How to do justice to the memory of one of America’s greatest politician is a question that Emilio Estevez must have asked himself countless times while planning his movie Bobby. Unfortunately, it appears that he didn’t find a satisfactory answer.

Bobby is built on an interesting, albeit increasingly overused, premise: to capture the last 24 hours of Robert F. Kennedy’s life through the eyes of several people who have only one thing in common: they will be present during Kennedy’s last speech in a Los Angeles hotel during that ill-fated night of June 6th, 1968. Estevez mixes their lives, stories and beliefs with real footage of Kennedy on the campaign trail, as he spreads his message of hope across America.

One of the early problems with the film is that this dozen or so of lead characters are all played by more or less well-known stars, and one can’t help but to start wondering who else is going to pop up next. The viewer becomes trapped in this overabundance of celebrities and begins to watch the stars themselves rather than the characters they portray. In addition, some of these familiar and pretty faces (my god, they were all so pretty in 1968!) happen to be very average actors and actresses, resulting in characters that are simply tedious to watch and enjoy, and in scenes that simply feel too much like they were built for a celebrity to fly in for the day and recite a few lines and express their liberal penchant by simply being there and by appearing in a film about Robert F. Kennedy. Using so many stars effectively is a difficult undertaking and intertwining their stories in a way that is compelling is even more complex. One can’t blame Estevez for trying to be Robert Altman (or to a lesser extent, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu) but one can certainly fault him for failing and for only being able to come up with a result that is as mediocre as Paul Haggis’ Crash (2004).

But what comes out as the single biggest problem with Bobby is that it is an avalanche of cheap and democratic sentimentalism. Estevez tries so hard to capture the impact that Kennedy had on people in 1968 (which begs the question as to why Estevez decided to focus mainly on all these white pretty people, instead of attempting to show Kennedy’s impact on the poor and blacks – the couple of so-called Latinos and Blacks in the film do not feel believable at all. Their comportment and attitude feel to me much more late 20th century than late 1960s) that he can only use amateurish tricks such as showing us people who got into an argument reconciling to the words of Kennedy and to the required late 60’s soundtrack. Oh, you just had an affair? That’s ok, now that I hear Kennedy and how he will change America, I forgive you. Oh, you just got shot, you racist pig? Even though I fired you this morning for being a racist and even though I strongly dislike you, let me make sure that I am the first one in the room to help you as you lay on the floor. In summary, let us all suddenly become better people and embrace as we listen to the message of Robert F. Kennedy. Can someone please pass the soap?

The real footage of Kennedy is actually the most interesting and emotional part of the film. Kennedy was destined to be a greater man than he already was. His vision, his youth, his honesty, his idealism, all had the power to change America and to make a real transformation in issues such as civil rights and racism, the environment, and social justice. He truly believed in the possibility of a better world and seemed untouched by the usual constraints and pressures of the military and business establishments. How much he would have achieved is another question but there is little doubt that America would probably be a different place today had he not been assassinated and had he been elected, instead of Richard Nixon…

Was Robert Redford ever a good director? That is the question i asked myself as i sat and watched, barely able to restrain myself from throwing a brick at my TV after only 25 minutes, his latest film about US foreign policy.

Yes, i remember fondly Ordinary People (80), The Milagro Beanfield War (88) and Quiz Show (94), but upon closer inspection, his directing career has been on the whole fairly average. I think Redford’s acting career in the 60s and 70s is what established him in my and in many others’ psyche as an institution, somewhat of a Hollywood legend who could do no wrong. But his directing efforts and choices of roles for the past 15 years, along with some interesting insights into his personality as revealed in Down and Dirty Pictures, insights which by the way make complete sense when compared to his consistently controlling and unemotional acting style, would indicate that, perhaps, Redford should be demoted to average status as both a director and as an actor.

Lions for Lambs profoundly lacks any subtlety and feels that it could have been written and directed by any C level film student. The film has some of the most tedious, arrogant, boring and embarassing scenes in recent memory, and 90% of them include Redford himself as some kind of Ueber-cool teacher trying to preach some mechanical, sanctimonious nonsense to an irritating student. I have no idea how Redford possibly saw any flow and sense of realism in these scenes. They are so badly written that i was gasping in exasperation. And there are the scenes between Cruise and Streep, which are barely more intelligent in terms of conveying a message. Cruise actually provides the only interesting performance in the entire film. Even Streep seems to be drowning, managing to come up for air only once or twice. Finally, a third story about 2 GIs in Afghanistan gives us the required dose of action, as if Redford was concerned that we would be bored by all the talking and that we would misinterpret his intentions and assume that he hates the US armed forces.

I won’t even go into the details of his liberal, anti-Bush message, as this film doesn’t deserve it. Which is a shame because i agree with what Redford has to say. It’s just too bad he doesn’t know how to say it.

Almost 10 years after Frankenheimer’s (The Manchurian Candidate 62, Seven Days in May 64, Seconds 66), Pakula directed his own paranoia trilogy (Klute 71, The Parallax View 74, All the President’s Men 76), as if possessed by somewhat similar demons and motivations, many of which drew from the collective spirit prevalent in the US at the time. It is probable that Pakula was also directly influenced by Frankenheimer’s work.

Indeed, The Parallax View reminds us at times of The Manchurian Candidate in its depiction of deception, fear, conspiracy and of an alternate reality in which the lone (in)sane character tries to uncover a conspiracy. But it reminds us also of the more recent Cypher (02) through its depiction of a world so easily constructed and deceived by large corporations and political entities pursuing their selfish aims at any cost.

But The Parallax View fails to live up to its pretensions and aspirations. The film is a bizarre mishmash of serious, dark and intelligent moments, action-driven mindless scenes, forced coincidences, overly convenient scene resolutions, and strange and often too abstract cuts and dialogues. The progression in time is frequently not perceived, resulting in a film that is often hard to follow. Finally, there is a sense of predictability to it all, making us question how truly intelligent this reporter is, when he seems to be the only one who does not know where this will all lead.

There are nonetheless some quality moments in this film, which is often mostly remembered for its five minutes brainwashing scene during which the viewer is exposed through the eyes of the lead character to a multiplicity of images and words, in a way which has a more profound and direct impact on the viewer, at the very least in the form of a headache, than a similar scene in A Clockwork Orange (71).

One would be hard-pressed these days to not notice the ever-increasing role that China is playing in all affairs of the world. The hunger of this industrial juggernaut for more consumption and production seems to be constantly rising, swallowing in the process so much energy and raw materials that an increasing number of people around the world are now asking about the human and environmental cost of this manufacturing escalation. Naturally, the Chinese are responding that these people should also question the same cost produced by their own countries over the past 100 years, that China has a right to augment its productivity and the ‘well-being’ of its people and that the country is doing more than any others to combat the negative environmental effects of its alarmingly fast entry into the world of mass consumption and production.
Still, the statistics are alarming: 16 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in China, coal production to double until 2020, 400 new cities planned over the next 20 years (including 233 Eco-cities, if the Dongtan model proves successful), around 14,000 people dying per year in industrial accidents (Corpwatch), about 60 percent (700 million people) of the population are poor peasants, the second largest producer of CO2 after the US, which it will overtake next year, the list goes on…
How can such an incredibly growth take place without triggering a chain reaction of negative consequences for many of the Chinese people, for the planet and thus, for all of us?

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Documentaries have the capacity to expose their filmmaker’s partiality, willingly or unwillingly, in a much stronger fashion than feature films can, for the simple reason that documentaries claim to portrait reality and to expose the truth. But what is the truth? Is one person, in this case, a filmmaker, capable of exposing the entire truth of a topic? Or do they simply expose mainly one side of it, their preferred side, their own understanding of the truth, which is usually a counterpoint to a dominant view or ideology? How effectively do documentaries reach out to people who do not share the views of the filmmaker and to the people who truly need to be made aware of a different angle to a certain situation? Many decent documentaries such as Why We Fight and Iraq for Sale end up mostly preaching to the choir, which certainly makes the choir feel good about their already more-or-less established convictions, but it does not do enough to make the other side question their own beliefs.

Therefore, it could be argued that some of the best documentaries are the ones that try to not convince the viewer of any truth, either by equitably showing both sides of an argument without adding a biased conclusion, or by skillfully threading the middle line between both sides, never really taking sides. Brilliant examples of this are Errol Morris’ The Fog of War and Marcel Ophüls’ The Memory of Justice. I suppose one could argue that there is always a trace of bias in all films or documentaries. Godard’s typical Godardian statement that ‘a tracking shot is a moral issue’ demonstrate that all aspects of filmmaking, from the location and movement of the camera, to the order in which the scenes are scripted to the final editing decisions, are all part of a deliberate decision by the filmmaker to tell a story according to his or her own opinion.

Michael Moore chose early on in his career to dispense with any attempt to hide his bias. He has embraced the documentary style as a means to fully express his opinion and to punch the side that he is trying to expose. In a sense, he has appropriated the truth and made it his. He also seems to know a thing or two about marketing and film promotion, which has allowed him to take the documentary style into a new realm of profitability and mass viewing. Throughout this process, he has made a lot of enemies, from the people he attacks in his films to others who simply do not enjoy the manipulative style of his work.

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This remake of the John Frankenheimer classic is a relatively decent effort by Demme and his screenwriter, who manage to somewhat preserve the sense of paranoia of the original film and the book upon which it is based, while modernizing the story with 21st century issues and themes. The criticism of the Bush administration and of its support of war profiteering corporations, while subdued, is still quite welcome in such a big budget Hollywood film.
While I tend to think that the film would have benefited from withholding the truth from the audience a little while longer, from forcing the viewer to question the authenticity and reality of more scenes, and from being more audacious in its political ‘incorrectedness’, The Manchurian Candidate nonetheless moves along at a solid and entertaining pace.
Just don’t expect the same quality as the original film.

War is an ugly thing and the business of profiting from death is even uglier. Iraq for Sale, directed by Robert Greenwald who previously took on the Fox TV channel with Outfoxed, exposes the lies, deceit and stratagems that took place during the Iraq war to ensure that a few large corporations with ties to the Bush administration would reap billions of dollars in profit by taking over several aspects of the war support operations in Iraq.

In most cases, it would seem that these contracts were awarded without a proper and fair bidding process to corporations that are somehow connected to the current administration, and that the services that these companies offered to the soldiers in Iraq were much below the quality levels of what would normally be expected. Examples are given of terrible living conditions for the soldiers, contaminated water supplied by the company hired to purify it, substandard food served to cut costs, empty trucks driving endlessly on the roads of Iraq so that the cost of driving and of gasoline can be billed back to the taxpayers, Halliburton executives driving leased luxury cars in nearby Kuwait (used as a training centre for their employees) at a cost of 250,000 dollars per vehicle for a three year lease…the list goes on. Ultimately, Halliburton, only one of several companies that have profited enormously from the war (others are CACI, TITAN, Blackwater…), has made billions of dollars in profit since 2001, by gratuitously overcharging a Bush government (and thus the taxpayers) that was more than willing to turn the blind eye. Why isn’t anyone made accountable?

http://iraqforsale.org/
HalliburtonWatch
http://www.robertgreenwald.org/
CorpWatch: War Profiteers site

SourceWatch: War Profiteering

Robert Greenwald is a busy man. Over the past several years, he has directed, produced or helped bring to the screen a slew of documentaries and films with a social angle, garnering award nominations by the dozens. Some of these titles include: Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election (2002), Uncovered: The Iraq War (2003), The Crooked E: The Unshredded Truth About Enron (2003), Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price (2005), Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers (2006), and Outfoxed, Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism (2005).

As is always the case with these documentaries, I hope they reach the right audience. I was already well aware of Murdoch’s deceptive tactics and techniques, and particularly, of his main messenger in the US, the Fox News Network. I also got to experience another Murdoch property, the Sun newspaper in London, which was enough to make me ponder human nature and the true meaning of intelligence.

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Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance festival in 2005, Why We Fight is a well crafted documentary that unfortunately offers little new information regarding the dominance of the ‘military-industrial complex’ in the US and the plans of the neo-cons in Washington to control the Middle-East, with Saddam Hussein being simply an excuse for implementing this strategy of control and power (see also Fahrenheit 9/11).

Such a documentary would be incredibly useful if one could somehow manage to get the sceptics to watch it. But it seems that most people who will hear about it and will indeed watch it are the people who believe already and simply want to be reminded of the absurdity and sadness of it all.

For more information on this sad state of affairs, read Noam Chomsky’s book Hegemony or Survival and read the American Empire Project blog.

A fascinating look into the life and actions of Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defence under Kennedy and Johnson and the man many have come to associate with the absurdity of the Vietnam war. Yet, as this documentary reveals, war is a complicated and often irrational affair, whereby even the most rational man can make illogical and unreasonable decisions. That being said, I am still not sure that McNamara was a reasonable man in those days, but the point which is made brilliantly by the documentary, is that Man can sometimes be caught up in events that are bigger than he is, and in this process, the lines between good and bad, between our beliefs and our actions, can easily be blurred. Errol Morris, the famed documentary filmmaker, does not try by any means to excuse McNamara. On the contrary, he wants to expose him, but rather than wanting McNamara to simply say ‘I am sorry’, Morris wants him to open up and to uncover what makes a man such as him do the things he did. And this technique works brilliantly. McNamara reveals an ambiguity, a paradox, a certain sadness that one can’t help but associate with something bigger than just McNamara, something that goes deep into human nature…

It was with great interest that I started watching this channel 4 documentary, a response to Gore’s Inconvenient Truth and, really, a response to what the producers and director (a certain Martin Durkin, who, 10 years ago was chastised by the Independent Television Commission for misleading some of the people he interviewed in his anti-environmentalist documentaries, something he apparently did again in this case with Carl Wunsch, who claims to have been deceived) of this anti-propaganda piece of propaganda see as an increasingly dangerous global warming bio-fool movement.

Now, I happen to be one of these bio-fools, but with what I hope is an open mind. So if I hear that some people are saying that global warming is a hoax, I am interested in finding out why they are saying it.
The GGWS starts strongly enough, with some interesting, albeit not new, evidence proving that severe temperature fluctuations have been with us as long as there has been an earth. The documentary then goes on to show that CO2 emissions play only a minimal role in raising temperatures, and that, in fact, temperatures affect CO2 emissions rather than the other way around. Finally, the point is made that solar flares are the source of the current rise in temperatures and that man-made CO2 emissions have, therefore, pretty much nothing to do with the global warming of the earth.

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A high budget and overlong documentary on the rise of the corporation over the past 150 years. It could have been 45 minutes short and still be as effective.

Nevertheless, this documentary has plenty to offer and enough to, hopefully, make even pro-business and pro-capitalism viewers think about the negative implications of a world dominated by greed, money and power.

The Corporation, unlike many documentaries, provides different points of view and gives both sides a chance to express themselves. That I found the pro-business speakers ridiculous (with the exception of the ex-CEO of Shell) is either a reflection of my own bias or an indication that the producers of the documentary selected these people for their self-defeating image and rationale.
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Aaron Russo’s documentary starts as a noble attempt to expose, if true indeed, a mind-boggling and little-known fact: that there is no law stating that Americans need to pay income tax.

Russo throws a fair amount of evidence at us and puts forth a strong case depicting the American Government and the Banking industry as a bunch of megalomaniac Big Brother types who want nothing more than to rule the entire world (that part some of us had figured out already).

What i found to be a truly interesting point in the film is that the Federal Reserve Bank is in fact a private organization, not a governmental one, a star chamber of sorts composed of a group of bankers who, having the power to print money, can therefore control much of what happens in the world.

These financial gods have the power, and more importantly, the will and desire, to play with the economies of the world and to try to shape the future of mankind to their liking.
Unfortunately, after that point is made, the documentary starts to drag, suffers from too many repetitions and attempts to make too many points, thereby diluting the initial concept.

Hotel Rwanda is the perfect political film for Western audiences. It ends well. But the Rwanda massacre obviously did not end well. So why have a film ending that might leave the audience with a feeling that things are not so bad afterall?

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Call me stupid but i found Syriana so hard to follow at times that it took away from the experience of enjoying the film. It is undoubtedly a very well made film, with an interesting point to make and a part of me dislikes the idea of bringing down a political film (we need them). But the constant back and forth and babbling of various people involved in different levels of conspiracy, none of them likeable (perhaps that is the point), prevented me from feeling anything towards the film. Instead of engaging us in the process of discovering the truth, the film creates a cold distance between us and the action on screen, something akin to sitting in a very boring business meeting and spacing out even though you know that probably someone has a point to make. And as much as i like Clooney, that was no Oscar winning performance.

There is a peaceful and serene tragic beauty to this film. From the very beginning, while we partake in the happiness of the characters as they fall in love with each other, we do so with the suspicion that such love can not and will not last, and this knowledge brings us closer to the story and its characters.

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This 6 hours made-for-TV film is a splendid study of an Italian family from the 60’s to the present day. It has been a while since i have seen such believable characters developed for the screen and the acting is simply brilliant all around (especially from the two brothers). None of the situations are exaggerated or forced, and if, at times, one does get the feeling that the director wants to get a tear out of us, it is quickly forgiven since he succeeds beautifully. A must see and one of my favourite films of this last year.

If you liked Fahrenheit 9/11, you will like this. Control Room is a film made by a reporter of Al-Jazeera, the largest TV network in the Middle East. This is their view on the reporting of the Iraq war, and the film intelligently discusses, not only the merit of the war, but also what the media’s responsibility is in reporting the truth, or in altering it.

Ken Loach’s influential docu-drama, made for the BBC in 1966, is an emotional downward ride into despair. Extremely effective, it helped raise awareness to the cause of the homeless and that of housing conditions in Britain, considerably lower at that time than in many European countries. Unfortunately, the political agenda sometimes overpowers the film, and we can’t help but feeling a little manipulated…

Remarkable in intensity, poignant in veracity, this 4 1/2 hours documentary by one of the masters of the genre explores how people and cultures deal with the concept of guilt. It is a fascinating look at what makes some people act, or not act, when confronted with certain events and situations and how they decide to deal with their decisions in the years that follow.