A U.S. Foreign Policy double-bill (ooh, the excitement) 19 January 2008
Posted by primus in : Posts , add a commentHaving caught the rather good Charlie Wilson’s War, starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, at the cinema last weekend, it reminded me very much of another film that probed the fallacies of American interventionist foreign policy, but set in a different period: Philip Noyce’s The Quiet American. Taken together, they are pretty different beasts. CWW is a witty, dryly amusing dissection of the origins of American support for Afghan rebels following the Soviet invasion of 1979. It has its sombre moments certainly, but on the whole it’s a satirical piece, and no less meaningful for it.
The Quiet American on the other hand is a drama, based on the classic Graham Green novel, about America’s increasing involvement in Vietnam in the 1950s. Unlike the more light-hearted approach of CWW, TQA has a sense of doom hanging over the story from the very beginning, when we see a corpse floating in a river. The political context of the film slowly develops, as we meet Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine on superb form), a married London journalist who lives in sin with his Vietnamese lover, Phuong (played by Do Thi Hai Yen). Their relationship turns in to a love triangle following the arrival of a young handsome American doctor, Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), who falls in love with the girl and promises to do the right thing by her if she will leave Fowler. Fate intervenes when it emerges Pyle’s reason for being there has a more sinister motive. The relationship between the three characters is a wonderful metaphor for the political situation of the time: Fowler representing the old colonial powers of yesteryear, Pyle the emerging superpower of tomorrow, America, and Phuong the colonised country caught between them, being used for the other countries’ political and economic ends.
They struck me as being bedfellows because of their examination of American foreign policy, specifically the same policy: to directly or indirectly fund local forces to help bring down a common enemy that is perceived to threaten American interests and security i.e. Communism. Both policies also came back to haunt America of course, in the shape of the Vietnam war and the rise of the Taleban. Of the two films, I preferred the brooding atmosphere of TQA; this is not to slight CWW however, as I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially Philip Seymour Hoffman’s caustic turn as an intelligence adviser.
So if you fancied an interesting double-bill of movies examining historical foreign policies of the twentieth century, you could do far worse than these two. I can’t say it would make a thrilling night’s entertainment I suppose, but then again one can’t snack on junk food all the time, can one…?
More than a guilty pleasure? 14 January 2008
Posted by primus in : Posts , 7 commentsThe irony of being a movie fan is that no-one dares buys you any dvds (surely the most obvious of presents for any film geek), in case you already own them. This being the case, I like to take steps to ensure that, come the 25th of December, there will be one or two shiny discs for me under the Christmas tree. A small list of suggestions in the appropriate email inbox usually does the trick, I find.
This year, at the top of the aforementioned list were a couple of items: one was the Blade Runner 5-disc set, a film which impresses more with every viewing (and there will be plenty more viewings this year, I am certain); and Transformers, something which will not come as a surprise to anyone who has read any of my earlier posts. I saw it twice at the cinema, and now a third time on my brand new dvd, and all I can say is: here is another film that just gets better with every viewing.
Now let’s be clear on this. I am in no way comparing Michael Bay’s Transformers to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. The latter is a masterpeice of cinema and a brilliant work of science-fiction; it treats its audience with intelligence; it dazzles, intrigues, and absorbs. It is a film that MUST be seen more than once to be properly appreciated. Transformers, on the other hand, is a commerical product designed purely to make money, based on toys and a cartoon series that were also products designed purely to make money. But the joy of seeing my childhood heroes come to life on the big screen earlier in the year meant that it was Transformers I was keenest to watch post-Xmas present opening. (In my defence, I had caught Blade Runner: The Final Cut at the cinema a few weeks earlier, so I had no urgent desire to watch it straight away again.)
So is this post going to be another act of worship at the altar of Cybertron’s finest? Well, possibly. What struck me was that, despite the obvious reduction in screen size, Michael Bay’s film worked just as well at home as it did in the multiplex. In fact, in some ways it worked better: the action is now easier to watch, it’s more intelligible. And because the script concentrated more on the human characters than the robots, the story was ultimately more involving. My original problem with the film was that the Transformers themselves were not the focus of the story, which meant there was precious little characterisation of them. In hindsight though, I think this was the correct decision: it opened the film up to a much wider audience, introducing this new world of TF to fans and newcomers alike. It allowed the audience to share the ‘Wow’ factor that Shia LaBoeuf’s character experienced. And that’s what Tranformers was all about for us kids in the 80s - how ‘Wow’ it all was. It was only later, through the comics and cartoons, that we came to know the characters of the Transformers themselves more intimately, and my hope is that the in-development sequel will shift the focus to them.
Of course Michael Bay’s film is no masterpiece: it’s too silly to be that. Bay’s direction can still ellicit snorts of derision when he pays too much attention to how wonderful US military hardware looks at sunset. But after three viewings, I think there is genuinely a case to be made that the film is more than a guilty pleasure. It is Fun with a capital F, because, aside from some phenomenal special effects, it has some heart to it - probably the first Bay film to do so. My gut feeling is that Steven Speilberg’s influence as Executive Producer has much to do with that, but I feel nevertheless a little credit should go Bay’s way. Having said that, my dream choice for the director’s chair of the sequel would be James Cameron, who is surely the best action director in Hollywood (except he hasn’t directed anything for 10 years), but I suspect he has bigger fish to fry these days - all-singing, all-dancing, 3-D fish by the sounds of it (the in-production Avatar).
So anyway, ramble over. I’m a Transformers fan, and I liked the new Transformers movie. Call me nuts if you like, but I’ll take it over the noisy, senseless, migraine-inducing 80s cartoon movie any day. Loved it when I was 10; watching it again a few months ago, I was appalled at how badly it had dated. It might have a certain nostalgic value of course, but in no other way can it compete with the new version. Except some of the Transformers looked cooler in animated form, maybe. Maybe.