Category Archives: Politics

Musical, Politics, Romantic Comedy, Up the Workers

Singing! Dancing! Oppression! Hipsters **1/2

July 30, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on December 3, 2011)

If the psychic energies of the average mass of people watching a football game or a musical comedy could be diverted into the rational channels of a freedom movement, they would be invincible. –Wilhelm Reich

Free your mind and your ass will follow. –George Clinton

Here are two things generally not mentioned in the same breath: “Colorful musical romp” and “Khrushchev-era Soviet Union”. But I have to say it…Hipsters is a colorful musical romp set against a backdrop of the Khrushchev-era Soviet Union. Lightly allegorical and doggedly retro, Valeriy Todorovski’s film is a mashup of Absolute Beginners and Pleasantville, with echoes of West Side Story, Grease and The Wall.

It’s 1955, and life is a bit on the gray side for 20-something Muscovites, especially within the ranks of the Young Communist League, whose idea of a good time is ruining everyone else’s. This is how we meet League member/star athlete Mels (Anton Shagin) and his (sort of) girlfriend Katya (Evgeniya Brik), who is the commissar of his particular auxiliary.

Lovely but priggish Katya is leading a patrol of saturnine League members, who are on the hunt for stilyagi (“hipsters”) who might be having a night out (god forbid) enjoying themselves. Their quarry will not be tough to spot; with their pompadours and peacock threads, they stand out from the drab, state-mandated conformity that surrounds them. Katya and her gang soon detect the telltale sound of forbidden American jazz, zeroing them in on their prey. Armed with scissors, they proceed to unceremoniously cut up their coiffed hair and flashy clothing.

It turns out that Mels may be conflicted; while giving chase to several hipsters, he is stopped in his tracks after he is smitten by one of them (Oksana Akinshina), a fetching blonde named Polza (you half expect Mels to break into “Maria”). Maybe this whole stilyagi scene ain’t so bad after all, he figures, and lets Polza go with a promise that he won’t narc her out. The free-spirited Polza reciprocates with an implication that if he gets hip, he might get lucky.

Well, you know how easy guys are. Cue the inevitable montage, wherein Mels enlists one of the hipster dudes to give him all the requisite grooming, fashion and dancing tips. His transformation complete, Mels sets off to win Polza’s heart. It’s a wafer-thin plot, but I can’t think of too many genre entries that allow obstacles like narrative to get in the way of the song and dance (at 125 minutes, there’s plenty of both).

If you love the song and dance, you’re sure to get a kick out of the energetic performances, over-the-top set pieces and eye-popping costumes. I found the song lyrics to be nonsensical at times; perhaps something literally got lost in the translation. Although the overall tone is fluffy, Todorovski saves room for political commentary (lines like “a saxophone is considered a concealed weapon” may elicit chuckles, but hold ominous undercurrents). I sense the film has deeper subtext in this regard (more attuned to, let’s say, Russian audiences?). Still, its prevalent theme, exalting self-expression and righteous defiance in the face of oppression whenever possible, is hard to miss. And, in light of the OWS movement (and our own ongoing culture wars) it’s a timely one as well.

Biopic, Drama, Family Issues, Politics

Chalkhills and children: Oranges and Sunshine ***1/2

July 30, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on November 5, 2011)

It was often said that the “sun never sets on the British Empire”. While that may have been an accurate cartographic assessment, there was a time or two along the way when His Majesty’s Government had a total eclipse…of the heart. In February 2010, British PM Gordon Brown issued an official apology for one of these hiccups, a child migration policy implemented from the 19^th century through the late 1960s. It is estimated that more than 130,000 children were affected. According to a CNN article from last year, the group at the tail end of the practice is known as the “Forgotten Australians”, who were shipped off starting just after WW II:

The so-called “Forgotten Australians” were British children brought up by impoverished families or living in care homes who were shipped to Australia with the promise of a better life.

But many ended up in institutions and orphanages, suffering abuse and forced labor. They later told of being kept in brutal conditions, being physically abused and being forced to work on farms. Many were wrongly told they were orphans, with brothers and sisters separated at dock side and sent to different parts of the country.

This Dickensian scenario continued to flourish under the auspices of the British government until 1970, which was when the final “shipment” arrived (the Australian government has since apologized as well for its part in the three decade-long collusion; whether or not the various church and charity organizations involved at the grass roots level have admitted same is anyone’s guess). However, as some of these children might have recited at one time or another, “For every evil under the sun, there is a remedy or there is none.”

In this case, the remedy arrived in the person of British social worker Margaret Humphreys, who, beginning in the mid-1980s, nearly single-handedly brought this extended period of systemic social injustice to world-wide attention, as well as reuniting hundreds of the “forgotten” children (adults by then) with their surviving parents in England. Humphreys wrote a book about this journey, which has now been adapted into Oranges and Sunshine, directed by Jim Loach.

The story opens in 1986, in Nottingham. Initially, Margaret (Emily Watson) seems an unlikely candidate for facilitating family reunions; in the opening scene, she is in fact doing just the opposite-taking custody of an infant from its distraught mother, while the police stand by as dispassionate observers. Margaret keeps her professional cool, but her eyes telegraph a pained resignation to the fact that it is one of those necessary evils that real nitty-gritty social work entails.

One night, as she is leaving her office, Margaret is approached by an Australian woman who tells her she was born in Nottingham, but had been placed into government care as an infant and shipped off to an Australian children’s home. Although she had grown up under the impression that she was an orphan, the woman now has reason to believe that she may have been lied to all those years. She pleads with Margaret to help her find her family roots. Margaret reluctantly promises to investigate, if she can find the time.

However, after another woman (Lorraine Ashbourne) in one of her counseling groups recounts an unusual story about how she was reunited in adult life with a long-lost brother (Hugo Weaving) who had also apparently been sent off to Australia not long after the siblings had been put into government care, Margaret becomes intrigued to dig deeper. Before too long, she connects the dots and a disturbing historical pattern emerges.

This is the directorial debut for Loach (son of Ken), who seems to have inherited his father’s penchant for telling a straightforward story, informed by a righteous social conscience and populated by wholly believable flesh-and-blood characters. He doesn’t try to dazzle us with showy visuals; he’s wise enough to know that when you’ve got an intelligent script (Rona Munro adapted from Humphreys’ book, Empty Cradles) and a skilled ensemble, any extra bells and whistles would only serve to detract from the humanity at the core of the story. Watson never hits a false note; she doesn’t overplay Margaret as a saintly heroine, but rather as an ordinary person who made an extraordinary difference in the world.

While elements of the story are inherently inspiring, it also has a very sad and bittersweet undercurrent. After all, these people were not only essentially robbed of their childhoods, but denied foreknowledge of their true identity, the very essence of what defines each of us as a unique individual.

As Margaret herself says in frustration to one of the now-adult migrant children (an excellent David Denham): “Everybody always thinks there’s going to be this one big cathartic moment when all the wrongs are righted and all the wounds are healed…but it’s not going to happen. I can’t give you back what you’ve lost.” Neither can a film; but like Margaret actions themselves, it assures us that there is some true compassion left in this fucked-up world. And that’s a comforting thought.

Drama, Neo-Noir, Politics

Blu-ray reissue: Taxi Driver ****

July 21, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on July 2, 2011)

Taxi Driver – Sony Blu-ray

Equal parts film noir, character study and sociopolitical commentary, this was one of the most important (if disturbing) films to emerge from the American film renaissance of the 1970s, due in no small part to the artistic trifecta of directing, writing and acting talents involved (Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, and Robert De Niro, respectively).

De Niro plays alienated Vietnam vet Travis Bickle, who takes a night job as a cabbie. Prowling New York City’s meanest streets, Travis kills time between fares fantasizing about methods he might use to eradicate the seedy milieu he observes night after night to jibe with his exacting world view of How Things Should Be. It’s truly unnerving to watch as it becomes more and more clear that Travis is the proverbial ticking time bomb. His eventual homicidal catharsis still has the power to shock and is not for the squeamish.

The outstanding supporting cast includes a then-teenage Jodie Foster (nominated for an Oscar), Harvey Keitel, Peter Boyle, Cybill Shepherd and Albert Brooks. The film’s memorable score is by the late Bernard Herrmann (it was one of his final projects).

Sony went all out for their Blu-ray edition, transferring from a digitally restored print; Michael Chapman’s striking cinematography really comes to the fore. The new HD audio mix is also a plus.

Biopic, Historical drama, Politics, War

Even Hitler had a girlfriend: Vincere ***

July 18, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on April 10, 2010)

Have you ever noticed something about movies set in mental hospitals? More often than not, there’s at least one character who thinks he’s Napoleon; or Jesus, or Elvis (you get the idea). I’ve always wondered if that cliché is based on fact. I couldn’t tell you from any personal observation-because I’ve never been committed (yet).

In 1920s Italy, a mental patient named Ida Dalser had a good one. She would claim repeatedly, for the benefit of any or all within earshot, that she was the wife of that country’s leader, Benito Mussolini (who was in fact married-but to another woman). She also insisted that her son, Benito was Il Duce’s firstborn and therefore his “rightful heir”. “Yes, of course you are,” they would assure her, rolling their eyes as they handed her meds. Funny thing is, she really was the mother of Mussolini’s firstborn son; although to this day there remains no official documentation that the marriage took place.

Actually, she wasn’t really crazy. Crazy in love, perhaps, but she wasn’t nuts. Unfortunately for the doomed Ida, she died of a brain hemorrhage in 1937, in a psychiatric hospital. Her son suffered a similar fate, dying in an asylum in 1942 at age 26. Mussolini’s history with Dalser was kept a state secret during his regime, and remained undisclosed to the general public for a number of years afterwards. Writer-director Marco Bellocchio has taken this relatively obscure historical footnote and elevated it to the level of a classic baroque tragedy in an exquisitely mounted new film called Vincere (Win).

The film picks up their story in pre-WWI Milan, where Mussolini (Felippo Timi) is a struggling self-employed journalist, and Ida (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) is running a beauty salon business. Attracted more by his persona rather than by his politics (he was a socialist acolyte at the time), Ida becomes 100% devoted to her lover; at one point she even sells off her business to help keep his self-published newspaper afloat. In a cleverly written scene, he vows to pay her back every lira, melodramatically drawing up an IOU like a world leader composing a proclamation (a portent of the clownish theatricality he would adopt once he did become a world leader).

However, his eventual “payback” to Ida was not exactly reciprocal in sentiment. Following the birth of their son, Mussolini (a textbook narcissist) begins to distance himself from Ida, Much to his convenience, storm clouds gather over Europe and Mussolini runs off to join the army, leaving Ida puzzled and hurt by his emotional (and now, geographical) distancing. When she visits him at a military hospital, she learns to her chagrin that the woman attending him is not his nurse-but his new wife. Her nightmare is only beginning.

Bellocchio makes an interesting choice. Just as Mussolini disappeared from Ida’s life, leading man Timi virtually disappears for the film’s second half, with archival news reels of the real Mussolini taking his place to update the viewer on his career trajectory, whilst Ida’s life turns into a Kafkaesque nightmare.

You see the method to the director’s madness, however, when Timi reappears in a memorable scene as Mussolini and Ida’s now college-aged son. He entertains several of his fellow students with a pitch-perfect reenactment of a Mussolini speech that has immediately preceded the scene in one of the aforementioned archival news reels. His pals are impressed by his spot-on impression of Il Duce (although they don’t really believe that he is Mussolini’s son, as he claims to be).

The first half of the film, which examines the couple’s relationship, reminded me at times of Reds or Doctor Zhivago, with its blend of passion, politics, and historical sweep. It is important to note, however, that this is not a film that sets out to detail Mussolini’s rise to power; it is really Ida’s story, which is more intimate.

That being said, as Ida descends further into a living purgatory, getting shuffled from institution to institution, having her identity, freedom, and eventually her son co-opted by “the state” (which is to say, her ex-lover), you could take away an allegorical lesson here about the ugly politics of fascism. Then again, one could also say that “seduction and betrayal” sums up politics in general.

Culture Clash, Documentary, Politics

Land and freedom: Tibet in Song ***

July 2, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on December 4, 2010)

Did you know that the Tibetans have a traditional song for milking your yak? And yet another to sing while churning said milk into butter? That might sound like the setup for a bad joke, but it’s not. Far from it-especially if you know this: if the Chinese government got wind that you were warbling the yak-milking song (or any traditional Tibetan music) in public, you could be imprisoned. Or maybe tortured. Or killed. Or-how about all three?

I learned all this and more from a fascinating documentary called Tibet in Song, which is really two films in one. Primarily, it is the film that director Ngawang Choephel initially set out to make back in 1995, when he returned for a visit to his homeland after years of exile in India and the United States (his mother had fled Tibet in 1966 with her then 2-year-old son.)

The filmmaker’s intent was to seek out and document the remaining vestiges of traditional Tibetan song and dance, which had become increasingly elusive in the wake of the Cultural Revolution imposed on the country by the Chinese government following the Tibetan Rebellion of 1959.

The first third of the film does deliver a sampling of the region’s folk dances and unique indigenous music, which shares a tonality with Native American chants. One thing it does not share so much in common with is Chinese music. While this latter observation is most certainly not lost on Tibetans, it seems to have been to the Chinese government, which has made concerted efforts, beginning with the Cultural Revolution era and going forward, to replace all traditional Tibetan melodies with Chinese pop songs singing praises to the regime.

One Tibetan interviewee (now an exile) recounts the introduction of radio broadcasts in the 1960s that blasted a steady din of the propagandist pop. Most Tibetans, who are culturally ingrained to express themselves daily in song and dance, had never even seen a radio; it was referred to as “the sound box”. “From that thing, there’s nothing to hear,” his father warned him, “It’s just for transforming ‘us’ into ‘them’.”

The film also recounts a very personal story, precipitated by a profoundly life-changing event that occurred two months into filming. While driving to visit his father, Choephel was stopped at a checkpoint and grilled by Chinese intelligence agents, who confiscated his camera, videotapes and notes. He was immediately accused of “spying” and sentenced to 18 years in prison (no trial).

Undaunted, Choephel continued his project. Fellow prisoners (many of them political dissidents) were happy to share their knowledge of traditional songs, which the director transcribed on cigarette wrappers. When this makeshift archive was discovered and seized by prison officials, Choephel began to commit the songs to memory (shades of Fahrenheit 451).

The studious and mild-mannered Choephel experienced a classic prison conversion, from objective researcher to political activist. “I had joined the (Free Tibet movement),” he recounts in voiceover. Thankfully, after a tireless one-woman campaign by his devoted mother, he was released in 2002, after six years of imprisonment.

Tibet in Song may begin as an academic culture study, but, not unlike the director’s own personal transformation, it becomes an unexpectedly inspirational and moving story. What more could you demand from a film? Singing and dancing? Well, actually…

Documentary, Journalism, Politics, Show Biz

SIFF 2010: Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, and Rebel ***

June 27, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on June 12, 2010)

Did you know Ray Bradbury was only paid $400 for the original serialized version of Fahrenheit 451 published in Playboy in 1954? That’s one of the interesting tidbits I picked up from this lengthy yet absorbing documentary about the iconoclastic founder and publisher of the magazine that I, personally, have always read strictly for the articles (of clothing that were conspicuously absent-no, I’m kidding). Seriously-there’s little of prurient interest here. In a manner of speaking, it’s mostly about “the articles”.

Brigitte Berman (director of the excellent 1985 documentary Artie Shaw: Time is All You’ve Got) interweaves well-selected archival footage and present day interviews with Hefner and friends (as well as some of his detractors) to paint a fascinating portrait. Whether you admire him or revile him, as you watch the film you come to realize that there is probably no other public figure of the past 50 years who has so cannily tapped in to or (perhaps arguably) so directly influenced the sexual, social, political and pop-cultural zeitgeist of liberated free-thinkers everywhere.

Animated, Drama, Politics, War

Welcome to the Hotel Babylonia: Waltz with Bashir ***

June 11, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on February 7, 2009)

George Carlin had an absolutely brilliant routine concerning his disdain for the rampant use of euphemisms to sugarcoat hard truths. As an example, he traced the metamorphosis of the term “shell shock” throughout the course of 20^th century warfare:

There’s a condition in combat. Most people know about it. It’s when a fighting person’s nervous system has been stressed to its absolute peak and maximum. Can’t take anymore input. The nervous system has either (click) snapped or is about to snap.

In the First World War, that condition was called “shell shock”. Simple, honest, direct language. Two syllables, shell shock. Almost sounds like the guns themselves.

That was seventy years ago. Then a whole generation went by and the Second World War came along and the very same combat condition was called “battle fatigue”. Four syllables now. Takes a little longer to say. Doesn’t seem to hurt as much.” Fatigue” is a nicer word than “shock”. (Stridently) “Shell shock!” (Subdued) “Battle fatigue”.

Then we had the war in Korea, 1950. Madison Avenue was riding high by that time, and the very same combat condition was called “operational exhaustion”. Hey, we’re up to eight syllables now! And the humanity has been squeezed completely out of the phrase. It’s totally sterile now. Operational exhaustion. Sounds like something that might happen to your car.

Then of course, came the war in Viet Nam, which has only been over for about sixteen or seventeen years, and thanks to the lies and deceits surrounding that war, I guess it’s no surprise that the very same condition was called “post-traumatic stress disorder”. Still eight syllables, but we’ve added a hyphen! And the pain is completely buried under jargon. Post-traumatic stress disorder.

I’ll bet you if we’d of still been calling it shell shock, some of those Viet Nam veterans might have gotten the attention they needed at the time. I’ll bet you. I’ll bet you.

A rose by any other name. Whether you want to call it shellshock, battle fatigue, operational exhaustion or PTSD, there’s one thing for certain: unless you are a complete sociopath and really DO love the smell of napalm in the morning…war will fuck you up.

In a new animated feature called Waltz with Bashir, writer-director Ari Forman mixes the hallucinatory expressionism of Apocalypse Now with personal sense memories of his own experiences as an Israeli soldier serving in the 1982 conflict in Lebanon to paint a searing portrait of the horrors of war and its devastating psychic aftermath. A true visual wonder, the film is comprised of equal parts documentary, war diary and bad acid trip.

The film opens with an unsettling sequence of a terrified young man being relentlessly pursued by a pack of raging, snarling hell-hounds, nipping at his heels as he flees through a war-torn urban landscape. This turns out to be the visualization of a recurring nightmare that haunts one of the director’s fellow war vets. While lending a sympathetic ear to his pal as he props up the bar and continues to recount his psychic trauma, Forman has a sudden and disturbing epiphany: his own recollections of his tour of duty in Lebanon are nowhere near as vivid; in fact they are virtually non-existent.

This leads Forman on a personal journey to unlock the key to this selective amnesia. He confides in a psychiatrist friend, who urges him to seek out and interview as many of his fellow vets as he can. Perhaps, by listening to their personal stories, he will ultimately unblock his own.

The answer may lie in the possibility that he had a ringside seat to the horrific Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacres, in which a large number of Palestinian non-combatants (including women and children) were rounded up and summarily executed by members of the Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia while Israeli Defense Force troops stood by. What follows is an affecting rumination on repressed memory, circumstantial complicity and collective guilt.

The director generally steers clear of heavy-handed polemics; this is more of a “soldier’s story”, a universal grunt’s-eye view of the confusion and madness of war, in which none are really to blame, yet all remain complicit. This eternal dichotomy, I think, lies at the heart of the matter in trying to understand what it is that snaps inside the mind of the walking wounded (or “shell-shocked”, if you will).

How do we help them? How do we help them help themselves? With the recent distressing news about the ever-escalating suicide rates of our own American Afghanistan/Iraq war veterans, I think these questions are more important than ever, for a whole new generation of psychically damaged young men and women. In the meantime let’s continue to hope for a day when the very concept of war itself has become but a “repressed memory” for the entire planet.

Historical drama, Politics, Up the Workers, War

The whole Bolivian army: Che ***

June 10, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on January 24, 2009)

Bosch: A series about a bunch of bank-robbing guerillas?

Schlesinger: What’re we going to call it –the ‘Mao Tse Tung Hour’?

Diana: Why not? They’ve got StrikeForce, Task Force, SWAT — why not Che Guevara and his own little mod squad?

-from Network (by Paddy Chayefsky)

No…wait! How about a full-length feature film about Che Guevara? No, wait….two full-length feature films, combined as a 4 ½ hour epic? We’ll throw Fidel into the mix, and make it a buddy movie. We’ll show how these two young, rugged and idealistic Marxists sowed the seeds of the Cuban Revolution with little more than a couple of guns, a rag-tag band of rebel soldiers, and a leaky boat. Then, we’ll move the action over to Bolivia, where Che plays cat and mouse in the jungle, Rambo-style, with the whole Bolivian Army looking for him…then he goes out in a blaze of glory! How’s this for a working title: “Butch Castro and the Argentine Kid”? We could get that kid who just directed another Oceans 11 sequel? Oh yeah, Soderbergh. That means he’s due for one of his Art House Cred films? Perfect!

Well, as far as Art House Cred flicks go, you could do worse than Che, Steven Soderbergh’s new biopic about one of the most iconic figures in the history of revolutionary politics. I know what you’re thinking. You’ve got your Thomas Jefferson, with the intellectualized ideals and the Declaration thingie; you’ve got your Mahatma Gandhi, with the passive resistance and the civil disobedience.

However, let’s face facts: Whose mug do you see on all the T-shirts and the dorm room posters? The stately, bewigged gentleman farmer? The lovable, bespectacled uncle? That’s not sexy. The bearded guy with the beret and the bandolier, leading his own little mod squad through the jungle like Robin Hood and his merry band, sticking it to The Man in the name of the People. Now that’s sexy.

Let’s get this out of the way first. Ernesto “Che” Guevara was no martyr. By the time he was captured and executed by a unit of CIA-directed Bolivian Special Forces in October of 1967, he had played judge and jury and put his own fair share of people up against the wall in the name of the Revolution. He was Fidel Castro’s right-hand man; some historians have referred to him as “Castro’s brain”.

That said, he was a complex, undeniably charismatic and fascinating individual. By no means your average run-of-the-mill revolutionary guerilla leader, he was also well-educated, a physician, a prolific writer (from speeches and essays on politics and social theory to articles, books and poetry), a shrewd diplomat and had a formidable intellect (he “palled around” with the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir; like many native Argentines, he was fluent in French as well). He was also a brilliant military tactician.

Soderbergh and his screenwriters Peter Buchman and Benjamin A. Van Der Veen have adapted their two-part story from a pair of Guevara’s own autobiographical accounts (respectively): Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War and The Bolivian Diary.

Part 1 begins with Guevara (Benicio Del Toro) preparing to address the U.N. in 1964, in his capacity as the head of the Cuban delegation. It was during this brief yet significant visit where Guevara’s cult of personality was first seededin America; he made a TV appearance on Face the Nation and was even feted by Senator Eugene McCarthy (both events are recreated in the film). Guevara also met with Malcolm X during this junket; although the film skips over that.

DP “Peter Andrews” ( Soderbergh in actuality…long story) shoots the footage of the 1964 trip in a stark, B&W verite style, which gives it a faux-documentary vibe and cleverly instills an effective period flavor. It also makes an eye-catching contrast to the beautifully photographed full-color flashbacks that make up the bulk of Part 1, which covers Guevara’s involvement in the Cuban revolution, beginning with his initial introduction to Castro in 1955, and culminating with an expansive, rousing, Sergio Leone-worthy recreation of the decisive battle of Santa Clara in 1958.

Regardless of your feeling on Guevara’s significance as a historical figure (or Castro’s, for that matter), what ensues in the movie’s first half is nothing less than a thoroughly absorbing, and at times downright exhilarating, piece of ace film making. What I found most fascinating about this part of the story is the amount of sheer determination and force of will that can be summoned up by people who are so thoroughly and immovably committed to an ideal.

Intellectually, it helps you grok the romanticism of “revolution” and the rock star appeal that leaders of such political movements can possess. Again, however, Castro and Guevara were no saints. They “freed” the Cuban people from an oppressive dictatorship, only to turn around and install their own oppressive dictatorship (meet the new boss, same as the old boss). And so endeth Part 1.

Part 2 is a different bailiwick. In late 1966, following an unsuccessful attempt to stir up a people’s revolution from the disarray caused by a civil war in the Congo (mentioned only in passing in the film), Guevara headed for Bolivia to see what kind of trouble he could scare up there (he was nothing, if not committed to his principles).

Unfortunately for Guevara, this venture was to lead to his final undoing. Compared to the relative cakewalk of a small island nation like Cuba, the rugged, desolate vastness of landlocked Bolivia proved to be a more daunting logistical hurdle for his preferred method of using “armed struggle” to win over the hearts and minds of the peasants; consequently this revolution didn’t quite “take”.

Since we know this going in, and after checking our watches, we also know that the film still has 135 minutes to go, the question is: How can Part 2 be as engrossing as Part 1? Well, it depends on how you look at it. If you’re the completist type (like me), naturally you’re going to want to know how the story ends.

I found Part 2 equally involving, but in a different vein. Whereas Part 1 is a fairly straightforward biopic, Part 2 reminded me of two fictional adventures with an existential bent, both of which also happen to be set in similarly torrid and unforgiving South American locales; Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear and Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Like the doomed protagonists in those films, Guevara is fully committed to his journey into the heart of darkness, and has no choice but to cast his fate to the wind and let it all play out.

A word about the presentation. My review is based on the “special road show edition” of the film that I saw here in Seattle (now playing in selected cities). This was presented as a 4 ½ hour film (ow, my ass), with a 15-minute intermission, and no opening or closing credits.

When it goes into wider release, it will be presented as The Argentine (Part 1) and Guerilla (Part 2), with individual admissions. I also noticed (to my chagrin) that it has now popped up on PPV in two parts (if your lineup includes the “IFC in Theaters” feature). I would recommend seeing it as a whole; but if your budget and/or attention span dictates otherwise, at least try to catch The Argentine if you can.

60's Counterculture, Drug Culture, Politics

SIFF 2007: Monkey Warfare ***

April 29, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on June 23, 2007)

Monkey Warfare, written and directed by Reginald Harkema, is a nice little cinematic bong hit of low-key political anarchy. The film stars Don McKellar and Tracy Wright (the Hepburn and Tracy of quirky Canadian cinema) as a longtime couple who are former lefty radical activists-turned “off the grid” Toronto slackers.

Dan and Linda dutifully hop on their bicycles every morning at the crack of dawn to go dumpster-diving for “antiques” to sell on the internet. They live in a ramshackle rental, filled with the type of posters and memorabilia that suggest an aging hippie mindset, with a particular interest and nostalgic attachment to 1960’s radical politics.

The longtime couple’s relationship has become platonic; they interact with the polite diffidence of roommates making a conscious attempt to avoid pushing each others buttons. We quickly get the sense that Dan and Linda also have a stronger bond that transcends the relationship itself; perhaps a shared secret from their past that feeds a just-barely palpable sense of chronic paranoia tempered only by smoking pot. A lot of pot.

Panic sets in when their regular dealer is suddenly hauled off to jail. Despair quickly turns to relief when our heroine rides into town-not on a white horse, but on a bicycle (merrily flipping off honking motorists like Emily Lloyd in Wish You Were Here). Enter Susan (Nadia Litz) a spirited twenty-something pot dealer/budding anarchist who keeps her basket full of some heady shake she calls “B.C. Organic”.

When Dan invites Susan over to make her first weed delivery, she becomes intrigued by his extensive library of subversive literature. Dan, who is deliriously baked on the B.C. and flushed by the attention of such an inquisitive young hottie, decides to give Susan a crash course in revolutionary politics, which (hilariously) includes dusting off his old MC5 and Fugs LPs.

However, when he loans her his treasured “mint copy” of a book about the Baader-Meinhof Gang, Dan unintentionally triggers a chain of events that will reawaken long dormant passions between himself and Linda (amorous and political) and profoundly affect the lives of all three protagonists.

Monkey Warfare is not exactly a comedy, but Harkema’s script is full of great lines, and the actors deliver them in that peculiarly Canadian deadpan style (I call it the “time-released zinger”). I also like how Harkema cleverly makes political statements without being heavy-handed. For instance, all of the principal characters (including a gang of eco-terrorists) ride bicycles. Obviously, Harkema is thumbing his nose at the oil companies, but almost subliminally.

There is also some basis in reality; the director partially modeled the characters of Dan and Linda on the real-life “Vancouver Five”, members of the Canadian anarchist scene who were arrested in 1983 for their links to several politically motivated attacks, including an explosion at a Litton Industries factory where a component for the U.S. cruise missile was being manufactured.

By the way, if you do get an opportunity to screen this film (outside of Canada), be sure to hang around until after the credits roll. There is an audacious scene tacked on the very end in which a gentleman demonstrates, step by step, “how to make” a Molotov Cocktail as he prattles on in (non-subtitled) French (the scene was greeted with some nervous titters, even though it is mostly played for laughs.)

At any rate, it’s certainly not something you see every day at the multiplex. According to the director, who was at the screening I attended, this scene has been censored by the Canadian government and must be excised from any prints that are to be distributed in his home country. (Welcome to our brave new world.)

Cold War, Conspiracy a-go-go, Politics, Spy vs Spy

The spy who came in from the beltway: Breach ***1/2

April 26, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on March 3, 2007)

Early in 2001, the FBI capped off its investigation of the most serious national security breach in U.S. history by arresting Robert Hanssen, who had used his access as the Bureau’s top Soviet counter-intelligence expert to sell classified information to the KGB. That case is dramatized in Breach, a superb new film starring Chris Cooper (in an Oscar-caliber performance) as Hanssen and directed by Billy Ray, who previously helmed Shattered Glass (another true tale dealing with deception and betrayal).

The film opens just a few months prior to the arrest. A young, ambitious field agent, Eric O’Neill (Ryan Philippe) is tasked to work in Hanssen’s office as his assistant, while surreptitiously reporting on his boss’s activities (O’Neill has been told that Hanssen is under suspicion of engaging in “sexual perversion” while on the taxpayer’s dime).

The officious, guarded and inherently suspicious Hanssen is a tough nut to crack; when O’Neill introduces himself on his first day of work, Hanssen barks “Your name is Clerk, and my name is Sir” before slamming his office door shut. However, as O’Neill ingratiates himself into his boss’s life, he is surprised to find him admirable in many ways; he appears to be a true patriot, a good Catholic, and a dedicated “family man”. O’Neill can’t seem to dig up any dirt on the increasingly puzzling “perversion” charges.

When he confronts his real boss (Laura Linney) with his doubts, she lets the cat out of the bag and admits that he has been the victim of a ruse to ensure he could gain Hanssen’s trust. Hanssen, she tells him, is actually under investigation for something more ominous; he is suspected of selling information to the Soviets, possibly over a period of 20-odd years. The degree of damage from this breach is so devastating, that “We (the intelligence community) might as well have all stayed home (all those years).”

Some may find the film bereft of nail-biting suspense; but real-life espionage isn’t always as intriguing as a Le Carre novel or exciting like a Bond film. When the credits roll, Hanssen remains a cipher; although we are shown enough to quash any agent 007 comparisons (unbeknownst to his wife, he videotaped their lovemaking and got his jollies mailing copies to cronies-the very antithesis of suave and sophisticated, I’d wager). If Hanssen recalls any fictional character, it would be a protagonist from a Graham Greene novel (typically a bitter, world-weary public servant, mulled in Catholic guilt).

The film abounds with excellent performances; it’s certainly the best work Philippe has done to date. Dennis Haysbert and Gary Cole lend good support, and Bruce Davison (as O’Neill’s father) makes the most of a brief, poignant scene with Philippe.