THE PAST OF A NATION - AND A GREAT MAN - EXAMINED : "LINCOLN"

Ok this is another film that is going to get talked about a lot. I mean, it already is. It did quite well at the Golden Globes, it got a slew of nominations for the Oscars® and if the Golden Globes are anything to by (and it is no industry secret that they often are), Lincoln is set to do well there as well. Now, we already know that this is a Spielberg biopic, which, in itself, gives away quite a bit. But let’s get the lowdown on this three-hour long epic shall we? (By the way, what IS it with the length of films these days? Nothing under 2, 5 hours long! I mean, mostly the quality is quite high so the length is not, in itself, an issue but still, I’m curious. Films used to be a lot shorter in the past, even when technical developments allowed for much longer films. Now, when our attention spans are supposed to be getting shorter, films are getting longer and longer. There’s a thesis for a researcher or three in there somewhere…). Ok, I’ve done another one of my mile-long parenthesis. But bear with me; I’m getting to the point. In fact, this was not intentional, but it is kinda fitting that I went down a bit of detour here. Because one of the main “things” about Lincoln is that it is verbose. Very  verbose. But I’ll get to that in just a sec. Let’s briefly hear the story first.

This biography of Abraham Lincoln (Daniel Day Lewis), takes up the story of the great politician’s life in 1865. Lincoln has two very important matters on his hands. The greatest without any shadow of a doubt is the Civil War. One thing is clear however, the war seems to be inexorably winding to a close. Lincoln is more than happy that the North seems to be winning. And with people dying in their thousands, peace could surely not come soon enough. The only thing is, Lincoln has a second issue on his mind that he is desperately trying to balance with peace with the south. For a while now, Lincoln’s main political aim has been to end slavery. However, he must bring the amendment to the attention of the senate and be sure to pass it before the southern states join if he is to have any hope of success. The economy of the southern states depends largely on slave labour, meaning that they would, almost to a man, block this amendment. Lincoln has a race against time on his hands if he wants to get this historic amendment through. On the one side, there is the hope of an early peace and saving thousands of lives. On the other, there is the chance to end slavery, which brings hope of much greater things in terms of ethics, lives and quality of lives. And then of course, there is the possibility of the amendment being rejected anyway, as the representatives are far from unanimous in their support of it. Lincoln deals with this crisis within his conscience with the aid of such historical figures such as William Seward (David Strathairn) and Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones) with truly historical consequences…

First up, hats off to Spielberg. This is an epic of quality and grandeur to suit a great man such as Abraham Lincoln and the historical changes he wrought in American history. The cast, full to the brim as we mostly know by now with big name stars (Joseph Gordon Levitt, Sally Field and Hal Holbrook among those who I couldn’t work into the synopsis) , present us with a true feast when it comes to acting. And for those, like me, who have very limited knowledge of American history, especially this period in American history, the film is easy to follow. The explanations given by the characters are clear and easily fitted into the storyline. And to be fair, seeing that the main part of the story takes place in parliament and amongst politicians, there are plenty of opportunities to make the discussion clear, so all levels of knowledge can follow and gain something. But of course this comes at a price. This tendency, coupled with the nature of the story, as detailed just now, means there is a lot of talking. And I mean A LOT of talking. There are, as I said, detailed explanations on what is going on, and even though my levels of concentration are definitely average if not slightly above, even I had to rewind, and/or check out a few facts online from time to time. You might, thus find it a tad hard to get into the pace of the film if you are a fan of less talking and more action, as it were. But once you “get” the storyline and adapt to the pace, this film will prove a wonderful lesson in a historical event in history. And I defy you not to get excited about the whole thing at the end, even though history tells us what happened as clear as day… 

WAR AND SADNESS "IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH"

With 9 / 11 and the subsequent war in Iraq there are more and more films discussing the matter; giving the pros and the cons and the different ideas and opinions as to what is going on. In the valley of Elah is one of these films. I am actually doing my dissertation on war films by the way so over the course of the next couple of weeks you will be hearing about these films quite a bit. I may even do a week on them but more about that later. First let’s take a look at the film in hand. Hank Deerfield (Tommy Lee Jones – one of my favorite actors incidentally) has the misfortune of getting the call every parent who has a son or daughter in the armed forces dread: “your son is missing”. The irony of the situation being that the young man did not get lost on the battlefield but actually back in the United States, when they had just returned from the tour in Baghdad. An ex-serviceman himself, Deerfield is determined to figure out the full truth of what has happened to his son. With the help of Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron) Deerfield starts his own investigation in the face of the apathy of the institutions. First of all, as you may have guessed the story does contain some quite open political overtones and messages. I am not going to get into that – this blog was not set up for politics. So let’s concentrate on the film itself. And the film itself is quite something. First of all, the film is quite brilliant as a crime / murder mystery alone. I mean I grant you, having a single hero – Hank – who just happened to be a retired intelligence officer doing a better job than the entire police force by himself is a bit “old”. But the film does save this particular gimmick by making him a middle aged man with a lot of flaws in his character – he is in fact a rather difficult man all in all. Tommy Lee Jones’s rugged charisma fits the role very well and they go well together with Susan Sarandon who plays his wife. Although there are a few “types” among the characters, but what I really liked about them is the fact that none of them are perfect. And the flaws in their characters do not look slightly off, as they do in some films, some times a flaw is there simply because the writers reckoned the characters turned out too perfect. Here we have very real and realistic people portrayed – the benefits of having an Oscar® winning writer / director (Paul Haggis, director of Crash) on the crew I suppose =) In the valley of elah is, above and beyond everything, a look into the human psyche and the way it reacts under pressure. In the valley of elah is definitely up there in good company along with a series of war films that look at the states of mind and changes in character that occur in prolonged combat. And it is of course very sad and in bits rather hard to watch but definitely worth it. By the way, just found out that Tommy Lee Jones was actually nominated for an Academy award with this role. Well deserved says I.

SURREAL TV : "NATURAL BORN KILLERS"

Having sampled some of life’s bitter truths with Kusturica, let us now turn to some light entertainment. As I was preparing for the review on this one I realized something… This film can be likened to a family fight. In it, under the direction of Oliver Stone, the cinema takes a massive bite out of its younger cousin, the television. And put like that I know it sounds a touch unfair, but really it isn’t anything the TV culture doesn’t deserve… I honestly feel sometimes that the “media” has gone completely barmy and could have disastrous results… And I liked this film because it is precisely this hypothesis that Stone explores. If the film is completely surreal, it is more to set us in the type of universe where everything is possible and where the more outrageous possibilities can be explored; this is akin to the sense of liberty the medium of animation affords… It also has the added benefit of rendering the film watchable; even though the amount of bodies that pile up all over the screen can only be described as carnage, the whole thing is so unbelievable it just doesn’t sort of you know… Hit you… (Excuse the bad pun)
Mickey (Woody Harrelsson) and Mallory Knox (Juliette Lewis) are “Natural Born Killers”. They love each other and they love life, and for them, “life” means rolling round the countryside, getting drunk, getting high and killing pretty much whoever they want whenever they want. The manhunt that begins is massive, as is the media frenzy. And of course the whole thing does nothing but get worse when, in a hail of bullets, the couple actually get caught. Now they are safely behind bars, it’s the press that wants its pound of flesh. In depth reports, close ups… The natural born killers love the attention, the problem is, they are NOT as dumb as some people seem to make them out to be… And the fact that they love the attention doesn’t mean that they don’t know how to use it to their advantage…
Oliver Stone’s attack on “TV Culture” is two-pronged. First of all there is the very obvious interaction of Mickey and Mallory with the media who takes the form of Wayne Gale (Robert Downey Jr.), the uber-cheesy reality-show host who thinks of nothing but his own face on TV and his ratings. And then, just in case you missed that one, there is the media in general’s “feeding frenzy” – Mickey and Mallory become super-stars overnight, their faces are all over the front pages of newspapers, morbid fascination pervades and as the audience we receive a little poke ourselves… Come on, admit it, you DO read all those gory stories in the newspaper… But there are also a few more slightly less-obvious attacks going on. First of all, as I already mentioned, the whole film is very OTT. So much so that the overly cliché characters in it just pass one by. But in fact these men, Wayne Gale, the police officers, everybody is the epitome of B-movie characters. So intelligently enough, the film criticizes what television has become by becoming rather disturbing itself. Here, the credit that is due must be given to the actors, especially Tom Sizemore as detective Jack Scagnetti and Tommy Lee Jones as the prison warden, one of the most laughable yet psychopathic characters I have ever seen on screen… Then of course, there’s Mickey and Mallory. In actual fact, what they are doing is no more than simply copying what a lot of us see in bad action movies all around the world late at night (I assume some things don’t change no matter where you go). Even though their love for eachother is genuine – as far as we can tell – the things they use to show that love (apart from the murders of course) are again all the old clichés we’ve all seen a thousand times before. They are not educated, they are not cultured, this is the only means they know of self-expression…
Oh yes, the movie may seem all innocence and light, however, Oliver Stone actually has a lot of scathing things to say about where media and modern culture are today… Just don’t get mesmerized by the fast- moving script, open your eyes and ears, and listen.