Weekend at Bernie's
My version of Phoebe's 249 movies, below. Yes, I seem to have about 45% more films on my list, but then, my list contains the Weekend at Bernie's films.
The Manchurian Candidate
I keep going back and forth on whether the remake of
The Manchurian Candidate is successful or not. This may be wildly misplaced, but I think there’s some real tension between what a Hollywood movie can achieve — with its need to make us empathize with individuals, and see the world at the level of individual agents — and what a movie like this sets out to do, namely provide a structural analysis of conspiracy (rather than a conspiracy of individual agents). Maybe, as has been pointed out to me, this is the essence of a noir film and I simply don’t have the fluency in the genre. But I felt a real disconnect here.
But the more pervasive (to the casual viewer) disconnect in this film could have been easily avoided. Throughout the film are countless signifiers that this action is happening in our world, our America: we are treated to shots of cable news coverage, advertising, and coverage of a political convention. Right down to the last detail, these establishing shots and other devices used to carry the plot along have been crafted very carefully, and are terrifically clever as well as funny. Rather than bring us into this world, though, these devices only serve to remind us that the world of
Washington and
Schreiber is not our world.
Plot is carried along and tone is set through the constant use of cable news coverage. There’s no shame in making up a cable channel to appear to be CNN, but
Demme went to the point of absurdity in laying out the channel. Since 9/11, yes, the scroll has become ubiquitous, but on Demme’s news channel, the scroll literally contains the same information as the main image and sound on the screen. “I want a stronger America,” Raymond Shaw will say, while the scroll underneath reads: “Shaw: ‘I want a stronger America.’” Okay, so the scroll in our (real) world is absurd, we get it, no argument. But this seems like a silly place to point that out. In general, the fact of the cable news throughout the movie is an excellent device; its execution, however, only distances us from the action.
Likewise with some of the news reported. Recent terrorist attacks have centered on Denver? This is just silly. For a movie that’s shooting for topicality as much as this one is — and few shoot for such topicality, with Halliburton (“Manchurian Global,” recipient of scandal-ridden overseas no-bid contracts from the army) playing the villain in an election year that sees the Democrats trying to take back the White House from an incumbent Republican — why try to be too clever? Demme should have stuck with the obvious: fears of terrorist attacks on the coasts. Hearing about such attacks in Denver only distracts.
And what up with Jessica Lynch onstage at the Democratic convention? It’s only a quick shot, but it’s clearly intended to be her. More gratuitousness.
One thing the movie did right, however, is something that most movies do glaringly wrong: the use of technology. In one scene in the New York Public Library, Ben Marco (Washington) uses Google like a normal person would. This simple device would get Demme more points but for the fact that here it’s only making up for the previous scene where Marco is researching Manchurian: when will Hollywood get over the retarded “microfiche as shorthand for research” image? Someone get Demme a Lexis-Nexis account.
These are all nitpicky things, yes, but they add up. When you’re shooting for verisimilitude, don’t employ devices that will most serve to highlight
differences between our world and the film world. A simple lesson that most directors — too clever by half — won’t learn.
Troi Coleurs
249 369 movies I've seen, beginning with Kieslowski's 'Three Colors' trilogy (because it has single quotes, placing it first alphabetically). From
ListofBests.
Update: I couldn't let Coco beat me by 45%. I just added 120 movies. Question: Why do I feel that I can check off Wild Wild West, which I saw about 30% of in a hotel room, but not Love Story, which I saw about 60% of in a hotel room?
The Candidate
Ladies and Gents
the time has passed
the time has passed
Got to be a better way
I say to you
Can't any longer continue
Can't any longer
play off black against old
young against poor
This country cannot house its houseless
feed its foodless
(blao blao mlao mlao)
They're demanding a government of the people
peopled by people
Our faith
our compassion
our courage on the gridiron
(explosion noises)
The basic indifference that made this country great
And on election day
And on election day
we won't run away
Vote once
Vote twice
for Bill McKay
...you middle-class honkies.
Bill McKay (Robert Redford) practicing his stump speech in a car
Paranoia and suspicion are the defining characteristics of the great 1970's political movies: Three Days of the Condor, All the President's Men, and The Parallax View all reflect a deep suspicion of the government and politics, while the anti-heroes of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, McCabe and Mrs Miller and Bonnie and Clyde all suggest that if this is society, then anti-social behavior is no crime (or perhaps that crime is the least anti-social behavior).
Although it shares a lot with the above list—more the power-and-politics set than the mythological one—The Candidate has a strikingly different tone. It replaces the deep suspicion with deep ambivalence.
Redford's character is the son of a former California governor who keeps his distance from electoral politics while he goes about farmworker and environmental activism; he struggles with the message discipline necessitated by campaigning, but never entirely defies the restrictions (like, say, Bulworth) or sells out entirely. (Yes, I know I've listed exclusively movies with Robert Redford or Warren Beatty, many of which have complements in the other's work. That's a different essay.) The movie clearly endorses McKay's own politics; in one scene, he nearly spits in the face of a Teamster president because of the Teamsters' efforts to bust the UFW's organizing drives. It offers suspicion of the forces that whirl around McKay on the road to the U.S. Senate, but never casts any of them as particularly malign; Peter Boyle's campaign director is manipulative, but he's not evil.
The famous last line, "What do we do now?" might suggest that the movie takes as cynical a look at electoral politics as Three Days of the Condor takes at spy wars. It doesn't. It exposes the race as a dangerous comedy, but it maintains sympathy for those who would run it. It mocks the tools, but not those who use them.
Before Sunset
Nostalgia is a curtain concealing a stage set with real passion. We too often attend the play and fail to complain when the curtain never lifts.
***I never saw Before Sunrise until the hour before (and the fifteen minutes after) I saw Before Sunset, the ending of which is still leaving me a little short of breath four days later.
