Amazing Grace, I Finally Watch Requiem for a Dream, How Sweet the Film Twas Viewed By a Wretch Like Me

Now that you've been born the best we can do is try to make you as comfortable as possible until the inevitable. Just think of family and all the friends you make throughout your journey as hospice workers.

Once in recovery, junkies and drunkards come to be happy with the simple notion of being alive and able to participate in the day-to-day. Taking life on life's terms. There is much gratitude at having a daily reprieve from drugs and alcohol. You really need to hear the stories of those who hit very low bottoms to appreciate the miracle of being clean and sober and functioning. It's all very humbling.

Films have a rather mixed record at dealing with most any topic you can name and addiction is no exception. It's easy enough to find a ham actor to play a drunk. These performances can be quite humorous or overly broad and silly. But the film drunk is usually just a highly amusing stage prop. If they are true abusers of booze, it's seldom dealt with. A lot of shaking, vomiting, self recrimination, overwhelming guilt and blistering headaches are not exactly cinematic. Let's just stick to slurring words and stumbling about.

More than ten years after its release I finally saw Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream (2000). Oh my....

It was my admiration for Aronofsky's film Black Swan (2010) that finally quit me hemming and hawing (what on Earth was the delay all about?). It made a very slow climb up my Netflix queue these past few months until finally arriving this week. As much as I appreciated Black Swan (and I did, a lot), Requiem makes it look like student film. Which is only to say that I found Requiem to be a positively brilliant film. (I did not hesitate a millisecond in using the "b" word to describe it.)

It reminds me a little bit of Half Nelson (2006) in its depiction of drug use, only cranked up 1000 more degrees. Full throttle.

I was in the wonderful position before viewing of knowing next to nothing about Requiem aside from the following: Ellen Burstyn was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her performance in it, it dealt with drug use and it was considered by most folks to be depressing. About that last point...I can find nothing depressing about a work of art that so elevates our understanding of the human experience, least of all when its style is so unique and utterly compelling.

Movies can turn a mirror on the world, reflecting people, times places. Most admirable. But movies can also bring you along for the ride, inviting you to join an experience. No, there's no physical pain, but you feel less a distant observer and more a passenger. With Requiem I felt like I was sitting right on the driver's lap.

Requiem focuses on a widow (Burnstyn) her junkie son (Jared Leto, a sort of Anglo version of Gael Garcia Bernal), his girlfriend (Jennifer Connelly) and his buddy (Marlon Wayans). It's not surprising that the three young folks are heroin addicts, but during the course of the film, Mom also develops a powerful addiction. In her case to prescription drugs. It's no use trying to summarize the plot. If you've seen Requiem you know it and if you haven't seen it, you don't need to. I didn't. In any event this is not a film in which plot points are crucial. Life isn't about plot points either. This film, like life, is about the journey and how to describe it. Aronofsky may not use every trick in the director or cinemaphotographer's book, but there's not many left. All the gadgetry in the world is useless unless done in service of the story telling. It's so easy for slow motion or special effects to be a distraction. Depicting drug abuse practically cries out for grumbling refrigerators, walls collapsing and quick montage cuts. All this is to say Aronofsky got it right.

I was wonderfully, happily uncomfortable at times. Reminded of that ugly desperation, that orgasmic relief and the emptiness of a life based on altered consciousness. I writhed and squirmed and wondered at it all. How some of us do these things to ourselves and a few of us even live to tell the tale. But also how that story can be told in such a bravura style.

Life is utterly fascinating if you give it half a chance. It's full of characters and events that defy description, yet we have the best damn time describing and imagining them. Nothing we make up is as truly astounding as what we actually do. From the soaring heights of human invention to the plummeting pratfalls of our buffoonery. Our intellects are capable of creating machines through which we can instantly communicate with the other side of the world. We can also conjure an endless variety of methods by which to murder and torture one another. We are capable of the deepest love and the vilest hate. We have God within us.

Through art we can understand, illuminate and entertain. It is all a wonder. The best of art, such as in a few films, can get us thinking about all of this. Examining our own existence and pondering the previously imponderable. By God, look what kind of mad mind trip Requiem for a Dream has sent me on.

I choose to live within the confines of the serenity prayer and hope that God will grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Here is a film that reminded me of the primacy of this dictum.

What a movie. What a world. Grace, amazing as it is, be on to you my dear reader.

The Eternal Overcast of the Troubled Mind

Existential angst. A curse of the self aware. Introspection colored by philosophical musings. It's the occasional inability to merely take the next step in one's life without first contemplating its ramifications or those of the previous steps. Throw into the mix something like an addiction, or a deviancy or a mental quirk and you've got the recipe for a tortured soul. Or at least one that needs a lot of attention.

You've also got the recipe for a French film of the New Wave era -- Le feu follet (1963) (the English title is The Fire Within). It's directed by Louis Malle who adapted the script from a 1930's French novel that was undoubtedly inspired by the work of F Scott Fitzgerald. That for Malle this is more homage than rip off is evidenced by references to Fitzgerald during the film.

Some films seem trivialized by presenting a synopsis. It's like being asked of a complicated person: "what's he like?" You can summarize but it hardly does justice. But one must, so in this instance I'll cheat by copy and pasting IMDb's plot summary:

Life has become unbearably painful for Alain who is in his early 30s. He once used alcohol to dull the pain. His estranged wife in New York has paid for a cure at a clinic in Versailles and sends an emissary, one of the many woman he has known, to see how Alain is. She sees only the surface as does his doctor, who says it's time for Alain to leave the clinic. He goes to Paris the next morning and has lunch with old friends, a rendezvous in a cafe and is invited to a dinner party. Will Alain make a connection that will change his mind about ending it all?


Le feu follet is like a lot of great films in that is an invitation. In this case Malle is inviting viewers to follow the main character, Alain Leroy (Maurice Ronet) through various parts of Paris. But it is also a journey through one man's mind and we all know the curious directions such expeditions can take. The mind, the old ad campaign said, is a terrible thing to waste. But it can be a wonderful topic for a film. 


The pace of Le feu follet seems languorous. Malle might have added a fist fight or a car spun out of control or a sex scene. Through much of the movie I was hoping for such a diversion. Not bored, but uncomfortable by the meditative pace. Yet by the last frame I was exhilarated. It had all come together into a wonderful whole. A rich melange of episodes, some curious, others intoxicating. Isn't the thinking process the same? Lots of randomness, lots of going nowhere until viola! 



Here's an overused and overrated word: underrated. But sometimes it must be used, as in any discussion of Malle among great directors. If you need proof look no further then what a compelling film he made out the story of a recovering alcoholic wandering Paris. For one it is beautifully shot, serving as it does as another example of the powerful advantage black and white has over color cinema photography. Pacing in such a film is critical and Malle got it just right. The casting is spot on. Finding the right actor to play Alain was a chore for Malle given the somewhat autobiographical nature of the story.


Donet looks by turns like he must be the French first cousin of Tony Curtis or the Gaelic uncle of Jude Law. He's as good an actor -- if not better -- than both. In Le feu follet he carries the weight of a million woes and personal demons with nary a gesticulation nor frown. It's an incredible responsibility to have the camera trained on you for almost the entire running length of a film and Donet is equal to the task. He expresses more with his eyes or a turn of the head than many actors do with a long soliloquy.


Our Alain visits old haunts and friends. This includes a stop at an upscale opium den where Jeanne Moreau has a cameo. There is also an outdoor cafe where Alain's old army buddies rendevous and visits to flats both bohemian and upper, upper crust. It's a whirlwind 24 hours for a normal bloke but again not the usual stuff of movies. But the French New Wave was not just about different ways of telling stories but of telling a different sort of tale. Why not the curious meanderings of a troubled man?


Don't show Le feu follet to your 14 year old boy, especially if he's been fed on a steady diet of Spiderman and Iron Man (this is Thinking Man!). But for a mature person such as yourself....


This is an explorations of a character. Sad, troubled, sympathetic and altogether mysterious. It is not afraid to leave much to our imagination. I've written often, including in my last post, about admiring films that do not fill in all the blanks. I really don't mind if a film leaves me with room to think. I thank the director for dignifying me in such a way.


Le feu will also leave you yearning for Paris. A city to be fallen in love with again and again. Yes, the photography here would flatter Hoboken, but anyone having seen Paris will know that Le fou is a mere hint of its considerable charms.


This may well be a movie to fall in love with repeatedly. For me it was love at first sight.

Sometimes You Have to Accept the Mystery of a Movie

Life is almost never episodic. It is less like a TV show and more like a river. It flows.

When a movie does not tack on an ending, when the "story" is not wrapped up in a nice neat package, a lot of people complain. There were howls from many people over the sudden ending of the Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men (2007). A few more could be heard from their latest film, A Serious Man (2009). Both films concluded somewhat abruptly without resolution, with questions unanswered.

Evidently many movie goers have a hard time with ambiguity. They want their stories to have a "once upon a time" beginning and a "they lived happily ever after" ending. Others of us are happy to be invited to have our brains indulged in a little thinking. I welcome stories that ask me to ponder possibilities.

Film is, after all, art and art at its best encourages us to exercise our intellect. The absence of denouement is but one method. A Serious Man gives us much to ponder while still being fully satisfying at face value.

I recently enjoyed my third viewing of the film. This time I was particularly struck by a very minor character encouraging the main character, Larry Gopnik (Mark Stuhlbarg) to "accept the mystery." He could well have been the voice of the Coens telling the audience that not all this film's riddles need be solved. Indeed maybe they aren't even meant to be.

Larry's life is plagued with a series of Job like troubles. Answers, would be nice. Very nice. He visits three rabbis. The first, the junior rabbi, can do little better than marvel at the parking lot (emphasis his and mine). The second tells Larry the story of dentist who is a mutual acquaintance. The dentist once had a patient, a goy by-the-by, who had a message inscribed in the back of his teeth. The dentist puzzled over both the meaning of the message and its origins, written as it was in Hebrew, in a goy's mouth. Only when the dentist embraced the mystery was he again able to sleep, eat and enjoy life.

Larry was not amused.

The third rabbi, the senior of the synagogue's three, was "too busy thinking" to see Larry. So it goes.

Why is this all happening to Larry? Wife wanting a divorce (didn't see that coming) brother in trouble with the law (who knew?) and the tenure committee deciding Larry's future is receiving scurrilous letters about him (huh?). Oh yes and he's wrecked his car and the Colombia House Record company is on his ass. Wait, I forget about the menacing neighbor who seems to be violating their property line, the student trying to bribe him and the damage his car sustained....

Why do bad things happen to good people? Why aren't there answers to all our questions, or at least the important ones? Why is that as we get older, instead of everything becoming clearer, new mysteries emerge? WHY?

I think many people with strong religious faith (regardless of denomination) would agree that much is to be left unanswered in this life. Yet we continually struggle, if not for answers, for meaning. What about karmic laws? The old what goes around comes around business. We want to make events represent something. There must be a point. Things can't just happen. Can they?

Can and do.

So the Coens gave us this wonderful stew of a film. If you haven't seen A Serious Man you may at this point be picturing something rather bleak. On the contrary it is rich with humor. It has to be, life is rich with humor. A Serious Man succeeds in reveling truths about life while asking if we wouldn't like to contemplate meanings, whys and wherefores. Or not, up to us.

Stuhlbarg's Larry is the perfect protagonist for such a story. He never tries to impose his will on events. No, he's trying to survive and prosper and wants only to understand so that he can navigate events. Understanding is not a philosophical exercise for Larry, it is a survival mechanism. He is, after all, a physics professor. He is, after all, a serious man. It would be a different movie and maybe not so satisfying a movie, if Larry were raging, or ironic or anything other than...a nice guy.

Larry rides the river. Which, as I said, is what life is like.

Some meaning can be enough meaning. A lot of meaning can be faking it.

America's Unspeakable Tragedy-- Having to Press One For English

I've become aware over the years that a great number of Americans are upset about having to press 1 for English when dealing with an automated voice system. These objections are quite understandable. We're all acquainted with the difficulty of raising a digit to push a number. I know, I know, its the idea of it that Americans object to. Making accommodations for others is, evidently, un-American.

There seems to be an increase in these type of complaints in the wake of the controversy surrounding Arizona's decision to enact Jim Crow laws in the pursuit of illegal immigrants.

This country has never been particularly kind to newcomers despite it's invitations for anyone and everyone to drop in and stay awhile. To quote the Statue of Liberty:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

The original illegal immigrants were, of course, those plucky European settlers of the 16th and 17th centuries who terrorized the natives, stole their land and slaughtered any one of them who proved an inconvenience. 

In the early days of the republic, indeed even in colonial times, it was the Irish who came to these fair shores only to be pushed around by the natives. They stayed and made the best of it. Then it was Germans who arrived here only to face harsh discrimination. They stayed and made the best of it. Later Italians showed up only to suffer ill treatment. They stayed and made the best of it. Finally Eastern Europeans, many of them Jews, sought a better life in America and were given a less than warm welcome. They stayed and made the best of it. Asians were next to flock to the land of the free only to be told to get lost. They stayed and made the best of it. Now it is Mexicans and others from Central and South American countries looking for a better life in the US of A. They are suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous discrimination. I venture they'll stay and make the best of it. It is as if there was a sort of unspoken hazing process for newcomers.

America is a melting pot full of xenophobes. Just as it was the home of democracy and equality and yet maintained slavery. That is to say the U.S. continues its paradoxical, contradictory utterly dumbfounding ways.

The harshest thing I can say about this country is, I believe, also one of the truest: it is a nation chock full of whiny babies. A proposed two cent tax on soda, as with any minor tax increases will get hordes of citizens off their sofas and away from their TV sets to scream "socialism!" in mass rallies. No matter who would benefit (sometimes because of) Americans will object to any raise in taxes. Indeed the very notion of any sort of self sacrifice for the greater good seems an anathema to far too many Americans. These are people who object to having to push the 1 on their telephone. It is a far cry from the US during World War II when Americans sacrificed many luxuries without complaint and gladly maintained victory gardens. And it is the polar opposite of John F. Kennedy's call for people to "ask not what their country could do for you but what you could do for your country." You could maybe press one.

I conclude with this scenario: Pedro has moved -- legally -- from Mexico to the U.S. He is gainfully employed as a carpenter. Pedro is good at his work, he's a law abiding citizen and pays his taxes. In addition to working all day he goes to ESL classes every night to improve his English. He is determined to speak and write better English. But when he calls the local cable company to inquire about a bill or a possible change in service he knows that the English voice instructions and menu will be a bit too complicated to understand. So he presses two (it's an option!) and gets all he needs to know in his native tongue. He is thus able to handle his business. Pedro hopes that someday he'll be able to push 1 for English. When that day comes, he'll be proud to do so.

This Post is Not as Much About Shutter Island as it is About How We Watch Movies

It should have been obvious. If a person (in this case me) goes to see a movie a second time on the pretense of making up his or her mind about said film, that individual must like it. The movie, I mean.

I was not being honest with myself or you my vast legion of readers (hello Courtney B. in Arkon, Ohio) when I rambled on in two recent posts about needing to see Shutter Island  a second time to clear up my confusion regarding, of all things,  what I thought of it.

I mean what idiot goes to see a movie in the theaters twice in two weeks at today's ticket prices if he (or she) has any ambiguity in the "did you like it or not" area? Not this idiot.

But I was desperately curious about how a second viewing on the big screen would sit with me. As mentioned in a previous post I felt influenced by having read Dennis Lehane's novel upon which Shutter Island is quite faithfully based. I also had interference in the form of a lot going on in my life, plus there'd been a zillion reviews of the film which taken together fell into the category of "mixed."

Here's the thing, once you see a movie that has a profound effect on you, it's part of what's going on your life. Shutter Island jumped right into my brain sharing space with studying for my Second Language Acquisition class final, falling behind in my French class (tres stresse !) and other cares, woes, concerns and preoccupations. I don't know about the rest of you (of Clive N. in Leeds U.K. I have my doubts) but it can get pretty crowded in my brain. Compartmentalizing is not always so easy. You've got general stress, or elation or depression or ambiguity going on, and a movie can be a distraction or it can mix right in. And don't think you can watch a film without the filter of what's happening in the "real world" (I hate that place!).

You see movies through a prism.

Imagine watching a film with a blank slate. Okay you didn't read the book it's based on. You haven't read or seen any reviews. Your mood is just fine. Nothing much on your mind. Something is going to tap into your biases, prior knowledge or maybe even your  metacognition, for crying out loud. We've all got an affective filter going.

The lighting of a scene. The soundtrack. The actor's accent. A violent act or a kiss. We react, we relate we contemplate. Ever notice how differently people from similar backgrounds can view the same film? And I'm talking about people who all love it.

The editing! The use of metaphors! The realism! The acting! The movement of the camera in that one scene.... Because everything we see is caressed or slapped or nudged by our world view

I'm going to let you in on something -- we're all different. Very different. Its remarkable any of us get along at all. One thing that's different about all of us is that we look at the same blessed thing and see something else. Problem is that some people are afraid to like or not like certain things in our culture because of good old peer pressure. That's a powerful fear and though most prominent among teens it can strike any of us. Bravo to those brave souls who say what they like and dislike without reservation.

So I maybe wasn't quite so preoccupied my second time seeing Shutter Island. Plus I knew where the story was going, no surprises to deal with. (That's a whole other topic, how surprises in a movie can be wonderful or distracting or not really a surprise at all.) It's always with the second viewing of a film that I can really determine how much I like it because I'm not having to worry about what happens and can focus on how it happens and how it makes me feel. Sometimes that second viewing causes me to realize that the movie was just about "what" and how it was told wasn't that interesting. Other times I see it again and like it even more because of how wonderfully the story was revealed. The same phenomenon is true of songs.

If not properly done Shutter Island could have been a classic one-and-done film because of what I must assume is a very surprising twist at the end to people who haven't read the book. Thus if this story was merely adequately told people would be satisfied with one viewing but feel no desire to re-visit it. But Shutter Island is a Martin Scorsese film and whether you like this particular one or not you know you he's grand storyteller.

The other night when wife and a child were watching a network TV drama I was struck by how facile the series is and worse how intellectually dishonest it comes off. It's a bunch of actors in a made up story acting out emotions. It was as real as to me as The Flintstones.

Scorsese is nothing if not a brutally honest director. His films don't involve pretense. The story feels real, immediate, without artifice. (William Wellman and John Ford were the same sort of directors.) While, for example, Shutter Island has shades of gothic horror to it, it's every bit believable and not a single punch is pulled. Scorsese draws magnificent performances from actors and it never hurts that he's able to lure the creme de la creme from the profession. Hell, in Shutter Island Patricia Clarkson showed up for a small role

Here's another sub topic. Famous or familiar actors. You see an actor in a film and your mind steps out of the movie for a second to say: "hey look, it's Max Van Sydow!" Or even more distracting, "who's that actor, I've seen him somewhere before."  If the performance is strong enough, such mental interruptions are short lived.

Leonardo DiCaprio is in every scene of Shutter Island. That's a helluva responsibility to put on one bloke in a two hour 18 minute film. He's excellent. After the nonsense that was Titanic it was difficult to imagine Leo becoming one of our better actors. But he is.

I feel the urge to summarize now but will fight that urge to my last breath. Hot or cold I've said what was on my mind about the experience of seeing a movie.  I leave much more yet to be said but have tried your patience quite enough (thanks for hanging with me, Didrik N. of Oslo, Norway). Suffice to say, more in the future.

But, what you ask, of Shutter island? What did your second viewing tell you about the film? Fair enough questions so here's my answer: I liked it!

Rally Round the Flag Boys (And Girls)! Propaganda, Hollywood and World War II

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                                  The Great Dictator
Unlike American military adventures of recent vintage, World War II enjoyed widespread popular support throughout the country. Moreover most citizens were willing to put their money where their mouths were. In the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor military enlistments were high. Those not eligible to fight did far more than sport a bumper sticker claiming to "Support Our Troops." The president asked for sacrifices (yes, there was a time when Americans were willing to make them for the good of all, Republicans take note).

National morale was strong. There was after all a clear enemy and tangible, measurable goals: stopping the spread of fascism in Europe and ending Japanese aggression in Asia. Presenting a case for war to the American people was not a problem. Both enemies had clear and villainous leaders, Hitler and Tojo, along with easily identifiable symbols, the swastika and rising sun.

Still, maintaining morale for a long and costly war was never going to be easy. But even before the U.S. entered the fray Hollywood was rallying the people. The war in Europe had been raging for over two years before the U.S. declared war, and hostilities in Asia long preceded that. But Hollywood didn't want until December 7th 1941 to attack.

Maybe you can name some films out of Hollywood that argued the isolationist case because I sure can't. With many directors, stars and even producers refugees from Nazi Germany and its immediate neighbors, the American film industry was quick to expose the horrors of the Third Reich. With U.S. entry in the war the motion picture industry began cranking out propaganda, thinly disguised as fictional films.

One of the remarkable aspects of these movies is that many of them were quite good films and remain beloved to this day. There's no better example than Casablanca (1942), which on top of everything else (like being one of the greatest films of all time) was a superb bit of pro war propaganda. Sure the Nazis are evil, but also Vichy is vilified and the resistance is heroic. Perhaps its strongest message is in the form of Rick's (Humphrey Bogart) transformation from an isolationist ("I stick my neck out for no one") to a man who gives up the woman of his dreams for the cause. A cause he then goes on to fight for.

                                  Confessions of a Nazi Spy
One of the first successful attempts to use Nazis as bad guys was Anatole Litvak's Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939). Edward G. Robinson is a G-Man who goes after a Nazi spy ring. It was highly effective at creating the great fear of the "enemy within." Those bad guys are not just across the ocean but in our very midst, threatening our very way of life.

A year Later Charlie Chaplin released The Great Dictator (1940) which specifically belittled Hitler and to a lesser extent Mussolini. The message was clear. Hitler was a buffoon, albeit a dangerous one who needed to be checked. That same year saw Alfred Hitchcock get in the act with Foreign Correspondent (1940). A U.S. newspaper sends a reporter to Europe to report on growing tensions and the possibilities of war. He ends up uncovering spies in London as he has adventures there, in Holland and smack dab in the middle of the Atlantic. The film ends with the reporter giving a stirring Edward R. Murrow like radio report from London during a German blitz. It's a great film and  rallying cry.

1940 also saw the release of Escape (1940) from director Mervin Leroy, starring Claudette Colbert and Robert Taylor, about a famous actress imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp and efforts to rescue her. And Mortal Storm (1940) which was an indictment of Nazi persecution of Jews.

On the eve of the war came All Though the Night (1941) in which Bogie plays a gangster who sics his New York based mob on a a group of Nazi spies who are planning sabotage. The head Nazi here is played by Conrad Veidt. Veidt was a German actor married to a Jewish woman. The couple fled Germany when Hitler came to power. He went on to play several odious Nazis, notably in this film and Casablanca. Peter Lorre and Judith Anderson (most famous for her role in Rebecca (1940)) were fellow Nazis in All Through the Night. The film, despite some weighty subject matter, is generally light in tone, boasting such comic actors as Allen Jenkins, Hugh Herbert, Phil Silvers and a young Jackie Gleason. But it slyly got across its message about the perils of Nazis.

Also that year the Fritz Lang thriller Man Hunt (1941) was released. Walter Pidgeon plays an Englishman pursued by Nazis first in Germany and then right within London. George Sanders is, not for the first time, excellent as a nasty Nazi. The film ends with Pidgeon's character parachuting into Europe as a soldier.

                                  Mrs. Miniver
One of the most effective pieces of Hollywood propaganda was William Wyler's Mrs. Miniver (1942). Greer Garson and Pidgeon are an upper middle class British couple with a lovely house and family. Their idyllic life is shattered by the war which calls their son into service and brings bombs from above to their home. The final scene with the sermon in the bomb-shattered church had to have audiences ready to go out and buy war bonds.

Later films during the war showed men in battle. A key element in all was to see some of the good guys die. It was always a hero's death. Invariably with the soon-to-be-deceased uttering stirring last words. Often the deaths were not just a result of standard enemy fire, but resulted from sneaky, back-handed action. Witness efforts to rescue a downed enemy flier in Destination Tokyo (1942). The rat fink fires upon and kills an innocent American. According to Hollywood, the enemy did that sort of thing quite regularly and needed to be vanquished.  Destination Tokyo, aboard a submarine, like Action in the North Atlantic (1943) aboard a merchant marine ship, features one man not convinced that the fight was worth engaging in. Of course, they always see the light. The reluctant participant was clearly meant to symbolize those Americans still unconvinced the fight was worth engaging in.

Bataan (1943) in The Philippines, Sahara (1943) in North Africa, Thirty Seconds over Tokyo (1944) in the air, are just a few examples of "our brave fighting men" in action. But women got in the act too, never more so than in So Proudly We Hail (1943) about the experiences of army nurses on The Philippines during the war. It is as blatant an attempt to tap into American patriotism and sentiment as you'll ever see. Also, it was doubtless highly effective.

                                  So Proudly We Hail
Hollywood's best directors and biggest stars featured in these films not to mention top screenwriters, cinema photographers etc. The result were dozens of films that both entertained and rallied the home front. Of course, I've only scratched the surface. There were also films about that very home front (something I may explore in a future post) and rallying cries that were disguised as films about other topics (another topic for another day). There were cartoons aplenty featuring the likes of Bugs and Daffy and clownish versions of Hitlers and racially stereotyped Japanese characters.

Of course I've not mentioned most of the WWII era propaganda fiction, some of which I've not seen. One example is something called Hitler - Beast of Berlin (1939), a title I stumbled across in the Internet Movie Database. Actually I'm just assuming it had an anti Hitler slant.

The flood of Hollywood films related to World War II has never abated as I've explored in previous posts. Such as this look at 25 of the best WWII films and this peak at a dozen more. I also wrote a post examining some of the best Nazi characters of films, which needs to be updated to include Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) from Ingloruious Basterds (2009).

So cinematically speaking World War II is the gift that keeps on giving, but there is nothing quite like those films made just before and during the war. They had the fresh perspective of those experiencing that time period. There is an urgency and a sense of getting an important story out.  But the dedication to telling a good story was never lost. Yes a message had to be gotten out but it had to be within what Hollywood did best, making a damn good movie.

Maybe They Should Have Played Checkers Instead - or - Why I Revere Bergman's The Seventh Seal

"Faith is a torment. It is like loving someone who is out there in the darkness but never appears, no matter how loudly you call." - Antonius Block.

Death.

Silence.

The absence of God.

God's silence.

Who on Earth would want to watch a film dealing with such deep and dour topics? If said film is Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957), count me in.



It's not an easy film for me to watch because I find myself thinking all the damn time. Because Bergman so effectively introduces the weightiest of all themes throughout the film, one is constantly stopping to contemplate them.

Yesterday Howard Zinn died. Today JD Salinger. Life goes on for the rest of us. For now. But whether its in the form of some pale faced bloke in a flowing black cloak or something rather less obvious, death follows us all. All the time. Goodness, have you any notion of how capricious life is? It's something to think about because it may inspire you to appreciate each day. Hell, each hour. Antonius Block (Max Van Sydow) does late in the film. In a break from playing chess with death, he enjoys a simple but tasty repast of strawberries and milk with friends. Antonius, a knight just returned from the Crusades, vows to remember these precious moments.

One thing recovering addicts learn is how great it is to be alive to face life on life's terms. Meaning, it's great to be alive, for the good, the bad, the horrible, the wonderful. So death is the absence of that. Unless it's not and something else awaits. But The Seventh Seal does not deal with the after life. Just the termination of this one.

The Seventh Seal is set in the time of Black Death when plague claimed the lives of perhaps one-third of all Europeans. Understandably, people were obsessed with death. It was omnipresent. Try not thinking about.

People looked for answers and inevitably for scapegoats. As we see in the film one young woman is blamed for bringing the plague because she supposedly had carnal knowledge of the devil. In desperation for answers to the seemingly unknowable, people will grasp at straws and end up clutching one. During the plague, in many parts of Europe, Jews were blamed (as a Jewish friend of mine said with a sigh when I mentioned this once, "of course."). If you don't know who or what's to blame, pick someone, anyone.

The Seventh Seal was based in large part on the iconography of the church of Bergman's childhood, where his father was a preacher. Tis no surprise that it is a visually lush film in dramatic and beautiful black and white.

There is symbolism aplenty and much profundity and Bergman had the confidence to lay it on quite thick. Great directors like him and Fellini are not afraid, nothing is held back. Modern movies are too often a case of, as the old song goes, "the self deception that believes the lie." Many great directors when finding something to say, say it. Loudly.

Bergman doesn't hint at the specter of death. He puts a guy in black cloak and calls him that. In the first scene.

Antonius challenges Death to a game of chess (is life, after all, a game? I dunno, you tell me). If he wins he lives -- yeah, but for how long? In any case he's just "playing for time."  Death must win. Eventually.

The knight and his squire travel to their home, a castle, literally, they've not seen for ten years. They encounter and travel with others, including a couple. Their names? Mary and Joseph and yes they have a baby. Make of it what you will.  That's part of the beauty of The Seventh Seal. You decide. So many choices. So much to think about. Just as in life.

If it all sounds rather bleak, well it's not. It's exhilarating is what. Great art always is. It explores ideas and thus allows you to do the same. So the topic is death. Hey, you wanna appreciate life, you wanna understand "it all" you gotta face the end of "it all." You've got to know it's there. The Seventh Seal is a good place to start.

Is it so terribly inconceivable to comprehend God with one's senses? Why does he hide in a cloud of half-promises and unseen miracles? How can we believe in the faithful when we lack faith? What will happen to us who want to believe, but can not? What about those who neither want to nor can believe? Why can't I kill God in me? Why does He live on in me in a humiliating way - despite my wanting to evict Him from my heart? Why is He, despite all, a mocking reality I can't be rid of? - Antonius Block.

Great Filmmaking, It's a Matter of Faith

The great ones don't hold back. They aren't afraid to take chances. They have faith in themselves. That's what distinguishes greatness, a faith in oneself.

I saw it yesterday in my second viewing of A Serious Man. The Coen Brothers did not use a single pretty face. Not one. They had a man endure all manner of misfortune. They had a film steeped in Jewish culture. They had a story within the story that went nowhere. They had a moral retrobate that we felt  for. They had loose ends (isn't life full of them? Loose ends everywhere. So why not in art?). They had a magnificent film because they weren't restrained. They let the story dictate itself. This was not from a script writing template.

Quentin Tarantino did the same thing. Not a shy man, more importantly, not a shy director (read: artist). His Inglourious Basterds just went ahead and changed history. Why not? Actual events are just a plot device anyway. That long unbroken first scene. Who does that? He did and it was cinematic gold. Sticking the David Bowie song in the middle of the film was inspired, just as the Coens did by using a Hendrix tune in the middle of the story about the Jewish dentist. Anyone can do unconventional, not many can make gold out of it.

Fellini could. 8 1/ 2 begins with a guy stuck in traffic, he's suffocating, he floats away... That's just the start of the movie!


Conventionality is good to a degree, but my God you need to break away and dance. You need to look at the world in different ways. Look at it this way. Black and white films, beautiful. But life, you want colors, lots of them. You want variety. That's where art comes in. It forces helps you see the world, your life, your view of the world your view of life, in different ways. Art Inglourious Basterdschanges our focus. It gets our brain ticking and might I add tocking. Like the character, the young rabbi in A Serious Man said: "look at that parking lot!"


It's not so easy to look and think in different ways all the time. Most of us only have the one brain (and that's if we're lucky) so great artists come along and help us see. And in terms of movies I'm not just talking directors or screenwriters, the cinemaphotogpraphers and set designers are crucial too and let's not forget the actors. Marlin Brando, Sean Penn those actors who interpret a character in a different way. Helps us see a person, people maybe, in different ways. Heck, the Marx brothers did that too. (Ya know what Geoffery T. Spaulding in Animal Crackers said the T. stood for? Edgar!).

Lot of people complain about ambiguity in films, especially at the ending. Want the story wrapped up in a pretty little bow. So what, you want it neatly finished to store away and forget about? Come on. How about a movie that lives with you. That leaves questions for you to ponder and answer your own way. Speaking of the Coens, their No Country For Old Men  was brilliant in that regard. Not just who the hell was Anton Chigurh, but what was he? What did he represent? Art isn't a summation, it's an invitation. If its all  there it can be an empty experince. In one ear out the other. But if we have, no GET TO think, to ponder, to wonder. That's beautiful. That's art.


Challenging. Maybe at first resistant to us. We have to try. The more you put in the more you get out. A nice comfy movie can be good every now and again but how cool is it when a film makes some percolation go on in our brains? Hey, to me that's fun stuff. It's the stuff the great ones produce.

State of Exception, An Exceptional Documentary About A Long Forgotten World War II Massacre, My Interview With Its Director, Germano Maccioni

A monument to Monte Sole's victims.

Nearly 65 years after World War II ended the war continues to haunt us. Such a cataclysm, claiming as it did, tens of millions of lives, echoes into the second decade of this millennium. Clearly there are still lessons unlearned and healing not yet finished. We are still finding some previously unknown or long hushed tragedy with a new set of villains.  We thus are exposed to new dramas and further contemplating the complexities inherent in human behavior.

If we are lucky the any  new story about the war is presented to us thoughtfully and in a manner meant to heal rather than merely shock. One such example is the outstanding new documentary Lo Stato Di Eccezione (State of Exception) about the absentia trial of the perpetrators of the September 1944 Monte Sole massacre in Northern Italy. German soldiers, with the collusion of Italian fascists, massacred 770 Italians, including the elderly, women and children. The killings were a retaliation against alleged acts of resistance. In subsequent war crime trials the leader of the massacre, SS Officer Walter Reder was sentenced to life in prison. But with the intervention of the Austrian government he was released in 1984. No one else was brought to justice for the Monte Sole massacres and the Italian government filed away documents related to the incidents in what is called the armadio della vergogna (closet of shame) until 1994.

Not until 2007 were seventeen Nazis brought to trial for the massacre. As none showed up, and indeed only one hired a defense attorney, they were tried in absentia. State of Exception is about that trial. The title refers to the notion of suspending legal niceties in the event of a supposed state of emergency. The title also refers to the “exception” of there having been no trial conducted against the soldiers for over 60 years after the bloodbath.

Germano Maccioni, a young Italian filmmaker from Bologna, which is just south of Monte Sole, directed State of Exception. The documentary has been a huge success in Italy playing at numerous film festivals. Mr. Maccioni showed it last year in New York and it will be screened in California and Oregon later this month. He is currently in San Francisco Bay Area with my niece, Maijastina Hourula, who did the English translation for the film’s subtitles and their two month old daughter, Sofia Alba. Mr. Maccioni recently completed his second documentary, My Main Man about the vibrant Bologna jazz scene.

State of Exception will be shown in Portland, Oregon on January 16, in San Francisco at the Italian Cultural Institute on January 27 at 6:00 P.M.,  and in Berkeley on January 28. It will also be shown in Santa Cruz at a day and time to be determined. (More details on times and places will be posted on the film’s website and on this blog.)

State of Exception does its important story justice. Mr. Maccioni has done a masterful job of cutting from scenes of the trial to interviews and present day footage of the sites of the massacres, (which includes a chapel). He displays a deft touch that one would associate with a veteran documentarian. Without, in his own words “showing a drop of blood” the story is powerful and dramatic. We feel the pain of the witnesses who testify but somehow we never grow uncomfortable. Done wrong, such a documentary could make audiences feel that they are intruding upon the private sorrow and anguish of the witnesses. State of Exception is exceptional in this regard. The story has more of the cathartic feeling that was the aim of Greek tragedies. The film introduces us to new horrors but only to inform and illuminate. Judgments are left for us to make. Mr. Maccioni's delicate editing choices do not pursue a point that is obvious to all. He make the choice that all good filmmaker's do – that audiences are capable of drawing their own conclusions.

I recently had the opportunity to interview Germano Maccioni for Riku Writes and some of that conversation follows.

Germano Maccioni.

RW: What drew you to this story?
GM: I got interested in those events by going to the actual place which is not far from where I grew up. I used to go there but I didn’t know what happened. So once I learned what happened and that what happened was so incredibly bad I thought, “why didn’t they teach me this in school? Why didn’t people tell me this?" Once I found all the reasons for the government hiding files and acting in denial of this whole thing I thought it was extremely necessary to make a film about such a subject. I thought that it would be difficult to make a film about that topic but I could do a film about the trial because I was kind of like the observer and the people in the community were the characters. So for me the border between fiction films and documentary can sometimes be very thin.

RW: The documentary film maker Errol Morris once said “If you know what you’re going to say before you say it, why bother?” What do you think of this quote in relation to your film?
GM: Life is so unpredictable that even if you have a film written and a set and everything is settled, you still have that element of mystery that can happen. Like an actor could easily turn in a way that you didn’t expect so you maybe light the scene in a totally different way. So if you’re filming a documentary you have that feeling that anything could potentially happen. I think its amazing because for a film maker, a documentary maker, it's the greatest luxury. If you have the freedom to do the story the way you want it’s a great opportunity. Why do we like cinema? Because in a subconscious way it relates us to this big mystery of life, reality and the way you feel reality. Life is very exciting because it’s happening live, its unpredictable. When you’re shooting something good I can tell when it’s happening because you get that vibration. With that film there were moments I could observe and edit at the same time.

RW: I was really intrigued by the old man who broke down. I thought it was an especially nice technique that you used. When he was being sworn in you were interspersing shots of him sobbing so it prepared us for what his testimony was going to be like. Tell me about deciding to do that.
GM: That’s probably the most intense scene, that man in particular to me represents the community, the archetype who disappeared. So somehow the Nazis won because that community doesn’t exist anymore and that’s a matter of fact. Having a chance to talk to and actually listen to this old man who grew up on a farm and probably didn’t go to school at all and all of a sudden he sees this crazy thing happening like all his family...they took his family and all of sudden started shooting them. Why? He doesn’t even know what the political reasons were. Having a chance to see him 60 years after, first of all he’s a survivor. That’s the moment when you understand that no matter how many rules you have in the courthouse there’s always going to be something more intense. In fact they had to stop the trial because it was too much, not only for the old man but for everybody. I did not put in the film the whole thing because it was way more intense because he started to freak out he started saying a lot of things to the judge, he was crying, I tried to edit it. It was very traumatic for me because I had to watch it over and over again. I thought I should put the whole testimony in. But then I decided it would be more powerful this way. It was total instinct that drove me to this.

RW: Was it hard for you to watch the trial?
GM: It was painful and new at the same time. I’d never been in a courthouse before. So at first it was new but once we started to hear all the tragic stories...every half an hour I’d have to go outside and breath because it was too painful. But then slowly I became part of that community. These people learned to somehow trust me (the witnesses). The most painful part was the editing process because I didn’t use an editor. For months it was basically me and the material. It was so painful, I was like crying. I had to experience the compassion. It was very painful but it was a good pain. And I hope it's a good pain for the audience, instructive.

RW: What kind of research did you do?
GM: I made a play (wrote and directed) performed on the site on Italy’s celebration of the liberation from the Germans and the fascists. I had the audience follow the actors walk. After that I started to study more about the events. Then I heard there was a trial going on. So there was no time to ask for funding or anything. I had the urge to do it. So we started to film without any funding. (Funding was attained during filming).

RW: What was the reaction to the film?
GM: It was always good. I was surprised because it’s not an easy film (to watch). They’re showing it at a lot of high schools in Italy. I was surprised in New York because I thought that people would not care less about something that happened so far away and they didn’t even know what it is. But maybe that story tells something more universal. Something that maybe could touch anyone.

I though it was important to remember what happened especially because in Italy we have such a bad government because people tend to justify the fascism. We need to remember that part of the responsibility for that massacre we have to attribute to fascism; there is a responsibility. Italy is such an amazing country but such a strange country. We still have the fascists and communists (such extremes) and people who don’t care about anything. They don’t vote, they don’t care about their history. Stories have the power to heal. That’s why the Greek tragedy. Like a cathartic power. The community would go to the theater, cry out and they would get clean. I saw that in the trial, I saw that happen.

RW: You talked to one of the defense attorneys. Did you talk to others and why did you just show him?
GM: I decided to have him because from the beginning he was very cinematographic he was that kind of actor -- uh,  actually he was lawyer, to be a good lawyer you have to be a good actor. From the beginning he was the one looking at me. Then I found out that his father was defending the super left extremists and he was a partisan and he comes from a very left family. He was the only one hired by an actual Nazi. So I decided to choose him because you have to make a summary. He was the most intriguing and also the whole trial was very complex I’m sure it was very painful for the lawyers to have to defend these men who never even showed up. I thought it was very important to give an idea for how complex it was.

I felt that I always needed to keep the audience awake. Also, I had the chance to do this in an old movie theater which is where the trial took place. A story told in a movie theater, in a theatrical ritual which is a trial where everybody has a role. All you had to do was be alert. Things like that for such an intense topic which many people would think was boring – maybe these kind of things help.

RW: It’s an easy story to get wrong because trials are not necessarily interesting because it's people talking. But you managed to find ways to keep it moving.
GM: I never showed a drop of blood. You never need to show anything, like in Shoah you didn’t even see archive footage.

RW: What’s next?
GM: It’s been released on DVD in Italy, apparently it is going really well. It’s been in a lot of international festivals and it played in New York and recently at Lisbon’s prestigious festival. Now we’re going to try to bring it to Germany;  a lot of German people have been very interested in it. We’re also seeing that there’s quite an interest here in the states. So we’re going to do Berkeley, San Francisco, Portland and Santa Cruz for now.

RW: What about the jazz documentary?
GM: It’s finished and being released now. It’s called My Main Man. As soon as the English subtitles are done we’re going to try to have screenings all over. I’d found out that the city I live in also has a huge tradition of jazz. Bologna has been one of the jazz capitals of Europe. People like Chet Baker lived there. He even went to jail there. I got some never-before-seen 8 millimeter footage of Baker from the summer before his arrest. He was very big there because he could find all the drugs he wanted. Thirty-five per cent of this documentary is archive footage that I discovered.


RW: This must have been fun to make.
GW: Yes, so fun and we filmed it between Bologna, Rome and New York. I discovered a new world. I think it's a great metaphor for life. The fact that it’s unpredictable and completely improvised and life is completely improvised. As we quote in the film, [Jazz is] "an art that somehow is so close to life’s unpredictability." It’s very powerful and significant art and it's also fun and dirty and full of drugs and full of nice people and bad guys.

RW: Ermanno Olmi who directed Il Posto started out doing documentaries, are you interested in transitioning into fictional films?
GM: I just need to finish the screenplay. There’s one I’m working on but I’m not quite done yet.

RW: What about acting?
GM: Acting is fun. I started out as an actor. Recently I played a role in a film based on the events of State of Exception.

RW: Last question, does everybody in Italy read my blog?
GM: I hope so now.
RW: Me, too.

Nosferatu, A Symphony of Angles, Shapes, Shades and, Not Incidentally, Horror

It's all angles. Shapes. Shades. A camera that holds focus one beat longer than we expect.

Nosferatu (1922).

The director was F.W. Murnau. He was messing with people's minds.

Nosferatu is like a nightmare. Not a gross disgusting one that you want to run away from. No this is a bewitching, beguiling nightmare that despite the better angels of your nature you want to behold. More than that, you want to follow -- where will it take me? Surely this is ultimately harmless, it's only a dream (a movie). All those haunting images and that's not even including Count Orlock (Max Schreck).

Murnau was perhaps the leading practitioner of the expressionist school of film making that came out Germany in the 1920's (maybe it was Fritz Lang, I dunno). Give him the story of a vampire, indeed the vampire story, Dracula not at all thinly veiled, and well you're in for a spectacle.

The notion of the undead is frightening. A predatory killer is frightening. Innocents preyed on at night is frightening. You combine these three elements into a world that is itself a nightmare and you've got the full title of the movie -- Nosferatu, Symphony of Horror. One of the definitions for symphony is "something that in its harmonious complexity or variety suggests a symphonic composition." That's the film right there.

Imagine your worst nightmare come to life. Not the events so much as the look of it. All is abstraction and distortion. Nothing has more than two eyes, but the eyes are too long. Buildings do not float, or laugh or bleed, but they seem out of shape. There is gargoyle in everything but nothing being unreal, just distorted. Is a gargoyle so impossible a creature, or is just a little beyond what we know?

In Nosferatu so many objects seem to point to the heavens, they're so sharp. Like Orlock's incredible fingers, the masts of a ship and structures. The evil one's castle, at first view, looks like an erect phallus. Strong and angry and pointing.

Roads and alleys tilt, some seem endless like you could drown in them. All that sharpness yet the sense you could be swallowed up. Forest seemed menacing despite their beauty. Mountains are majestic, sure, but they are also foreboding. Windows are not ways to look out so much as ways to be seen, and view a nether world.

Young eyes might look at this relic of the silent era, their eyes washing out all the eccentricity of it. "That's not scary!" they'd exclaim. Obviously preferring a film that is the equivalent of someone sneaking up behind you and yelling "boo!" in your ear. Or perhaps a cinematic version of a steaming pile of feces being thrown at someone. "Yuck! Gross!" But if you let your imagination have any play within the world Murnau created, it'll scare the bejeezus out of you. And you know what else? The lack of voices just adds to the eeriness, making it all the more like a dream state.

Nosferatu is rightly famous for the curious Mr. Schreck's performance. He's meant to look like a rat, the notorious plague caring rodent part and parcel to the story and to many human fears. Herr Schreck lacks the sophistication of Bela Lugosi's Dracula. There isn't the intelligence that can make a predator all the scarier. But there is the inexorable malevolence of the creature totally without reason or the slightest chance of conscience. There is no negotiation with his Orlock, no nuance. Just like a rat he merely is.

The is he is is creepy. In a still photo he may appear silly. But when you watch him move, or worse, not move but watch, you'll shudder.

Nosferatu is a not your silly teenager vampire story of today. It's not about the teeth or bright red oozing blood. It's about creating a world that is your worst nightmare...but you can't look away.

Liking the Actor While Loathing the Man, John Wayne and Me

"I believe in white supremacy until blacks are educated to a point of responsibility." - John Wayne, 1971.

My first recollection of John Wayne is as Davy Crockett in The Alamo (1960). He was a heroic fighter for his country, gallantly going down to defeat against overwhelming odds. Though I can't recall specific films, I'm quite certain that as a young lad I saw Wayne in many other movies, always wearing the proverbial white hat, standing up for justice and waging the good fight. He was no hero to me like Steve McQueen ( I was into "cool" early on) but he appealed to a young boy's sense of morality, confirmed by the principle of might makes right.

Then I became politically aware. Growing up as I did in the Sixties and Seventies in the People's Republic of Berkeley, it is not surprising that I was influenced by leftist politics (I'm a confirmed lefty to this day). We had heroes aplenty in popular culture, notably in rock 'n roll. Most villains were politicians, many conveniently placed in the White House or other seats of power. But there was also Mr. Wayne.

Other conservatives stars were benign like Bob Hope. People so embedded in the establishment that we could only strongly suspect their political leanings. We interpreted their silence on the Vietnam War or Civil Rights as tacit approval and disinterest, respectively. But Wayne opened his big yap, and promptly stuck his foot in it.

Wayne was the poster boy for the conservative backlash against the emerging counter culture. In that tough guy drawl he would issue homilies that evoked mom's apple pie. To wit: "Sure I wave the American flag. Do you know a better flag to wave? Sure I love my country with all her faults. I'm not ashamed of that, never have been, never will be." Love it or leave it. My country right or wrong. United we stand.

But the man born as Marion Morrison was not just going to talk the talk. He walked the walk. His response to dissent over U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War included making a film in support of that war, The Green Berets (1968). It's tagline: "They had to be the toughest fighting force on earth - and the men who led them had to be just a little bit tougher!" It's one of those taglines that actually says a lot about film. It was a pro war propaganda plain and simple in which a cynical reporter is shown the light about the virtues and necessity of US actions in Nam. Americans were the heroes rescuing women and children from the evil Viet Cong. Forget what you heard about the Mai Lai massacre.

The film was widely panned, perhaps in part for its message but mostly because it was a lousy movie. Conservatives rallied to it and to Wayne.

A year later Wayne won a gratuitous Oscar for the schlocky True Grit. This in a year that Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight were nominated for Midnight Cowboy along with Richard Burton for Anne of a Thousand Day. It not only was a horrible choice, but it ticked a lot of us for political reasons. It also further demonstrated how silly claims of Hollywood's liberal bias can sometimes look.

It was two years after that career high point that Wayne's infamous Playboy magazine interview hit the stands. As the quote at the the top of this post indicates, Wayne managed to insult every African American in the country. He also took pot shots at Native Americans, ones more lethal than those imaginary one fired by his many Injun-killing characters: "I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them if that's what you're asking. Our so called stealing of this country was just a question of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed new land the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.... I'm quite sure that the concept of a Government-run reservation... seems to be what the socialists are working for now — to have everyone cared for from cradle to grave.... But you can't whine and bellyache 'cause somebody else got a break and you didn't, like those Indians are." Take that you whiny Indians!

So now the bete noir of the left had lost a lot of mainstream love. He still made another eight films before succumbing to cancer in 1979 and his box office numbers remained credible. He was, after all, a star and the public will forgive much greater transgressions from its film icons than a few ill timed, albeit racist, remarks.

For what it was worth I completely turned my back in the man. Not that it made any difference to anyone. Anyway I had already refused to watch anything featuring Wayne for several years. The grudge was to last couple of decades more decades.

But to stay away from Wayne is to stay away from the great director, John Ford as Wayne featured in many of Ford's best films. That is to say it's cutting off your nose to spite your face.

John Wayne was never a great actor. He was a great star. One of the best. He had a presence that helped make some good films masterpieces. The classic Ford Western, Stagecoach (1939) is immeasurably enhanced by Wayne as the Ringo Kid. Indeed his screen entrance in it is one of the greats of all time (pictured above). Ringo Kid is a few shades different than the characters that Wayne came to be mistakenly identified with. For one he's wanted by the law and he's got vengeance on his mind. This is a younger, hipper Wayne who of all things falls in love with a hooker (one with a heart of gold, of course).

Wayne is also a dark character in Ford's greatest film The Searchers (1956). Again he's seeking vengeance. There's something shady about his Ethan Edwards, namely how he came to have so much money. Then there are the looks he exchanges with his brother's wife. He's also plainly a bigot and this is portrayed as a no- question-about detriment to his character. This is surely Wayne's best performance.

Wayne featured in a few films by another great American director, Howard Hawks. Most notable of these is Red River (1948). Here again there is nuance to a Wayne character: obstinacy, temper and (here it is again) vengefulness. His adopted son is played by Montgomery Clift and its hard to imagine two more different actors working closely together. Part of the reason they succeeded was an agreement not to talk politics.

Ford's last great film was The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). The film would beembodies. He is the unbeatable force of good. No liberal milquetoast, but a man willing to throw a punch, issue a threat or shoot his gun to make things right. Talk is cheap. He's everything appealing about John Wayne, even to a repeal-the-second-amendment radical such as myself. The fact is that American films need an occasional brutish gun toting fighter, even if he's ham fisted and intellectually derelict. Inglourious Basterds wouldn't have been nearly so good if Brad Pitt and his men had gone into Germany to rehabilitate Nazis.

So Wayne didn't just happen to show up in some pretty good films. He played a type of role that is central to American mythology. That he bought into it as real life philosophy was to his detriment as a human being and should be irrelevant to our film going pleasure. Wayne, in fact, reflects the macho American style that emphasizes brawn over brain. They're the type of people we want taking the orders of cooler heads. They thus develop a resentment at having to follow orders and only being able to exercise the power of their fists or guns and not of their intellect. It is a type of rage evident today among conservative Americans who bristle at another intellectual liberal in office seemingly entrenching power in Washington and away from them (never mind that this fear is poppycock). Americans don't want to just kick ass, they want to dictate the terms. Wayne's characters often did both. It's also no accident that he was often settling scores. Americans like to see the tit for tat. Our very un Western support of capital punishment is a reflection of a basic eye-for-eye philosophy at the heart of the American ethos. Many Americans also find their feathers ruffled over such niceties as due process, preferring a simple sock in the jaw. Wayne did not play lawyers or professors. He was never loquacious. He was all about taking action. Seriously, who'd want a Wayne soliloquy? We want him meting out justice from the barrel of a gun. Ford had the good sense to give Wayne as few lines as possible. Interestingly, Wayne is perhaps most thought of us as a plain old fashioned good guy in Westerns and war films. In truth Wayne's more memorable characters had some moral complexity to them. Even Doniphon was a tortured soul who suffered greatly at the loss of his one great love. Wayne's greatest attribute as an actor was always surprising us with the different shades to his character, just as often revealed with silence as words.

Ironically in another Ford classic, Fort Apache (1948), Wayne's character is the one who cautions restraint and urges negotiations with nearby tribes while the real life liberal Henry Fonda plays a Custer-like officer who wants to charge in and fight. Today the movie can and has been seen as a metaphor for U.S. adventures in Vietnam and Iraq. Or any place where American forces have ignored local custom and policy at their own peril.

John Wayne is a seminal character in my film watching experience and a supporting player in my political development. Thankfully I've matured enough, at long last, that I can separate the two.

They're Out to Get Me! I Swear, They're out There! Paranoia in Seventies Films

"Paranoia strikes deep

Into your life it will creep

It starts when you're always afraid

You step out of line, the man come and take you away."

From "What It's Worth" by the Buffalo Springfield

We are not in control of our lives.

The institutions that we count on cannot be trusted.

Our lives are cheap.

We are expendable.

Especially if we know too much.

Or maybe if we don't know a thing.

It's "us" against "them" and they are all powerful.

Who are we? A resident in a Kafkaesque Soviet Satellite perhaps?

No. We are a character in a 1970's film and we're living in the United States of America.

We are Warren Beatty in The Parallax View (1974) trying to uncover the perpetrators of political assassinations. But will we live to tell the tale?

We are Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor (1975) a government employee who only escapes death by literally being out to lunch when an assassination team hits our office. They are after us now and moreover they are members of our own government!

We are Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man (1976) a graduate student caught in a web of international intrigue and duped by our own big brother, who we didn't realize is a government agent.

We are Gene Hackman in The Conversation (1974) tearing up our own apartment in search of a bugging device planted by someone within a mysterious corporation. One that hides behind a veneer of respectability.

We might even turn up in a combination sci fi/horror film like Alien (1979) where we are Sigourney Weaver watching as our fellow crew members on a space ship are killed by a monster and finding out its all been planned by a corporate power and that we're not supposed to survive the journey either.

What factors within our culture were in play that spawned such a high level of paranoia in films? First of all it wasn't technically paranoia. In all cases the fear was quite real. One of these characters even died as a consequence of what he knew. All save one had attempts made on their lives and one even endured torture. None ever really understood the whole story they were wrapped up in.

Some have claimed that the growing revelations of Watergate influenced these movies. But that's mistaken because the implications of Watergate were just beginning to be understood in the middle of the decade and it takes several years for historic events to really impact film.

More likely the answer can be traced to the 1960's when there was an increasing willingness to question government, especially in light of the disastrous war in Vietnam. America had undergone a period of tremendous social upheaval in the Sixties. Our institutions were no longer considered benevolent protectors. Indeed in light of a spate of assassinations in which the government might have played a part or at least did not adequately respond and especially in light of questions about conspiracies related to to those assassinations, there was a growing sense of distrust.

The Pentagon Papers, leaked in 1971, had proved beyond doubt that the government had at least misled the American people and in the eyes of many had outright lied to the public.

Americans weren't willing to blindly trust their government anymore. They also increasingly became aware of the unfettered power of intelligence agencies and the supplanting of small businesses by massive international corporations.

While spies had been heroes in films of the 1960's, ala James Bond, now many were taking a more realistic, less romantic look at cloak and dagger activities. The Cold War was less of a concern to most Americans, many of whom felt that the far away Soviet government wasn't as much a danger as their own. Besides, not all Americans still believed that "we" were, in all cases, the "good guys."

Of course, American film was enjoying a renaissance during the Seventies. Story telling was much more imaginative and themes were increasingly likely to be relevant and to mirror the new willingness to question authority. The old production code (read censorship) had been toppled. Meanwhile a new group of directors were emerging, including Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg, who came out film schools and had been influenced by the French New Wave.

In 1967 Bonnie & Clyde and The Graduate had changed the tone of American film ushering a sort of US New Wave. Bad guys could be heroes, whether bank robbers or disaffected adulterous college grads. American film was ready to cast its heroes as something other than guys in white hats defeating a clearly identifiable foe. The changes in society and film allowed for villains to be shadowy, mysterious figures, even omnipotent corporations or government agencies.

While in reality challenges were being issued to "the establishment" by organized groups, the narrative of film was more suited to isolated individuals challenging a powerful enemy in an recasting of the David/Goliath theme. In some cases these were people who could be accused of "asking for it" like Beatty's investigative reporter; but they could just as easily be someone who'd been happily minding his own business, like Hoffman's graduate student, when circumstances conspired against (pun intended.)

While these films required the protagnoists to act heroically there was no leaping tall buildings or utilizing extraordinary talents or gadgets. They survived by wits and perseverance, and perhaps a little help from a friend, like Redford in Three Days.

These were entertaining films from directors like Coppola, Sydney Pollack and Alan Pakula. Part of these films' appeal was that they seemed to know something. Surely someone had a hint of a corporation resembling the one depicted in Parallax. And there must be rogue government operations as seen in Three Days and Marathon Man. It was as if the filmmakers were letting us on some dastardly secret they had uncovered. The films were fun, thought provoking but also seemed to cast a light on some very dark corners of the country. They fed a hunger to know and understand more. The paranoia was not being experienced so much by the characters as it was by us. Could that really happen? Has it?

There was even a hint of this at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). After a rollicking good adventure story we were left with the rather dour sight of evidence of a great biblical find being stowed away by the great bureaucracy that is our government.

What else do they hide? What else do they know? What else might they do? Could I be trageted next? What if I find out something? My God, what if I just learn something by accident? (And say, what glamorous star will play me in the film?)