Before Sunset

This is Linklater’s sequel to his 1995 ‘Before Sunrise’, perhaps my favorite romantic film, in which a young American man and a young French woman meet on a train in Europe, spend a day and night together, and without exchanging any contact information, vow to meet again in six months.  ‘Before Sunset’ takes place nine years later as they meet again for the first time since their initial encounter.   It follows them for 80 minutes of “real time” as they walk around and talk, and every one of those minutes rings true.   The sigh-inducingly great Julie Delpy gives a wonderful performance and Ethan Hawke is quite good as well.  

Of many wonderful moments, one sticks in my mind.   She asks him if she’s changed, if she looks different.   He says nothing but his expression reveals what he is thinking (in fact, both actors’ faces show the nine years that have passed).   She says “I have,” and there is a great acceptance in the way she says it: an acceptance that we’re not what we once were, and that there is a sadness in that, but it’s okay because what we are now is good as well.    

At least, that’s how the scene plays when I replay it in my mind; I’ll have to see it again to confirm.   (This is the first movie this year that I’m anxious to see again in the theater).   It couldn’t be further away from the sitcom banality that passes for “romantic comedy” these days. Co-written by Hawke and Delpy along with Linklater and Kim Krizan.   

-- Jul 20, 2004  

Fahrenheit 9/11

This is a very powerful and important film.   It’s rigorously factual (not always Moore’s strong suit in the past), although there’s nothing objective about it: Moore’s avowed purpose is to remove from office George W. Bush.   ‘Fahrenheit’ may even appeal to those with reservations about Moore’s tendency towards self-aggrandizement, as he’s not in it much, staying mostly behind the camera as narrator.  

I’ve read Hitchens’ attempted takedown of the film but I think he left its salient points standing.   Among these points, which have been verified by the likes of the 9/11 commission and Bush’s own former chief of counter-terrorism, Richard Clarke, are these:

*   Being an oil family, the Bushes have had longtime financial relationships with Saudi Arabian elites, including the bin Laden family, who have invested over $1.4 billion in various Bush-affiliated interests

*   A key investor in W. Bush’s oil company Arbusto was James R. Bath, the Texas money manager for the bin Ladens

*   The Saudi government was able to get the Bush administration to allow members of the bin Laden family to fly out of the U.S. after 9/11 (although, counter to the impression given in the film, they actually left after the ban on air travel was lifted)

*   Bush was explicitly warned in an Aug. 6, 2001 CIA brief that bin Laden was about to attack the U.S. but did nothing about it (and recall, as this film does in passing, that the Reagan administration funded the Islamic militias that would go on to become al-Qaida)

* Administration-affiliated corporations stand to profit enormously from opened-up Afghanistan and Iraq

And there’s much more, from the stolen election to the present moment.   Like ‘Bowling for Columbine’, this film takes as one of its themes the culture of fear and those who profit from it, chiefly the administration (in that frightened people are easily manipulated into going along with its policies).

It is by turns hilarious and shattering, particularly when it focuses on a mother from Flint, Michigan, a self-described “conservative Democrat” with kids in the military who says that she used to hate the protestors.   Then her son is killed in Iraq and she begins to question everything.   She reads aloud a letter from her son in which he rails against the “fool” Bush for having them in Iraq for nothing.   We feel the heartbreaking tragedy of a life wasted.  

This movie is extremely ambitious.   Themes and facts stream and swirl, all of them reinforcing, reiterating and resounding with one basic message: we’ve been duped.

- Jun 30, 2004

The Story of the Weeping Camel

This is my type of flick!   Set in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert, there are no Hollywood stars for thousands of miles.   Byambasuren Davaa’s film was inspired by Flaherty pictures such as ‘Nanook of the North’ in that although it is a recreation, it has a documentary-like quality, striving to portray as accurately as possible the way these Nomadic people live.   The filmmakers call this approach “narrative documentary”.   Though these people don’t have much, they never come off as impoverished or suffering.   They are content in their cozy, colorfully decorated huts.   “The Story of the Weeping Camel” fulfills one of my criteria for a good film: it shows me something I haven’t seen before.

- Jun 28, 2004

Control Room

If you’re like me, every day your mind boggles at how Bush & Co. gets away with it.   That they are able to do so is thanks in no small part to the U.S. media’s willingness to report the Administration’s lies/staged events as though they were reality.   This documentary by Jehane Noujaim focuses on Al Jazeera (the independent satellite news channel that reaches much of the Arab world) during the run-up to and during the U.S. invasion of Iraq.    

Famously characterized by the likes of the intolerable Rumsfeld as a mouthpiece for Bin Laden, Al Jazeera comes across as sort of the anti-Fox, reporting on the war from the point of view of those on the receiving end of the bombs.   Literally, in fact: during the invasion, the U.S. bombed Al Jazeera, killing three of its journalists.   However, the Al Jazeera representatives aren’t interested in broadcasting simplistic anti-American propaganda.   Indeed, some of them express great admiration for many aspects of the U.S.   Amusingly, Samir Khader, an Al Jazeera producer, contends that he’d eagerly accept a job at Fox if offered.  

Much of the action takes place at CentCom, the U.S. military headquarters/press center in Quatar where Al Jazeera correspondents work side by side with western journalists.   There are debates between Hassan Ibrahim (an Al Jazeera journalist) and Cpt. Josh Rushing (a U.S. military press officer).   Rushing comes across as thoughtful and open-minded, a decent man who, though he parrots the official line, actually listens to the opposing viewpoint.   Indeed, it’s been reported that since ‘Control Room’ came out Rushing has left the Marines due to their ordering him to not discuss this film.   I read a recent comment from him where he regrets coming off as so pro-invasion in the movie.

When an Iraqi contends to Ibrahim that there needs to be a new power in the world that can stand up to the U.S., because, he asks “Who else will stop America?”, Ibrahim cites his faith in the U.S. constitution and answers that the American people will stop America.  

I can’t recommend Noujaim’s work enough.   Her film is a showcase for the rewards to be found in good documentary, in that it reflects a complex world and counters stereotypes.

- Jun 22, 2004

Super Size Me

The director of this documentary, Morgan Spurlock, set out to find out what would happen to a person who ate nothing but McDonald’s food for 30 days, using himself as the guinea pig.   This experiment was inspired by a food industry spokesperson’s claim in response to a lawsuit filed by two fat, sick girls which alleged that their health problems were caused by McCrap: this spokesperson actually claimed that McDonald’s food was nutritious.   Although initially skeptical of the girls’ lawsuit, Spurlock thought this comment equally ludicrous.   The results of his McBinge are even direr than you’d expect.   As just one example, by the end of the month he has the liver of a man at the far stages of extreme alcoholism.  

A major theme of the film is McDonald’s bombardment of young minds and bodies.   The company indoctrinates children with overwhelming advertising and baits them with toys and playgrounds.   Additionally, a study has shown that all that sugar and fat has an opiate-like effect on the mind.   This effect is overwhelming on developing minds.   The food may in fact be addictive; internal McDonald’s memos actually refer to their customers as “users”.   In one sequence, the filmmaker visits a school for at-risk adolescents where administrators changed the lunch program to healthy food instead of the junk served in most U.S. schools.   The results were dramatic: the students became much better behaved and their academics improved.  

Incidentally, back in the 90s, Helen Steel and Dave Morris stayed at my place during a visit to the States.  Steel and Morris are the two famous British activists (the “McLibel 2”) who McDonald’s sued for libel for passing out flyers that told the truth about the company.   It became the longest-running trial in British history.  

As the McSpotlight website puts it: “The verdict was devastating for McDonald’s. The judge ruled that they ‘exploit children’ with their advertising, produce ‘misleading’ advertising, are ‘culpably responsible’ for cruelty to animals, are ‘antipathetic’ to unionisation and pay their workers low wages. But Helen and Dave failed to prove all the points and so the Judge ruled that they HAD libelled McDonald’s and should pay 60,000 pounds damages. They refused and McDonald’s knew better than to pursue it. In March 1999 the Court of Appeal made further rulings against McDonald’s in relation to heart disease and employment.”

- Jun 11, 2004