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Reviews
The Ground Truth: After the Killing Ends (2006)
God/Karma/Newton
When President G. W. Bush wanted authorization to invade Iraq, most of the active leading Democratic politicians in the Senate voted for a resolution that the President should feel free to do as he saw felt. This film, The Ground Truth, shows how expensive that resolution was. Through portrayal of Iraqi civilian deaths and through accounts of some of the soldiers who caused civilian deaths of Iraqi men, women, and children, we get a profound impression of something gone terribly wrong.
What's poignant is that the men who did the killings are not being accused by anyone--that is, anyone but themselves. A significant number of them say they cannot return to being the person they were before they were sent to Iraq. For some, a severe physical injury is a part of the reason. But the stronger reason is frequently that they cannot undo what they have done, and they cannot forgive themselves. And we have to assume that the havoc done to their lives is more than equaled by the havoc they left in Iraq.
As one watches the film, one has to think the crime one sees rests mostly on our political leaders. The thought may come they have to hope there is no God. For if God is, one has to tremble at the thought of reckoning. Even atheism though doesn't seem to offer escape. Karma still lingers. Or it that's still too mystical for some, a sociological version of Newton steps up to fill the void. Arguably the most oft confirmed law in all of sociology, this law says simply: "What goes around comes around."
Un spécialiste, portrait d'un criminel moderne (1999)
presentation of the sheer ordinariness of Eichmann: a warning
This film is wonderfully topical. Eichmann is riveting in his ordinariness. He repeats over and over his conviction that he obeyed orders, and he prides himself that his superiors had nothing to complain about in the efficiency with which performed his duties. He also says it would have been futile to resist. He might easily have held an MBA from one of our finest business schools today, or a law degree from one of our foremost law schools. One goes along to get a along. What adds to his topicality is that today the American government is proceeding against Erik Snowden and Bradley Manning on what it seems to take as the self-evident principle one should always obey orders--especially if one is in the armed services or is an employee of the government. Eichmann does not lose his temper and is not irrational. On the contrary, he is wonderfully consistent. He functions therefore as a kind of terrible wake-up call indicating what one can come to if one will go all the way with the notion that orders from superiors relieve one from moral responsibility.
The Lorax (2012)
not The Lorax of the 70s
I was not raised on Dr. Seuss, but back in the 70s I somehow saw a short film based on his The Lorax. I was deeply impressed at the time by how thoughtful it was--how prophetic in fact. When I saw the title recently among Netflix choices, I was delighted; and I hoped, inattentively, to return to that film to analyze it more carefully. The film I actually received, made in 2012, had many rather sly references to contemporary culture; and it managed to retain the basic theme of the earlier film. But it had been burdened with googaws which struck me as distracting, and it occurred to me that in its playing to contemporary taste, it may have been too hip for its own good. I hope it will engage its current viewers in the wisdom of Seuss--but if you want that wisdom in less diluted form, I suggest you look up the short film of the 70s.
W ciemnosci (2011)
poor treatment of an interesting story
Director Holland follows a cliché that has become very shopworn; cinema schools should do what that can to outlaw it. As antidote, instructors should repeat as often as needed: "Don't film in the dark." I know the temptation. The director or screenwriter will say, "Let's make the film very mysterious. We will film in such a way the audience will hardly know who is talking or where they are. The intense confusion of the audience will lead the audience inexorably into the terrible frustration and confusion of the film's characters." Sounds plausible. And when Shakespeare produces the ghost of Hamlet's father in the darkness of night, the staging is effective. That however is because the darkness is a brief interruption in the light; there's dramatic contrast. When darkness becomes a dominant cliché, the contrast is lost, and the effect is boring. The audience tends to wonder when the director is going to get back to work. Also, what Aristotle regards as the indispensable identity of the audience with the characters becomes very difficult to generate. IN DARKNESS is a poorly made film about an important subject.
The Lost City (2005)
film drowns in self-pity and narcissism
The long pauses that professional reviewers remarked on negatively are major clues to the self indulgence of the author and of Andy Garcia. Gone with the Wind got away with something along these lines, but The Lost City doesn't. Scarlett O'Hara was treated with balance enough to keep her movie afloat. Garcia drowns his movie in bathos by being too uncritically admiring of Fico--whose only commitment seems to be to the privileged lifestyle he enjoyed in the early parts of the film. Some effort at making Fico an echo of Rick in Casablanca is attempted, but the film has none of the tautness of Casablanca. More important, where Rick was able to let go of Paris for the sake of some more generous commitment to the human future, Fico and Garcia seem unable to let go of anything. At the end Fico is babbling what sounds like a very poor parody of Kahlil Gibran at his most pretentious. By then, perhaps, he has been infected by the babbling of the no-name Bill Murray character who has been inscrutably and mysteriously babbling throughout most of the film.