"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.

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.

42 ends on a feel-good note as Robinson is revered and celebrated wherever he goes, and kids- black and white- imitate him on the sand lots.  You walk away with a feeling similar to that felt by voters who elected Obama to the White House. “Obama[s] told a crowd gathered inside the State Dining Room that ‘everybody in this country needs to see this movie.’” (JK, Colorlines.)

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