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I am not a professional film critic. I do not review films for a
living. Reading a review from beginning to end is often a chore for
me, and many times it is confusing, an exercise in overthinking about
something that is rather simple. Struggles for power. Mother complex.
Father complex. Boy loves girl. Girl loves boy. They argue. They
fight. One wins. One loses. Sophocles. Antigone. Euripides. Oedipus.
Hamlet. King Lear. Romeo and Juliet. Ibsen. Chekhov. Arthur Miller. On
and on. There is nothing new beyond what the Greeks, then Shakespeare,
Marlow and others wrote hundreds of years ago.
Which, brings me to the purpose of my essay. This year’s Oscar
nominations for Best Picture. Four of those contending for one or more
Oscars. All are extremely violent. It’s as if violence and awards go
together like mustard on a hotdog.
 “The Departed”
allows us to see Martin Scorsese doing what he does best -- films
about men who inhabit the ugly underbelly of America, whether they are
cops or crooks. It is fascinating to watch Scorcese’s mind at work as
he wrestles with good and evil and how these two forces intersect. In
the film, no one has any redeeming qualities, except for the female
lead, of whom I did not see enough. Each character potentially
possesses more evil than the next, though at the start the Leonardo
DiCaprio character exhibits a modicum of innocence, thus good, until
the swiftly moving plot overtakes him as he attempts to free himself
from what had become his self-induced trap. Scorsese poses the
question -- who is more evil, the cops or the underworld. Neither side
survives his scrutiny. Each is worse than the other, but I leave it
for you to decide, based on what you think of the film. Is this really
Scorsese's worldview – power, vengeance, and deceit -- or is what we
see on screen a calculated pose to make money? Blood splatter, a Jerry
Bruckheimer specialty, is part of an imaginative dance on TV. On the
big screen, Martin Scorsese uses blood splatter to the extreme.
“The Departed” is a film filled with one surprise after another, all
calculated to leave you on the edge of your seat. It is enough to say
that, despite excellent performances, fine directing – the opening
sequence is riveting – and very good camera work, the film left me
with a bad taste. Despite my reservations and the film’s extreme
violence, for me it is the best of 2006. That does not mean ever, just
for the films it is up against in this last year.
 “Letters from
Iwo Jima,” is, in many ways, a trick. Clever, intelligent, well
written, it is wonderful storytelling from director Clint Eastwood,
who knows best how to tell a tale rather than manipulate us with too
many filmic devices. His films, thoroughly grounded in traditional
filmmaking, make no pretense to any modern techniques. It is probably
why he is so successful as a director. Though the film is in Japanese
with English subtitles, we have the standard stock company of actors
usually found in war films. That Eastwood tells it exclusively from
the Japanese point of view makes the film unique. The acting is
superior with Ken Watanabe leading the way in a difficult and nuanced
role. The actors in the other roles are convincing without being
overly sympathetic, especially the ones playing the ordinary the
Japanese soldiers.
“Letters from Iwo Jima” is too long. At two hours and twenty minutes,
it is tedious as it takes us through the Japanese buildup of the
island’s defenses in preparation for the American landing, including
the marked difference of opinion among the Japanese officers about how
to conduct its defense. The occasional flashbacks mostly work well,
but some are disconcerting as they break from the story in front of
us. The compassionate screenplay by Iris Yamashita takes us inside the
Japanese mind to show us how it worked in 1945 when the invasion of
the rocky island took place 62 years ago. That understanding is worth
the price of admission, especially when we realize that Japan lost the
war, and then how America made it into essentially – not completely,
but in many ways -- a new nation. Most critics praised the film
because of Eastwood’s compassion and understanding of the Japanese and
their motivation for fighting what by 1945 was a lost cause. I accept
that. But the point is made again and again to where it is
mind-numbing.
Additionally, and importantly, the link to the war in Iraq is easy to
appreciate, not because of any similarity but because it is a war in
which we see soldiers suffering – as they do in every war. That is not
reason to go overboard for the Eastwood film. If Iwo Jima wins, it
means Hollywood can only see as far as its emotions allows. It is a
good movie but for me, not an Oscar winner.
Instead of a movie comparable to “Letters”, I want to mention a
powerful novel from 2004 called “War Trash,” by Ha Jin. It tells the
tale of a Chinese Army P.O.W. captured by American troops during the
Korean War, and his life, seen through his eyes while incarcerated in
a series of South Korean military prisons run jointly with American
forces. As with “Letters,” the story, told by the main character,
allows us to understand the thought process of a Chinese soldier. We
learn what it is like to be a P.O.W and how the various Chinese
factions in the camps function and fight for power among themselves
and with the authorities. Written with great understanding, it is the
best fictional memoir, in my reading, which gave me unexpected insight
into the mind of a person from another culture who, with his fellow
prisoners, is under great stress. Unlike many in the Japanese army who
do not survive Iwo Jima, the main character in “War Trash” lives to
tell his tale.
 Why “Babel” is
getting so much attention is a mystery to me. It is overdone,
overwrought, overwritten, and overedited. The film’s philosophy is
sophomoric and better suited to university students sitting in a
coffee shop contemplating their navels. The movie has a contrived plot
with three stories the director connects in his attempt to make us
believe they are plausible. They do connect only because the director
connects them, not because they connect logically. I refuse to believe
that so many diverse events link up even in our ever-narrowing world.
The movie is beyond pretentious, if that is possible. The music is
annoying to the extreme and oddly monotonous. Well shot, with many of
the images beautiful, but so saturated with color and deep contrast to
make us know the director was working overtime to manipulate my
emotions. I had a difficult time feeling anything for most of the
characters, their failures, their foolishness, and their emotional
distresses. The accidental shooting sequence with Brad Pitt and Cate
Blanchett was mostly powerful, but the plot of that storyline had so
many faults as to put it into the realm of fantasy at best.
Two sequences in “Babel” were far too long. The minutes stretched into
hours. The wedding in Mexico and the alienated youth in Japan wore me
down with the sameness of their emotions. Nothing I saw was new.
Nothing I saw made me care about the poor and oppressed in Mexico who
have too little except a contrived peasant goodness; and in Japan, the
rich who according to the director, are so steeped in sophistication
and money, they are equally oppressed because they have too much of
everything. Great camerawork? Marvelous editing? A director should
know when to stop. Someone on his team should have said enough is
enough. Or enough is too much. Overindulgence does not make a great
film. I kept looking at my watch praying those sequences would end,
but they did not. Finally, I thought the film beyond pretentious by a
filmmaker who had to think he was reinventing the wheel. If “Babel,”
is the direction international filmmaking is taking, I want nothing to
do with it. Big time Third World filmmaking is not a guarantee of
talent and thus quality. “Babel” has no place for me on any awards
list, except for the acting.
 Of course, there
is “The Queen,” staring Helen Mirren, easily for me the best actress
of the year in a masterful performance. If not for her, I might not be
thinking of this film for anything other than a good tear or two as we
eavesdrop on British royalty and its inability to understand the
nation it serves. Framed in the immediate days following the death in
1997 of Princess Diana in a car crash in France, we are witness to a
monarchy that is far out of touch with its people. I am more than
familiar with the story because I produced a long special program for
Lifetime Television about Princess Diana’s funeral at the time of her
death.
Mostly the film is an interesting mix of actual footage and wonderful
scenes of what is supposed to be Scotland – including Queen Elizabeth
II’s army of corgi’s that follow her everywhere. We get a true sense
of what it is like to be inside the world of royalty, the homes, and
the look and feel of castle life. We see the marked difference in
perception and attitude between the newly elected Prime Minister, Tony
Blair, who wants Elizabeth II to connect with her people, steeped in
mourning for the woman a Blair aide dubbed, “The People’s Princess.”
The story centers on Blair, the Queen, and the sparing match they have
in Blair’s attempt to make the Queen realize people are turning
against the monarchy and that she had to step outside protocol to
unite the country, no matter what she thought of Diana in life and now
in death.
The difference in how Tony Blair, his wife and children live, down to
Mrs. Blair serving everyone fish fingers for dinner, and how life is
lived among royalty is well realized. It should be no surprise to
those who recall “Upstairs, Downstairs” on PBS in the 1970s. Except
for Sylvia Syms as the Queen Mother, the other principal players left
me cold. I found the actors who played Prince Charles, Prince Philip
and Cherie Blair close to caricatures. This is a story of different
and differing conceptions of Britain. It is a struggle between modern
Britain and a royalty behind the times, with a new Labor party
determined to change the country. According to the screenplay, at the
end Queen Elizabeth concedes that perhaps it is time to change. That
she allowed Prince Charles to marry his longtime love, Camilla
Parker-Bowles in 2005 is certainly a major concession to the world of
the 21st Century. Perhaps Tony Blair won after all.
 “The
Last King of Scotland,” the story of Idi Amin and his destruction of
Uganda, is a movie with many problems. It is episodic, there is not
enough history – except for a line here and there -- as to why Amin
became the man he did, and we really do not see much of how the people
lived or the fear they had of his cruel rule. The film is, to put it
simply, a performance piece. Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin is
remarkable. He inhabits the man; his terrifying menace, his madness,
and his mood swings are captivating as we watch him destroy others,
and teeter on the edge of self-destruction. Whitaker’s performance is
one of the best I have seen in years. The juxtaposition between the
James McAvoy character – physically slight, at times bewildered,
caught up in the excitement of a revolution and a life unlike anything
he, as a young doctor, could have imagined when he left his home in
Scotland -- and the dominating physical presence of Forest Whitaker
only adds to the stature of Whitaker’s performance. In “Ray,” I knew I
was watching a performance by Jamie Fox. In “Walk the Line," I had to
imagine Johnny Cash somewhere in the slight, un-Cash-like body of
Joaquin Phoenix. But Forest Whitaker as the mad Idi Amin brought me
fully into his character’s being and inside his insanity from the
moment he appeared on screen. That was no small feat.
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At NBC News for 35 years, Ron Steinman was bureau chief
in Saigon, Hong Kong and London, was a senior producer on Today and wrote
and produced for Sunday Today. At ABC News Productions, he produced
and wrote documentaries for A&E, TLC, Discovery, Lifetime and the
History Channel. He has a Peabody, a National Headliner award, a
National Press Club award, a International Documentary Festival Gold
Camera Award, two American Women in Radio & Television awards and
has been nominated for five Emmy's. He is a partner in
Douglas/Steinman Productions, whose latest documentary, "Luboml: My
Heart Remembers," aired on PBS' WLIW/21 and the History Channel in
Israel, April 29, 2003. He is the author of, "The Soldiers 'Story",
"Women in Vietnam," and most recently, "Inside Television's First
War: A Saigon Journal," University of Missouri Press, 2002. |
