As often happens, I got cut off when my camera automatically stopped recording after 30 minutes. I had said most of what I wanted to say, but one point I didn't get a chance to make: Ed Norton did a great job as Pete Seeger. When I first found out Ed Norton was cast in this, I thought it was strange since he didn't look anything like Pete Seeger. But Ed Norton really nailed Pete Seeger's style of speaking. He sounded exactly like Pete Seeger did.
As I mentioned in the video, is my third time watching this movie. But it's my first time reviewing it on this blog so according to my new rules, I'm doing this as a video only review.
I got abruptly cut off in mid-sentence because my phone ran out of storage space. (My fault. I should have checked my storage before I started filming.) There were several other points I wanted to make about this movie, so I could have kept going for a lot longer, but... once I got cut off, I decided 37 minutes was long enough, and I'm just going to leave the review here. There's no point in making a review that's as long as the actual movie, after all.
Background/ My History With this Movie
I'm breaking my own rules a bit with this on. Usually I only review movies that I watch for the first time. This movie I saw once before back in college.
It was on VHS in the public library. I stumbled upon it one day just while browsing. I hadn't known there was a Rosa Luxemburg movie prior to stumbling upon it, but I was very interested in Rosa Luxemburg the historical figure, so I grabbed it and watched it at home.
I don't really remember much from that first viewing--at least I don't remember much about the movie itself. I vaguely remember sitting in the apartment watching it on a Summer afternoon, and I remember feeling slightly bored at points. But I don't remember the movie itself. The only part I really remember is the ending.
The other day, I stumbled upon this movie while I was surfing Youtube. Some kind soul has put the whole thing on Youtube, and it is now available to watch for anyone who wants it.
I decided to re-watch. And, since I remember so little from the first time I saw it, I decided to treat it as a new movie, and review it accordingly.
The Review
This is a 1986 movie from West Germany. (In German, but with English subtitles). It's good for what it is, but it is far removed from the style and pacing of a modern Hollywood movie.
It also doesn't have anywhere near the budget of a modern Hollywood movie. Most of the movie feels like more of a stage play than an epic Hollywood movie, and the set design and even the film quality remind me of a BBC television miniseries from the 1970s or 1980s.
Consequently the film doesn't show the big set pieces of war and revolution. I suspect probably because they didn't have the budget for it.
...although according to Wikipedia, the big war and revolution set pieces were not what the director was interested in anyway. Wikipedia states that director Margarethe von Trotta's films have a common theme:
Von Trotta has been called "the world’s leading feminist filmmaker." The predominant aim of her films is to create new representations of women. Her films are concerned with relationships between and among women (sisters, best friends, etc.), as well as with relationships between women and men, and involve political setting
Through her cinematic vision, von Trotta returns to the theme of "the political and the personal," giving fair attention to both Rosa Luxemburg's personal life as a female in society and her political life as a "public revolutionary."
Consequently, the film focuses as much on Rosa Luxemburg's personal life as her political life. I've complained about this tendency in the past with other - biopics, but in this case it didn't bother me that much. The personal details didn't seem like they were interfering with the story the film wanted to tell--they were the story that the film wanted to tell. (It could also be that because this was my second viewing, I was prepared to be more patient).
The historical/political parts of the film are here as well, though.
One of the things I remember from my college history courses is that the Socialist International fell apart because of the outbreak of World War I. Socialists were supposed to support international solidarity instead of nationalist wars, but in the war hysteria of 1914, most socialists supported the war efforts of their own country, and the international solidarity fell apart. (Nowadays we remember socialist and anarchist figures like Eugene Debs, Emma Goldman, and Rosa Luxemburg who went to prison for opposing the war, but they were the exceptions).
The movie does a great job of depicting this, and in fact this makes up the bulk of the middle of the movie--Rosa Luxemburg's struggle to get the German Social Democratic Party to oppose the war, and her bitter disappointment when the German socialists cave in and support the war. (The same thing happened in all the socialist parties in Europe, on both sides of the war.)
The movie does a good job of showing Rosa Luxemburg's speeches opposing the war. And then showing the absurdity of how she was the one who ended up in jail. (It's a strange thing about modern civilization. Waging war makes you a hero. Campaigning for peace puts you in a jail cell.)
The movie slows down again when Rosa Luxemburg is in jail, as the drama at this point largely consists of her trying to keep her spirits up while she is in jail, and reading books, and walking in the prison yards. It arguably goes on a bit too long, and gets a bit too boring, but again, I think this was what Margarethe von Trotta wanted to focus on.
The Spartacist Uprising, when it does come, happens mostly off camera. Again, I suspect this movie just didn't have the budget to show it.
And then the ending of the movie is shocking. Rosa Luxemburg is shot in the head and dumped into the canal. And the movie just abruptly ends.
Ratings: 8 out of 10 Stars. (I'm willing to forgive a lot because I'm so interested in the history. Assuming you're of the same mindset, I think 8 out of 10 stars is fair. If you're not interested in the history, then stay away. There's nothing in this movie for you.)
Positives
* I love these movies that can inform and entertain me at the same time. And it was a very interesting little piece of American and Hollywood history here.
* Bryan Cranston is, as always, wonderful.
Negatives
* The historical stuff in this movie was really interesting, but by the time we get to the "genuis struggles to balance his work and family life" storyline, then we've officially reached Biopic Cliches 101. At this point, the arguments he has with his wife and kids could have been switched in from just about any other Biopic, and no one would know the difference.
* A lot of the celebrity impressions in this movie were really bad, and had a "made-for-TV movie" quality to them. Bryan Cranston was really good, of course, but the actors playing John Wayne, Edward G Robinson, and Kirk Douglas were all pretty awful.
Review
This film moves at a pretty slow pace, so you have to be in the right mood before you settle down to watch it. But if you're in a relaxed mood and you feel like a good biopic and some interesting history, then this is worth checking out. Rating : 8 out of 10 Stars
Unfortunately I was overseas when this movie hit theaters in the US, and I've had hard time tracking it down ever since
Finally, I was able to track down a copy the other night. So here I am with my review.
The Review
So, I loved this movie. Of course.
This kind of movie is red meat to a person like me, so it's a foregone conclusion that I'll fall in love with it. I'm a history geek for one, so any movie that dramatizes history is going to catch my interests. Plus I'm particularly interested in protest movements, so this movie is really ticking all my boxes.
I'm the kind of guy who's pre-disposed to give this movie 10 out of 10 stars before I even watch it.
So, 10 out of 10 for the history. But what about the entertainment value?
The problem with dramatizing history is that history doesn't always lend itself to a 3-act Hollywood screenplay structure. And this is particularly evident here, when the climax comes halfway through the movie, and everything that happens in the last 40 minutes of the movie is just anti-climatic.
So, I admit to being a little bit bored with the second half of the movie.
But what can you do? If they had re-arranged the structure of the story to better accommodate a 3-act screenplay, then history geeks like me would have been furious. The story has to be what the story is.
Maybe a better director could have found ways to punch up the second half and keep the momentum going. I don't know. (Film-making is not my business. I can wish for a better film, but not actually give any useful advice on how to get there.)
But three things come to mind as perhaps missed opportunities that could have kept the momentum of the story going:
1) The media attention regarding the death of the white priest James Reeb was a big turning point in terms of national politics. This was both a big help to the civil rights movement, and a big frustration to it. (Black deaths in Selma never got the same level of media attention as white deaths did). But it did massively increase pressure on the government to do something.
Although James Reeb's death is shown, and the fallout is alluded to, I thought they could have done more with this.
2) According to Wikipedia: In between the second and third marches, SNCC was doing a lot of protests. James Forman was really getting the crowds excited, and the SCLC was worried they were losing control.
There were protests outside the White House, and President Johnson met with a delegation that included H. Rap Brown.
These White House protests were alluded to in the movie, but this could have been much more dramatic. James Forman's speeches in Selma could also have been included.
3). I didn't like the soundtrack choices for the 3rd march. That song (Yesterday Was Hard On All of Us) was just really blah, and I thought it killed the momentum of the scene. Another song could have carried that scene a lot better.
But here I am harping on the negatives of the movie, when I should be praising its accomplishments.
I mean, the fact that a movie like this could get made at all, and be so faithful to the historical record, and get a major theatrical release, is such a wonderful thing.
The acting is good. The directing is good. And, aside from my one complaint above, the soundtrack was really good.
The movie did a good job of re-using classic songs from the period with some really good new songs. The official theme song of the movie, Glory, was brilliant.
Okay, now on to my complaining about the negatives...
Negatives
* I really like Tim Roth, but he is miscast as George Wallace. His fake Southern accent is awful, he looks and sounds nothing like the historical George Wallace, and his whole performance is just generally terrible.
* Back in 2007, I made a list of all the Hollywood Biopics I wanted to see. I put Martin Luther King as number one on that list. ( I know he's been the subject of many TV movies, but I don't think he'd ever gotten the major Hollywood theatrical release treatment).
So, I should be really happy this movie finally came out. And I am. But on that same list, I expressed some fears that if Hollywood ever did a movie about Martin Luther King, then they would throw in a bunch of sappy stuff about his relationship with his wife.
To quote myself:
The only thing I would be worried about would be Hollywood’s tendency to really sap this up, pile on the emotion and the turbulent home life, throw in a troubled childhood, and make it interchangeable with every other Bi-opic already out there. I mean, you can just see it already, can’t you.
Wife: “We need you Martin, the Children need you.”
King: “The Work I do is important.”
Wife: “We’re important too.”
Lots of crying, yelling, et cetera, and the standard husband/wife fights that are a part of every Hollywood Biopic film. I’m not suggesting King’s marital infidelities be white washed out, I just hate to see the sap become the main part of the story.
I hate to publicly congratulate myself, but that little prediction turned out to be dead-on, no? Although I guess I really shouldn't take too much credit. This kind of thing was all too easy to predict. Hollywood just can't resist. They just have to throw in the scenes of the husband and wife fighting. (There was probably some Hollywood executive somewhere demanding that they add those scenes of King and his wife quarreling).
And the thing is --that was all fictional. Martin Luther King and his wife never had these fights. Yes, he was unfaithful in real-life, but she apparently never made an issue of it. She just always pretended she didn't know.
So that whole scene where King's wife confronted him about his cheating was entirely fictional--see this article here for more discussion.
Final Rating
Since this is the kind of movie the world needs more of, I'm going to give it 10 out of 10 on good intentions. In execution, however, I'm going to bring it down to 9 out of 10 for some of the reasons listed above.
Historical Nitpicking/Discussion ...In which I go off on tangents about things which are interesting to me.
Being a martyr does strange things to a man's reputation.
Because he died as a martyr, no one would dare criticize Martin Luther King now. Which makes it easy to forget that he wasn't necessarily regarded as Jesus Christ during his own lifetime. Both the Left and the Right had their issues with him.
The Left never really forgave King for turning the march around on that bridge.
In his book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe reveals that the New Left had started using the name "Martin Luther King" as a term of abuse to describe people who didn't have the courage to follow through with the protests. (Wolfe is describing events while King was still alive. I'm assuming this must have stopped once King became a martyr.)
The Vietnam Day Committee marched in frantic clump at the head, trying to decide whether to force the issue, have a physical confrontation, heads busted, bayonets—or turn back when they ordered them to. Nobody seemed to have any resolve. Somebody would say, We have no choice, we've got to turn back—and somebody else would call him a Martin Luther King. That was about the worst thing you could call anybody on the New Left at that time. Martin Luther King turned back at the critical moment on the bridge at Selma.
Secondly, I forgot where I read this, but I once read somewhere that during his day Martin Luther King was much resented by some in SNCC because he would sweep in to places only after other people had done all the hard work of grassroots organizing, and then King would take all the credit.
To the movie's credit, they actually show this--they show the conflict between Martin Luther King and SNCC.
To the movie's discredit, however, it comes down a little bit too heavy on the side of Martin Luther King, and portrays SNCC as children in need of adult guidance.
the film is a crude insult to SNCC, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee workers who, along with a small minority of Black preachers like Dr. Martin Luther King, comprised the infrastructure of the civil rights movement in the Deep South. These hundreds of heroic young people, who had been organizing communities in Mississippi and Georgia and, yes, Lowndes County, Alabama for years, and who invited Dr. King to come to Selma, are personified in the film by one confused sounding, infantile behaving youth who we are supposed to believe is James Forman, the SNCC executive secretary who was, in real life, a Korean War veteran and former teacher and ground-breaking organizer about the same age as Dr. King. In the film, the James Forman character comes across as petty-minded, while Dr. King is made to seem like the only adult in town. Veterans of SNCC have a right to be hurt at being consigned to the dustbin of history by the likes of Oprah Winfrey.
On the side of the Right, they would love to forget how they used to call Martin Luther King a communist, and how the FBI was constantly harassing Martin Luther King.
The film shows the FBI harassment of Martin Luther King, although it muddles the details a bit. The FBI really did send the sex tapes to Martin Luther King's wife, and they really did send a letter to King urging him to commit suicide. But these were two separate events. The movie muddles this together by putting the letter and the sex tapes together.
The chronology is also a bit muddled. The FBI sent the letter to King urging him to commit suicide in 1964, before he received the Noble Peace Prize.
What's also left out of this movie is that the FBI tried to get the media interested in these sex tapes and sex transcripts, but the media refused to play along. (It was obviously a different time back then).
Had this little bit been included in the movie, it would probably have altered the relationship between Johnson and Hoover.
In the movie, Hoover wants to get rid of King. Johnson wants King weakened, but not eliminated, because Johnson is worried that more radical elements like Malcolm X will take over if King is gone. (This is speculation on the part of the movie, but this seems reasonably to me--Johnson probably did think this way.) When King refuses to back down, Johnson allows Hoover to send the sex tape to King's wife.
In real life, however, Hoover first sent the sex tape and transcripts to the media, and only sent it to King's wife later, after the media refused to publish them.
However had the media been less scrupulous, then releasing the sex tapes to the media would have been the equivalent of destroying King. Which would have not been what Johnson wanted, according to this movie.
* Speaking of muddled chronology, King receiving the Noble Peace Prize was in 1964. The Birmingham Church Bombing was in 1963. The movie switches the order of these.
* My primary education about the Civil Rights movement comes from the PBS documentary series: Eyes on the Prize.
I actually saw this documentary twice as part of my high school education--two separate teachers teaching two different classes both showed us this documentary series. (They both only showed us the first season, but the second season I was able to track down at the public library a couple years later when I was in college).
Because this series had been such a big part of my high school history education, I assumed it was something that everyone was familiar with. But as I've gone out into the larger world, I've discovered a lot of people haven't even heard of it.
I can't recommend this documentary series enough. If you haven't seen it, it's well worth tracking down.
For the moment, the episode on Selma is freely available on Youtube--here.
It's interesting to re-watch this video, and compare it with the movie.
I was surprised how much of the dialogue of the movie comes verbatim from the actual history--Andrew Young's description of how he talked people out of using guns, for example, is almost verbatim in the movie the way it is in the movie.
It's also interesting to see how much fascinating stuff the movie left out. James Forman working up the crowds is portrayed in this documentary, and, as I mentioned above, it's too bad the movie couldn't find room for that scene somewhere.
Link I like the AVclub's review of this film for sufficiently pointing out both the strengths and the weaknesses.
The AVclub review also points out how depressing it is that we've managed to backslide back into a culture where these same issues have returned. In 1965 black people were being shot by police, and now they are again. In 1965 the FBI kept wiretaps on all the dissident groups, and now the NSA is doing the same thing.
The Review
This is another in the series of political historical dramas directed by Jay Roach and produced for HBO.
I absolutely love these films.
I loved Recount, I lovedGame Change. And I loved this film.
In a world where popular entertainment is becoming dumber and dumber, these smart political historical films are a welcome breath of fresh air.
The writing is smart, the history is fascinating, the acting and directing are superb.
Well done guys. You've hit the ball out of the park once again.
Rating
I've got a few historical nitpicks which I'm going to get to down below, but in spite of some historical inaccuracies, I'm going to go ahead and give this film 10 out of 10. It was entertaining, and it did a good job of teaching people about an important year in American history.
Historical Nitpicking
As I said in my review of Lincoln, I'm one of those annoying history purists who believe historical films should stay as true to history as possible. And this is especially true of political dramas. Movies like Braveheart or Spartacus get more leeway, because the entertainment value comes from the battles and the romance, and not from the history.
Movies that dramatize political maneuverings, however, are only interesting because they are historical. If none of this had actually happened, no one would be interested in it.
But before I take this movie to task for inaccuracies, I'm going to admit right up front I don't know everything. Nor did I exhaustively research this movie. I caught a handful of things, but for anything I'm I'm not informed about, I'm just assuming the movie got it more or less correct. If anyone out there knows better, let me know in the comments. If I find out this movie took more historical liberties than I thought, I might be persuaded to bring down my rating.
I read these articles on the historical accuracy here and here.
From the above articles, I learned that John Lewis, not Stokely Carmichael, was head of SNCC during this time. (This was something that I have to admit I would have completely missed if the above article hadn't pointed it out--although I should have remembered this, because I had already written about it in an old high school paper of mine, in which I mentioned that Stokely Carmichael replaced John Lewis as head of SNCC in 1966--not 1964).
Stokely Carmichael is better remembered today as the radical voice of the movement, which is obviously why the writers made the switch, but I think the omission of John Lewis was an unfortunate slight to John Lewis.
The FBI's infamous letter to Martin Luther King I already discussed in my review of J. Edgar, in which I quoted a historian who said that the letter was almost certainly delegated, and not written by J. Edgar Hoover personally. I'll repeat here what I said then:
I can understand why the movie wanted to have J. Edgar Hoover himself dictate the letter—from a cinematic standpoint that scene of J. Edgar Hoover yelling out that letter to his secretary makes for much more interesting viewing than a scene of Hoover delegating the task.
And yet, from a historical standpoint, it’s worth remembering the letter was delegated, because it means that the FBI’s attempts to destroy Martin Luther King wasn’t just limited to Hoover’s personal idiosyncrasies, but was something the whole organization was responsible for.
* Finally, on the Vietnam War:
--the movie portrays Robert McNamara as the one pressing Lyndon Johnson on Vietnam. However, recorded audio tapes from the white house show that it was the other way around--Lyndon Johnson was the one hounding Robert McNamara to make Vietnam more of an issue--see the documentary film The Fog of War. Or just listen to this 2 minute youtube video here.
--the movie portrays the Gulf of Tonkin incident as an unwelcome complication to Johnson's plans. However, Daniel Ellsberg in The Most Dangerous Man in America reveals that the White House and the Pentagon had already determined they were going to escalate in Vietnam, and were just looking for something they could use as an excuse.
Addendum:
One further thought which occurs to me belatedly: Watching this movie makes you realize what a struggle it was to get the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965, which makes me angry once again that the Supreme Court struck down the Voting Rights Act in 2013. Link of the Day Noam Chomsky The Cold War
Why I Saw This Movie
This was part of the inflight entertainment options on a airplane flight.
Positives
* A great soundtrack (naturally)
* The lip syncing is a bit off in some scenes, but generally a good job of showing how dynamic and energetic James Brown was on stage.
Negatives * A completely by-the-numbers Hollywood rock star biopic--if you've ever seen any Hollywood rock star biopics before, there's absolutely nothing new here.
* Related to the above, like all Hollywood rock star biopics, it tends toward the sappy and melodramatic
* No real script or story to speak of, just a collection of random flashbacks.
The Review
Well, they obviously didn't spend any time writing the script for this movie. "Just throw some random scenes together" they must have said, "standard biopic stuff, troubled childhood, rise to fame, these things just write themselves. Besides, the music is what will carry the movie anyway. Who cares about the script?"
And the thing is: they were kind of right--the music does carry a lot of this movie, and almost makes it watchable just by the music. But no points for the movie itself.
Rating : 1 out of 10 stars (The music was kind of enough to make this movie watchable, but I'm reluctant to give the movie too much credit for just using James Brown's old music.)
Links
Mostly in agreement with the avclub's review of this movie HERE. (Update: also liked Film Drunk's review HERE.)
There are really two different movies: one is the story of the political career of one of the most important figures of the 20th Century. The other is the story of Margaret Thatcher going senile near the end of her life. I was very interested in the former story, but not in the latter. The filmmakers, however, were primarily interested in the latter story, and only told the former in brief flashbacks. As a result, I learned nothing new. Even so, there's probably a good 30 minute short feature buried inside this 104 minute film. Rating: 3 out of 10 Stars
I’ve got
mixed feelings about this film. On the whole I’m glad I watched it, and I
appreciate its ambition. But at the same
time, the story lacks forward momentum, and can be hard to sit through.
To be fair,
it’s a difficult subject to condense into a 2 hour movie.
Biopics in general can be difficult to do as movies, because real life doesn’t
always follow the classic Hollywood 3 act
structure. Most people’s lives are a
series of unconnected events rather than a continuous story that is leading up
to a single climax followed by a tidy resolution.
Of course
some lives adapt themselves to movies easier than others. With movies like Spartacus or Braveheart,
it’s pretty clear what the central conflict should be, and where the final climax
should fall.
But the life
of a government bureaucrat doesn’t lend itself to
screenwriting. Hoover
served for 48 years under 8 Presidents, and during that time was involved in
some way with most of the political or social events of the United States. But how do you make one single story that
combines the Palmer raids, the Lindbergh Kidnapping, prohibition, the gangster
era, Hoover’s vendetta against Charlie Chaplin, World War II, McCarthyism, the
Civil Rights Movement, the Mississippi Freedom Summer murders, the Vietnam War,
student radicals, the Black Panthers, Cointelpro, Nixon, and,
of course, Hoover’s famous vendetta against Martin Luther King Jr.? (And that’s only to name a few of the events Hoover was involved
with.)
What
approach would have worked best for a
J. Edgar Hoover biopic is still an open question. I think a J. Edgar Hoover biopic is worth
doing, but I’m still not quite sure what the best way around the problem would
be.
What I can say, however, is that this film doesn’t
work. It tries hard, and it makes some
decisions that I’m sure must have looked good on paper, but in the end it just
doesn’t add up to an engaging film.
The first
problem is that this film focuses too much on J. Edgar Hoover’s personal
life.
It’s an
understandable mistake. The film is
trying to humanize J. Edgar Hoover, and portray him not simply as a monster,
but to understand what made him tick.
This is a
common problem with Hollywood biopics. And yes, it does help to humanize J. Edgar
Hoover by showing he had relationship issues in his private life. But it’s possible to overplay this. We all have relationship issues in our
life. The thing that makes Hoover’s
story unique and worth telling is not the fact that he had mother issues or
that he formed an attachments to another man—no one would have cared about any
of that if Hoover had died an anonymous businessman. The thing that makes Hoover’s
story worth telling is how it impacted our history, and the relationship issues
are interesting only in so far as they shed light on Hoover’s historical actions.
Unfortunately,
although the film spends a great deal of time on Hoover’s
personal life, the film never makes a connection between Hoover’s personal life, and his actions as
the director of the FBI. (Or at least no
connection that I could see. If I’m
missing something, let me know in the comments section.)
Hoover’s
relationship with Clyde Tolson at times threatens to become
the main focus of the film, and make all the historical events look like simply
little incidents that happened along the way of our main story: Hoover and
Clyde and their unrequited love for each other.
Also, since
the exact nature of J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson’s relationship
is the subject of speculation, it’s my understanding that most of what the film
portrays between them is just the screenwriter’s imagination, and not
historically accurate at all, including that big, ridiculous, drawn out, overly
melodramatic scene of them fighting in the hotel room.
So that’s
one problem.
The other
problem is the narrative structure of Hoover
dictating his memoirs, which causes the movie to jump around in time.
I’ll admit
there are some clever ideas here. And it
was an interesting Rashomon like touch to show how Hoover’s
memories of historical events always differed from what really happened.
The
implication was that Hoover had been telling listening to his own propaganda
and lies for so long that he had begun to believe it, but (in what I’ll admit
is a clever move) the audience isn’t let in on this until near the end of the
film.
But this
cleverness comes at a cost, and in my opinion the negatives outweigh the
positives. Jumping around in time, and
revisiting the same events, just kills any forward momentum the film might have
had. It fragments Hoover’s story even more, and makes it
impossible to get absorbed in the story.
So, those
are my criticisms.
On the
other hand, even though this film never came together as a coherent narrative,
there were parts of it I found fascinating: the Palmer raids, the deportation
of Emma Goldman, the Lindbergh baby kidnapping case (and the resulting media
circus), the development of criminal science, Hoover’s attempts to take
personal credit for all arrests made by the FBI and his vindictiveness against any
other FBI agent who became too famous, Hoover’s blackmailing of American
presidents, and Hoover’s pathological hatred of Martin Luther King, and his
attempts to discredit King—all fascinating.
And for
that reason, despite all the film’s flaws, I’m going to give it a cautious
recommendation anyway. It is worth
seeing, even if it is a little hard to sit through all 2 hours. (Perhaps it’s best watched in segments rather
than all at once.)
Was the Film Too Nice
to Hoover?
There are a couple of reviews on
Salon [links HERE and HERE], that accuse this film of white
washing J. Edgar Hoover by leaving out all the really nasty stuff he did—for
example, the infamous Cointelpro (W) program which Hoover’s FBI used to
sabotage black radicals and which, in some cases, even went as far as assassination against prominent Black radicals (W) is completely
absent from this movie.
Was
Cointelpro, and the other similar abuses, left out of this movie because Hollywood is too conservative
to reveal the whole truth?
Or was it left out because you just can’t
include everything in a two hour movie?
Or perhaps
a bit of both?
At the very
least, I’ll give this film credit for not shying away from Hoover’s attempts to destroy Martin Luther
King.
Although
back in his own day Martin Luther King was hated by conservatives, nowadays
Martin Luther King is considered an American icon. So, if you’re trying to tell a story to a
mainstream audience, and you’ve only got two hours, and you want to do it
economically, and you haven’t got time to get into the whole history of Black radicalism
and Cointelpro, then simply showing J. Edgar Hoover’s attempts to destroy Martin
Luther King is a nice short hand way of conveying the message: this guy’s gone
too far. You don’t really need to show a
lot more than that—once he’s on the wrong side of Martin Luther King, he’s lost
the sympathy of the audience. So I’m
inclined to cut the movie some slack on this one.
(…of course
that being said, it is a travesty that most Americans don’t know about the
history of Cointelpro because the schools and the media never talk about it, and,like a lot of other things in history, this just gets swept under
the rug. But that’s a separate issue.)
At any
rate, this movie is an improvement over previous movies like Mississippi Burning, which re-wrote
history to make the FBI the champions of the Civil Rights Movement.
On the same
subject, here’s a note from Wikipedia, here is a small historical fact note:
I can
understand why the movie wanted to have J. Edgar Hoover himself dictate the
letter—from a cinematic standpoint that scene of J. Edgar Hoover yelling out
that letter to his secretary makes for much more interesting viewing than a
scene of Hoover delegating the task.
And yet,
from a historical standpoint, it’s worth remembering the letter was delegated,
because it means that the FBI’s attempts to destroy Martin Luther King wasn’t
just limited to Hoover’s personal idiosyncrasies, but was something the whole
organization was responsible for.
(The movie Mississippi Burning, for example,
attempted to explain away Hoover’s
hatred of Martin Luther King as something that didn’t really affect the rank
and file members of the FBI, which the movie portrayed as the heroes of the
Civil Rights Movement.)
Notes
* The movie, and the DVD extra featurette, both made a big deal about how J. Edgar Hoover was responsible for
making the use of fingerprints mainstream in criminal investigations.
I’m not
sure about the exact history of this. It
may well be that J. Edgar Hoover
made the process mainstream, but as far back as 1894, the idea of
using fingerprints to solve mysteries was already appearing in Pudd’nhead Wilsonby Mark Twain.
* The first Gulf War happened when I was in 7th grade, and
Norman Schwarzkopf was in the news a lot back then. I remember my history teacher at the time
pointing out to us that Norman Schwarzkopf"s father, Norman Schwarzkopf senior, was the very same police officer who had bungled the Lindbergh
kidnapping case. (Just something I
thought about when Schwarzkopf appeared briefly in this movie.)
* One of the interesting things I learned from Sideshow by William Shawcross is that
after the wave of campus violence following the invasion of Cambodia, Nixon’s
team favored a surveillance program of American citizens that was so invasive
that it appalled even J. Edgar Hoover, who refused to even sign the document
until he had all his objections typed out onto it, and quickly rescinded parts
of it afterwards. (See sections quoted in my review of Sideshow by William Shawcross).
It was
interesting to read that Hoover,
of all people, was being the voice of caution in the room.
I’m not
sure if this was the general pattern throughout the Nixon White House, or not,
but this movie also implies that Nixon’s team was so ruthless it surprised even
Hoover.
* I wish the story of J. Edgar Hoover's relationship with Clyde Tolson would have taken up less time in this movie. Nevertheless, I admit to being educated. I previously had no idea who Clyde Tolson is. Now that I know, I'm better able to understand who that mysterious figure was with J. Edgar Hoover in other movies, such as Oliver Stone's Nixon.
Another HBO
political movie. This movie is by the
same director and writer of Recount, and because I enjoyed Recount so much, I thought I would check this movie out as well
On the
whole, I really enjoyed the movie.
The writer
has a great talent for being able to streamline a lot of messy real life events
into a single simple narrative. He also
has a great talent for exposition dialogue, and a great economy with his words.
There are some great scenes in this movie when McCain’s advisors are laying out
the central campaign issues very clearly, and it is very easy for the audience
to follow along.
The acting
was very good as well.
Despite all
this, I still found myself a bit bored in the middle.
I have a
hard time putting my finger on exactly why I got bored. Perhaps the story of Sarah Palin was not
enough to hold my interest for the whole film.
Or perhaps it was that I already knew in advance what the ending was
going to be.
Most
likely, I think the problem was the middle of the film got a little bit
episodic. The middle of the film focused
on a series of separate events—the build-up to the Charlie Rose interview, the
Charlie Rose interview, the build-up to the Katie Couric interview, the Katie
Couric interview, the build-up to the vice presidential debates, and then the
vice presidential debates. I think the
attempt to build up tension and then resolution for each of these mini-climaxes
caused the film as a whole to lose some momentum.
But then
things got back on track for the final act of the film, which I found very
entertaining.
As for the
content of the film:
The
accuracy of the film is a controversial issue since Sarah Palin and her advocates
have denied the film is a truthful representation of what really happened. I suspect your own view of the film is going
to be heavily influenced by your individual politics— most conservatives are
going to be critical of the film, and most liberals are going to accept it as
true.
I fall in
the liberal camp myself. Because this
film was film was vouched for by the chief McCain campaign strategists (W), and because it fits my preconceived notions of
Sarah Palin, I’m inclined to regard it as probably a mostly true
portrayal. (Although I do admit I’m
biased.)
The film
presents Sarah Palin as a great communicator, but someone who has great
difficulty understanding and remembering basic political facts.
I’ve always
been a history/politico geek myself, but over the years I’ve learned that not
everyone’s brain is wired like mine.
There are plenty of people in the world who have a hard time
understanding history, and whose brain just shuts down when you try and
overload them with names and dates.
According
to the movie’s portrayal, Sarah Palin was one of those people. She had a lot of enthusiasm for politics, but
she didn’t know what the Federal Reserve was, didn’t understand the difference
between the war in Iraq and
the war in Afghanistan, didn’t
know why North and South
Korea were two different countries. And even when these things were explained to
her, she had a lot of trouble understanding or remembering the information.
Sarah Palin
also apparently had a couple of mini-meltdowns behind the scenes of the
campaign, which caused McCain’s advisors to wonder if she had undiagnosed
mental issues (although this question is never answered in the film.)
Perhaps one
of the more interesting parts of the film is how the McCain campaign pulled a
minor miracle by getting Sarah Palin ready for the debates. You may remember that after Palin’s two disastrous
news interviews, everyone had expected her to get creamed in the
vice-presidential debates, and yet surprising she held her own.
What was
the secret? It turns out that after
trying (and failing) to educate Palin about political issues, the campaign just
had her memorize a list of 45 responses, and then a number of segues (or “pivots” as they were called) so that she could redirect any
question to one of her pre-memorized responses.
And it was a strategy that worked surprisingly well. (Although it does make you wonder how often
this happens, and just how much of politics is really theater.)
Although it
is understandably why Palin would hate this film (it pretty much kills any of
her future political ambitions), the film’s portrayal of Palin is not
unsympathetic. It’s not her fault she
has a hard time processing facts—she is who she is and she does the best with
the talents she has.
And
although she was arguably unqualified to be vice-president, this wasn’t her
fault either. She didn’t ask for the
job. The McCain people came to her
first. All she did was say yes when her
Party called for her service. The fact
that she was never properly vetted was the fault of the campaign, not Sarah
Palin.
For that
matter, the film is not overly critical of the McCain campaign either. In retrospect obviously Sarah Palin was a
terrible choice for vice-president, but the film shows how every decision the
McCain campaign made was completely logical at the time given the information
that they had.
The film
does however raise a number of questions that go through your head as you watch
it.
Like, how
unique is Sarah Palin? Is her ignorance
an extreme case, or is this actually very common among politicians? How many politicians have been able to use
their skill at communicating in order to successful hide how little they
actually know?
And how
much should a person have to know to be President? Is being passionate about the issues (like
Sarah Palin was) just as important as having an encyclopedic knowledge of
foreign policy? Should the ability to
memorize the names of world leaders be a prerequisite to becoming involved in
the political process?
I also
wonder a little bit about the sexism issue—not in the sense that the media was
too hard on Sarah Palin, but that a male politician might have gotten a free
pass on the same thing.
Ronald Reagan comes to mind as someone who was a great communicator, but
whose grasp of the facts was always a bit shaky. (The film does mention that Reagan once
claimed pollution was caused by trees.)
Also in the
2000 election, George W. Bush was caught out on any
number of issues. You will remember
perhaps he confused the Prime Minister of Canada with a French food [LINK HERE]. And you might also remember
that back in 2000, it was openly argued that Bush’s ignorance of foreign policy
didn’t really matter, because once he became President he was going to be
surrounded by the best advisors.
(I’m
picking on Republicans, I know. Sorry,
it’s my liberal bias again. Feel free to
leave the names of exceptionally ignorant Democrats in the comments section.)
*********************************
At one
point in the film, one of the characters makes the comment that 2008 was the
first presidential election that took place in the age of youtube.
I had never
made the connection before, but it’s true.
(Amazing how quickly the times are changing—in 2004 nobody had ever heard of youtube, by 2008 nobody could imagine life without it.)
Perhaps
another reason I got a little bit bored in the middle of the film was because I
had already seen it all before, and at this recent date it is still pretty
fresh in my mind.
In this
respect, I suspect the film will become more interesting with age as 2008 fades
further into the past, and new generations grow up. (Although by the same token, references to
Ted Stevens, Joe Lieberman, Bill Ayers, and Reverend Wright are going to become obscure in the future, but a few missed
references aren’t going to spoil the film.)
Back when
we were taking a course on 20th Century American history, Bork, Buma and I used
All the President’s Men as a study
tool to try and help understand and remember the convoluted drama that was the
untangling of the Watergate scandal.
Perhaps
because of that memory, whenever I watch a modern political drama movie, I
always imagine history students using it 20 or 30 years from now.
It will be
interesting to see how this movie will age.
The sad
truth is that more likely than not, it will be completely forgotten in 30
years. (All the President’s Men is still considered a classic today, but
that’s the exception. There were any
number of TV movies about the Watergate scandal that came out during the 70s
and 80s and today are just completely forgotten.)
But if this
movie is still being watched in 30 years, I imagine it will do a very good job
of giving future college students a glimpse of some of the craziness that was
the - 2008 - election.
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