Category Archives: 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.

Action, Adventure, Historical drama, War

Canola dreams: Little Big Soldier ***1/2

July 17, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on July 3, 2010)

I will confess that I have not gone out of my way to follow action star Jackie Chan’s career. According to the Internet Movie Database, he has made 99 films; after a quick perusal of that impressive list, I’d guesstimate that I have seen approximately, let’s see, somewhere in the neighborhood of, oh, around…four.

So when I say that Little Big Soldier is the best Jackie Chan flick I’ve ever seen, you can take that with a grain of salt. There is one camp of Chan’s devotees who would tell you that you can’t truly appreciate his prowess as an entertainer until you’ve seen one of his Hong Kong productions; I think I understand what they are talking about now.

Of course, you could easily apply this caveat to any number of accomplished actors from Europe or Asia who, due to their broken English, give the impression of impaired performances when they star in Hollywood films.

For example, let’s say I was a (what’s a polite term?) casual ‘murcan moviegoer who had never heard of The Last Metro, The Return of Martin Guerre or Jean de Florette, and my first awareness of Gerard Depardieu was seeing him in 102 Dalmatians. “Loved the puppies, but who was that dopey fat French dude?”

So, while Chan’s latest Hollywood vehicle, The Karate Kid inundates 3700 screens, in the meantime this splendidly acted and handsomely mounted comedy-adventure-fable from director Sheng Ding sits in the wings, awaiting U.S. distribution. The film had its North American premiere at the Seattle International Film Festival a few weeks ago, but I couldn’t make the screening. Luckily, I found a Region 3 DVD version available for rent (the movie opened in the Asian markets back in February of this year).

The story is set in the era just prior to the unification of China under Qin Dynasty rule, a time when many of the country’s states were in a perpetual state of war with one another. Chan is the “Big Soldier”, a Liang survivor who emerges from a mountain of corpses in the opening scene, poking around the remnants of a recent battle. When he happens upon a wounded enemy Wei general (Lee-Hom Wang), he takes him prisoner, hoping to collect a reward.

Big Soldier, a cynical, dirt-poor farmer who was grudgingly conscripted into military service, would just as soon leave the fighting to those who care, and fantasize about what he’s going to grow on the “5 mou” of land that he is going to purchase with this windfall (rice paddy…or canola field?). The young general, an arrogant nobleman, is appalled to be at the mercy of such rabble, but in his debilitated state has no choice but to grin and bear it until he sees a chance to escape.

An arduous, episodic journey ensues, with the “prince and the pauper” dynamic providing most of the comic and dramatic tension. Along the way, the pair encounters interesting characters, most notably a motley crew of cutthroats led by a whip-wielding bandit queen (“They are trustworthy, but truculent,” as one character describes the bandits, in the film’s best line).

However, it’s the animals who threaten to steal the show; my favorite scenes feature a bear, an ox and a pregnant rabbit. There’s also a Shakespearean subplot, concerning royal intrigue in the general’s home court, which leads to an unlikely alliance between the two sworn enemies.

Chan (who wrote the screenplay) reportedly has had this project percolating for nearly 20 years. Despite its relatively simplistic narrative, the film does have an epic feel. The misty mountains, serpentine rivers and lush valleys of China are beautifully photographed; suggesting a mythical sense of time and place.

As per usual, Chan choreographs and directs all of his own fight scenes, executed with his Chaplinesque blend of gymnastic prowess and deft comic timing. As I mentioned earlier, I’m no expert on his oeuvre, but his performance here sports a noticeable upgrade in nuance and character immersion from what I’ve seen of his Hollywood fare (don’t worry, fans-the closing credits fold in the requisite blooper reel). If you have a multi-region player, it is worth seeking out; although this is likely best seen on the big screen.

Documentary, Spy vs Spy, War

All the world war’s a stage: Garbo the Spy ***

July 4, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo in 2010)

WW2 espionage buffs won’t want to miss Garbo the Spy, an absorbing documentary about a Spanish double agent who arguably changed the course of the war in one brilliant play. In 1944, he managed to convince the Germans (who thought he was working for them) that the D-Day landings were merely a diversionary exercise (the Nazis may have otherwise thrown even more weight behind the defense of their crucial Normandy beachheads).

It’s a fascinating tale of an enigmatic and unlikely hero, who one interviewee calls “one of the greatest actors” who ever lived (at one point, he had 22 “operatives” working for him-all creations of his own imagination, and juggled so masterfully and convincingly that his German employers truly believed that they were an actual consortium of intelligence gatherers). Director Edmon Roch uses a clever device, weaving in footage from classic WW2 espionage thrillers to put events in context. One bit of footage (from the 80s) showing a choked-up “Garbo” visiting the U.S. cemetery in Normandy, is a moving tribute to the great sacrifices made on those beaches.

Drama, War

Blu-ray reissue: Paths of Glory ****

June 29, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on December 11, 2010)

Paths of Glory – Criterion Collection Blu-ray

Stanley Kubrick really came into his own with his third film (fourth, if you include his never-officially-released “lost film”, Fear and Desire). Kirk Douglas is in top form as a WWI French regiment commander caught between the political machinations of his superiors and the empathy he feels for his battle-weary soldiers, who are little more than cannon-fodder to the paper-pushing top brass.

After an artillery unit serving under Douglas refuses to execute an insane directive from a glory-hungry field general to lay a barrage into their own forward positions, the commanding generals decide that the best way to ensure against any such future “mutiny” is to select three scapegoats from the rank and file to be court-martialed and shot.

Despite all the technical innovations in film making that have evolved in the 50+ years since this film was released, the battle sequences still make you scratch your head in wonder as to how Kubrick was able to render them with such verisimilitude. The insanity of conflict has rarely been parsed onscreen with such economy and clarity. A true classic. Criterion’s Blu-ray print has been transferred with an obvious attention to quality and detail that befits a Kubrick film.

Culture Clash, Drama, War

Blu-ray reissue: Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence ***1/2

June 29, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on December 11, 2010)

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence – Criterion Collection Blu-ray

I had nearly given up all hope that this largely-forgotten 1983 gem from Nagisa Oshima (In the Realm of the Senses, Empire of Passion) would ever see the light of day on DVD, much less be given the Criterion treatment on Blu-ray-but there you go. I remember at the time of its original release, the stunt casting of David Bowie and (equally flamboyant) Japanese pop star Ryuichi Sakamoto in the leads seemed to generate more interest than the film itself.

The story is set during WW2; Bowie and Ryuichi play a headstrong, defiant British officer and a disciplinarian Japanese prison camp commander who butt heads from day one. The dynamic between the two men initially recalls the relationship between Alec Guinness and Sessue Hayakawa in The Bridge on the River Kwai-but quickly moves into some more decidedly weird areas (very, very weird areas).

Tom Conti is excellent as a fellow British prisoner who attempts to mediate peace between the two. The real scene-stealer is Takeshi Kitano, as a prison guard. He injects a subtle humanity into a character that could have easily played one-dimensional. Sakamoto composed the hauntingly beautiful soundtrack (an electro-pop pioneer, he was the founder of the Yellow Magic Orchestra).

This is a film that deserves a serious reappraisal. That being said, the films of Oshima are always a challenging, and not for all tastes, so consider this a guarded recommendation; while definitely worth consideration for the collector on your list who is a confirmed fan of the director, perhaps a “test” rental first would work best for others.

Historical drama, War

DVD Reissue: Gone With the Wind ****

June 25, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on November 28, 2009)

Gone With the Wind (70th Anniversary Edition) – Warner (2-disc)

1939 was a good year for director Victor Fleming. Even if he had been hit by a bus after helming The Wizard of Oz, his rep would have been secured; but he also delivered a little sleeper you may have heard of called Gone With the Wind that same year. Technically, he “inherited” the project from George Cukor, who dropped out over differences with producer David O. Selznick (who in essence co-directed). No matter who actually called the shots, the end result is generally considered the quintessential American film epic.

You know the story (based on Margaret Mitchell’s sprawling novel); spoiled, narcissistic Southern diva (Vivien Leigh) has unrequited love for dashing Confederate war hero (Leslie Howard) who is betrothed to her saintly rival (Olivia deHavilland) and takes 2 hours of screen time to realize she really belongs with the roguish and equally self-absorbed Clark Gable.

The burning of Atlanta (and other Civil War distractions) provides an occasional sense of release from the smoldering passion and sexual tension (consummated in torrid fashion about 3 hours in). That’s a lot of foreplay, but in the meantime you are treated to a visually sumptuous feast and mythic performances by all four leads. It is worth noting that co-starHattie McDaniel became the first African-American actor to win an Oscar (Best Supporting Actress, 1940, for her role as “Mammy”).

While it is hopelessly “of its time” (particularly in its unfortunate characterizations of African-Americans), it is ahead of its time in one respect-it features some very strong and self-sufficient female protagonists. This is one film that transcends its own medium. Warner’s 2009 transfer is breathtaking.

Action, War

Torah! Torah! Torah!: Inglourious Basterds ****

June 17, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on August 29, 2009)

Care to repeat that anti-Semitic remark?

World War II movies can be divided into four categories. There’s the no-nonsense, fact-based docudrama (The Longest Day, The Battle of the Bulge, Tora! Tora! Tora!).

There’s the grunt’s-eye-view, “based on a true story” yarn (Saving Private Ryan, The Big Red One, Hell is for Heroes).

There’s the Alistair MacLean-style action-adventure fantasy; with maybe one toe grounded in reality (Where Eagles Dare, The Dirty Dozen, The Eagle Has Landed).

And finally, there’s the “alternate reality” version (Castle Keep, The Mysterious Doctor, and The Keep). Quentin Tarantino’s new war epic, Inglourious Basterds, vacillates between action-adventure fantasy and alternate reality.

Sharing scant more than a title with the correctly spelled 1978 original (itself a knockoff of The Dirty Dozen) Inglourious Basterds is ultimately less concerned with WW2 than it is with giving the audience a Chuck Workman on acid montage of 20^th century cinema, “101”.

It’s not like we haven’t come to expect the cinematic mash-up/movie geek parlor game shtick in Tarantino’s films, but he may have outdone himself here, referencing everything from the Arnold Fanck/Leni Riefenstahl mountain movies to Tony Montana making his final stand in Brian DePalma’s Scarface.

Tarantino wastes no time referencing his Sergio Leone obsession, with a prelude cut straight out of Once Upon a Time in the West and pasted into “Nazi-occupied France”. Remember Henry Fonda’s memorably execrable villain? He has a soul mate in SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), a disarmingly erudite sociopath who has been assigned the task of combing France to round up and eliminate Jews hiding out in the countryside. Landa is very good at his “job”, which has earned him the nickname of “The Jew Hunter”.

A scenery-chewing Brad Pitt stars as Lieutenant Aldo Raine (whose name, I am assuming, is homage to the late actor Aldo Ray, who was a staple player for many years in war films like Battle Cry, The Naked and the Dead, Men in War and The Green Berets). Lt. Raine has been charged with assembling a Geneva Convention-challenged terror squad comprised of a hand-picked group of Jewish-American G.I.s.

Their special assignment: Kill Nazis. I know – “Wasn’t that the goal of the Allied forces in Europe?” Yes, but the mission orders normally didn’t include a directive to take scalps. And forget about taking prisoners; although they always leave a lone survivor (not before they etch out a Charlie Manson-style souvenir in his forehead).

The self-anointed “Basterds” have managed to “carve out” quite a name for themselves, and have become the bane of evil Nazis (or as Raine refers to them in his Huckleberry Hound drawl, “gnat-sees”) everywhere; these are some bad-ass Jews. Even the Fuhrer (Martin Wuttke) fears them; he is particularly chagrined whenever the name of the dreaded “Bear Jew” (horror director Eli Roth) is mentioned.

This particular team member (known to fellow Basterds as Sgt. Donny Donowitz) has earned his nickname from his swarthy, hulking appearance and a preference for dispatching Nazis utilizing a baseball bat (move over, Sandy Koufax). These happy Jews, this band of bubelehs have even enlisted a Nazi-hating German defector (Til Schweiger) who fits right in; he’s a complete psychopath.

This outing is not strictly a Braunschweiger fest. No Tarantino film from Jackie Brown onward would be complete without an ass-kicking heroine. Shosanna Dreyfus (played with smoldering intensity by Melanie Laurent) is a French Jew who has a score to settle with one of the main characters (recalling “The Bride” in Kill Bill).

She’s a clandestine resistance fighter (a la Melville’s Army of Shadows) who has covered up her Jewish heritage by changing her name and “hiding in plain sight” as proprietress of a movie house. Her story eventually converges with the Basterds (and her quarry), culminating in an audacious, Grand Guignol finale.

Love him or hate him, Tarantino proves again to have a real knack for two things: writing crackling dialogue, and spot-on casting. As usual, every actor seems to have been born to play his or her respective part , especially Waltz. Repellent as his character is, Waltz manages to telegraph the pure joy of performing, just short of hamming it up.

Pitt, who doesn’t get as much screen time as trailers infer, seems to be having the time of his life. Diane Kruger is good as a German movie star who is feeding intelligence to the Allies. A heavily made-up Mike Myers can be seen as a British general; playing the type of supporting character “back at HQ” that you could picture Anthony Quayle, Jack Hawkins or Trevor Howard playing back in the day.

As you might expect, there are cameos a-plenty, including Rod Taylor (as Winston Churchill) and Bo Svenson (a veteran from the original film). Don’t strain your eyes trying to spot cameos by QT stalwarts Harvey Keitel and Samuel L. Jackson; they are heard, but not seen. Tarantino appears as a dead German soldier getting scalped, which undoubtedly fulfills the fantasies of some of his detractors.

Much of the dialogue is spoken in-language by the French and German actors. It’s quite a testament to the director’s formidable writing skills that after the first few scenes, you don’t really notice that some characters will frequently switch idioms (especially the amazing Waltz, who proves equal fluency in German, French, Italian and English). Even when subtitled, the words veritably sing and dance with Tarantino’s unmistakably idiosyncratic pentameter.

In the context of pure visual storytelling, I think that Inglourious Basterds signals the director’s most assured, mature and resplendent work to date (beautifully photographed by Robert Richardson, who was the DP on both Kill Bill films and previously a veteran of 11 Oliver Stone collaborations). This is particularly evident in the film’s opening scene, which immediately draws you in with an eye-filling, gorgeously expansive exterior shot of the French countryside.

The buildup to the finale is the visual highlight of any QT film to date. In a possible homage to Joan Crawford’s Vienna (whose name is derived from the French word for “life”) donning her rose red blouse for the final showdown with her black-clad nemesis in Nicholas Ray’s lurid revenge western Johnny Guitar, Shosanna (whose name derives from the Hebrew word for “rose”) dons her vividly Technicolor red dress as she prepares for the showdown with her black-clad nemesis, scored with David Bowie’s “Putting Out Fire” (originally the theme for Paul Schrader’s 1982 version of Cat People).

It’s a ballsy move by Tarantino, but not unlike his similarly brash gamble lifting of the theme song from Across 110^th Street for Jackie Brown’s credits, I’ll be damned if it ain’t the perfect choice (maybe he figured it would have been pushing his luck to also “borrow” the “harmonica man” theme from Once Upon a Time in the West?).

Finally, a thought or two about the violence, which is de rigueur for any Tarantino film, and which invariably provides the catalyst for discord in any conversation between his disciples and detractors. Yes, you will see scalping, stabbings, shootings, and deaths by strangulation and bludgeoning. This is not Pinocchio.

Yet, if you were to add up all of this mayhem in screen time, I’m guesstimating that it wouldn’t be more than 10 minutes (out of a 153 minute total running time). With the possible exception of Kill Bill Vol. 1 (an over-the-top affair in the bloodletting department by anyone’s standards) I think that the knee-jerk tendency is to perceive a higher ratio of violence in Tarantino’s films than actually exists.

In fact, do you know which scene has the most white-knuckled, edge-of-your seat, heart-pounding suspense in this film? People playing a game of Celebrity Heads. I won’t spoil it for you; just know that wherever Alfred Hitchcock is, he’s probably looking down on QT with a nod and a wink…from one inglourious basterd to another.

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.

Biopic, Historical drama, War

Earsplittenloudenboomer: Valkyrie **1/2

June 9, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on January 3, 2009)

A patchy uprising: Tom Cruise in Valkyrie.

One of my favorite lines from Mel Brooks’ The Producers is uttered by psychedelicized thespian “Lorenzo St. Dubois” (Dick Shawn), star of the Broadway musical romp Springtime for Hitler. After “Goebbels” (David Patch) carelessly tosses a lit reefer into a vase, making it explode, our “Hitler” turns to the audience with a wink and bemoans in mock consternation: “They try…man, how they try!”

Man, how they tried. By 30 April 1945, the day Adolph Hitler finally put us all out of his misery by treating himself to a cyanide cocktail, followed by a Walther PPK 7.65mm caliber chaser, there had been no less than 17 (documented) schemes/attempts to take him out.

The would-be assassins ranged from military officers (captains to field marshals) to members of his inner circle (including Armaments Minister Albert Speer, who toyed with the idea of sending poison gas down the ventilator shaft of his Berlin bunker in 1945). It looked like Hitler was going to be tougher to get rid of than Rasputin.

The most famous attempt, code-named “Valkyrie”, was spearheaded by an idealistic German nationalist named Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg, an army staff officer who ingratiated himself into a well-organized consortium within the German resistance.

On July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg, who had finagled himself into a position to attend Hitler’s military strategy meetings, managed to smuggle a briefcase full of timed plastic explosives into a conference at the “Wolf’s Lair”. He slipped the briefcase under the table, close to where Hitler was positioned, excused himself to take an “important call”, and waited outside for the earth-shattering ka-boom.

Once all hell broke loose, Stauffenberg made a beeline to Berlin to initiate the next phase of the plot, which would require neutralizing the SS and mobilizing the reserve army (under an emergency contingency government reorganization plan that ironically had been set up by Hitler himself). It almost worked (except for the part where they forgot to check Hitler’s pulse before proceeding with Step 2). The day did not end well for Stauffenberg and several other key conspirators; they did not live to see the next sunrise.

This true-life tale contains all the thrills, suspense and complex plotting of a ripping WW2 yarn by Alistair MacLean, except that in this case, the “good guys” and the “bad guys” are all…the “bad guys” (i.e., based on the traditional Hollywood depiction of WW2 era Germans). This presents an interesting dilemma for a filmmaker. It is only in recent years that we have seen films that (for better or for worse) posit a relatively objective view of what the Second World War looked like from the perspective of the Germans.

Now, I am by no means an apologist (I had many distant relatives who perished in concentration camps, and the very sight of a swastika makes me physically ill) but it is a fact that not every single person who lived in Germany between 1933 and 1945 was a blindly obedient member of the National Socialist Party who worshiped Hitler. There was actually an active military and civilian domestic resistance movement that flourished during that era.

One of the earliest films to lurch in that direction was Edward Dmytryk’s The Young Lions (1958) which featured among its three principal characters a conflicted Nazi lieutenant (Marlon Brando) who was devoted to duty, yet palpably repulsed by the inhumanity being perpetrated in the name of the Fatherland. Cabaret (1972) tentatively touched on the idea of the anti-Nazi sentiment within Germany, but the story ends just as Hitler is coming to power, so in historical context, his full capacity for avarice and evil would have still been an unknown quantity to the general populace at the time.

Das Boot (1981) was probably the first film to portray members of the Nazi era German military in a “sympathetic” light and was one of the first to feature German military characters expressing anti-Hitler sentiments. Then again, this was not a Hollywood production (it was originally produced for German TV). And tangentially, we have Schindler’s List (1993) which cheers for an unlikely war hero-an (initially) opportunistic Nazi businessman who profited from the abundance of cheap labor from concentration camps.

All of which now inevitably (unavoidably?) brings us to the new Tom Cruise vehicle, Valkyrie, reuniting director Bryan Singer with his The Usual Suspects screenwriter, Christopher McQuarrie (who co-scripted with Nathan Alexander). Cruise stars as Stauffenberg; stern of jaw, steely of gaze and nattily resplendent in polished jackboots and matching eye patch. To the chagrin of some, he is also bereft of a German accent. This is a moot point, because most of his co-stars sport British accents. Since we know everybody in this story is German, it’s but a momentary distraction (like when Tony Curtis informs Spartacus that he is “…a singah of sooangs.”)

Singer showcases his prowess for well-staged action sequences in a slam-bang battle scene early on the film that depicts how Stauffenberg suffered his disfiguring wounds. As he recovers from his injuries, we catch a glimpse of his family life, and glean a warm relationship with his children and his devoted wife (Carice van Houten). As the tides of the war turn against the Reich, Stauffenberg comes to realize that Hitler’s hopes for victory are becoming more delusional by the day and can only lead to the complete annihilation of his beloved Germany, so he decides that he must be stopped.

The film recreates several other assassination attempts by Stauffenberg and his associates which preceded the conference room bombing at Wolf’s Lair in July 1944. The final attempt is quite riveting, tautly directed and full of nail-biting suspense. Unfortunately, however the film is marred by an abrupt ending; the split second after Cruise has his Big Death Scene, it’s time to fade to black and roll credits (it’s probably in his contract rider).

Another problem is Cruise himself. Yes, he is a Movie Star, right down to those dazzling choppers, but try as he might over the years (bless his heart), he is just simply not cut out to be a character actor.

The real Stauffenberg was a complex person; a fervent German nationalist, an aristocrat, politically conservative and introspectively philosophical by nature. All I kept seeing up on that screen was…Tom Cruise with an eye patch. Don’t get me wrong, when a part is tailor made for his particular energy (Risky Business, Jerry Maguire, Magnolia) he can be undeniably appealing and genuinely charismatic.

Two supporting performances are particular standouts; the always-excellent Tom Wilkinson as General Fromm, and Bill Nighy as Genral Olbricht. A couple other venerable Brits are on board (Terrence Stamp and Kenneth Branagh) but they aren’t given too much room to flex (perhaps Producer Tom didn’t want to be upstaged).

Singer does have a keen eye for historical detail. Several key scenes were filmed on location, most significantly the recreation of Stauffenberg’s execution, which was staged in the Berlin courtyard where the actual incident took place (that courtyard now contains a memorial to the conspirators, now regarded as national heroes in Germany). History buffs will likely be more forgiving regarding the film’s shortcomings, and just enjoy it as a straightforward WW2 action thriller. Tom Cruise fans will see it regardless of critical opinion, and the rest…may want to just wait for the DVD.