Reviews

Machuca is a recipient of the Unidad Popular program of President Allende. Allende had nationalized industry and agriculture, and embarked on a massive literacy program for Chile. We are made aware of problems, however, Gonzalo's sister's boyfriend is scary, and later we see him in a fascist demonstration. There is no meat, no vegetables, no milk in the stores. Chileans will recognize the hand of the CIA in collusion with the Chilean oligarchy, and the counterfeit money that was introduced into the country by the US to create inflation and scarcity and bring down the regime. The coup happens, and the army takes over the schools. The priest who was the principal and the liberal teachers disappear, reminiscent of "Au revoir les enfants." It is useful to compare these events with those 30 years later in Venezuela. Hugo Chávez was 17 when Allende took power, and was very much involved in following the Unidad Popular and their program. He lived through the coups in Chile and Argentina, and learned a thing or two. Many on the left criticized Allende for not calling out the army, a mistake Chávez was not to repeat. Although he had no need to declare war against the coup, Chávez had worked for 30 years with his men as lieutenant colonel, and gained the undying devotion of soldiers and population alike. When the CIA-engineered coup happened there, Venezuelans were ready, and the coup failed. One could say that without Allende there would be no Chávez.

All legends are rooted in some sort of fact. The fascinating thing about Arthur is that he spans the time from 100AD to about 700AD, that is to say, the fall of Rome and the proselytizing by the new Christians into England, where they found witches and rituals as ancient as anything in Persia or Sumer. The first arrivals, according to the 6th-century British writer Gildas, were invited by a British king to defend his kingdom against the Picts and Scots. A tradition reached Bede that the first mercenaries were from three tribes--the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes--which he locates on the Cimbric Peninsula, and by implication the coastlands of northwestern Germany. Archaeology, however, suggests a more complex picture showing many tribal elements, Frankish leadership in the first waves, and Frisian contacts. Revolt by these mercenaries against their British employers in the southeast of England led to large-scale Germanic settlements near the coasts and along the river valleys. Their advance was halted for a generation by native resistance, which tradition associates with the names of AmbrosiusAurelianus and Arthur, culminating in victory about 500 by the Britons at the Battle of Mons Badonicus at an unidentified location. Add to this the psychosexual elements, incest, homosexuality (I am convinced Arthur, Guenevere and Lancelot were a menage a trois, although not at the same time) the economic and moral crisis of a system that had played itself out, an almost Christ-like feeling of betrayal, death and resurrection, and you have a story as compelling as anything told by Homer.

Kurosawa. Bergman. Wajda. Truffaut. Fellini. Spike Lee. What more needs to be said? Lee is true to his vision, and reflects his country, his people (the American people) his times, with an unflinching and critical eye. He shows a hatred for everything that is wrong with America, but at the same time he has a gentleness and a love for its people that takes him to a whole other level. He is simply brilliant. At the same time he indicts the capitalist mad dash to be number one, and the prison system that is there to catch the fallout, he softens the harshness with sly wit, as with naming the dog after Kostya's malapropism. He is savage at one moment, but with an underlying sweetness missing in someone, say, like Scorsese. Not many artists can do that.

I thought this movie was excellent as a movie, but at the same time it would be a serious mistake if anyone thought anything like this would work in real life. V was counting on "the masses" rising up to vindicate the struggle against the dictatorship, but it doesn't work that way. Resistance may be clandestine, but revolutions can never be, and the idea that a few brilliant brave men and women are going to lead the rest is by its very nature elitist. That is a good recipe for corruption further on down the line, and there is nothing to prevent the transference of one dictatorship to another, no matter how high-minded in its origins. The clues are that V and his comrades are active and interesting (there's no denying that), but the people in their houses and pubs are mere decoration. Why weren't they involved? The trench-coat mafia parade at the end doesn't count. Didn't they have an actor's union card? The movie business in real life is elitist, and this is necessarily reflected in the plot (stars and supporting players). Additionally, it would have been stronger if Evye had been tortured by real government agents, and had become fearless thereby. However, the idea of control of a virus used as control of the population is interesting, and has echoes in the LSD and syphilis experiments, and as some have implied, in the (manmade??)HIV virus.

There may have once been a grain of truth in the original Merimeé novel, but it has been turned into an icon beyond recognition as much as La Dame Aux Camelias has. Vivian Romance camps it up playing "gitaine" for all it's worth. She plays it like grand opera, probably the director's immediate frame of reference. When one thinks of the Rom one thinks of oppressed people, and it is perfectly consistent to see a young woman from an oppressed group as a sexpot--- that's their value. It is no accident that the story has been redone with former slaves (Carmen Jones) and by Senegal, although in that case, while still oppressed and clandestine, she is more in command than some of the others. Two of the best Carmens are by Sara Montiel and Imperio Argentina, although there is no question that we are watching a bourgeois stereotype regarding what the directors consider a "lower class." Romance's Carmen is worth seeing for comparison.

The trouble with satire is that it is constantly in danger of turning into the thing it satirizes. I saw Americans who were selfish, xenophobic and infantile, which is where I suppose the satire lies. The trouble is that the movie itself IS selfish, xenophobic and infantile. What if Kim Jong-Il really is a good leader, who knows? We are totally in the dark about him, and it's really hitting below the belt to attack a real person who has been projected as "evil" by other xenophobes without any other information to go by. You are really taking sides when you do that. The geopolitical situation in the world today is anything but funny. It's like making fun of cancer, or the holocaust. On another level, by satirizing everybody and everything, (except Bush, who remains sacrosanct, apparently. This shows up the basic dishonesty of the filmmakers.) the only position left is one of nihilism. It is not surprising that there is so much emphasis in blowing up the world. Why is that funny? It is the reaction of a child who has a permanent temper tantrum. And what's up with blowing up the only good actors in the US? This leaves us with Tom Cruise and Travolta! This is also taking sides. Suffice it to say that in real life there is an organization called Team America PAC who apparently drank in every word. They are Minutemen dedicated to wiping out every trace of color in the US population. This is their movie. They don't think it's satirical at all.

Let's take one of the most obnoxious characters; Matt Dillon's Sgt Ryan. Not only does he stop people for no good reason, but harasses them sexually. He is a racist and insults people to their face. Yet he has a sick father who apparently can't afford medical care (at least until he has full-blown kidney failure.) He touchingly cares for him and at one point breaks down in tears. Should he be pilloried for being a racist? What is his problem? What theme runs through all the characters? Would Peter Waters and his friend steal cars if they had a car to begin with? Would Shaniqua deny medical care if medicine were free for everyone? Would the young officer have shot Waters in a panic if his tolerant views had been born out of social and loving experiences with black people, as opposed to theoretical, knee-jerk political correctness? Why is everyone so stressed out? There is only one answer, in my view. Capitalism diligently works to divide people and keep them helpless in the face of injustice. If Americans can blame "the other-the black, the Mexican, the Iranian,the Asian" then they don't have to consider that their lives are rat race, that they are unemployed or can be fired at any moment, that they can become homeless, that they have no medical care, that they have to toe the line against their better instincts or face the wrath of a corrupt system that demands corruption. None of these conditions are brought about by blacks, Mexicans, Iranians, Asians. They are brought about by the system, and the system is capitalist. This is entirely new ground in American movies, and it is encouraging.

Hollywood will never know what a favor it has done to Polanski by making him persona non grata. The Pianist can best be commented on by what it is not---it is not a Hollywood movie, that is, it does not have starving people having romantic box office sex. It does not, in spite of horrifying atrocities, portray all Nazis or Poles as evil, it does not portray all Jews as heylik. The Americans don't come in at the end handing out chewing gum and chocolates. It doesn't give a damn about the irrelevancy of someone having sex with a 13 year old. That's because it is not a Hollywood movie. It is right up there with Eisenstein and Bondarchuk and Kurosawa and Wajda.

It is not easy to shuffle so many elements--art theory, politics, biographies and personalities, the masses, the trips to capitalist sanctuaries and the ethical problems they pose--but Frida takes a valiant stab,and succeeds part of the time, producing a lush and evocative film. Where it fails, not surprisingly, given the number of producers, is that it is not very Mexican and it is not very communist. There is no real organic feeling that 1920s-30s Mexico had just gone through a revolution, as Russia had. The protagonists lived at a time when anything was possible. They were going to slough off the yoke of Porfirismo and have an egalitarian society, but in the film the peasants and workers (who are the heart of Mexico)are nowhere to be seen. There was a glorious, excited energy that socialism were going to change the world. People worked round the clock to build on the bourgeois Mexican revolution and turn it into a socialist one. They engaged in marches and hand-to-hand combat with the falangistas in the Zocalo. They protested Mussolini's ships when they docked in Veracruz. Mella, in exile, was the founder of the Cuban Communist Party and Modotti's lover. Modotti herself was a died-in-the-wool Communist, and went to Spain, as did Siqueiros, and joined La Republica. None of this is understood. And finally, the producers neglected (did not understand) the ready-made dialectic between Siqueiros, the champion of the workers, and Diego and Frida, the petty-bourgeois individualists who were more concerned with their genitals than with the minimum wage.The arguments comparing Stalin and Hitler are anachronistically straight out of 21st Century United States, and were not current at the time. It feels like a cowardly sop to Hollywood ideologues. Where the film does succeed is in its surrealism and its presentation of Frida's art. The scene between Hayek and Chabela Vargas singing "La Llorona" is a knockout, as is the scene at the Pyramids, one of the few times where Mexico in all its glory is truly present. However, consider the portrayal of Mexico by these non-Mexicans (excluding those who are)-the food-tourism, the costumes-tourism, the pyramids-tourism. Too many non-Mexican cooks have spoiled the soup.

I stopped watching this movie during the train ride to Dachau. It is a completely amoral film, and not because it shows amorality. Jagger, whom everyone is so crazy about, turns the two lovers in for money. No one is outraged. Then the Nazi makes the protagonist beat his lover, to whom he had declared his love only hours before. No one is outraged. We are supposed to feel pity at the forced degradation, not contempt at the protagonist that holds life to be more dear than dignity. I would have, and I swear to it, beaten the Nazi to a pulp, knowing that I would be killed. Death is a small price to pay for keeping your dignity. The protagonist collaborated with the Nazis in beating his lover! Where is the outrage? He's as bad as they! Then, I am told, he is redeemed by love, at the camp. I don't think so. Some things cannot be forgiven and forgotten so easily. Antonio