FIVE MOVIE REVIEWS

Reviewed by Joel Johnson

WHY WE FIGHT
Written and directed by Eugene Jarecki; directors of photography, Étienne Sauret and May Ying Welsh; edited by Nancy Kennedy; music by Robert Miller
Rated PG-13. Running time: 99 minutes

½

Writer-director-producer Eugene Jarecki first gained wide praise for his documentary The Trials of Henry Kissinger (2002). In Why We Fight, he tackles targets that are both more diffuse and more immediate historically than Kissinger, whose heyday ended about thirty years ago. Borrowing his film’s title from Frank Capra’s series of films intended to galvanize attitudes in support of the war effort during World War II, Jarecki also borrows liberally from President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation. Eisenhower warned of the dangerous alliance of interests between the military and corporate manufacturers of military hardware. Eisenhower was particularly concerned with how the good that could be provided by public funds was being diverted to military spending. A single bomber devoured the same resources that could build numerous schools. The convergence of interests between the Pentagon and the providers of military goods threatened, in Eisenhower’s thinking, to undermine American democracy. Jarecki connects the dots behind this to find that the unhealthy alliance of military and corporate interests extends to Congress, whose role is governmental oversight, and to the various “think tanks” that influence government policy.

The appearance of corruption, if not the actual fact, is quite overwhelming. The concern on this issue is twofold. Not only is the United States devoting more money to military spending than all of Europe, Russia, and China combined—which belies the question of what would be done with the money if we didn’t spend it on the military—but American policy is being predicated on what will benefit American business interests that serve the military. The film provides a wider context for American interventions overseas and seeks to see those interventions as endemic to the realities of American government. No single administration or political party has solely owned the use of American military power. The military-industrial complex and its tentacles are seen as a systemic problem. However, it is not long before the focus becomes much more personal with 9/11, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and its aftermath.

Jarecki does an outstanding job weaving in multiple strands, both the overarching historical contexts and the personal stories. He even has provided opportunities for the neoconservatives to articulate their perspective, yet he is clearly unconvinced. We meet a young man on his own who joins the Army because it offers him benefits down the road in exchange for his sacrifice during wartime. Retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski testifies as to how the special office was established in the Pentagon to build the case for the invasion of Iraq—relying on evidence that was outdated and untrue. Retired New York City police sergeant Wilton Sekzer, who lost his son on 9/11, provides poignant personal testimony. He had so felt the need to avenge his son’s death that he had asked that his son’s name be placed on a missile to be fired against Iraq. He later expresses a sense of betrayal as the repeated statements (included in the film) linking Iraq to 9/11 that were issued by the Bush administration turned out to not be true. He is incensed by statements from an administration that seems to be incredulous that someone might have felt that there was such a link.

This is a disturbing documentary that provides a wider historical context for American foreign interventions, which it eventually calls economic colonialism. There are concerns and charges that have been raised and reiterated frequently about the case for the invasion of Iraq. These are quite disturbing enough on their own as lives both American and Iraqi have been squandered as well as hundreds of billions of dollars. The truly alarming aspect to the film is that this type of event may not disappear with a change of administration in which the so-called “neoconservatives” that long advocated removing Saddam Hussein from power as part of a new concept of wielding American power no longer find favor. If Jarecki and Eisenhower are correct, the military-industrial complex may be able to subvert our democracy to find other ways to profit from making war.

NEIL YOUNG: HEART OF GOLD
Directed by Jonathan Demme; director of photography, Ellen Kuras; edited by Andy Keir; production designer, Michael Zansky Herzberg
Rated PG. Running time: 103 minutes



Singer-songwriter Neil Young has been the focus of six concert films during his illustrious career that has stretched from the 1960s to the new millennium. Although he just turned sixty last November and could well have more than a few good years ahead of him, he does not need to make another concert film (although his fans surely would like him to do so). I write this because Jonathan Demme’s film of Neil Young collaborating with a huge cast of fellow musicians at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, the longtime home of the Grand Ole Opry, has captured the elegiac qualities of the man and his music. In addition to the rich harmonies that Neil Young’s music has always provided, we have the musings and the songs of a man whose father has passed away, whose children have left home, and who has experienced a lot of living in his years. This is also evident from his longtime collaborators who, if not quite as old as they may appear, surely have been ridden hard in the nomadic, often drug-fueled life of a professional musician. Young and his friends let the music do most of their work. This is for an audience that recalls that listening is the most important way that music is experienced. There’s no dance troupe, no light show, no jumping and running all over the stage, and no playing the instruments while engaging in the tricks of a contortionist. Demme keeps the focus on the performers and maintains movement with unhurried editing and gradual camera pans. One never gets bored with his choice of a subject for the camera nor does one want him to return to a subject too fleetingly seen. This is a virtuoso performance captured by a talented director who knows how to make musical performance work in a film. This is a wondrous film that simply needs the addition of the years spanning the lifetime of Neil Young to serve as an eloquent memorial to his life and work.


ASK THE DUST
Directed by Robert Towne; written by Robert Towne, based on the novel by John Fante; director of photography, Caleb Deschanel; edited by Robert K. Lambert
With: Colin Farrell, Salma Hayek, Donald Sutherland, Eileen Atkins, and Idina Menzel
Rated R. Running time: 117 minutes



Normally, this is the kind of film that I tend to really like. A film that works very hard to capture a particular place and particular time—a period film. The time is the 1930s and the place is Los Angeles (filmed in Los Angeles as well as on location in South Africa). Those truly familiar with the real Los Angeles of this era may disagree, but I found its period setting quite credible.

This film is based on author and screenwriter John Fante’s semiautobiographical novel about coming to Los Angeles to begin working as a writer. Fante brings his experience of not feeling accepted because of his Italian ancestry to his alter ego Arturo Bandini (Colin Farrell). We meet Bandini following his initial breakthrough in selling a story to the magazine The American Mercury edited by his idol and mentor H. L. Mencken. Bandini soon discovers that the flowing of words for writers frequently does not keep pace with the writer’s bills—a situation exacerbated by Bandini’s tendency to allow money to burn a hole in his pockets. Although Bandini wants to find a beautiful all-American blonde on his arm, it is on a trek to spend his last nickel that he comes across fiery Mexican waitress Camilla Lopez (Salma Hayek).

Even if one had missed the credits and had not known that Farrell and Hayek were the film’s stars, as soon as they began hurling insults at each other it would be clear that they would eventually become lovers. Although the film features supporting actors Donald Sutherland, Eileen Atkins, Idina Menzel, and William Mapother, the film is essentially a two-person drama. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t give the audience much reason to root for these two people. They share little except a sense of not being accepted as Americans and a razor-sharp tongue to eviscerate each other. Arturo is a man who plans to make his living through words, and Camilla is illiterate. Arturo has to deal with his lack of life experience and especially his lack of experience in dealing with women. H. L. Mencken describes this as a classic problem for writers because one cannot be experiencing life and writing about it at the same time. Arturo does get some help in this regard from Jewish housekeeper Vera Rivkin, who literally forces her way into his life. Then nearly as quickly as she appears in the film, she exits.

Director Robert Towne’s script provides us with precious little back story on Bandini. It challenges credibility to see Colin Farrell, a major star and frequent celebrity gossip fodder on the cusp of age thirty, so unworldly and so totally inept in the presence of women. The Bandini character is a very young and inexperienced man in his early twenties. A younger and probably less handsome actor might have been better suited to play Bandini with his obvious insecurities. Although both Farrell and Hayek are game and put forth the effort, they have trouble having chemistry together. My wife made the telling comment that she wondered if they were really together when some of their shared dialogue scenes were filmed since each seemed only present in that they appeared in alternating shots. Although I’m sure the film’s backers anticipated the potential for a deeply romantic and tragic film featuring two of today’s most attractive major stars, this did not materialize for me. I found myself disinterested and unmoved by the film’s denouement. The film’s much bigger thrill was finding that my nephew Matthew W. Johnson had worked on the film as an IQ artist.

THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA
Directed by Tommy Lee Jones; written by Guillermo Arriaga; director of photography, Chris Menges; edited by Roberto Silvi; music by Marco Beltrami
With: Tommy Lee Jones, Barry Pepper, Julio César Cedillo, January Jones, Dwight Yoakam, and Melissa Leo. Rated R. Running time: 120 minutes



Tommy Lee Jones's first effort at film directing tackles one of the “hot” political topics of 2006—recently identified in polling as second in importance only to the War in Iraq. How does the United States deal with illegal immigrants? Jones, the actor, plays rancher Pete Perkins who has hired and befriended illegal immigrant Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cedillo) who just wants to be a cowboy. Estrada ends up being shot in one of those “accidents” that are almost inevitable when literally shooting first and asking questions later becomes standard operating procedure. Jones’s film, based on Guillermo Arriaga’s (Amores Perros and 21 Grams) script, intermixes flashback sequences into this narrative about the untimely death of Melquiades Estrada and how his three burials fulfill a promise and teach new Border Patrolman Mike Norton (Barry Pepper) a lesson about the humanity of the illegal Mexican immigrants.

The action takes place in a lonely hard-baked section of Texas on the border with Mexico. What social life develops in this arid community of double-wide trailer homes centers on the local diner. Waitress Rachel (Melissa Leo) arranges trysts under the nose of her husband Bob, the diner’s cook. Pete and Sheriff Belmont (Dwight Yoakam) are among her admirers. Rachel befriends another stranger to the local scene, Lou Ann Norton (January Jones), a blonde flower unceremoniously transplanted from Cincinnati to rural Texas. Eventually, frustrated with the official legal acceptance of the reckless conduct that had led to Melquiades’s death and having made a promise to the much younger man to have him buried in Mexico, Pete decides to take matters into his own hands. Soon he is the subject of an all-out manhunt by the border patrol and local law enforcement.

Although this film is less explosive than the other films I had cited earlier as written by Arriaga (and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu), Jones’s film probably creates the most rounded and believable characters. We see their basic humanity despite the good and the bad that they do. There are some powerful lessons to be learned in this film and some very thought-provoking questions to think about. How do we deal with illegal immigration? I don’t know what the answer to that question should be, but I don’t think anyone who sees the film will be able to think of illegal immigrants as faceless lawbreakers. We will have a lot of real faces to consider as we think about this human problem.

TSOTSI
Directed by Gavin Hood; written (in Tsotsitaal, with English subtitles) by Gavin Hood, based on the novel by Athol Fugard; director of photography, Lance Gewer; edited by Megan Gill; music by Mark Kilian and Paul Hepker, with the featured vocalist Vusi Mahlasela
With: Presley Chweneyagae, Terry Pheto, Kenneth Nkosi, Mothusi Magano, and Zenzo Ngqobe. Rated R. Running time: 94 minutes

½

The winner of this year’s Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film is Gavin Hood’s Tsotsi, a tough drama about sin, despair, and redemption. The film is set in a teeming poor black township outside Johannesburg. We first meet Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae) and his gang as they arrive in the city to pick out a mark. They find an older black man who had been a little too free in flashing an envelope of money. When he boards the train, they descend on him like locusts. Suddenly, we see the fear in his eyes. The well-named Butcher (Zenzo Ngqobe) wields a nasty looking awl-like knife with a thin narrow blade. Tsotsi grabs the envelope, the husky Aap (Kenneth Nkosi) stops holding the victim upright, and then the man lays dead on the floor of the train car as everyone on the train rushes out the doors. It is a vicious killing that has left one-time would-be schoolteacher Boston (Mothusi Magano) sickened by their moral descent. Abruptly, Tsotsi explodes and viciously beats Boston.

We next find Tsotsi walking in a rainstorm just outside a wealthy home. When a BMW appears and the gate won’t respond to the remote control, a woman gets out to manually work the controls. Tsotsi sees his chance to steal the vehicle. While he fumbles with the transmission, the screaming woman rushes the car. Reflexively, he fires his handgun and hits her in the midsection. His escape with the car is short-lived as he puts the vehicle in the ditch. As he tries to salvage anything of value from the vehicle, he discovers why the woman had not simply let him drive away. There’s a small baby boy in the backseat. It is this baby boy that will lead Tsotsi from his tortured childhood through his desperate poverty to a life of crime without conscience and finally to redemption.

Hood’s screenplay, based on an Athol Fugard novel, doesn’t make this transformation happen all at once or as if it came as part of one smooth motion. Yet, little by little, we see that his actions are beginning to occur in the midst of moral understanding. Interspersed with scenes of Tsotsi coping with his dual life as gang leader and surrogate father, we meet Captain Smit (Ian Roberts) and Sergeant Zuma (Percy Matsemela) trying to solve the crime and recover the baby. We also see how the family is trying to deal with both their missing baby and the woman’s paralysis from Tsotsi’s bullet. Second to the child in Tsotsi’s redemption is the young mother Miriam (Terry Pheto). Their relationship begins with his armed robbery of her mother’s milk, but their relationship evolves in a way that is mostly revealed by their eyes and the expressions on their faces. The ending is laced with suspense and is also bittersweet. We find ourselves left with lots of unanswered questions. What will happen to Tsotsi? Miriam? The baby? His parents? Boston? Hood has brought us to a world that is far away and into which we rarely have been allowed to see. He has given us people for whom we have started to care.

As good as this story is and as well as its actors perform, it is clear that this film’s power would not be anywhere near as effective without the gloriously evocative soundtrack of South African music. Zola, who also plays the township’s gangster kingpin Fela, contributes several songs that show a hybrid of traditional African music and rap. This is a soundtrack that may work as well for stand-alone listening as it does in concert with the film’s story. The soundtrack is worth half a star all by itself. This is an outstanding film and a worthy winner of its Oscar.  

 

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