Senators McCain and Obama can only wish to be as virtuous and firm in their principles as Robert Bolt's version of Sir Thomas More. Sadly, there is not a politician alive in this country (or I suspect any other) who is worthy of the comparison. A true target of perfection (albeit fictional perfection) at which we all shoot in vain.
"More is a man of an angel's wit and singular learning. I know not his fellow. For where is the man of that gentleness, lowliness and affability? And, as time requireth, a man of marvelous mirth and pastimes, and sometime of as sad gravity. A man for all seasons." - Robert Whittington, 1520
Historians have argued about the accuracy of Bolt's portrayal of More (played in the film and on stage by Paul Scofield), but let's leave that aside for the moment. A Man for All Seasons is a version of history that has something to say about politics, in a general sense. Yes, the specifics are about the English monarchy, but the principles are timeless, I think.
The story centers itself on More's refusal to take an oath declaring King Henry VIII to be the Supreme Head of the Church of England. This is, of course, an action the King takes in order to replace his wife Catherine of Aragon with a new wife, Anne Boleyn. The purpose of this replacement, he reasons, is because Catherine cannot provide him with a son. More has refused to support the marriage, but has said so only to the King. Knowing full well that his words to anyone else could be used against him, he remains silent to all others, even those who hold power over him and threaten to (and eventually do) imprison him.
More is a brilliant man who knows his rights, trusts them, and asserts them. He reasons that his silence is the best means of remaining safe without abandoning his principles and his conscience. He's an exceedingly good man, and a wise one, but he's not at all a politician in the sense that I think we all are familiar with that term. He is fiercely loyal to king and country, but he knows what monsters the court and politics makes of men. More is definitely not a politician, and though that deficiency costs him his life, he leaves that life with the knowledge that he did what was right.
I leave you with one of my favorite moments from the film, in which More tries to talk a young man named Richard (played by John Hurt) out of a life at court.
Man, it's getting ugly in politics already this week, and I can only imagine what the debate will have in store for us. So how about something on the lighter side of politics for today?
America Rock
Again, not technically a movie, but Schoolhouse Rock: America Rock shaped a lot of young American minds - including my own - and gave them a base of historical and political knowledge on which to build their ideas about how the country works. This is not really the strongest, musically, of the sets (in my opinion). It would be hard to beat Grammar Rocks for that title. But there are some cool songs in 'America Rocks' and fun animations that put the facts in our heads.
There's apparently a new "Election Collection" DVD out, containing almost all of the America Rocks songs (except for "Elbow Room"), plus "Energy Blues" (from Science Rock) and a few songs from Money Rock ("Walkin' On Wall Street", "Tax Man Max", and "Tyrannosaurus Debt" - the last of which is linked below). And they've added a new song ("Presidential Minute") to the mix. It's a cool idea, except that for a few dollars more you can just buy the whole SHR set.
ALL of the videos - each about three minutes long - are available on YouTube (links and sample lyrics under the cut). In addition to "Tyrannosaurus Debt," I've also added a parody cartoon that SNL did about ten years ago called "Conspiracy Theory Rock," which is hilarious (and was quite controversial). Also, "I'm Gonna Send Your Vote to College" was not in the original America Rock set, but ... how could I not include a song about the electoral college here?
Enjoy!
No More Kings We're gonna dump this tea And turn this harbor into The biggest cup of tea in history!
Fireworks The Declaration of Independence (Oh yeah!) In 1776 (Right on!) The Continental Congress said that we were free (We're free!) Said we had the right of life and liberty, ...And the pursuit of happiness! (Side note: I always crack up that the "pursuit of happiness" is consistently represented by a man chasing a woman. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of some. :P)
The Shot Heard Round the World Take your blanket, and take your son. Report to General Washington. We've got our rights and now it's time to prove.
The Preamble We the people In order to form a more perfect union, Establish justice, insure domestic tranquility...
Elbow Room The way was opened up for folks with bravery. There were plenty of fights To win land rights, But the West was meant to be; It was our Manifest Destiny! (Side note: I don't think Manifest Destiny has ever sounded so folksy and cute. :D)
The Great American Melting Pot Lovely Lady Liberty With her book of recipes And the finest one she's got Is the great American melting pot. (Side note: Kind of creepy to see people jumping into a pot like that - much like when Gargamel used to try to cook the Smurfs.)
Mother Necessity Ring me on the Alexander Graham Bell. Thank you Alexander for the phone. I'd never get a date, I'd never get a job Unless I had a telephone. (Side note: A little Equus flashback with Samuel Morse and his, errr, horse.)
Sufferin' Til Sufferage Those pilgrim women who... who braved the boat Could cook the turkey, but they... they could not vote. Even Betsy Ross who sewed the flag was left behind that first election day. (Right on! Right on!)
I'm Just a Bill I'm just a bill. Yes, I'm only a bill. And I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill. Well, it's a long, long journey To the capital city. It's a long, long wait While I'm sitting in committee, But I know I'll be a law some day At least I hope and pray that I will But today I am still just a bill. (Side note: I giggle every time Jack Sheldon says "Oh yes!")
Three Ring Government No one part can be more powerful than any other is. Each controls the other you see, and that's what we call checks and balances. (Side note: The innocent nature of today's post precludes me from saying what I want to say about the current state of checks and balances and certain politicians' efforts/hopes to circumvent them. *innocent smile*)
I'm Gonna Send Your Vote to College And even if the vote is close, And someone wins by just a little, tiny hair, Electors give that person all their votes, And it's considered fair and square!
BONUS: SNL's Conspiracy Theory Rock (Aired in original episode, but cut for reruns. Lorne Michaels claimed it was because it didn't work comedically, but it's more likely he wanted to keep his job. :P)
You may never have heard of this film before today. I certainly hadn't before I went seeking out films for this series. Oddly enough, just a day or two after I first read about this film and put it on the list of movies to possibly include here, Alan Alda (who wrote the screenplay and stars in it) appeared on the Today show to promote his new film (Flash of Genius) and this film came up.
Despite the title, this film is not as lurid as it might seem. Yes, the eponymous hero of the film engages in an extramarital affair, but his real mistress is Washington. And you can see the pull this mistress has on his life from the very first moments. Joe Tynan is a likeable, well-meaning senator who wants to do the right things. He gets a bill passed in the opening moments of the film, and later, when he's in bed with his wife (played by the incredible Barbara Harris), it's all he can talk about. Not that this is really a problem. The Tynan's have a fairly enviable, genuine relationship. They're still affectionate and sexual after nineteen years of marriage, which is more than a lot of married couples can say. They're pretty cool parents, caring and curious about their children's lives, but not interfering too much with them or the struggles between them. However, you can sense that there's a tension underneath the surface - nothing that's much of a problem, but something that could be one under the right circumstances.
Enter the right circumstances. The President is trying to appoint a new Supreme Court Justice - one that we gather is not someone Tynan would support. But one of his friends urges him not to make a big fuss or lead an opposition, because if the appointee is confirmed the friend will lose his major rival for reelection. Tynan tells his friend he won't oppose the appointment (though he probably won't vote for the appointee himself), but things soon change when a Louisiana lawyer (played by Meryl Streep) comes to him with compelling evidence that could be used against the appointee in the confirmation hearing. Tynan is reluctant to break his promise to his friend, but when he realizes that breaking it could make him a star of his party, he can't say no.
This isn't a flashy movie, but it's incredibly well-written and well-executed, and is a great example of a cautionary tale about how getting too involved in politics can suck the life and virtue out of even the best people.
Recently, I read part of a movie review from Ain't It Cool News critic Drew McWeeny (a.k.a. Moriarty) that I absolutely loved. The gist of it was that it's sad when people can only put filmmakers into two categories - brilliant auteur or Sucky McHackington. It reminded me of how a friend of mine once described some readers' response to fictional characters - they're either perfect angels or Hitler-y baddies, with no room or allowance for middle ground.
But there's a LOT of room, I think, between the Uwe Bolls of the filmmaking world and the Orson Welleses. And in that middle ground, there's a lot of fun, in my opinion. Fun that I'm happy to spend my time and money on. Horror is chock full of this kind of fun, and in the 1950s and 60s, nobody did fun quite like William Castle. He made great, schticky pictures that had great gimmicks. He'd do things like make audience members sign a waiver, so that if they died of fright, the studio wouldn't be held responsible.
Strait Jacket doesn't have that kind of gimmick, but it doesn't need one, because it has Joan Crawford. She made this film after What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, and there was actually kind of a fad at the time of what people used to call "hag pictures" - where women who had been movie stars in the 1930s and 40s and were starting to show their age would do horror films. Joan Crawford is no hag, though, and is every bit the star in Strait-Jacket.
The movie starts with a blood-curdling scream, a headline, and a little backstory. Frank Harbin (played by the uncredited Lee Majors, in his first ever film role) is messing around while his wife Lucy is out of town. He married Lucy for money, you see, and she was older than he was. He brings his trollop home, thinking (wrongly) that his daughter Carol is asleep. Little does he know that Lucy is coming home early. This is Lucy's second marriage - her first had been arranged by her parents, and when that ended, she picked a guy for herself and her own happiness. Poor gal.
We don't get much more set-up than this. Lucy just sees through the window her husband in bed with another woman and goes ass-crazy. She grabs a conveniently located axe from the yard and goes in all gangbusters, chopping off rubber replicas of their heads and hacking away at what we're meant to infer are their bodies lying just below frame. The daughter, who had not been asleep in the first place, obviously witnesses all this, and there's a pretty hilarious sequence where Lucy's axe-wielding is intercut with Carol's stupefied stare. The next thing we know, Lucy is being carted off to an asylum.
Twenty years pass, and Carol is very calmly spilling all this to her boyfriend/fiance, Michael, with an almost indifferent "And now you know." She finds out that her mother is going to be released, and I'm left wondering how often it is that people who have committed brutal murders are actually released from medical custody.
As with all campy movies like this, there are moments of (perhaps) unintentional humor. I couldn't help giggling when Lucy first arrives and is about to see her daughter again and someone says to her "I know she's dying to see you." And it's almost like Carol went down a list, saying, "Hmmmm, let's see how many inappropriate things I can show and tell a person who's just spent 20 years in an asylum for axe murder." If it wasn't butchering chickens, it was slaughtering pigs. And then she shows Lucy this sculpture she made - of her mother's HEAD.
She also decides that a little trip down memory lane would be a good idea, and presents her mother with a photo album of everything she's lost over the last twenty years (GREAT idea) and some bracelets of hers that she saved. From the night of the murder. We recognize them because they are officially The World's Jangliest Bracelets. And then I have a moment of immense sympathy for Lucy - when she talks about doing some sculpting during her treatment and Carol flips out because she's unconsciously picked up the sculpting knife. I mean, I understand that it might be freaky to see your axe-murdering mother with a knife in her hand, but if she's really cured she's probably NOT going to murder you.
Soon it's dinner time, and everyone is still tiptoeing around Lucy. Carol manages to think of something her mother can do to help with dinner that can't possibly lead to homicide and lets her fill the water glasses. After seeing her daughter and Michael being affectionate with each other, Lucy abruptly exits the kitchen and leaves the water running into the pitcher, leaving us to wonder if she can handle ANYTHING in the real world.
In another display of staggering insensitivity, Carol takes her mother shopping and proceeds to get her dolled up to look almost exactly like she did the night she committed the murders. Right down to another pair of The World's Ka-Jangliest Bracelets. Methinks Mr. Castle saw Vertigo a few times, but Carol's rationalization is that she thinks looking younger will give Lucy confidence.
On their way out of the wig store - oh yes, they even got Lucy a wig to match her hairstyle from twenty years ago - Lucy hears her name. Children singing her name as part of a sort of nursery rhyme.
Lucy Harbin took an axe, Gave her husband forty whacks, When she saw what she had done, She gave his girlfriend forty-one.
I'd have been creeped out, but honestly it didn't strike me as much scarier than the things we used to recite in elementary school for fun. Like:
Glory, glory, hallelujah, Teacher hit me with a ruler. Met her at the door with a loaded '44 And there ain't no teacher no more!
Something tells me kids don't sing that one anymore, though.
Now, I'm genuinely feeling sorry for Lucy here. Wherever she goes, she's confronted by reminders of her crime. She has nightmares about severed heads on her pillow, she runs into the farm hand taking an axe to a chicken ... and everywhere she goes, people are really guarded. Like if they say the wrong thing, she's going to go ka-razy and start killing people.
Eventually, we start to see a distinction between Lucy when she's wearing the wig and fancy dress and Lucy when she's gray-haired and plain. It's pretty clear that the dressing up and trying to look younger is part of the problem. And when people *do* start to die, we see the wig and we hear the Super-Jangly Bracelets. Robert Bloch (writer of the novel Psycho) wrote the script for this movie, and you definitely get a Norman Bates kind of feeling with Lucy. The dress and the wig seem to be part of a character she puts on that brings the crazy, and it's almost as if ... someone else is committing the murders.
This may be a B-movie, but Joan Crawford (if you'll excuse the pun) KILLS it with a really top-notch performance. She has a real vulnerability about her, and you can tell that she's drawing on some of her own extraordinary life. Her best scene by far is a scene near the end when she's talking to her daughter's future in-laws. She talks a little too much and finds out that the fiance's parents are not about to let the marriage happen. And this is when Crawford really steps up and gives us what we need to buy the last act. Because she's NOT crazy. She's a very strong woman who loves her daughter and is not about to stand by while her daughter gets cheated of happiness just like she herself was. This scene is a bowl full of awesomesauce with extra oregano, and Crawford acts the hell out of it, reminding us of why she's Joan effing Crawford.
The thing at the end is fairly easy to guess, but the moment of revelation is no less effective for it. I love the story about Crawford getting Castle to change the ending so that the emphasis would be on her. Once a star, always a star.
This is a great, fun, campy movie with a few genuine, good Hitchcockian scares. If you're looking for gut-wrenching gore ... well, you're in the wrong decade of film, for one thing. But Castle makes no effort to make the decapitations look real. It's just pure fun, right down to the headless Columbia Pictures statue after the final fadeout.
This whole country's just like my flock of sheep! Rednecks, crackers, hillbillies, hausfraus, shut-ins, pea-pickers - everybody that's got to jump when someone else blows a whistle! They don't know it yet, but they're all gonna be Fighters for Fuller! They're mine! I own 'em! They think like I do! [laughs] Only they're even more stupid than I am, so I gotta think for 'em.
A Face in the Crowd
One of the greatest movies of all time, in my opinion, and my favorite Elia Kazan movie, period. It may not seem like a political movie at first glance, but A Face in the Crowd could not be more relevant or profound in the context of politics, and especially an election. I first found out about this movie at the 1999 Oscars, when Elia Kazan was given an Honorary Oscar in 1999 and they ran a tribute to his films. What caught my eye was seeing a clip of Andy Griffith in a decidedly non-Mayberry role. In fact, this movie was made well before the Andy Taylor days, when he was a monologist and wasn't that well known.
Griffith appears as Lonesome Rhodes, who we first meet as an inmate in jail. Marcia Jeffries (played by Patricia Neal), runs a radio program called "A Face in the Crowd" and sees a definite Quality about Rhodes. Soon, Rhodes finds himself a radio star with a surprising amount of influence over public opinion. He sees things and says things about ordinary people that make them feel as if he really knows them and understands them. Watching him, you can't help but fall in love with him. He talks about housewives, and how hard they work doing things that nobody sees, like scrubbing apple juice from the bottom of the oven that's spilled over the edge of a pie pan. And he combines that soft wisdom with a genuine shrewdness about how to wield public opinion.
It doesn't take long at all for Rhodes to go from Piggott, Arkansas to local TV in Memphis to a nationally televised show with a New York City penthouse to a proposed position in the Cabinet. The more popular he becomes, the more corrupt he becomes. Marcia sees the growing corruption, but she can't help being mesmerized by him and running to him every time he calls her and tearfully pleads for her. I'd question her judgment, but then I remember how much I loved him myself in the first half hour of the film.
I know who Rhodes reminds me of in the current political cast of characters, but I leave you to your own conclusions, because certainly comparisons can be made to more than one of the entities that we've been watching this election.
I wrote about this film a few years ago as part of my first series of movie posts, and I've always been reluctant to do repeats. But this movie, and especially the clip embedded below, has never been more poignant to me than it has become during this election cycle.
The American President
Essentially, this film is a romantic comedy - a great one - and one of the reasons it's great is that is has a secondary story that keeps it from getting bogged down in the mush. Politics makes for a great distraction, and shows us how hard and soul-destroying it can be to get legislation through Congress (which we all learned in a very real way just this week). Politics is entwined with the romance plot, too, as the President's private life is very much the focus of attention for the media, his staff, and his political rivals (especially that nasty Bob Rumson).
I'm intrigued by the idea of electing a President that doesn't have the traditional family background. We're told that Shepard's wife died before the election, so the opposition didn't feel they could launch a character attack on him. As much as we might like elections to be about the issues - especially when the issues are literally life and death, like they seem to be are this go-round - character does play an important role. I despise the idea of voting for someone or supporting them for high office because they're someone you feel you could have a beer with, but that doesn't mean that character is unimportant. Leaders should be intelligent and accomplished, to be sure, but they also need to be the kind of people you'd be willing to follow onto a battlefield.
A lot of people are fond of Shepard's final speech in the press room, and of course it's been brought up in the course of discussing a couple of Obama's recent speeches, because they have a couple of cadences in common - even if they're not quotes (which they absolutely are not). But I'm rather partial to the exchange between Shepard and his speechwriter (played by Michael J. Fox) about leadership and America's thirst for it. Video below, and transcript below that, in case you can't see it for some reason.
Lewis:You have a deeper love of this country than any man I've ever known. And I want to know what it says to you that in the past seven weeks, 59% of Americans have begun to question your patriotism. President:Look, if the people want to listen to-- Lewis:They don't have a choice! Bob Rumson is the only one doing the talking! People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand. President:Lewis, we've had presidents who were beloved, who couldn't find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don't drink the sand because they're thirsty. They drink the sand because they don't know the difference.
Please, please, America - know this difference this November.
In honor of tonight's Vice Presidential debate, as well as perhaps the last occasion in this election that most people think of either Biden or Palin as terribly important, I give you one of the few (very few) movies that center around a candidate for Vice President. (The only other one I can think of is the 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate.) And this one is about a female candidate for Vice President. A female candidate for Vice President who is being thoroughly ripped apart by the old boy network of the opposing party. Life just keeps on imitating art, don't it?
The Contender
Film critic Bruce Fretts lambasted Lurie's screenplay at the time, because for one thing he thought it highly implausible that a President would wait so long (three weeks) to pick a replacement for his deceased Vice President, and then hastily pick a female candidate without thoroughly checking her background.
No comment.
Except to defend writer-director Rod Lurie, who would later go on to create the television series Commander in Chief, from the "wait so long" charge. Three weeks isn't that long, and the president (played by Jeff Bridges) has made a choice at that point, but has to go back on it because of an accident involving his first choice that brings unfortunate comparisons to Ted Kennedy's Chappaquiddick episode. Incidentally, though it seems like a tiny subplot that's over in the first few minutes, it comes up again in an unexpected and rather fabulous way.
Joan Allen was still somewhat a secondary player in films at this time, and she and Jeff Daniels both took second billing to Gary 'Rocks My Face Off' Oldman, who plays petulant Republican senator Shelly Runyon. Runyon leads the Congressional confirmation process, and also leads a series of attacks on her character. He's a very unpleasant and crusty conservative, and the temptation to reach through the screen and yank his badly balding head off is quite strong. Well played, Mr. Oldman. Well played, indeed.
The attacks get really nasty, and mostly revolve around some pictures that are supposedly of the candidate, Laine Hanson, engaged in a gang-bang. Her face is not visible (for reasons I won't list here), but there are witnesses who claim that it's her. The incident took place during Hanson's freshman year of college, and was said to be part of a sorority initiation. She refuses to answer the charges of immorality, even to defend herself, because it's beneath her dignity. Instead, she stands her ground remarkably well against the big bad bullies in Congress.
I may be treading in a minefield here, but as I refreshed my memory on this movie today, I couldn't help making comparisons between the events of the film and the events surrounding Sarah Palin in the past few weeks. No one - and I mean no one - feels the need to protect Laine Hanson from difficult questions or charges, either from Congress or from the press. Hanson understands that - questions about her sexual history aside - a vigorous vetting process is part of the deal, even though she's been a senator and on the national stage for several years already. Laine, like Palin, is also asked questions about how she would balance her job and motherhood - more pointedly, even, because she is specifically asked about how she would handle it if she were to become pregnant and have a child while in office.
I wouldn't ever say that Palin has not been a victim of sexism, because I do think there has been some, but there's nothing like fiction to put a little perspective on the real world. Joan Allen has a great scene at the end, where she fully explains what happened the night the photos were taken and her refusal to answer the sexual charges, and we're left wondering if her sexual proclivities in college would have even been issue if she were a man. She says that if she had answered the questions, that would have amounted to saying that it was okay to ask them in the first place.
One more thing. Despite some very impressive monologues in this film (such as Joan Allen's "chapel of democracy" speech (see below), which you can find on YouTube), the movie never really gets too precious about America and politics. There's a moment where you think it's going to go there, when a female FBI agent talks to the Chief of Staff about how important it is that a qualified woman be given a chance. And just when you think the schmaltz is coming ... Elliott metaphorically smacks the agent (and by extension, the audience). Nothing wrong with political schmaltz, in my opinion, but sometimes you need that smack on the cheek.
As the 2008 US Presidential (and Congressional) election draws nearer, I thought it would be fitting to take a look at how politics, especially American politics, has been portrayed on film. I'm going to try to do a post a day until Election Day, because there's more than enough to choose from, but that's not a promise. I hope this is something people will enjoy, no matter what their political persuasion.
And I'm going to start with something that's not even a movie, but I can't possibly do a series on politics without giving it a very special mention.
The West Wing
It wasn't the first television show with a political bent, but it was the first show that took us inside the White House and introduced us to the people who help the president run the country. It was a Democratic White House, but it wasn't a partisan show. There were lots of Republican characters on the show, and they were almost without exception incredibly smart and just as patriotic as the people on the other side of the aisle.
Aaron Sorkin was heavily involved in the writing of the show - either solely writing or co-writing every single episode - for the first four seasons. After Sorkin left, to spend more time with his remaining sanity, the show faltered but came back strong in my opinion in the seventh and final season. That season focused on a new election, this time for the successor to Martin Sheen's President Bartlett, and the two candidates were a young, non-caucasian Democratic senator and an older, mavericky Republican senator. Funny old world, innit? (Incidentally, writers for the show have said that the fictional Democratic candidate Santos really was based on Obama, and even consulted with Obama's then aide - now chief campaign strategist - David Axelrod for research.)
I can't even begin to scratch the surface of the awesome storylines, character moments, and wowza dialogue that made this show such a wonderful phenomenon to watch each week. I'm not even going to try. But I do want to talk about a single episode, the pilot, which I think was the mission statement for the show, particularly the last few minutes.
We start with White House Deputy Communications Director Sam Seaborne (Rob Lowe), at a DC bar trying to fend off questions from a journalist and making eye contact with a lovely woman across the room (Lisa Edelstein, who most of you probably know as Cuddy from House). We then meet several other members of the White House senior staff as they are informed of the President having had a bicycle accident. Chief of Staff Leo McGarry (played by the late, great John Spencer), who is upset with the New York Times crossword for misspelling 'Khaddafi.' Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford), who recently smarted off to an important member of the religious community and may lose his job over it ("Lady, the God you pray to is too busy being indicted for tax fraud!"). Communications Director Toby Ziegler, who tries to point out how silly the 'no cell phone' rule is for air travel. Press Secretary CJ Cregg, who is treadmilling and trying to flirt when she gets the news, and subsequently falls on her face.
We don't see the President for most of the episode. It's focused on the staffers and their responsibilities and relationships. Toby arranges a meeting with the offended religious personality and a couple of others to talk about how to appease them and thereby save Josh's job. Josh has lunch with an ex-girlfriend who is working for (and dating) a senator who may pull a Ted Kennedy and oppose the incumbent President in the next election. Sam, after spending the night with the lovely lady from the bar, accidentally takes her pager with him the next morning and discovers that she is an upscale call girl. He also gets stuck giving a tour of the White House - one of the few topics about which he cannot speak intelligently and with authority - and humiliates himself in front of Leo McGarry's lovely daughter and the third grade class she teaches. And on top of all that, several hundred Cubans have been spotted trying to escape from their homeland and seek refuge in the US.
In the final act, Toby, Josh, and CJ go to the meeting with the Very Important Religious People. And, because no description could match the awesomeness (excepting the bizzare ignorance of religious personalities as to what the First Commandment actually IS), here's the clip:
Sadly, that clip does not include the much more moving final couple of minutes, between the President and the senior staff, where he states what the show is really about. (The speech is in a separate clip, but without the context, so I'm not going to embed it.) They've received news that half of the Cubans who escaped from Havana in little more than fruit baskets have died and that the rest have arrived in Miami, seeking asylum. And here's the good part:
With the clothes on their back they came through a storm, and those who didn't die want a better life, and they want it here.
Then there's a wonderful moment, another mission statement of the show, I think. The President, who from a PR standpoint, should fire Josh for his nationally televised outburst. Instead, though, he's more of a father figure - somewhat jokingly chiding him for not being able to come up with something cleverer, but making sure he understands it can't happen again.
As great as the show was at inspiring people about what America could be, I think the human moments of the show were just as important, if not more so. These characters are not just serving their country and doing a job - they genuinely care about each other. Later that season, Josh and Sam would attempt something incredibly unethical and immoral to help Leo save face. When Josh considers bring a civil action against the KKK for contributing to the shooting that almost killed him, Leo and Toby (and Sam) offer to take a leave of absence from their very important jobs and help him sue the pants off them. President Bartlett had a very special relationship with his secretary and long-time friend, Mrs. Landingham. There were few more moving moments in the show than when he imagines seeing her ghost, echoing an earlier conversation they'd had and telling him that she can respect his decision not to run again if he doesn't think it's the right thing to do, but that if he doesn't want to because he thinks it'll be hard and that he might lose ... "then God, Jed, I don't even want to know you."
I could seriously go all day for many days about this show. It was such an incredible piece of patriotism, dealing with real and current issues that our country was facing and putting them with pretty faces that we loved to watch week after week. Every episode had a handkerchief-grabbing, hand-over-your-heart, humming-America-the Beautiful moment, and while I think the show itself ran its course and went out on a high note, I'm sad that there's nothing really out there that tugs at America's heartstrings like that.
Several people in Nashville, where I live, have been trying to grow a real cinema culture in our town for several years. There have been lots of unique screenings at our local art house theater, and today's was perhaps the most unusual film that I've ever seen in a theater in Nashville - a rare slice of Czechoslovakia's short-lived "new wave" called Valerie and Her Week of Wonders. The movie is based on a 1935 novel by Czech author Vítězslav Nezval, and it was supposedly inspired by the gothic romances of the 19th century (in other words, it would be right up Catherine Moreland's alley!). This film was part of a series of "staff picks," and the staffer who'd picked it talked to us a bit about it before the lights went down. The print we were seeing was actually part of a private collection, and the owner brought his own projector and showed the film himself.
The reason the Czech "new wave" was short-lived is because it started not too long before Prague Spring, and by 1970, when this movie was made, artistic freedom had essentially been bound and shackled by the new Russian regime. Some filmmakers, like Miloš Forman (Amadeus and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) took refuge in America and had thriving careers in Hollywood. Others, like Valerie's director Jaromil Jireš, stayed and saw either their work shelved or their artistic endeavors strangled by a government that was suspicious of the allegorical and the experimental.
Many of you know my deep and profound love for a film called The Unbearable Lightness of Being, directed by Philip Kaufman, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche, and Lena Olin, and based on the novel by Milan Kundera. Kundera was Czech himself, and based the novel on his own experiences surrounding Prague Spring. The film was made in 1988, just before the fall of the Soviet Union, and the government absolutely forbade this movie (or any other film that criticized the regime) filming in Prague. Several of the Czech actors and crew members involved with the film did so with full knowledge that their careers, their livelihoods, and perhaps even their lives would be in jeopardy for doing so.
With all of this in mind, then, I sat down to watch Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, probably the last film of its kind before the artistic and experimental impulses of Czech filmmakers was snuffed out for the next twenty or so years.
I'm not going to lie to you. This is one weird movie. There's no internal narrative logic, and everything that happens in the story seems to be more symbolic than literal. I suppose Jaromil Jireš could have just saved himself some time and energy and simply said "Sexual awakening is scary, yo! The End," but then we wouldn't have this beautiful and strange film. The whole film works very much like a dream (or nightmare, rather), and if you try too hard to make it make sense or figure out exactly what's going on, you're going to miss the film. So the only thing you can do is just sit there and let it seep into your brain cells.
The eponymous Valerie is 13, according to the story, and so is the lovely young actress who plays her. One of the first images we see is her walking through a field and suddenly getting her first menstrual period, making her "a child no more." It may seem gross or TMI, but there's something rather gorgeous and profound about the image of blood drops staining white daisies. Hardly subtle imagery, but powerful nonetheless.
It would be folly to try and explain the story, because there is no story. Even the characters are somewhat fluid. The vampire with the really bad teeth may be Valerie's father, and then again he may not. The grandmother seems to be the same person as the mother ... or maybe not. The boyfriend seems to be the same person as Valerie's brother. There was a highly significant and very symbolic pair of earrings. And I don't know WHAT was going on with Valerie the newlywed woman Hedvica. There are all kinds of blurred lines, and the film seems a perfect metaphor for how frightening and confusing a young girl's coming of age can be.
The movie was recently released on DVD and is available on Netflix. I'm pretty sure you can also watch it online somewhere (nudge, nudge, wink, wink). But if you don't feel like it's your thing, I'd at least recommend watching the trailer below (made, I presume, by the Belcourt Theater staffer who introduced it to us this afternoon), just to get a brief glimpse of how beautiful this film is.
I should also make mention here about the music used in the film (part of which you'll hear if you watch the trailer). There's a group of called "The Valerie Project," and they've made a mission out of screening this film and providing their own re-interpreted soundtrack. While I admire their efforts, though, I can't help thinking that it would be tragic to replace the original music (though I understand the print they have has a damaged soundtrack anyway). The music is incredibly haunting and, like the film itself, very dreamlike. I was very happy to learn that this is available on CD (there's a vinyl copy on eBay, which I would LOVE, but it's a bit pricey).
What a pleasant surprise of a film. Now I'm dying to see some of this director's other films, like The Joke, which was based on a novel by Milan Kundera.
Since Manitou turned out to be so bizarrely awesome, I was excited about this month's Final Girl film club movie, Scarecrows. There's lots of hit-and-miss with the scarecrow sub-genre - you've got great stuff like this movie and Dark Night of the Scarecrow and then you've got crap like ... well, pretty much everything that came out of the 1990s and later.
Okay, so five robbers have ripped off a military base. Or something. Actually, I can't remember very well, because I was too busy being creeped out by the opening credits that these facts were being spoken over. It starts with a wide shot of this thing:
The movie cuts back and forth between the credits and increasingly closer-upper shots of this Seriously Creepy Scarecrow Thing. I found myself unable to even look at the screen because I'm expecting him to suddenly go "RWARRR!" and make me have to hit pause while I go change my pee-stained pants. We find out about the robbery from a radio broadcast that's being played over the credits (it wasn't until after the movie that I realized where the radio noise was actually coming from, which is a whole 'nother level of creeps).
Anyway, five robbers have stolen about $3.5 million, or so we're told on the radio. We don't see any of the robbery - the first we see of the robbers is that they're on a plane. They have commandeered the plane and are holding the pilot and his daughter hostage. One of the robbers betrays the others by bailing out and taking the money with him, along with the plane's only parachute. He lands in a tree close to what looks like a farm. It's hard to tell, though, because it's verrry dark. Thank goodness for night-vision goggles or else we the viewers would hardly see a thing. The other robbers force the pilot to land the plane and they go looking for the traitor in a game of cat-and-mouse. They happen upon an old farmhouse, and that's when things start to go horribly wrong.
Because the farm is guarded by scarecrows. Evil scarecrows. Magic scarecrows that have awesomely scary powers. And here's something I really liked about the movie. We're never told any backstory about where these scarecrows came from. At all. We only know what the characters in the movie kind of surmise from their surroundings and what ultimately happens. The best we can tell is that the three people who lived in the house were Satanists, and now they've become magic-demon-scarecrows. And they've probably turned previous trespassers into magic-demon-scarecrows as well. These guys have all sorts of powers. They're super-stealthy, they can replicate the characters' voices, they can do things like make phones ring and doors close and decapitated heads talk. And they use some of the classic scarecrow-movie tropes, like impaling people with pitchforks and lopping heads off with sickles. So the decks are seriously stacked against our, for lack of a better word, protagonists.
The characters are killed off, one by one, until only the pilot's daughter and one of the robbers is left alive. And then there's a somewhat spectacular escape sequence. The closing credits are intercut with reverse footage of the shot that opened the movie - getting farther and farther away from the Seriously Creepy Scarecrow Thing pictured above - and another radio broadcast (presumably coming from the SCST itself) explaining about the robbers who are now missing.
This movie is downright awesome and genuinely scary. I love that we don't get all this mythology about where the scarecrows came from. That makes them scarier somehow. Like the killer in Black Christmas that we never see. Another thing that contributes to the chill factor is Terry Plumeri's musical score. And then there are these shots of the scarecrows that are sprinkled throughout the movie, and once in a while, if you're looking hard enough, you can see them breathing.
The acting is ... not great. And some of the lines are painful. But the atmosphere, gore and overall creepiness of the movie more than makes up for it, I think. Great 1980s supernatural slasher fun that may cost you a night's sleep.
Oh! And I didn't even mention the movies TRULY awesome tagline: "Trespassers will be violated." Indeed, Scarecrows. Indeed.
