Tuesday, August 27, 2013

"NO" directed by Pablo Larraín, with Gael Garcia Bernal.

"NO" is said to be film director Pablo Larraín's final film of an Augusto Pinochet trilogy that began with "Tony Manero," the second being "Post Mortem," films I reviewed in Screen Shots last month. It is based on real events.  "No" features Gael García Bernal and Alfredo Castro.

Gael Garcia Bernal as René  Saavedra at work in the ad agency.


Bernal plays René Saavedra, an in-demand advertising accounts executive in the creative department of an agency run by Lucho Guzmán (Larraín regular, Alfredo Castro).  In Chilé in 1988, the government was so certain that after 15 years of Pinochet's military dictatorship, he would easily get another eight years in office.  The government decided on a plebiscite, a simple Yes or No vote by its citizens.  If Yes, another 8 for Pinochet; if  No, a free and open democratic election sans Pinochet.  The committee for the No campaign, knowing of Saavedra's work, had no doubts that he could pull off a successful ad campaign that would ensure a No majority.

I had been watching reruns of the Cable series, "Mad Men", so seeing Saavedra and his group working up copy and TV spots for the campaign was interesting and intriguing.  Smartly, he avoided focusing on how Pinochet's murderous dirty work affected the majority of Chileans.  Instead, he created up-beat, fun ads for the No campaign that gave people optimism and hope.  Guzmán was not happy (for once, Castro was not playing an pathological, obsessive killer ("Tony Manero"); a loser with a dead-end job ("Post Mortem"); or a licentious, homosexual patient in an asylum for the mentally ill ("Fugue"), but a believable ad executive a la the Roger Sterling character in "Mad Men".

Guzmán feared losing his rich corporate clients if they found out that his firm was involved in the No campaign.  Authorities' attempts to intimidate Saavedra and sabotage his work,  failed.  The unorthodox marketing theme is thought by some No members to be a simple-minded dismissal of the regime's horrific abuses.  Nevertheless, the campaign approves Saavedra's proposal.  Lucho offers Saavedra a partnership if he drops the campaign.  He refuses.  Lucho then signs on to the Yes campaign not only to save face with his clients, but for survival
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The  "No" ads are followed up by international Hollywood celebrity spots and wildly popular street concert rallies.  The police attacks are futile.  Ironically, the "Yes" side is desperate to the point of parodying the "No" ads.


Again, as in his previous films, there were criticisms about "production values."  In "No," Larraín used low definition, magnetic tape, widely used in the '80s by Chilean television news, prompting some entertainment rags to argue that this most likely lessened the film's chances not only commercially, but also for getting an Oscar. ("NO" was nominated for Best Foreign Film.)  An article in the Village Voice stated that  the film allows Larraín's new material to mesh seamlessly with the 1988 archival film clips of actual police crackdowns and pro-democracy assemblies that Larraín included.  The article went on to state that this decision was  an "accomplishment in cinematic verisimilitude."

Genaro Arriagada, head of the real No campaign, accused Larraín of simplifying history, focusing exclusively on the advertising campaign and ignoring the grassroots voter registration effort that played a huge part in getting out the No vote.   The director defended his film saying that he created art not a documentary.  He went on to say that "a movie is not a testament. It’s just the way we looked at it."  Further, a Chilean political science professor questioned whether the moment that political activism turned into marketing should br celebrated, instead of a discussion of principles.  However, were it a documentary, would it have gotten the play it did?








Sunday, August 4, 2013

DIRTY WARS and FRUITVALE STATION





DIRTY WARS, a documentary film, written by Jeremy Scahill and directed by Rick Rowley. 



 The documentary film “Dirty Wars” should sicken, anger, and depress you.   Investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill , who wrote the film, has done his job.  Seems that the United States presidential administration has allowed  the CIA to work jointly with a once  secret US paramilitary team  known as JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) to do its dirty work outside the law.  Since 9-11-2001, and the beefing up of the Patriot Act, JSOC  has been authorized to kill anyone carte blanche that the US government believes is  intent on doing harm to the United States-politically, militarily, or socially.  These suspects are not arrested, given no jail time, no trial, just death carried out in secret by this team of uniformed, armed dudes (some dudettes in the future, perhaps) who answer to no one but whomever happens to be in the White House  at the time.   Recently, their operations went wide in that they are authorized to kill even  US citizens believed to be connected to terrorists in any way, be it through family, a charitable organization, friend, or acquaintance.
Immediately after the US bombed Afghanistan in October 2001, invaded and shelled Iraq in 2003, Scahill went to these countries on his own with his notebook, a tape recorder, a translator, and a cameraman.  He trucked into dangerous provinces in Afghanistan to investigate night raids, and after winning the villagers’ trust,  interviewed them.   They spoke openly about the atrocities that the US military and its coalition forces wreaked upon them.   There is a scene where they show Scahill cell phone videos where families are dancing and singing at a wedding party; suddenly it turns to chaos when, without  warning, the building is bombed and shelled, and the wedding partiers-men, women, and children are blown to bits and maimed.  They show him photos of the aftermath: fathers carrying limp bodies of their children; women wailing, the bloodied dead, dying, and wounded.  They are disturbing and difficult to look at.  This type of raid is carried out by US forces who allegedly have proof that the place was harboring the Taliban or Al Qaeda.  With scenes like these- and there are several- Scahill raises the documentary from a dry, factual account featuring pundits’, military  officials’, and/or world leaders’ talking heads to the heart-wrenching personal stories of innocent people’s suffering and those responsible. 
 
Scahill (3rd frm left) with Afghan villagers
The film concludes with the assassination by a US drone strike of outspoken, radical Muslim Anwar Al Awlaki , an American citizen, in Yemen.  Scahill included photos and videos of Awlaki’s 16 year old, American-born son growing up, and as a young college student, playing sports with his friends in the United States.   He had gone to Yemen to look for his father.  He too was killed in the same manner.  Why?  Both were on the US administration’s not-so-secret “kill list,”- so, fair game.  Awlaki was killed not for any terrorist acts, but for his words.  He had been charged with inspiring Muslims in America and in the Arab world to kill Americans; his son, guilt by association.  Father and son were never charged with any crime, nor were they arrested or brought to trial which is an American citizen’s right.  These killings are unprecedented.   As one reviewer stated, Scahill uncovered a “world of covert operations unknown to the public and carried out across the globe by men who do not exist on paper and will never appear before Congress.  In military jargon, JSOC teams ‘find, fix, and finish’ their targets.”
“Dirty Wars” is an important film detailing a “war” that goes underreported.  In fact, the film played in only one theatre in San Francisco for one week.  The day I went to see it, the power had gone out; then, the theatre closed for renovation; the film was not picked up by another movie house, which is usually the case.    I had to travel to Berkeley to catch it at the one theatre that carried it in all of the Bay Area counties.  This is a shame.  Still, we are fortunate that Scahill and other truth-seekers and tellers like him have not been silenced.  Can we be certain, given the fate of Snowden, Assange, and Manning, that they will not be? Try to get it when it comes out on DVD, Netflix, Hulu, or wherever.

This review has been published also on  www.socialistaction.org

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FRUITVALE STATION.  Directed by Ryan Coogler, starring Michael B. Jordan, Olivia Spencer, and Melonie Diaz

Michael B. Jordan as Oscar Grant III


Fruitvale Station is filmmaker and director Ryan Coogler’s first work and is as polished and professional as any seasoned Hollywood filmmaker’s.  He opens his film with the authentic, jumpy, low resolution of the cell phone videos taken of the tragic killing of Oscar Grant III that early New Year’s morning by a BART cop.  Towards the end, Coogler recreated the scene fictionally, capturing the verisimilitude of the original.
Coincidently, the film hit the theatres about the same time George Zimmerman, the self-styled neighborhood security cop, was awarded a not guilty verdict for shooting and killing unarmed, 17-year old, black youth Trayvon Martin in a Miami suburb.

Fruitvale Station is an independent docu-drama, a fictional account of Grant’s murder by BART cop Johannes Mehserle (whose identity is neither revealed in the film, nor in the film’s database).  The film shows him shooting Grant in the back as he lay prone and handcuffed on the platform of Oakland’s Fruitvale BART station.   Grant is played by Michael B. Jordan who has Denzel Washington’s charm and winning smile.  He, his girlfriend, Sophina (Melonie Diaz) and mother of his four year old daughter, Tatiana (a delightful, natural Ariana Neal), and their friends were on their way home on a BART train from the New Year’s Eve fireworks in San Francisco.  An altercation broke out and the train was stopped at Fruitvale Station.  BART police arrived, ordered Grant and his friends off the train.  Grant insisted that they weren’t doing anything. 

Oscar Grant & Friends  with BART cops at Fruitvale Station
    What followed was a brutal attack along with undue harassment and beating by the cops on innocent people, which ended with Grant’s death.    The audience in the theatre, including me, involuntarily gasped and cried out in disbelief when the shot was heard that killed Grant, even though we knew the outcome.  The camera stayed on Grant’s face as it registered his confusion.  You felt him thinking, “This can’t be happening.”  

   Though we saw the scene captured by cell phone at the beginning of the film, Coogler’s recreation of it towards the end had more impact in that he allowed us to get to know Grant during the 24 hours before he was killed.   Heartbreaking.   We see him with Sophina, playing with Tatiana, taking her to preschool; and in a fictional scene he’s caring for a dog that had been hit by a car.  Also, there’s a joyous celebration for his mother’s birthday with grandparents, siblings, and kids.  Coogler makes it feel as though we’re there. 
 
Grant was not blemish-free.  During the hours before his death, we learn that he had lost his job but pretended he was still working and threatened his ex-boss when he tried to get it back; lied to his girlfriend about seeing other women; and sold marijuana to make money.   In a scene by the bay, as Grant waits for his contact, he reflects on his time in San Quentin (shown in flashback) and how it affected his mother, Wanda, beautifully played by Olivia Spencer (Oscar recepient for The Help); his girlfriend and their daughter.  In that scene, Jordan lets you witness Oscar Grant’s epiphany; he’s that good an actor.  He made his New Year’s resolution, but Mehserle kept him from realizing it.
Jordan and Ariana as Grant and Tatiana
 
As of this writing, an appeals court granted the Oscar Grant family the right to sue the BART police officer for killing their son.
Oscar Grant III and Trayvon Martin are symbols for mostly young black males in America who are subjected to ongoing, documented killings and beatings by law enforcement officials, though many go unreported.  It is said that the race of the cop is not a factor, it’s the group psychology of the general law enforcement population, the “blue” cop.  This has to change.

This review has been adapted for publication in the alternative, national newspaper, Socialist Action, and posted on its website.  Subscribe on line at www.socialistaction.org.
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Tuesday, July 16, 2013

HE RIDES AGAIN! "The Lone Ranger"


Johnny Depp as Tonto and Armie Hammer as the Lone Ranger scope out Red's bordello for bad guys.


The film "The Lone Ranger," starring Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer, Tom Wilkinson, and William Fitchner, was directed by Gore Verbinski.  It features a haunting yet robust score by Hans Zimmer, with beautiful, mesmerizing, panoramic cinematography by a raft of people headed by Bojan Bozelli.  It was supposed to be the No. 1 summer hit; unfortunately, it failed miserably at the box office, bested by "Despicable Me 2".  I do not know why.  Critics were mean and cruel.  Their comments about Depp, hurtful.  Still, none of this kept me away.  I believe in Depp, having seen him in just about everything he's ever made.  I feel he disappointed critics because he didn't play Tonto as Captain Jack Sparrow's lost twin.  Depp created a totally new character in Tonto, which he does in all his films save the "Pirates" franchise.

The film begins and ends with a scene set in a display of old west dioramas at the San Francisco 1933 World's Fair.  A little boy, dressed as the Lone Ranger, checks out a diorama featuring a Native American  habitat on an arid plain, complete with teepee, baskets, tools, bow and arrow an other Indian accoutrements.  A model of an old, withered native with dry, cracked skin, stands in front of his teepee, peering out through the glass as though analyzing the weather.  Suddenly he comes alive when the boy talks to thim.  The boy (and we) learns that he is the real Tonto (Johnny Depp), the Lone Ranger's sidekick. Thus the story begins in flashback.

What binds Tonto and the Lone Ranger is that they are both outcasts.   Tonto was banished from his Comanche tribe as a child for selling out the whereabouts of the silver deposit to a shady silver speculator, Cole, played by British actor Tom Wilkinson, for a silver, engraved pocket watch.  Cole oversees iIlegal mining practices;  he's also a railroad magnate. Texas ranger John Reid (Armie Hammer with the straight, even, too-white teeth), "died" at the hands of creepy, cannibalistic gang leader Butch Cavendish (an amazing, unrecognizable William Fitchner, currently seen in ABC TV's "Crossing Lines").  Butch's gang had wasted Reid's brother, Dan (stoic James Dale) and the other rangers, including, they believed, John, who were hell bent to bring them to justice.

Tonto, with the assistance of a mystical white "spirit" horse (the soon-to-be Silver), "resurrects" John by chanting Comanche prayers over him and sprinkling him with birdseed with which he constantly feeds the dead crow (Depp's idea) perched on his headdress (Tonto's not the ranger's).  Reid certainly cannot show up in town when he's believed dead so Tonto bestows on him the moniker "Lone Ranger" and he swears to never reveal his real identity.  Hence, an outlaw.  Tonto gives him a mask he'd cut out of a dead guy's black leather vest, warning him never to remove it.  Reid somehow finds a pristine white cowboy hat near the bodies, slaps it on and voila! his LR look is complete, even to the badge his bro had given him.

This oater has everything- from inter-Indian battles; Butch's gang impersonating natives and burning villages, harassing, abusing women and children, and scalping so whites will in turn kill innocent Indians; and tribal land treaty betrayals by whites, and, of course, explosions. There's run-away trains carrying terrified, hymn-singing passengers; locomotives pulling gondola cars filled with silver nuggets plunging from burning bridges into a river.  Rebecca Reid (simpering Ruth Wilson), Dan's widow, executes some Perils of Pauline bits.  In one, she hangs off a speeding train by her fingernails, flapping like a flag in a high wind.  (She and John had history before he'd  left for California, so Dan took up the slack.) She has a prepubescent son who ends up getting the legendary silver bullet to the Lone Ranger in the nick of time!

The requisite top-of-the-train chases as it hurtles along includes one of the Lone Ranger on a galloping Silver, either running from or towards the menacing, ever-present villain: evil, scar-faced, stringy haired, determined Butch Cavendish,   Then, there's Cole's political shenanigans about the building of the railroad across the plains, connecting east and west, assisted by Union soldiers, led by Captain Jay Fuller (Barry Pepper).  "If these men represent the law, I'd rather be an outlaw," intones the Lone Ranger.

Helena Bonham Carter as Red Harrington

Helena Bonhom-Carter plays the town Madam, fittingly named Red Harrington, with a messy, out-sized bird's nest of bright red hair.  The interior scene of her ostentatiously tricked-out bordello reminded me of the one in "Gangs of New York"- bawdy, lewd, salacious and raucous.  Her role, typically, is to assist the good guys in every way possible, even employing the weapon hidden in the heel of her red boot on her ivory, artificial leg.

Political, cultural, and social activists, suspend your activism, sit back, relax, and enjoy this rollicking, yet at times, haunting, yarn.


This film could not possibly end without you know what (if you are not up on your Lone Ranger lore, I leave you to discover what that is).  To which Tonto warns sagaciously, "Do not ever say that again."

The Lone Ranger and Silver






Tuesday, June 18, 2013

OPPRESSION DEADENS THE SOUL: 2 Films by Pablo Larraín

Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín's most recent film is "No," starring Gael Garcia Bernal, which I have not yet seen.  It was in theatres for a week, then seemed to just disappear.  It may well be Larraín's final installment in a trilogy about the assassination of Salvador Allende and Augusto Pinochet's 17 year regime in Chile.  The first two are "Tony Manero" and "Post Mortem."  Over the past few days I watched both  and came away haunted and depressed.  All three films were made in the past five years, but look much older as though Larraín eschewed recent film-making technology.

Alfredo Castro as Tony Manero


TONY MANERO (2008)

Larraín shoots a bleak palette and uses no soundtrack save for ambient noise in around the locations, the radio, CD player, and live music.  "Tony Manero" set during the Pinochet reign,  stars Alfredo Castro (also one of the writers) as Raul Peralta, a soulless, shell of a skinny, middle-aged, impotent man who is obsessed with the John Travolta character of Tony Manero in "Saturday Night Fever".   Raul lives in a seedy neighborhood where he rents a room from an older, blowzy woman, Wilma (Elsa Poblete).  The other tenant is his girlfriend Cony (Ampuro Noguero), who has a teen-age daughter, Pauli, and an adolescent son.  Their quarters are above a cheap nightclub run by Wilma, where Raul, Cuyo, Pauli's boyfriend, and Cony perform sleazy, amateurish dances to recorded music. So obsessed is Raul with Manero that he goes to the neighborhood movie house several times to see Travolta in action.  He leans forward, eyes moist with tears, reciting every word as the characters speak them.  He goes to a casting call for a Tony Manero look alike contest to be broadcast on TV; he gets the dates mixed up and discovers it's for Chuck Norris, but finagles his way to sign up for next week's call for Manero.

Castro is very thin and wiry,with a sad sack face, droopy eyes and bags.  His hair is a lank, brownish grey.   He bears a slight resemblance to actor/activist/narrator Peter Coyote. Castro plays Raul as a totally hollow man, a cypher, an expressionless zombie.   He shows absolutely no emotion- not even when ruthlessly destroying property or committing the most shocking murders to further his Manero image.  The theatre proprietor makes the fatal mistake of switching from "Fever" to "Grease."  Same actor, Raul is told, but that's not the point.  Raul is insanely focused on becoming that character.   He has a white suit made to order and carries it around in a garment bag. He runs around, robbing and manipulating people to do his bidding, first befriending the weak and vulnerable with smarmy charm.  He comes to the aid of a woman being purse-snatched.  He sees that she gets home.  The result is that she'd have been better off dealing with the purse snatchers.   The women with whom he lives seem to adore him.  Why? Desperate people do desperate things?  Wilma wants to run away with him; Cony is all over him, even Pauli succumbs.   Throughout the the film, there are scenes of Pinochet's thugs carrying  out witch hunts, snatching people off the streets.   In one, on a piece of deserted, vacant, rubble-strewn land, the thugs leave their victim's body lying in the shrubs.  Peralta had hidden from them, watching.  When they leave, he goes through the corpse's pockets, takes its money and watch.

Things come to a head when Goyo, Pauli's boyfriend, signs up for the Manero contest, too.  He makes the mistake of modeling  his suit in front of the others.  Goyo, played by Hector Morales, looks more like John Travolta than Raul could only dream of.  The night before the contest, Raul soils Goyo's suit in the most sickening way you can imagine.  The day of the contest, Pinochet's thugs barge into their home, browbeat  Pauli, Cony, and Wilma, shove them against walls, and shout at them to "name names."  Goyo walks in on the fracas, complaining about the mess Raul made of his suit only to be ordered to shut up and sit down.  Peralta, in his pristine white suit, black shirt; hair blackened and combed a la Travolta, hides in a secret space under the stairs; he manages to sneak away to the contest, leaving the others in the hands of Pinochet's men.  Once there, he tries to jump the line, but fails.  He is second to last to compete.  Unbelievably, it's a close call.  Peralta does exude an atom of charisma and executes all the right moves, but without passion.   The film ends abruptly when he gets on the same bus as the winner and his girlfriend.  Knowing what he did to get this far, you can probably guess what's in store for this innocent, happy couple.

I feel that Larrain used this film as a symbol for what went on during the Pinochet years.  The character of Raul Peralta represents the mindless atrocities that regime wreaked on innocent people.  Pinochet, USA puppet, aided by our CIA and Henry Kissinger, had Allende assassinated and tried to to make it look like suicide, which is the subject of "Post Mortem," which follows, though looked at obliquely, as did "Tony Manero."


Alfredo Castro and Ampuro Neguero


POST MORTEM (2010)

Chile, 1973, during the last days of Salvador Allende's presidency.  Augusto Pinochet was set to become dictator and was already having people who oppose him as well as communists, sympathizers, and suspected communists "disappeared."  Alfredo Castro plays Mario Cornejo, an autopsy transcriber at a morgue's recording office.  He types up notes on a manual typewriter as the medical examiner performs autopsies and dictates the findings.  The opening scenes are quite grisly, showing none of the fresh-looking bodies one sees on popular TV police procedurals.  These, laid out on a slab, are a deathly grey.  The ME cuts them open and flaps the flesh aside, revealing greyish-brown clumps of organs.  Some of the bodies are morbidly obese.

Cornejo lives alone, across the street from a couple of women, one of whom is a burlesque dancer, Nancy Puelma (Antonio Zegers).  Cornejo's love for her is unrequited.  He hears about the arrest of her brother and father, a prominent Communist and Salvador Allende supporter.  When Nancy unaccountably disappears on Sept. 11, 1973  (Chile's 9/11), after a violent Army raid on her family's home, and others, he commiserates with her roommate, Sandra (Ampuro Neguero), and begins his fruitless search for her.  In one scene, Sandra unexpectedly visits Mario; he fixes her a simple meal of rice and an egg.  They sit in silence for a minute or so, then both begin sobbing quietly, unashamedly, which goes on for what seems like several minutes.  It is as if all the sorrow of the loved ones that Pinochet had murdered and disappeared that fateful day is contained in these two beings.

There are scenes of Mario and his morgue co-workers riding along in an open cart, picking up bodies.  There are so many, now, they slide off the cart on to the street.  The morgue is overwhelmed; they can't keep up so are reduced to just noting where the bullet entrance and exit wounds are.  It is as this point that one's loyalty is measured.  Obeying an order from an army officer, Cornejo is told, to his surprise, that he is now a member of the Chilean army.  Any one who balks is executed.  In a scene filmed in a hospital corridor, a respected doctor with whom Cornejo had worked resists a superior colleague's orders.  Shockingly, the superior pulls a gun from his lab coat and shoots his colleague point blank.

Towards the film's end, a fully, dressed, uniformed body is brought in.  The lower half of its face has been shot off, making the corpse unidentifiable.  The chief ME orders Cornejo to transcribe his notes, but his typewriter is missing.  He's told to use another.  He says he will try, but it's electric.  He's never typed on one.  The camera zeros in on the corpse's head and we see that the lower half is hamburger.  Fortunately, Larraín used the same bleak, washed out palette as in "Manero" so we are spared the color of blood and gore.   As the assistants cut away, one by one, they lay down their instruments and say, "We can't do this,"  and walk away, some in tears.   Cornejo pecks away at the keys slowly.  He's not keeping up and apologizes.  An army officer takes over, typing skillfully.  The cause of death is discussed.  The doctor concludes that the death was an assassination, made to look like a suicide.  With this we know that they are performing Allende's autopsy.

As Mario and Sandra's friendship grows, she becomes demanding.  She is hunted by Pinochet's men.  Mario agrees to hide her in a niche behind a brick wall, which he covers with a wooden wardrobe.  Cornejo takes care of her cat.  She wants this, she order, and "Mario, get me that."  Her demands becomes too much for this simple man.  The final straw is that she wants a radio.  He unplugs his own from the wall, brings it to the niche.  "I need one with batteries!" she shouts.  Cornejo pushes the wardrobe back over the niche.  What follows is mesmerizing. The camera stays on the wooden wardrobe, the  brick wall for a few seconds.  Cornejo walks into the frame carrying an empty bookcase which he shoves in front of the wardrobe.  Larraín hold the frame as Cornejo walks in and out of it, each time tossing more wooden chairs, bookcases, and tables on top of the growing pile.  Cornejo walks out of the frame one last time.  The scene freezes, the credits roll.  Again, we don't know what happens, but whatever it is, it won't be pretty.  So ends the second of Pablo Larrain's films symbolizing Augusto Pinochet's reign: that of a a ruthless, meglo-maniacal dictator, driving the oppressed to desperation.

Look for a review of "No," the final link in Larraín 's Pinochet trilogy,  soon.





  

Monday, May 13, 2013

"OBLIVION" and "THE COMPANY YOU KEEP": Briefs.


OBLIVION

Jack's Home in Space


"Oblivion" is an entertaining yet thoughtful film which has us pondering:  what will happen to humans once we kill  Earth and all living things by blanketing the precious planet with deadly CO2?  It stars Tom Cruise in yet another space, sci fi thriller, written by Karl Gajusek and Michael Arndt, directed by Joseph Kosinski.

It's the year 2077.  We find Jack (Tom Cruise) living in a glass box, with the coolest swimming pool ever suspended below. It is cantilevered  by a stainless steel leg over some asteroid orbiting a decimated, dessicated Earth.  Jack lives here with his wife (?), Victoria aka "Vicky," played by Andrea Riseborough.  Jack, a scientist/homeland security agent of sorts, is ordered by Sally (Melissa Leo), a bossy, snarky-voiced face on a screen ("Are you an effective team?"), on missions back on Earth to continue searching for any natural resources.  Vicky maps out Jack's intended location on a table top composed of screens, charts, maps, and pictures that she manipulates with a swipe of a well manicured hand. 

But Jack suffers occasional  flashbacks of images of New York circa 2013  and of a smiling dark-haired woman.  He tells Vicky; she says that can't be happening; you've undergone Memory Wipes (which sounds like something you'd find in Walgreens next to adult diapers).  Sally orders Jack back to Earth, which died due to global warming.   Jack, in a silver space suit, takes off in his shuttle.  Accompanying  him are spherical drones that resemble Chinese Demons, which scan foreign stuff and shoot anything down that doesn't compute. They're not stealthy and sneaky, like today's drones (which yah gotta admit- hate 'em, I know- they're kinda groovy lookin').   As they rise up from behind hills and over canyons, these drones make horrible, loud, grinding sounds like stripped gears on a tractor hauling eight-wheelers.  In one suspenseful scene, one even attempts to assassinate Jack. 

Angry Drones




As Jack's flashbacks recur, he begins to question his identity- who is the woman?  On one harrowing mission he discovers a tribe of humans who never left Earth led by none other than white-haired Morgan Freeman, in round shades with blinder-sides, playing a wise (what else) character named Beech.  With his pony-tailed, right-hand man, Sykes (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), they live practically underground in deep, dark caves, out of drone range.  Jack swears not to betray them.

Jack shuts off his tracking devices so neither Vicky nor Sally can find him and flies to his secret hiding place on Earth- an idyllic, Walden Pond like arrangement, unknown to anyone but Jack.  He goes there to think about stuff and to try to recreate memories of his life on Earth.  On his way back to space, he and his drones discover a crashed space ship strewn about with space pods containing humans in suspended animation.   As he peers into each pod's face plate, he sees THE WOMAN! Julia, played by Olga Kurylenko.  He checks her status and discovers she's been asleep since 2050, seventeen years.  The year everyone had to evacuate planet Earth.  He must save her!  However, the drones go into high dudgeon and blast away at the pods.  Jack blasts the drones before they can blast the woman's pod.  He manages to bring her back to his space pad, shooting his way out of canyons and valleys, downing drones every which way and it's like watching him play a video game (this happens a lot during this film).

Once home, Jack revives her.  Suddenly, the film is about relationships: Vicky is jealous.  But, hey, she is just part of his team, not a real wife, I mean, after all!  Especially after Julia helps him remember that they are married.  After a lot of suspenseful and life-threatening moments, including Sally's thwarted commands, Jack and Julia escape.  He takes her to his secret lair and leaves her.   Several years pass.  She and a toddler are tending a garden.   She senses something behind those trees.  Is she frightened?  Does she try to protect her child?  No.  Just curious.  The trees part-  there's Sykes followed by Beech.  Behind them are all these shabby humans.  I wondered: are they all going to live in that tiny area?  Can Julia's kitchen garden support them all?  And why isn't Jack with them?  Ta Da!  The humans part and who should step into view?


THE COMPANY YOU KEEP

Robert Redford and Jackie Evancho


"The Company You Keep", directed by Robert Redford, written by Lem Dobbs, based on the novel by Neil Gordon, starring Robert Redford, Susan Sarandon, Shia LaBeouf, and Terrence Howard.

I made a special effort to see this film before it left the theatres.  Despite its stellar cast, it didn't do so well at the box office.  Should you have been aware of the turmoil of the '60s and '70s with the Vietnam war protests, hippie counterculture, radical anti-war activists, Kent State shootings, and riots, this film might interest you as it did me.  It should interest others because of its historical background and as a measure of how things have changed.  It's a fictional account of a group of members of the Weather Underground, one of whom allegedly shot and killed a security guard in a bank in Michigan.  Before they could be arrested and brought to trial, they managed to disappear in plain sight for thirty years.  Yes, they were domestic terrorists who felt that the only way to stop the war, stop the shooting of innocent people here and in Vietnam, was through violent protests, since marches and the burning of draft cards, the thousands who protested at anti-war demonstrations, seemed to have no impact.  Today, the only demonstrations of any significance were those against the bombing of Afghanistan in 200l.  We are still there twelve years later.

"The Company You Keep" opens on a typical suburban scene of a husband taking his kids to school, saying goodbye to his wife doing the breakfast dishes.  Except, the look he gives her is freighted with meaning.  His wife is the shooter, Sharon Solarz (Suzanne Sarandon), a former member, who, at the time, implicated Nick Sloan (Redford).   Tired of hiding her real identity, she gives herself up to the FBI.  She can't implicate anyone else because she has no idea of where they live or who they've become.  The FBI, lead by Special Agent Cornelius (the ever wonderful, honey-voiced Terrence Howard) picks up any leads to find them.   Shia LaBeouf plays Ben Shepard, a hot shot reporter (to appeal to a younger audience?)  for the Albany Sun Times.  Shepard had seen an article in a rival paper about Solarz arrest; now nothing will stop him in his quest to be the first to get the scoop on these people. His boss, Ray Fuller (Stanley Tucci) keeps a tight rein on the budget, hampering his efforts. 

Terrence Howard as FBI Agent Cornelius.



Shaggy haired, craggy Jim Grant is an alias for Nick Sloan.   Grant is a successful attorney, a widower with a young daughter, Isabel, played by Jackie Evancho of  America's Got Talent fame.  Hearing of Solarz's arrest, he farms his daughter off to his brother, Daniel (the always watchable Chris Cooper) in a suspenseful scene involving an FBI stake out in a hotel.  Though asked to defend her, he won't fearing doing so will put his and his daughter's life in jeopardy.  Preparing to flee from the home and life he has built with his late wife, he goes in the closet and hauls out his trademark leather jacket, the one the authorities now use to track him down.   Why?  (The photos in the film are of Redford in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.")  As the film follows Sloan, it segues into scenes with other members, such as Mimi (Julie Christie).  Mimi was Grant's lover with whom he had a daughter.  They had given her up as an infant up to a trusted friend, Henry Osborne, played by Brendan Gleeson.  All this unfolds towards the end, following Shepard's dogged investigative reporting.  Mimi's been hiding out with MacLeod (Sam Elliott) in a beautiful home on a lake.  She has an alibi for Sloan as they were together at the time of the shooting and is the only one who can clear his name.  The other members are revealed: Donal Fitzgerald (gravel-voiced Nick Nolte), who owns a business,  and Jed Lewis (Richard Jenkins), now a tenured professor.  As the film progresses, you wonder if Sloan will find Mimi, and will she have the guts to stand by him and help clear his name for his daughter's sake?

Though rather slow-paced and methodical, which is Redford's style, "Company" keeps your interest.  It's shot in his signature golden-green hues, rolling hills and leafy streets, old, well-maintained homes, rustic boatyards, and sun shimmering on lakes.  Thankfully, he kept scenes of the FBI guys racing around in their dark outfits, shades, and SUVs to a minimum.  Shia LaBeouf provides enough heightened activity.  This is a movie worth seeing.  If you can't catch it while it's still in theatres, see it on DVD or by other means.












Thursday, May 9, 2013

JACKIE ROBINSON: BASEBALL LEGEND




Chadwick Boseman  as Jackie Robinson and Harrison Ford as Branch Rickey
              
“42” is a fictional film biography written and directed by Brian Helgeland, starring Chadwick Boseman, Harrison Ford, and Nicole Beharie.  It covers the years 1945 to 1947 in the life of baseball legend, Jackie Robinson, when he rose from the Kansas City Monarchs, a Negro League team, to play with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Chadwick Boseman, whom Helgeland cast as Robinson, bears an uncanny resemblance to the young athlete.  Boseman studied archival news clips, read countless sports articles about Robinson.  He spent endless hours playing baseball, capturing his unique style.

After a successful career with the Monarchs, Robinson was signed by Branch Rickey, a Bible quoting Methodist (played by Harrison Ford, now in his grumpy-old-man stage), to play on the all white Canadian Montreal Royals, the first Black on the team.  Later, Rickey moved him up to the Major League’s Brooklyn Dodgers, which he owned.

Segregation and prejudice were rife at the time of Robinson’s rise in major league baseball, issues which are still present, despite decades-old laws and the election of a Black president.  Yet Rickey knew that signing Robinson would create controversy, which meant publicity as well as bucks. Christopher Meloni (Law and Order) plays a convincing Leo Durocher, the team’s manager, who was at odds with Rickey about Robinson, as was Rickey’s right-hand man, Harold (T.R. Night of The Good Wife).  At one point in the film, Robinson and his wife, Rachael (Nicole Beharie), want to fly from Daytona Beach, Florida to Pasadena, California, where they live.  In the airport to buy tickets, Rachael says: “That’s the first time I’ve seen that,” pointing to a “Whites Only” sign on the bathroom door.  Then they’re told the flight is full as they see a white couple allowed on, so they end up taking Greyhound.

Though Robinson has experienced racism, in the majors it is relentless. Jibes, jeers, racial slurs come not only from baseball fans and players on other teams- pitchers who bean him, basemen who purposely cleat him when he reaches the bag, but from some members of his own team, who openly express their hatred. 
Many team members were from the South and thought nothing of their despicable treatment of Blacks. It was how you were raised.  Some threaten to quit if Robinson stays, especially when denied entry into hotels that once had welcomed the Dodgers.  Durocher tells them, "I do not care if the guy is yellow or black, or if he has stripes like a fuckin' zebra. I'm the manager of this team, and I say he plays. What's more, I say he can make us all rich. And if any of you cannot use the money, I will see that you are all traded."  Robinson is neither weak nor submissive.  He uses logic, tact, and smarts to assert himself when refused anything he feels he has a right to as a human being, and rarely gets physical or emotional.

Alan Tudyk, from the TV series, Firefly, plays Ben Chapman the manager of the Philadelphia Phillies.  When Robinson’s up at bat, Chapman slings a continuous verbal barrage of racial epithets at him.  Robinson seethes, but does not react until Chapman spews one so egregious, he heads for the tunnel leading to the dressing room, where out of sight he falls apart. Rickey goes to talk to him.   It is one of the most compelling moments in the film. Another is a scene in the grandstands of a white father and his young son who hears his father hurl racial slurs at Robinson; at first the boy joins him, but by the end of the game, you see that his conscience has been elevated.  Soon, Jackie’s team-mates rally around him.

 Pee Wee Reese (Lucas Black)  demonstrates his support for Robinson

Robinson’s presence on the field became polarizing not only there but also in American society. The threat of violence was palpable for him and his family, threatening letters were sent. Branch Rickey can’t protect him, but only give him pep talks and trust that Robinson will maintain his stoicism 

Sportswriter Wendell Smith (Andre Holland), covers his career in the Black newspaper, The Pittsburgh Courier. Smith travels with and suffers the same ignominies as Robinson.  Smith is banned from the Press Box where white reporters clack away on their typewriters, while Smith sits in the stands with his portable on his knees (an archaic version of a laptop).   Except for Ebony, established in 1945, print media was almost completely segregated; only a handful of African-Americans were journalists at major white newspapers.

So, How far have we really come since the 1940s, especially now, with a Black man in the White House?  Not very, considering the dozens of Blacks who were killed in race riots in Detroit and Harlem in 1943; killed in foreign countries defending their “freedom” during WWII in a segregated military.  There were laws to secure voting rights and abolish segregation on interstate transport; still, doing both in the South was risky.  The sixties saw lunch-counter sit-ins. The bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama made the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. a national figure. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded The Black Panther Party, in Oakland, California (which ended badly).

Jackie Robinson advocated openly for civil rights, often alongside King,and became a leader in the NAACP.  (King described Robinson as “a freedom rider before freedom rides.”)  As important a figure as Robinson was in the movement, he testified against actor Paul Robeson at the Committee for Un-American Activities, fearing not complying would jeopardize his career.  He told the Committee, in part, “Every single Negro who is worth his salt is going to resent slurs and discrimination because of his race, and he’s going to use every bit of intelligence he has to stop it. This has got absolutely nothing to do with what Communists may or may not do. Blacks were stirred up long before there was a CP and will be stirred up after unless Jim Crow has disappeared. I haven’t any comment to make except that the statement [about Blacks refusing to fight the USSR]—if Mr. Robeson actually made it—sounds very silly to me. Negroes have too much invested in America to throw it away for a siren song sung in bass.” Jamilah King, Colorlines, News for Action, April 12, 2013.

 Later in life, he founded the only Black owned bank, and became a board member of a large white-owned corporation. He served on the boards of the NAACP and the Congress for Racial Equality, led rallies at the invitation of civil rights leaders, and accepted the first vice presidency of Rev. Jesse Jackson’s PUSH Coalition. He once told a New York Times reporter in 1969 that he “wouldn’t fly the flag on the Fourth of July or any other day. When I see a car with a flag pasted on it, I figure the guy behind the wheel isn’t my friend.” JK, Colorlines.

Schools were desegregated but not without cost.  President Eisenhower dispatched more than 1,000 paratroopers to enforce a court order in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957.  Blacks and their supporters were slaughtered indiscriminately. Horrific crimes continued, with lynching the most egregious.  All across the former Confederacy, Blacks, who were suspected of crimes against whites— or even what were considered "offenses," were tortured, hanged and burned to death by the thousands.  Chicago-raised, fourteen year old Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi, for allegedly whistling at a white woman. 
 
In the 1950 and sixties, outspoken NAACP leaders who championed voters rights, like Medgar Evers, were assassinated.  Then six years after gaining public attention in a television documentary on the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965. In a 1963 letter to Malcolm X, Robinson wrote, “America is not perfect by a long shot, but I happen to like it here and will do all I can to help make it the kind of place where my chlildren and theirs can live in dignity.”  Yet he wrote in a 1972 biography published shortly before his death: “I cannot stand and sing the [national] anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white man’s world.” Colorlines, Jan. 2013.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, causing riots resulting in many deaths in major cities.  Klansmen bombed a church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four young black girls.  More people were killed in race riots in New Jersey and Detroit.  
Despite anti-lynching laws, Blacks were still being hung, mostly in Southern States. In an essay Without Sanctuary, historian Leon F. Litwack wrote that between 1882 and 1968, at least 4,742 African Americans had been lynched.  In 1981 Michael Donald was murdered by two Ku Klux Klan members in Alabama.  It is sometimes referred to as the last recorded lynching in the United States.
Yet, prominent Black politicians and lawmen were being elected to the Senate, appointed to the Supreme Court, and elected mayor in major cities, and have run for President, including Shirley Chisolm, the first Black woman.

However:  Of the 535 voting members of the 113th Congress, 359 are white men. In other words, white men— who comprised 34 percent of voters in the 2012 election— still occupy 67 percent of the seats in Congress. (From Colorlines, by Sally Kohn.)
In 2009, Democrat Barack Obama became the first African American to successfully run for president and win, yet has done little to better the lives of Blacks compared to white Texan, President Lyndon Johnson; Texas-born, former military general, Dwight Eisenhower, a white Republican; and Harry Truman, a white Democrat from Missouri. Obama being president doesn’t make the lives of all people of color equal to those of so-called “Whites,” in education, health care, housing, employment, and probably most important- justice.

African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites. One in six black men had been incarcerated as of 2001. If current trends continue, one in three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime. One in 100 African American women are in prison. Yes, Jackie Robinson became the first African-American Major League baseball player, but the idea that he improved himself for the benefit of whites, puts the burden of change on people of color rather than on the institutions that, historically, have made racism and discrimination law in white America.

The film is designed to make everyone happy (except white supremacists and racial bigots): All is right with the world and the sun is shining in America. 

Note: This review can be also read in an abridged format at www.socialistaction.org