The Fog of War

I approached this film with an open mind. I like to think that I am open to the truth not as I see it but as it is. Also, I was eager to watch a film by Errol Morris, a man who I had heard of for years, but I had seen none of his films.

The philosophical question of what makes a film a documentary is debated from time to time. Some say it must be factual (a critique I remember hearing a lot from the political right when Michael Moore's films are released). Some say they are simply the director's opinions set to film, and they needn't be factual in the strict sense, because that would eliminate artistry. I agree with the latter. After all, why make a film when a filmmaker could simply release a list of facts instead? The reason to me is that all of us as humans must find ways to express ourselves artistically.

As art, this film is extraordinary. It is built around a series of interviews with Robert McNamara, former Secretary of Defense for John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. He was intimately involved in the planning and execution of the Vietnam War, as well as a trusted advisor to Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The movie's point, it seems to me, is to cast shrouds of mystery around any supposed black and white morality surrounding the concept of war. Since war is only a result of the fallible nature of humanity, it seems only natural that this horrible action called war would contain numerous ethical dilemmas. In interviewing McNamara, Morris seems to want to show how we as a country have failed due to getting involved in different conflicts. At times, certain actions within a conflict are questioned (for instance, the dropping of the A-Bomb on Japan is dealt with, but the just nature of WW2 is not questioned) while other times a conflict itself is brought to trial (Vietnam is not seen as a justifiable conflict.).

It is not hard to make war a complex topic. It is hard to make a film that is so watchable and engaging, even when I may have different views than the filmmaker. I got the feeling that the military complex as a whole is under suspicion, as it should be. I wonder where the line is between conscientious objection and a realization that certain conflicts are unavoidable and we must be prepared for the worst. No one would love to see the world eradicated of weapons more than myself...but can we, given the nature of humanity? The great thing about this film is it gives its point of view, but allows the viewer (whatever point of view he/she brings) to wrestle with the ideas along with McNamara.

In closing, I also love the style of the film. Morris uses a device called an Interrotron, which allows him to look directly into the camera when answering questions. This gives the film more humanity. McNamara may have made questionable decisions in his career, but this film shows him as one small man dealing with an overwhelmingly complex world, and trying to make sense of it.

Big Night

It's a long flight from London to LA. The upside of a nonstop flight between the two cities is less overall travel time. The downside is obvious-you sit in one place for a long time. As I write about Big Night, the primary thing that comes to mind is my first experience of it. After all, watching and loving movies often times is about when you saw the movie and how it met you at that point in your life. And so, my love of this movie will always be connected to being 21 years old, discovering how much I love movies, and a nonstop flight from London to LA. It was on that flight that I stumbled upon a movie that left me stunned in my chair.

Watching this movie 14 years (gulp) later, I am still struck by one thing. It is an uncomfortable thing to watch in many ways. The story involves two brothers who have moved to New Jersey from Italy to open their own restaurant. Their hope is to bring their authentic Italian food to America. The older brother (the aptly named Primo) is a prima donna chef. He believes his food is art and that his customers should appreciate his food as such. The younger brother (also aptly named Secondo) understands his big brother's point of view, but desperately wants his restaurant to be successful. Since the brothers' food is unfamiliar to most of its customers, the business is failing and foreclosure looms. Enter Pascal. He owns an Italian restaurant across the street that cannot keep people away. Secondo says, "The people love it." Primo says, "The man should be in prison for the food he serves."

Pascal gives the brothers an great opportunity. He tells Secondo that the jazz great Louis Prima is a friend of his. Since Prima will be in town, Pascal will have Primo and Secondo cook for him and his band. This will create publicity for the brothers, giving Secondo the worldly success for which he yearns, and with that success comes the freedom for Primo to cooks as he wishes.

It is uncomfortable to watch the two brothers conflict. They love each other as brothers, but their paths and philosophies are so different that it is a wonder that they ever thought going into business together was a good idea. As the Big Night of Louis Prima's dinner approaches, it is clear that they believe everything depends on that night. Woven into this story is are so many wonderful human vignettes. Secondo is the ladies man, while Primo is shy but could successfully woo any woman just with his cooking. Primo cooks for an artist in exchange for a painting. He thinks it's a good trade, while Secondo sees the bags of money flying out of their restaurant unclaimed. The simple human drama comes out. And the love of family comes out too. Here are two men who could not be more different, but their shared experiences give them a bond that they share with no one else.

What an unappreciated talent is Stanley Tucci? Such a talent...here, he acts and directs, and is super. Tony Shaloub inhabits his role. The other members of the cast only add more texture to the story. And of course, the food in this film is a pleasure just to look at. One can only imagine how it must have tasted. My favorite line from the movie? "To eat good food is to be close to God." How true.

So as the film quietly came to an end, I sat there. The hum of the airplane's engines had made the movie a little hard to hear, but the story carried the day. I had never been so riveted by simple human drama. I had never even heard of this movie, yet it moved me more than any film I could remember at that time. I had just seen one the world's great cities for the first time, and then I saw what I felt was a truly special movie. I felt that I was drinking from a sensory fire hose, and all my senses were on overload.

A Mighty Wind

I am a big fan of Christopher Guest's movies. One of my favorite memories from college was seeing This Is Spinal Tap for the first time. The freshness of the comedy blew me away. Christopher Guest was a star of that film, and he went on to direct several of his own films. A handful of these films have a distinct style. They are all shot in documentary format, and they all follow a myriad of characters who are all part of a plot revolving around a certain theme. "Waiting For Guffman" follows a group of characters as they attempt to put on a community musical in a small town in Missouri. "Best In Show" centers its attention around a group of oddballs who all converge at once on a prestigious dog show in Philadelphia. "For Your Consideration" satirizes the movie award season. It seems to me that the movie I am writing on, "A Mighty Wind," sort of got lost in the shuffle. I don't really know why, for it is every bit as sharp and every bit as poignant as the other movies.

The movie satirizes 60's folk music. It follows three musical groups who all come together in New York City to honor a folk promoter who has just passed away. One group (The New Main Street Singers) is a group of 9 whose great contribution to the folk genre involves a child who is named after a sweet potato. The second group (The Folksmen-the same three actors who made up Spinal Tap) come together after many years only to be frustrated by the lack of purity of almost any of the other folk artists around them. And Mitch and Mickey (brilliant portrayals by Eugene Levy and Catherine O' Hara) were the darlings of the folk movement who still have baggage. When they all come together (with many other brilliant ensemble characters, especially Fred Willard as the Main Street Singers' agent), the laughs are great.

But there are other things that make this movie special. It shares with Guest's other films a propensity for depicting apparently normal people who become increasingly abnormal as their layers are pealed back. But what makes this film shine is how close to reality it really is. All of the folk artists in this film take their art and themselves seriously. One need only watch footage of Peter Paul and Mary to see how achingly close to reality the satire is. Also, the actors in this movie are so believable. There is a moment when all the actors are watching Mitch and Mickey from off stage, and Parker Posey's character blinks back tears. The line between comedy and heartfelt drama is blurred here, though it doesn't take long for the next song to start, and again we realize we are watching a comedy film.

Finally, I also must talk about the songs in the movie. All of them are written to sound like folks songs, but none of them are profound. They sound like songs written by struggling artists. In this, they are both sad and hilarious. They are sad because the performers put so much stock in songs that aren't so profound. They are hilarious because....well, listen to the lyrics and hear for yourself.

Inception

I haven't seen a movie recently that I had such high expectations going into my viewing. I'm happy to say that the movie lived up to the hype for me, even though I'm still not quite sure what it is I saw.

The movie is a sublime piece of postmodernism. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb, a man who makes his living infiltrating peoples' dreams to find out their secrets. He has been hired by a wealthy businessman in order to convince one of his rivals to split up his inheritance for his benefit (the benefit of the first wealthy businessman). If Cobb helps him, he will make it possible for Cobb to return home, where he is suspected in the murder of his wife.

It seemed to me that the whole point of the film is that the viewer is never sure of what they are seeing, You see, not only can the characters enter people's dreams, but the characters inside people's dreams can also go to sleep and enter into the dream within a dream. Since this can continue infinitely, the viewer is constantly disarmed, never knowing for sure what they are watching. The final sequence reminded me of watching a juggler who is being tossed more and more objects while juggling. It becomes a game to see how many balls can be kept in the air at once. In the same way (without giving away too much), the films climactic moments seem to constantly demand more of the film and its audience, but its success seemed effortless.

The cast here is great. Every actor and actress is believable and engaging. I was particularly impressed with Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Arthur. He is in a supporting role in every sense of that word, and he is believable and effortless in his portrayal.

I often have thought that action movies are among the hardest genres of film to do really well because often times the believability is called into question. Since this films action primarily takes place in the mind, the visions are otherworldly and the normal laws of the universe don't apply, so one can watch the movie with total abandon. Something tells me that people will be talking about this movie for years to come...I know I will be watching it again.

Airplane

"Surely you can't be serious...I am serious, and don't call me Shirley..."

"Don't tell me which zone is for loading and which zone is for unloading..."

"Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking!"

It's like call and response for me. Drop one of these lines in mixed company, and someone is bound to show a knowing smirk and join in. If there is one way I can be sure to illicit a roll of the eyes from my wife, it is to suggest that we watch this movie when we are trying to decide a movie to watch. There are movie comedies, and then there is Airplane. Don't get me wrong, there are other comedies which are every bit as funny or every bit as clever. There are other comedies that seem to make significant cultural contributions. This one stands on its own.

Watching this movie now can become almost liturgical for me. There is almost a comforting order to its pranks and its pratfalls. I read somewhere once that one of the reasons this movie works so well is that it did not cast comedic actors in its roles. That really does go a long way toward explaining why this movie is so funny. Since the genre being parodied is disaster drama, it helps to have its characters deliver their lines in a completely dead pan way. Also, there is the almost vaudeville approach to the jokes, where so many jokes are tried that even if some of them don't work, they are still funny merely due to the volume.

Waxing on about this movie misses the point. It makes me laugh when I watch it. It makes me laugh when I talk to others about it. It makes me laugh when I think about it. There aren't too many movies that have that kind of payoff. There are so many jokes and sight gags that it is pointless to talk of the plot or of anything higher regarding this movie.

Put in the dvd and enjoy the ride.

The King's Speech

As this movie captured the Oscar for Best Picture last night, I thought about why it resonated with me so much. I am hardly a lone voice on this one. Nearly all the critics adored this movie, and its victory did not come as a surprise last night. Many movies over the years have ridden a great wave of hype through the award season, only to be relegated to the "good movies" file. But I think this is a special movie. I am only one man, but here's why I think it is special.

If there is one thing that most folks would agree upon, it is the fact that royalty (throughout history) have led very insular lives. The lives they live are immensely privileged. This level of privilege is often met with great disdain and even hatred from the masses. Those of royal blood have sometimes not helped their own cause. Marie Antoinette famously showed her insensitivity by expressing that the poor should eat cake since they had no bread to eat. In this movie, the drama of the movie is seen in the fact that the person of royalty seems so much like one of the rest of us. He hates this position in which he finds himself. He resents the enormous responsibility that he now has. In this man of wealth we see ourselves. We think of our own struggles to overcome basic obstacles that we face every day. Here, the filmmakers have given all of us an extraordinary gift by stripping this royal figure of his regal attire and leaving us with one man's naked soul.

Colin Firth is great, as always. The relationship between him and his therapist is a classic dichotomy of British manner and Greek phileo. These two men love and respect each other, but they would never put it that way. The other touching portrayal is how the king is seen with his family. Here, all of the kingship is put aside, and we see a man who is both a loving husband and gentle father. As the king begins to face his own struggle with his speech, he shows utter determination. He knows that his country is going to war, and he knows that his country needs him to speak to them. He meets the challenge.

The depiction of the speech itself is nothing short of brilliant. The director chooses the ominous second movement of Beethoven's 7th symphony as a musical backdrop for the speech. Beethoven's 7th symphony is a brilliant choice. This symphony is a great work, but it is made more dramatic by the fact that it was the first symphony Beethoven completed as his hearing loss really took over. Both figures in this moment of cinema (King George VI and Beethoven) are struggling with a tremendous physical affliction. Their works both show struggle and work in their achievement. And both figures rose above their weaknesses to do something tremendous.

It is an astounding achievement to bring such gravity and humanity to humans whose lives seem so inhuman. The life of the person in this film is an inspiration.