On Film
Sacha Baron Cohen as The Dictator
IN THE 1930s, the Marx Brothers took political satire seriously enough to make a comedy about imperialism. Duck Soup stands today as one of the most comforting movie antidotes to the depressing post-9/11, enemy-until-proven-friend political culture. The 1960s saw Stanley Kubrick upgrade the cinematic presentation of war into Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb—employing the Screwtapian dictum that if the devil cannot bear to be mocked, then the best way to reveal the horror of war is to laugh at it. A decade later, Mel Brooks attacked—and transcended—white supremacy in Blazing Saddles, a film whose coruscating offensiveness is merely a mirror to our own prejudices. Sacha Baron Cohen is the evident successor to the Marxes, Kubrick the comic satirist, and Brooks. (Some of Michael Moore’s work, and both Armando Iannucci’s In the Loop and Chris Morris’ Four Lions, deserve attention in this light too.)
Baron Cohen’s trilogy of fish-out-of-water-in-the-U.S.A. films, Borat, Bruno, and current release The Dictator, taken together, constitute both deliriously funny entertainment (sometimes confused, and with something to offend truly everyone) and a jeremiad against the monstrosities of our time: racism, sexual violence, homophobia, xenophobia—and that’s just for starters. The Dictator has post-9/11 politics, the war on terror, Islamophobia, and anti-Semitism clearly in its sights. Our hero—for that is what he ultimately becomes—is a Middle Eastern tyrant in the Saddam/Gadhafi mold, with a bit of Ahmadinejad and even Kim Jong-Il thrown in for good measure. He gets lost in New York and experiences what life is like outside the palace, leaving behind its personal executioner and other amenities. His path to liberation and respecting others comes through working in a vegan grocery store—not an unrealistic program in the non-cinematic world. What’s remarkable about his transformation is that it comes in response to meeting a broader variety of characters than you’d find at the U.N., and to being mentored in treating sexuality (his own and others’) with more respect.
THE TRUTHS flickered into visible expression at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival are, minute-for-minute, usually among the cinematic highlights of the year.
The line between documentary and fiction movies has blurred: On the one hand, even a Hollywood package as huge as The Dark Knight has its share of verite-style intimate handheld camerawork (and thoughtful politics—Batman is presented as nothing less than the necessary sacrifice for a community that has to kill someone to stay “pure”). On the other, the top 10 grossing documentaries of all time were each released in the past decade: Audiences are attracted by the fusion of social engagement and entertainment like never before.
Michael Moore’s appearance at the festival reminded me how common it is for activists to want to make films just because it’s cool (which usually makes for bad films), or for filmmakers to inject a dose of socially “relevant” messaging into their movie because they think it will increase the box office. (Think of when churches jumped on the bandwagon for Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. Mel got rich. Jesus, I aver, stayed 99 percent poor.) Moore’s point is that you should make documentaries because you want to make films—you can be an activist without being a filmmaker.
But if you’ve got the heart and the talent, it should rise to the surface, and if it does, you’ll usually end up at Full Frame, where this year’s highlights were three films that mingle mature cinematic craft with ethical depth.
DISNEY ANIMATION is often criticized for masking cynical corporate values—Wall-E’s profound challenge to over-consumption was accompanied by the selling of toys and games; the company claims to be pro-feminist but only tweaks the fairytale princess archetype with heroines who express their “strength” by showing that they can fight like a man.
Yet there’s still some magic in the Disneymagination—Fantasia, The Jungle Book, and The Lion King, despite their political alarm bells (racism and homophobia are challenged and reinforced, the average of which can only compute to ambivalence), are examples of visual resplendence, a sense of humor, and an invitation to hope. The best parts of the Disney worldview look like the eschatological images in a Martin Luther King Jr. speech; the worst merely bolster a culture of privilege and exclusion.
The most Disney-like current film is Mirror, Mirror, a retelling of the Snow White story, directed by the fantastic visual stylist Tarsem Singh. It features Julia Roberts in a wickedly entertaining turn as the queen, with a witty script, gorgeous set and costume design, and some bawdy fun. But the portrayal of Snow White as a “liberated” young woman whose liberation depends on her behaving like a Bruce Willis action character produces a paradox: Any of the images from this film could be exhibited in an art gallery—so elegantly composed and imaginative are they—but the ethical heart of the film isn’t artful at all.
Along with the silent film The Artist, Haywire, and War Horse, the smartest wide-release recent movie is Chronicle, a kinetic fusion of Breakfast Club-style teenage angst with post-9/11 violence-as-a-way-of-life (or at least way-to-be-noticed).
A perfect time to catch up on the 10 best Blu-ray releases of the past year.
Hugo, Take Shelter, and The Mill and the Cross have little in common on the surface other than their quality; look deeper and you may find love-filled, theologically profound, hopeful invitations to live better.
Roland Emmerich is known for making the kind of disaster movies that fans of quality filmmaking love to hate.
Clooney's new movie, The Ides of March, serves as a thoughtful and entertaining mirror for next year's presidential election.
The round-up on late-summer cinema, including: Solaris, The Tree of Life, and Super 8.
The award for most surprisingly profound film of 2011 might go to Bridesmaids. This story of a woman trying to figure out her path in the midst of witness
Gareth Higgins reviews Batle: Los Angeles, Saving Private Ryan, and Chinatown.
Preachers in American fiction are usually not to be trusted -- Elmer Gantry might steal from you, the priest in Mystic River might kidnap you, Robert Duvall’s Sonny i
It's a golden age for documentaries. Michael Moore kick-started the era with crusading films such as Bowling for Columbine and Sicko, fusing serious social commentary with a protagonist who could be identified with by a wider audience than the "God's-eye view" used in magnificent PBS films by Ken Burns, such as The Civil War and Jazz. Burns seeks a resonant "objective" perspective, relating tales of U.S. history as if our lives depended on it (which of course, if you accept that those who forget are doomed to repeat, it does). Moore wants to place us at the story’s center, revealing the insecurities at the heart of American social strife as something that we could all do something about.
Moore and Burns are only the most popular and widely seen of recent documentarians. They stand alongside Errol Morris, whose treatment of the life of Robert McNamara, The Fog of War, may be the best analysis of how political rhetoric can mask horrific action; Michael Apted, whose Up series, following the lives of several people since their seventh birthdays in 1964, constitutes a social history of the past 50 years; and most of all the Maysles Brothers, who were among those who invented the form, with films such as Salesman, an astonishing vision of the corruption of commerce and religion, and Grey Gardens, which serves as a mirror image to the myths of Camelot that surround JFK's presidency. All of these films paved the way for recent works fusing factual cinema with an ethical eye.
The most significant DVD release of 2010 is America Lost and Found, packaging seven films produced between 1968 and 1972, including Easy Rider and The Last Picture Show.
Gareth Higgins reviews Submarine, Project Nim, and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.