at home hearkens back to Coming Home and the horror of war on combatants is, well, present in nearly every war film made since the 1970s. Having now seen this source material, it seems to me making an English-language movie 5 years later is a waste of time.
There was a time when remaking a foreign film made a lot of sense, at least from a financial standpoint, because a good plot was already in place and the state of foreign-film distribution was such that hardly anyone would have seen the original. But this movie was played in theaters on this continent and is easily available for rent with the diversified collection of services like Netflix. I do realize that just a few years ago Martin Scorsese won an Oscar for The Departed, which was a remake of a then four-year-old Hong Kong movie Mou gaan dou, known in the United States as Infernal Affairs. I do admit that case does work against my argument, but to a lesser extent because, having seen both movies, they are completely different film experiences. The general plot is the same but the style and character are reflect two vastly diverging approaches in the two tellings (and, I should say, they are both worth seeing). Having watched the trailer (see bottom) for the American remake of Brothers, it does not appear to be the case. The lines from the trailer mimic many of the lines from the movie and since the story is about a war that is still going on, I have a hard time seeing how the filmmakers will find something else to say about it. It looks like it will turn out to be a similar movie with the actors speaking in English instead. In defense of the movie I should note that it has some credentials that make it a more serious project than a simple Hollywoodization. The director is Irishman Jim Sheridan, who created such memorable films as My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father, In America and (as if that trilogy were not enough) the 50 Cent biopic Get Rich or Die Tryin'. With the aforementioned Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Natalie Portman, it shows some promise -- it just seems like a big ole waste of time. It's possible that with this team the movie might not be stripped of its quality and replaced by a weepy drama with Portman as the balling wife -- stripped of all her emotional scars and instead replaced by a teary housewife as American representation of women in movies often do. And since I did promise a complaint about Spider-man -- how about that he does not look noticeably older than Bubble Boy? Or that he looks just as small, if not smaller? The physical difference between the brothers I found to be a key element and when I see the two of them together it kind of ruins the dynamic.
It seems to me that too often, no matter who is involved, American remakes are known for taking what was a good foreign film and turning it into something bland. It seems that it would be quite difficult to make a good movie once, but to take the same idea and do it again without making it a completely unoriginal, literal translation would be even more difficult. Think Vanilla Sky, originally Abre Los Ojos, also with Penélope Cruz. It takes so much effort to make a movie and as you described in questioning whether Darren Aronofsky should remake RoboCop, I can't help but wonder if the talented people behind this movie should invest their time making something more worthwhile. There have been hardly any quality representations in narrative film of the two wars in which the country is now embroiled -- the first acknowledged success being The Hurt Locker, THIS YEAR -- that I would much rather see a creative team make another quality movie on the topic instead of rehashing one of the only good ones that has been done thus far. I would go so far as to say that film has failed thus far to capture the significance of the post-9/11 environment, which is at least as significant of a cultural element as the Vietnam War. But that could be a whole different post. This is just concluding that the topic of Afghanistan and modern war has not been so thoroughly explored that only opportunity is a remake of a foreign film.
So that does leave the question of whether I will see the new movie. Yes, I expect I will. If it is good, I will want to see what they have done with it and whether that causes me to reassess my judgment. If it is not good, well that just gives me something more to write about here.
It looks like we're both pretty busy right now, but just to keep the blog active I thought I'd mention the last two movies I've seen, though I don't have a lot to say about them at the moment.
So last night I saw Once (trailer), just a wonderful, beautiful film. In addition to its purely cinematic qualities (story, acting, photography, etc.), it's also a welcome new take on the musical genre. While standard musicals generally just have a story (itself often non-musical, like an Austrian ex-nun taking care of a military officer's children, or the criminal underworld in Victorian London) with songs interspersed, Once integrates its musical naturally by making its main characters musicians who actually have a logical reason to break into song. I also loved how the relationship between the guy and the girl (those are their names according to the credits and IMDB) skirts the edges of romance and platonic friendship, instead of going the standard route of just being the former. It made the depiction of that relationship much more natural, realistic, and honest than what we usually see, especially in musicals. On top of that, the music was great, too; I have a hankering now to go buy the soundtrack. Once is a well made, touching, and unconventional film, whose songs alone would make it worth seeing if the rest of it weren't great as well.
The night before, I saw Come and See (trailer, good New York Times article), by Soviet director Elem Klimov. Simply, if somewhat glibly, put, this is a war movie that makes every other war movie ever made look like Daddy Day Care. Taking place in 1943 in German-occupied Byelorussia (today's Belarus), it depicts an adolescent boy who joins the Soviet partisans with hopes of adventure, whose innocence, courage, and almost his humanity are beaten out of him by the horrors of war. By the end, the boy looks like a cross between a 70-year-old man and a beaten dog. In many respects, it seemed almost like a depiction of the Fall of Man, with its young couple thrown out of their forest "paradise" into a cruel, hard world. I found out about this film thanks to The Onion A.V. Club's list, "Not Again: 24 Great Films Too Painful to Watch Twice," and it certainly deserves its place on that list; seeing it once is a must, seeing it more than that is probably masochism. It's a stunning, unforgettable film, more terrifying and disgusting than any horror movie, and a powerful indictment of all war (even justifiable war, like the partisans' fight against the Nazis), but following it up with a film like Once was probably a good idea.
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.
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 weboth 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'sassessment of the lack of filmmaker responsibility.
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.
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?
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