WIFF Day Two: The Most Dangerous Man in America
Apr 16th
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (U.S., 2009)
D: Judith Ehrich and Rick Goldsmith
Strange times in Madison. At about 10pm on Wednesday night, the sky turned green and a great almighty fireball blazed across the sky – a meteor, the national news later reported. Thursday a throng of Tea Partiers gathered at the capitol to listen to Tommy Thompson tell them that he really, really, really wanted to run for Senate, but his wife wouldn’t let him. And on Thursday night, a crowd threaded from the main entrance of the historic Orphem Theater around the corner, around the corner again and through the parking garage, and back around another corner until it nearly met itself. A multi-pierced young student asked dazedly what event we were all waiting to see, and a festival goer responded, “Daniel Ellsberg.” The student nodded vaguely and walked away.
More correctly, we were all waiting to see The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. A riveting documentary, and a worthy film to hold the prized 8pm Thursday-night-at-the-Orpheum slot for WIFF, I was nonetheless surprised to see the huge theater fill to near capacity. But this is Madison; we’re strange folk. The film recounts how Ellsberg, a young Harvard intellectual and a highly-placed military analyst for the Vietnam War under Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, came to leak a massive, and massively-top secret, report from the Pentagon on the history of America’s involvement in Vietnam. The film is narrated by Ellsberg, featuring interviews with his wife Patricia (ever-present, and always beaming proudly at her husband and at the cameras, in the 1970’s news footage shown here), as well as his son (who, as a tyke, helped his dad Xerox the Pentagon Papers), key players such as the New York Times’ Neil Sheehan and RAND colleague Tony Russo, and friends such as the late Howard Zinn. It’s a fairly unassuming documentary, bereft of gimmickry (apart from some crudely-animated, and very amusing, “re-enactments”), and I find it refreshing that the filmmakers let the story provide its own genuine drama and tension, of which there are spades. Ellsberg took tentative steps out of his own shell, the result of applying his intellectual acumen to a belated and painful self-analysis, realizing that he was, in fact, helping perpetrate the war; at one point he attends an antiwar rally and has a private breakdown, vividly described (the film movingly reunites Ellsberg with the Vietnam vet whose speech at the rally triggered that breakdown). Then he reinvents himself, and begins secretly and laboriously photocopying the Pentagon Papers on the hope that if its secrets were known - exposing the lies of multiple administrations - America will stop the President and the war. He first distributes copies to Democratic members of the Senate, senators who had been against the war longer than he’d been, but he’s shocked to find they do nothing. So he goes to the New York Times…and what follows is historical record but nonetheless gripping: Ellsberg goes into hiding from the FBI; the White House challenges the freedom of the Press; rival newspapers form a united front against the President; the Congress cuts off funding for the war - all of these being important incidents on the road to Watergate and resignation. And thank God Nixon taped everything. The excerpts from his recordings are shocking, and I’m not just referring to Nixon’s unwarranted abuse of the nonsensical “son-of-a-bitching.” Nixon, in vertiginous meltdown mode, rants against Ellsberg, the press, and the citizens of Vietnam (whom he contemplates either drowning or nuking). But for all the eye-opening facts and anecdotes in The Most Dangerous Man in America, the film has an undercurrent of melancholy. After the release of the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg notes, the American people are largely complacent; they follow the scandal but seem oblivious to its meaning, and in a short time the evening news moves on. Nixon is undone, but largely of his own doing. Ellsberg had a key role in stopping the war, but Nixon was reelected by the people. It’s clear in the film that Ellsberg is still disappointed by this complacency, and it’s telling enough (and touching) that in the final moments in the film we see the old man getting arrested again, proudly, this time in protest of America’s new wars. George W. Bush was reelected too, beating out the Vietnam vet running against him. My mind keeps lingering on one moment in the film, as Ellsberg recounts debriefing a newly-arrived Henry Kissinger on the Vietnam War; Ellsberg then voices his prediction that Kissinger, after receiving high-level clearances, will learn information of such a priveleged nature that he will cease to listen to anyone else, and the advice that analysts like Ellsberg provide will be ignored. This is what happens, Ellsberg insists – you rise high enough and you stop listening. But the heartbreak at the center of the tale of The Pentagon Papers is that, despite their impact, the American people wouldn’t listen very closely either, and the problem of popular complacency is hardly isolated to the past.
WIFF Day Two! (Or One?)
Apr 15th
This photo, by The Isthmus’ film critic Kenneth Burns, is from last night’s WIFF opening night screening of The Art of the Steal. This is festival director/superhero Meg Hamel. I’m at the upper left of the photo, with my wife Anne leaning in. The full article is here and captures the WIFF atmosphere pretty well.
Tonight: another documentary! Tomorrow – probably another documentary I think! For some reason I ended up with a doc-heavy schedule this year. You always end up with a schedule different from what you intended, but somehow, at the end, you’re more than pleased.
2010 WIFF, Day One: The Art of the Steal
Apr 14th
The Wisconsin Film Festival launched one day earlier this year, in festival director Meg Hamel’s tentative steps in expanding the scope of WIFF to five days rather than the typical four. This is the twelfth year of the festival and it’s been growing in popularity each year; I moved to Madison from Salt Lake City, so it’s nice to have exchanged one film festival (Park City’s Sundance) for another that, who knows, one day might be just as big (we did get the world’s second Sundance Cinema, so at least Robert Redford has faith in us). At WIFF I’ve watched Roger Ebert introduce A Hard Day’s Night and Laura; I’ve seen giant spiders crush Buicks beside fellow Wisconsinite and B-movie auteur Bill Rebane; I’ve solved Timecrimes and watched Sita sing the blues. This year brings the New York Times’ Manohla Dargis to the festival (introducing Michael Mann’s Collateral); an extensive Bong Joon-ho (The Host, Mother) retrospective; the U.K.’s much-praised Red Riding Trilogy; a Wisconsin film starring Tony Shalhoub and another directed by The Straight Story’s screenwriter Mary Sweeney; and more – but my list was compromised from the start. Of course everything you really want to see if playing only once and at the exact same time. That’s how it always works. You make the sacrifices, you take some risks, you end up seeing a lot of films with a number of extremely enthusiastic local film buffs. It’s become one of the major events I look forward to every year. And this year, on WIFF’s “bonus day” (as Meg called it in her introduction), I began my cluttered program with one of the most controversial documentaries of the last year. (I’d wanted to start with Historias Extraordinarias, the 4-hour-long Argentinian film, but…not on a Wednesday night, and not at the campus’ Play Circle Theater. Just couldn’t do it.)
The Art of the Steal (U.S., 2009)
D: Don Argott
There was a small uproar when Don Argott’s The Art of the Steal opened a few months back in select cities, particularly from certain persons in Philadelphia portrayed in a very negative light. That’s because the documentary is an exposé of the underhanded, and quite possibly illegal, methods applied to uproot and violate one of the most distinguished art collections in the world: the Barnes Foundation, an art school and museum, featuring an astonishing array of key works of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Modern Art as collected by Dr. Albert C. Barnes in the first half of the twentieth century. Barnes fought to keep his collection intact and as he had arranged it: and as the film shows us, the arrangements did not just display exquisite taste, but were astonishing, clustering together disparate works into an unexpected harmony. He also insisted upon the Foundation operating primarily as a school, closed to the public for most (but not all) days of the week. Located in Merion, PA, about four miles from Philadelphia, Dr. Barnes’ collection was misunderstood at first - but soon his purchased works by Matisse, Cézanne, Picasso and others would become invaluable as the art world caught up with him; it would be the source of envy of Philadelphia’s art museum and bitter scorn from Barnes’ political enemies. And the film is never better than in its first half, as it illustrates the battles Dr. Barnes fought to keep his collection intact – he drew up a will which seemed flawless in its foresight and rigidity. The museum would not be moved, the collection would remain together, the paintings would not leave the walls, and the primary function of the Barnes Foundation would be as a school. How this will was slowly undermined and then completely undone is the subject of the second half of the film. In recent years, the Barnes Foundation has fallen back under the sway of Philadelphia, and key players, including Governor Ed Rendell, found a way to undermine the Foundation’s core principles so that it could be appropriated to become, as one interview subject puts it, a “McBarnes.” The politics so carefully dissected in this half of the film are fascinating to a point – it’s like a how-to guide for using power, influence, and money to get what you want no matter what the obstacle - but ultimately are either maddening or just dispiriting. That’s the point, naturally. The Art of the Steal is an Argument Film, a polemic that’s been the fashion of the documentary for the last ten years or so, with a score that pushes all your buttons, sometimes with head-smacking obviousness (keep an ear out for the electric guitar anytime someone’s up to no good); it’s a film about great art that can be accused of being quite inartful. Much of the last portion of the film is spent hanging out with protesters wielding angry wooden signs. This film can sometimes be just another one of those screaming signs. But on the other hand, I can’t help but admire the cause behind the transparent manipulation; this is an Argument Film making a very strong case for something which is actually quite subtle, or - well, not easily comprehended by moneymen and power brokers. Art resists commodification. What Dr. Barnes did with his Foundation was to create, essentially, a new work of art, one that could only be appreciated the way he intended it, in the building that had been constructed by his design, with his original displays, in Merion, PA. It was a school because in the presence of the art you were to be the student. This is why Matisse called the Barnes Foundation the only “sane” way to appreciate art in America. The artist’s stamp is important, because he recognized the institute as a work of art in itself. You cannot, for example, pack up Taliesin or Fallingwater and relocate it inside the walls of a museum – that would betray the essence of Frank Lloyd Wright’s intentions. The “new” Barnes building being constructed, currently, in downtown Philadelphia, is glimpsed only by its outdoor “under construction” facade, with paintings of representative artwork slapped on in pale representation - paintings of paintings, essentially. And there, as the final irony: a painting of a portrait of Dr. Barnes. They needn’t have gained his approval – he’s dead, after all. They only needed to steal his image for their own wallpaper.
The Prisoner (II)
Apr 12th
I feel unqualified to write about AMC’s recent miniseries/remake The Prisoner, now that I’ve finally watched it the whole opus on DVD.
And I’m surprised that I feel so very unqualified. It’s not that I’m unfamiliar with the 1967 original, starring Patrick McGoohan. Good God, I wrote an agonizingly-geeky essay on the perfect Prisoner episode order, which you can read here. I’ve seen those episodes dozens of times. Scrutinized them endlessly. Applied the ideas and philosophies espoused in the original series to everyday life, almost unconsciously, since I was a teenager. Hell, I even wrote a piece of fan fiction published by the now-defunct Prisoner fan club Once Upon a Time. I know my Prisoner.
But the chief deficit in my appreciation for the new miniseries is that I have never watched a single episode of Lost.
I just never cared. Gilligan’s Island meets the X-Files, I thought, and I gave it a pass when it first premiered; then, when I heard it was terrific, I just never caught up with it. (I’ve never watched The Wire, either. I have a long To-Do List when it comes to modern television.) I stood by the sidelines while people got tired of it, and waited still when they got excited about it again. It will be off the air soon, and I’ll still be doing other things, namely catching up on some of the great books I haven’t yet read or some of the great movies I haven’t yet watched – maybe, someday, I’ll catch up with Lost. Until then, I can safely say I’ve watched its rip-off.
Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner concerned an ex-spy (McGoohan) confined against his will to a green and sunny seaside resort known only as The Village, where everyone has been assigned a number (he is No.6); across its seventeen episodes he struggles to escape, and fights off attempts from his warden, No. 2, to break his will. He’s hounded by a giant white orb named Rover; he battles against his own doppelganger; he uncovers one plot after another while hatching some of his own; and ultimately he comes to a psychedelic showdown with his captors, set to tunes like ”All You Need is Love” and “Dry Bones.” It was a counter-culture classic, many things to many people: an action show, a conspiracy thriller, a psychological mindbender, a political satire, even experimental theater with traces of Beckett and Ionesco. It was, in a word, indescribable. I finished watching the new Prisoner, written by Bill Gallagher and starring James Caviezel and Ian McKellan, some days ago, but it was only today, reading an online review, that the remake finally snapped into focus. Of course. It’s Lost. That’s all it is. Why fret about it? It’s just Lost.
But you haven’t seen Lost. I know. That’s why I couldn’t quite put my finger on it until another online reviewer told me it was so. And I was illuminated. Certainly, I detected throughout the series cliches of the modern “serious” genre drama, a little Battlestar Galactica, a little HBO this or Showtime that. Patton Oswalt has argued that we are in a new golden age of television, and I don’t necessarily disagree with him, although I think that you can still trace how one program has influenced the next, and the cliches have begun to emerge. I love Parks & Recreation, for example, but every time lovely Aubrey Plaza sneaks a glance at the camera I think of how Officey it is, and even The Office (Carrell) took it from The Office (Gervais). How many one-hour dramas have you watched which end on a musical montage? I believe this dates back to the excellent Homicide, which made regular use of it. Bill Gallagher’s The Prisoner bears not the mark of McGoohan but of all the hit one-hour-drama TV shows of the last couple years – I am sure most prominently of Lost, but I will leave it to that other guy, and to you, to confirm for me. So what’s withered and gone? The compelling, enigmatic, and engaging qualities of the original; the stew of philosophy, witty dialogue, Big Ideas, and good storytelling sense. Quite simply, the impact. A few hours after Bill Gallagher’s Prisoner was done, and I was done with it: done thinking about it, done worrying over it, just done and quit.
So I apologize but I really am underqualified to write about the new Prisoner, because I have never seen Lost, but I can note the following 6 impressions:
1) Just because Ian McKellan is in it does not mean that it’s good. Further, just because Ian McKellan can act very well does not mean that he’s doing so whenever you’re looking at him. And speaking of No.2, I don’t care about his family, not his drugged wife nor his closeted child. I don’t care. These feel like additions made after a writing workshop. (”You know what? I need to care more about No.2. What does No.2 care about? Does he have a family? Now that would be interesting.”) I miss the mute dwarf manservant. That didn’t feel workshopped to me; it felt inspired. I mean, you remember him, don’t you? That’s the point.
2) In this new version, everyone in The Village has never heard of the outside world. These Villagers believe that all life begins and ends in The Village. This is laboriously explained: they even think every invention, and all philosophical thought, originated by someone living in The Village. Precious time is wasted reiterating this, which is unintentionally funny; but it actually deeply betrays McGoohan’s vision: one of the central points of the original is that the Villagers theoretically could but don’t want to escape. They–or most of them, anyway–are complacent. McGoohan’s show was a call for consciousness, a call for waking. In Gallagher’s version, you can’t blame the Villagers because apparently they’re not aware there’s anything beyond the Village. Further, it reduces the scenario from a striking, wide-reaching metaphor to an overused science fiction cliche: it feels like yet another story about an isolated city/lost civilization and nothing more. Yes, there is more, as episode 6 reveals in its big “twist,” which I’ll gripe about last.
3) I like Brian Wilson’s SMILE album too, but maybe it wasn’t such a clever choice to include one song from the album in almost every episode. Especially when the songs are applied in such a random and downright amateurish manner. The songs don’t offer any alternate meaning, for the most part: they just queue up, like someone accidentally tripped on the CD player. (Although I did like the use of “Heroes & Villains.”)
4) James Caviezel is no Patrick McGoohan. I know, that’s unfair, but part of what makes McGoohan’s Prisoner such addictive viewing is McGoohan himself. His performances are electric; he is a joy to watch. The most I can say about Caviezel is that he remains inscrutable and unpredictable throughout, but it strikes one as an inconsistent performance (and weak writing) rather than a commitment to maintaining the enigmatic quality of McGoohan’s No.6. Further, you simply do not crave to see more of him, and you don’t care about his plight. For the show, this is crippling.
5) No one ever tries to break No.6. The plots that they do hatch are not apparently intended to break No.6 (no one is interested in why he resigned)…I’m not sure what the plots are intended to accomplish, actually. One plot (in an episode, “Darling,” which is the only one I actually kinda sorta enjoyed) seems mainly intended to get No.6 laid, which doesn’t seem so evil.
6) Nobody needed a concrete explanation for what The Village is. Nobody. The explanation, which is the climax to the series, longs to be thought-provoking, but isn’t. In fact, it is such an insipid attempt to blow your mind that the exact opposite happens: the idea vanishes from your mind almost minutes after you’ve been exposed to it. A dud. Do you want to know why? It’s because it’s a last-minute attempt to introduce a loaded concept which the series as a whole has very little interest in exploring. Therefore, once you learn it, you are not compelled to reassess everything you’ve seen. You make a disgusted, rather phlegmy noise and then turn off the TV. Nobody likes a lame twist ending (ask M. Night Shyamalan – or did he write this show under a pseudonym?). And speaking of quasi-profound pretentiousness, this series’ remake of the brilliant “Schizoid Man” somehow managed to completely botch an unbotchable concept.
Oh, you know, I can’t limit myself to only six criticisms, but I must. I’m starting to get angry again, and this show isn’t worth the anger.
Maybe I’ll bump Lost up in my Netflix queue instead.
2010 Wisconsin Film Festival This Week
Apr 11th
The 2010 Wisconsin Film Festival begins this week Wednesday, running through Sunday at various venues across Madison, Wisconsin. My annual tradition is to blog the festival, and I’ll be doing so again right here. Here’s my lineup:
Wednesday:
The Art of the Steal
Thursday:
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg & the Pentagon Papers
Friday:
The Thorn in the Heart (the new Michel Gondry film)
The Exploding Girl
The Bug & the Fox [The Tale of the Fox/The Bug Trainer]
It Came from Kuchar
Saturday:
Waking Sleeping Beauty
A Town Called Panic
Shameless
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Sunday:
The Magic Sword (with Bert I. Gordon in attendance!)
Paddle to Seattle: Journey Through the Inside Passage
Terribly Happy
Mother