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October 12, 2005
The Trouble With Writers Who Try to Think
I was going to leave the Caryn James essay on "Films That Try To Think" from Tuesday's New York Times alone. It was sent to me as a show of NYT arrogance and while NYT arrogance is hardly in short supply, I am rather sick of writing about it… as I imagine many of you are of reading about it.
But as I was sitting in my second trip to North Country, one of the movies James targets in her piece, I found myself getting a little angry. I am not someone who will be defending North Country to the death. There are various charges that can be leveled fairly. But intent and the validity of the choice of subject are not amongst them.
This issue reaches far beyond Caryn James or The New York Times, which in fairness, pays Ms. James to sling ideas into the fray, no matter how misguided. This is a classic horror amongst the Movie Chattering Class.
1. Hollywood is inherently evil, desperately clinging to the failure of "real art."
2. "Real art" is what I think it is at this moment.
3. What is really needed is art that challenges us to think deeply.
4. When someone makes a movie that requires audiences to think outside of the box, it must be destroyed because it doesn't fit in an easy definition.
Ms. James does add her own special twist to this horror show of discourse, obsessively demanding that these movies speak more directly to current events. We can start with the obvious failure to acknowledge that a major release requires a minimum of 18 months to go from concept to completion. (If you want to throw out Million Dollar Baby or Munich as examples of what is possible, both films were years in the making before they went so quickly through production.) Far more damning is Ms. James' utterly ignorant argument that movies are just getting around to discussing 9/11. Apparently they could not be seen as such because they were not literally about 9/11.
Did Ms. James see House of Sand & Fog, Cold Mountain, 21 Grams, In America, The Last Samurai, etc, etc, etc? All of these movies sought meaning in loss. Cold Mountain literally had a massive explosion that send the disillusioned soldier on a journey home, unable to carry the flag any longer. House of Sand & Fog embraced deadly Middle Eastern honor in light of pained American arrogance. In America spoke to what remains great about the heart of America, regardless of our homeland horrors.
For me, the great misread of a post-9/11 movie was The 25th Hour, in which Spike Lee - WOWEE! - showed the hole! Wow.
What was great in the American cinema of the early 70s, much as it is about other nations in recent years, almost always comes from metaphor, not literal films about this moment. Great filmmaking most often seems to come of repression, so that metaphor is the only way to express it. It is that lack of overt commentary that tends to challenge the filmmakers to reach beyond the obvious. If you want a treatise on George Bush, watch The Daily Show. If you want to engage in a discussion of the power of personal commitment to a cause greater than you own selfishness and the love that comes from that giving, go see The Constant Gardener.
Was M*A*S*H updated to specifically reflect Vietnam?
Do we really think that Platoon was about Vietnam?
Wasn't part of what we found in the Lord Of The Rings trilogy an answer to al Quaida with America seeing itself as the underdog?
And isn't it more likely - however unpleasant to consider - that All The King's Men (btw, based on the real Kingfish) is really about Bill Clinton and not George Bush? Wouldn't a Bush analogy be better served (assuming you swing that way politically) by a remake of The Bridge Over The River Kwai? (Uh, Bush would be the Alec Guinness character, a leader whose myopia threatens to do more for the enemy than for the cause he thinks is really important.)
When Mike Nichols, no arch-conservative he, made Primary Colors and got Clinton just right, no one wanted to see it. It was too literal. If you want to know why we loved Clinton, watch Wedding Crashers. Smart, charming, funny, well-intended scoundrels. Hot! The achievement of Primary Colors won't be celebrated for another 15 years.
If you want to know what America was worried about as the millennium turned, watch American Beauty, Fight Club and The Matrix.
I agree with James that the notion of Good Night, And Good Luck as an important metaphor doesn't really fly. But why does that weakness of metaphor - the primary evidence of intent coming from media discussions with Clooney, not the film itself - which is not how it works - put the value of the film in question? In fact, I would say that in terms of political value, the argument that the film offers no context - an argument I embrace as an explanation of why the film will not become a cultural phenomenon - is the strength of the film. Instead of trying to create an argument by fictionalizing personal lives and throwing destroyed lives into the mix to up the dramatic ante, Clooney and Grant Heslov stuck pretty much to the facts of the story and allow the audience to consider the context on their own.
It is ironic that James includes North Country in her argument, when that film does exactly what she seems to want from Good Night, And Good Luck? But there, the argument against shifts to another "it's all about me" challenge… the film is "only" about the first sexual harassment class action suit… it's not about what women in New York City experience today. "A truly provocative film would deal with the backlash against sexual harassment laws, the contemporary sense that political correctness has gone too far." Oh! You mean Chicago… set in the 30s, but loaded with cynicism about how easily the public can be made to believe lies disguised behind batting eyelashes? Or perhaps the only worthy artist is Neil LaBute, who is endlessly raging against modern poseurs, particularly with The Shape Of Things, which has a woman putting a man though hoops because we all feel that what we are is not enough.
Oh… maybe James needs it to literally be about a backlash against harassment laws for her to think it sincere enough to be considered.
As for A History of Violence, Ms. James joins the literal-minded minority that can't see the meaning for the violence… which suggests, I guess, those people's history of violence. The central challenge of the film is to the central character, Tom Stahl. But his wife and his son are both challenged to consider their history of violence as well. All Ms. James can see is that the movie "suggests that violence is everywhere and in everyone." Well, duh! That's an obvious truth. Why the movie is interesting is that these people have to face the choice of how they control or do not control that violence.
What is one of the year's most interesting film discussions on how we all deal with the violence in our lives and in ourselves? George Romero's Land of The Dead, where the zombies become more human than the humans.
But I think what really pisses me off is the rancid arrogance of judgment against the people who have made these and other well-intended films.
Ms. James writes, "What's whispered, yet rarely said out loud, is that Hollywood producers know that most of what they churn out is junk, and they are happy to seize an opportunity - especially if it's cost-efficient and Oscar-ready - to prove they are people who think."
She may kiss George Clooney's golden tuchus in the last paragraph, but the statement above is a direct "fuck you," to ol' George, who is part of the machinery. It is a direct "fuck you" to Niki Caro (whose last film, about a girl and some whales, didn't directly address Maori sexual politics as experienced on the Upper East Side) and everyone else who was trying to reach for something on that film. And on and on…
The funny thing is that Ms. James seems quite aware of what she is saying in a larger context. "…Deliberately hyperreal in its picture-postcard setting that it might as well be a fable." "…Everything about that conflict resonates with the war in Iraq today." "But the film's subject is self-contained, easily dismissed by anyone who chooses to leave the story in the past."
Fables… resonating… easily dismissed by choice… that is the goal! That is the magic! That is the challenge!
Ms. James is encouraged that Syriana is based in current time. But is that because all she really wants is for films to bash George W. Bush as she wants to or because she doesn't like the idea of having to deal with allowing audiences to think for themselves?
Let's not even discuss that the note I received from the family of one of the real-life North Country participants who says that the same behavior cited in the late 1970s into the early 90s - wow, ancient history! - is still going on at the very same Eveleth Mines. Is that relevant enough? Moreover, that suit - the first class action suit for sexual harrassment in history - would still probably be in court today had all the participants not settled in 1999.
I guess in the end, my point is that there are all kinds of ways to make a point. Movies, Hollywood-made or not, are an art form and literalism is rarely the best tool in an artist's box.
Is Jarhead really about Iraq, or will it be about the horror and the thrills of war - any war - as most great war movies are?
If Memoirs of a Geisha is just about a woman who has sex for money in a complex, culturally traditional way, will it be enough to connect with people who are reaching for something?
And is Cheaper By The Dozen 2 the most political film of the season, showing our lack of regard for natural resources and space on the planet as well as our imperialistic urges, breeding more and more Americans to invade the world?
I have no problem if Caryn James has problems with all of these films and thinks them unimportant. But this article, like many other conversations with critics, engages this compulsion to put everything in a nice, clean box that doesn't take into consideration that human beings with all kinds of aspirations are part of making these movies. There is nothing Hollywood-safe about any of these movies. None of them are an easy sell… except in New York City, where basic sexual harassment has been solved, violence is for Mother Goose, and journalists taking a stand is par for the course.
Ha Ha.
