Category: Film Reviews

Going to the Movies in Bangalore: “Elysium,” Snowden, Manning and Assange

Elysium

“Elysium,” the film starring Matt Damon and Jody Foster showed up in India this past weekend. My wife, Peggy, and I happened to be in Bangalore to celebrate her birthday. So we went to see the film – our first time at the movies since arriving in India about three weeks ago. (We intend to stay here another three months as Peggy’s Fulbright at Mysore University takes its course.)

“Elysium” has been panned by some as convoluted in plot, over-the-top in its acting, and filled with typically Hollywood violence as indestructible and robotic adversaries clash in hackneyed, interminable and highly unlikely fight scenes.

I however found “Elysium” strangely intriguing when viewed from our setting in India and in the context of our government’s furor over information leaks. From that perspective, “Elysium” was evocative of the Bhagavad Gita in pitting its protagonist against overwhelming odds in a fight to the finish for human liberation.

More specifically, “Elysium” played out in comic book fashion the battle of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and other information “criminals” against the overpowering state apparatus of a militarized, out-of-control and venal federal government.

To begin with, take the film’s setting – Los Angeles in 2054. The streets of Bangalore were a good prep for the film. Like L.A. in the film, they are polluted, over-crowded, and dirty. However, unlike the imagined L.A. of the future, Bangalore finds itself going in two directions at once, not simply downhill.

Bangalore is situated somewhere between decay and an undisciplined version of globalized commercialization. It features “branded stores” like The Gap, Nike, KFC, Pizza Hut, and Dominos alongside stalls and shops overflowing with goods of all description. The treatment of workers on this sub-continent (as exemplified in the recent factory collapse in Bangladesh), is not unlike workers take-it-or-leave-it dilemma in the film.

Then consider the film’s plot. It’s about Max, a factory employee (played by Matt Damon) who is injured on the job as he’s exposed to a fatal dose of radiation. With five days to live, he must find his way to “Elysium,” a human-fabricated planet floating above the earth. There the rich live in idyllic conditions, where life-saving medical care is readily available. “Elysium’s” story is about Max’s quest to reach for that star. Damon does so by stealing government secrets.

Meanwhile the government responds with extreme violence. It pursues Max in ways reminiscent of the U.S. pursuit of Snowden, Manning and Assange. Its security apparatus hunts him down relentlessly. He is pursued by an implacable, incredibly powerful mercenary agency. He is threatened by drones. Finally, he sacrifices his life so that the information he divulged might set others free.

All of this happens in an oppressive culture characterized by:

• Dominance of the military-industrial complex that completely subordinates politicians to business moguls.
• A high unemployment rate that makes it a privilege for workers to be exploited in the workplace as opposed to remaining jobless.
• A medical system that provides healthcare only to those who can pay for it.
• Total surveillance of everyone involved.
• Fail-safe border patrol that entirely eliminates refugees by killing those attempting to cross borders illegally.
• A highly brutal police force that acts with robot brutality, absolute lack of compassion, and over-all impunity.
• The use of drones to hunt down and eliminate dissenters.
• Women (personified in the Jodie Foster secretary of defense) who despite finally holding high office prove to be more heartless than their male counterparts.

So in the end, “Elysium” is about the fate of a low-level corporate employee like Edward Snowden. The secrets Max reveals show the Department of Defense violating Elysium’s own constitution that supposedly governs a highly polarized society and keeps the reins of power in the hands of a rich minority. While protecting and empowering the minority, the rules in place deprive the majority of the rights of citizenship.

The disclosure of the planet’s governing secrets not only exposes abuse of power, but ends up dethroning the elite, while enabling ordinary people to claim the rights that belong to them in virtue of their humanity. “Elysium” is about information as the key to revolution.

Very little of this is perceived by movie critics. A movie review in The Indian Times saw “Elysium” as just another Hollywood action flick. Without explanation, it remarked that “conspiracy theorists” might find it interesting, and that the film said something about immigration and health care.

I’m suggesting that “Elysium” says much more than that. It perfectly describes the direction in which our culture is traveling. It represents a story of hope. It’s about the triumph of the working class against overwhelming odds. “Elysium” is about the power of information and the heroism of people like Snowden, Manning, and Assange. As a cautionary tale, the film is a call to support whistle-blowers against our own corrupt “leadership.”

Too bad all that de rigueur Hollywood overlay of violence, chases and predictability obscures “Elysium’s” valuable message.

“Lincoln:” A first rate second rate film

affiche-lincoln-spielberg

My wife and I went to see Stephen Spielberg’s “Lincoln” last night. Both of us came away disappointed and surprised to discover that the film had received multiple Golden Globe nominations.

As a successful exercise in hagiography, Daniel Day-Lewis’ portrayal of a saintly Abraham Lincoln was well done. In those whitewashed terms, Lewis convincingly embodied a simple, straight-forward, wise man obsessed not with image or popularity, but with the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Lewis’ Lincoln was witty, self-deprecatory, an eloquent homespun speaker, and a charming raconteur.  Above all he was a single-minded abolitionist. In fact, apart from their vastly differing charm quotients, there was little to separate President Lincoln from his ally, the caustic and belligerent Thaddeus Stevens (overplayed by Tommy Lee Jones) – the abolitionist chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

But as many have observed, Abraham Lincoln was also a racist who openly thought of whites as intrinsically superior to African Americans. Howard Zinn points out that candidate Lincoln was anti-slavery when speaking in the North. He was white supremacist campaigning in the South. In the end he advocated sending former slaves back to Africa. As he said repeatedly, his main purpose as president was not to free the slaves or to pass the 13th Amendment, but to preserve the union even if that meant keeping blacks enslaved forever. Moreover, it’s impossible to distance Lincoln from the wholesale slaughter of the Civil War and its scorched earth campaigns. Even according to Spielberg’s portrait of St. Abraham, Lincoln was willing to sacrifice untold numbers of other people’s sons to his “noble cause;” but he was stubborn in refusing to offer up his own. Abolitionist Wendell Phillips put it well when he described Lincoln as “a first rate second-rate man.”

Similarly, because of the Day-Lewis performance and its unflinching depiction of the absolute slaughter of the War between the States, Spielberg’s film might well be described as a first-rate second-rate movie. It is second-rate because it leaves us with an eighth grade understanding of its subject. It fails to deepen our grasp not only of the complexities of the man Lincoln, but also those of his historical context and the important working class struggle that was represented by the United States’ Civil War. As a result, we’re left with “feel-good” images of elderly white Republicans embracing and singing “Union Forever” because the cause of freedom and equality for all has been advanced by Constitutional amendment.

In reality, the purpose of the newly formed Republican Party was not to free blacks [who remain(ed) largely despised by whites] but to advance the cause of 19th century industrialists, railroaders, and mining interests.  Those exclusively white cabals were part of the struggle between old money and new that had reached its apex in Europe during the revolutionary year of 1848. Across the European world, the old money interests were the land owning agriculturalists that had ruled since the onset of the middle ages. The “new money” people were the products of the Industrial Revolution. In their eyes, it was their turn to call the shots, and they were willing to go to the mat with their rivals, whatever the consequences or cost in working class corpses.

In terms of such ferment, the Civil War represented the mid- 19th century struggle in Europe “crossing the pond.” The Civil War was really about land and gold. Specifically, it was about what to do with the vast acreage recently stolen from Mexico in the war of 1846. It was about who would own and transport all that gold discovered in Old Mexico in 1849. Would that territory be used for plantations worked by slaves? Or would it be used for industry, mining, and railroads? Northern industrialists were determined to use the territory for their own profit. So they sought abolition of slavery in the New West. Republicans like Lincoln also passed legislation subsidizing railroaders as they colonized the land for purposes of moving eastward the spoils of the Mexican War. That form of abolition and subsidy was what precipitated the South’s secession from the Union.

So the Civil War really wasn’t primarily about slavery, but about land and hegemony. Nonetheless, slavery was deeply part of the struggle.  Eliminating that “peculiar institution” played a major role in weakening the competitive advantage the old money had. Abolition would also create a mobile labor force providing a surplus of workers to fill job openings and suppress wages in northern factories. The exigencies of emerging industrial capitalism had made it clear that slaves were more expensive to maintain than wage labor. Hence northern joy at the passage of Amendment 13.

Similarly slave rebellions were co-opted by the new captains of industry. Thus insurgent slaves represented a working class contribution to the mid-nineteenth century changing of the hegemonic guard in the United States. Slave interests melded with those of the industrialists opposing the old aristocracy based on plantations and forced labor. In a sense, in fighting for the North, slaves were going from the fire into the frying pan – from a more egregious form of servitude into a softer form of bondage.

None of this historical context is even hinted at in the Spielberg film. As a result, viewers are left no more enlightened about history or the causes of current struggles than they were before their 150 minute investment. Instead Spielberg perpetuates the myth that significant change comes from the top. He shows us the familiar and misleading portrait of U.S. leaders primarily responding to ideals of freedom and equality and the needs of “the people” rather than to those of the moneyed classes who use “the people” as cannon fodder to advance their venal concerns.

Certainly there were idealistic abolitionists like Thaddeus Stevens. But Abraham Lincoln was not one of them. He was more complex, ruthless and beholden to his patrons than Spielberg allows. Had the director portrayed that Lincoln, had he not erased class differences and conflicts from his portrait, his film would have been first-rate indeed.

“The Book of Mormon” or “F_ _K You, God!”

Thanksgiving week, my daughter and son-in-law took us to see “The Book of Mormon” in New York City. When first I heard of the plan last summer, I wasn’t enthusiastic. A musical comedy about Mormons? Why would we want to see that? Then I heard that the book, music and lyrics were written by Trey Parker, and Matt Stone (of South Park fame) along with Robert Lopez, a co-creator of Cable TV’s Avenue Q. That irreverent trio gave me hope. So our family started listening to the soundtrack on CD. The music turned out to be catchy, clever, memorable, and poignant. It left us all humming – and laughing. The story was funny and moving as well, but somehow still respectful and even reverent. After seeing the play, I realized that “The Book of Mormon” also communicates an insightful understanding of Christianity and its development.  Even more importantly, it highlights Mormonism’s mythology that reminds playgoers of truths that can indeed change lives – as Mormons claim.

The “Book of Mormon’s” story centers on two young “elders,” Kevin Price and Arnold Cunningham. All of us have met these over-sincere 19 year olds, dressed in black trousers, white short-sleeved shirts and black ties. They knock on our front doors regularly. Kevin is the all-American boy – handsome, energetic, supremely self-confident – and self-centered. Meanwhile, Arnold is dumpy bespeckled and totally admiring of his companion. The two young missionaries been assigned to Uganda. Neither one of them knows where that country is located or even that it’s in Africa. When they realize that their destination is ‘the dark continent,” their minds are filled with “Lion King” images complete with its “Hakuna Matata” problem-free philosophy – “no worries for the rest of your days.”

Instead Price and Cunningham find a completely problem-filled culture. They’re told there are war, poverty, and famine. There’s drought; eighty percent of the people have AIDS; and young girls are forced to get circumcised. In the meantime, Ugandan men are busy raping virgins and even babies on the belief that such intercourse will cure their AIDS. The people’s response? Far from “Hakuna Matata,” it’s “Hasa Diga Eebowai” – “F_ _ k you, God!”

The All-American, Elder Price, is turned off by such blasphemy and by the resistance of Ugandans to Mormonism. Soon he’s checked out for the more comfortable make-believe of Orlando’s Disneyworld,  Meanwhile, Arnold Cunningham is engaged by Uganda’s problems, and finds himself using his empathy and imagination to adapt Mormonism the problem of female circumcision.

Lo and behold, he claims to discover that Joseph Smith actually did address the problem of clitorectemy. All this brings him close to the lovely Nabulungi, whom he initiates into the Latter Day Saints’ community. She and Arnold’s double entendre duet, “Baptize Me,” turns out to be a wonderfully moving love song.

The musical ends with Ugandans being converted to the faith of Latter Day Saints – but to a version that’s fully adapted to their reality. Their concluding number, “Hello” reprises the play’s opening song, but this time in Ugandan form meaningful to an exploited and poor people who long to be freed from war.  Besides this, Arnold Cunningham has become a key figure for the converts on a par with Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.

The Arnold Cunningham story is really the reversal of Christianity’s story and its development over the centuries.  In effect, the historical Jesus was a Ugandan – poor, oppressed, a “marginal Jew” on the edge of empire, out of sight, out of mind to the world’s movers and shakers. Then empire and its hangers-on elevated him to the status of “the Christ.”  He became Europeanized addressing concerns he never centralized – like the after-life’s heaven and hell. Finally, he was Americanized as the champion of the U.S. version of a “City on a Hill.” Only with the advent of liberation theology and the Jesus Seminar was the historical Jesus rescued and rediscovered in his identity as empire’s victim, not its champion. That in itself is a fascinating story – too long to pursue here.

Here though it is appropriate to celebrate the insights preserved in the mythology of Mormonism that “The Book of Mormon” centralizes.  It’s actually a beautiful myth – the story of a man with the most ordinary name possible, Joe Smith – obviously an “everyman.” This average Joe finds riches right in his backyard – gold out there under a tree. It’s like the rabbinic tale of the prayer-shawled pious Jew walking the floor of his tiny cabin praying for riches, while beneath the path he’s tracing on his floor lies a strong box filled with treasure.

Actually, Joe Smith finds a great deal more than gold. For right in his own backyard he discovers that a revelation from God has been written on the golden tablets he finds. The revelation tells how Jesus Christ, the very Son of God, belongs to every culture – even to a late comer like the United States. Jesus actually came to America, Joe finds out.  All life began here. Paradise was actually in Missouri somewhere.

What could be more meaningful (and true) than that? Treasure in your backyard; revelation close to home; your own land as the center of the earth and history? Like so many myths, it’s all true, even if none of it actually happened.

“The Book of Mormon” is well worth seeing – and thinking about. Taken seriously, its story which “blasphemously” rejects a God responsible for life’s tragedies can really change your life.

Movie Review: “Cloud Atlas” (A film for the ages but perhaps not for ours)

A couple of friends and I saw the film “Cloud Atlas” last week. It was a wild ride to say the least. The movie was visually spectacular – Academy Award quality indeed. Though its storyline was at times difficult to follow, its message about revolutionary resistance and liberating reincarnation was beautiful and inspiring. It made me think about the worth of self-sacrifice and about what happens after death.

Featuring actors like Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, Hugh Grant, and other well-known stars, “Cloud Atlas” chronicles the six lives of the Hanks and Berry characters over a period of roughly five hundred years.

The action takes place in the South Pacific of 1849, England of 1936, San Francisco of 1973, the United Kingdom of 2012, Neo Seoul (South Korea) of 2144, and the Hawaiian Islands of 2321. Over the course of the epic’s nearly three hours, six separate apparently unconnected stories are told. The first tells of Adam Ewing, a lawyer who converts from his father’s slaving business to abolitionism because a Maori slave responds heroically to Ewing’s own act of kindness. That tale is followed by Robert Forbisher’s, a bi-sexual musical genius, who commits suicide after accidentally murdering a mentor who attempts to steal Forbisher’s musical masterpiece, “the Cloud Atlas Sextet.” The story helps viewers appreciate a love story between two men in a culture hostile to relationships like theirs. The third narrative introduces us to the journalist, Luisa Rey, who fights to expose big oil companies intending to stage a nuclear accident for the benefit of the oil companies themselves. Rey’s fate turns out to be reminiscent of Karen Silkwood’s. Then there’s the account of Timothy Cavendish who at age 65 is imprisoned in a nursing home by a vengeful brother. Cavendish triumphs over the nursing home’s ageism by executing a successful escape along with three other patients.  “Cloud Atlas’” fifth episode takes us to Neo-Seoul where a clone named Sonmi-451 joins the Resistance to take down an all-controlling multinational fast food giant which, she discovers, is turning “fabricants” like her into food. Finally, “Cloud Atlas” tells of Zachary whose tribe lives in a post-civilization wilderness after modernity has been destroyed by global warming.

Though each of these stories at first seems unrelated to the others, the Hanks and Berry characters bring them all together – but not without some work on the part of the viewers. Hank’s post-apocalyptic Zachary is the film’s unifying narrator. He begins and ends “Cloud Atlas” telling its stories to his wide-eyed grandchildren around a fire on the Cloud Atlas planet itself. In the starry distance, he points out a faint blue dot – the destroyed Planet Earth where he used to live. “Grand-P’s” stories assert the connection of everything and about how acts of kindness or cruelty influence not just the reincarnated selves of the agents, but the entire planet and all of its inhabitants.

More specifically, the film is about ordinary people sacrificing themselves in the face of overwhelming odds. The rebellious heroes include a slave, that bi-sexual man in prudish England, a power plant whistleblower, a crusading reporter, a rebellious clone, and a man facing his own internal guilt and fears following a haunting act of cowardice. All are pitted against systemic abuse caused by slavery, homophobia, big oil, ageism, the fast food industry and the devil himself. Against such forces, each act of sacrifice is infinitesimally small – a mere drop in the ocean, as one of the films characters puts it disdainfully. Nonetheless, as another character replies, the ocean itself is made up of innumerable drops. Each human has a small part to play, but the final effect can have the force of a tsunami. That’s the revolutionary message of “Cloud Atlas.”

What the film says about reincarnation is equally thought provoking. What happens to us after death? The movie’s response: We pass through an open door moving from one room to another, from one time, from one place to others. And we carry our karma with us. What we sow, we reap.

In the meantime all of us are one. “Cloud Atlas” conveys this idea by having all of its actors play wildly different characters. In one epoch we’re born as men, in another as women; we are heterosexual and homosexual; we are black and white, Asian and European; we are clones; we are primitives and technological wizards; we are heroic; we are knaves. In hating others belonging to any of those categories, we hate ourselves. Our loathing will come back to haunt us shaping both our destinies and that of our planet.

Some reviewers have found offensive the film’s insistence on having each actor play multiple roles. Why, they ask, did the film’s directors cast westerners as Asians with unconvincing make-up chiefly having to do with eyes? Couldn’t the casting directors easily have found suitable actors from Korea or China?

Though reflecting an admirable concern for inclusion and equal opportunity, the question misses one of the film’s major points about reincarnation and karma. Differences in each incarnation, “Cloud Atlas” implies, are superficial like badly applied makeup. After all, body appearances really are only cosmetic.  Underneath it all is our true essence, our real Self which is the same in every instance.  Therefore we must be careful about whom we despise because we may well come back as those very people.

And so it is that Tom Hanks appears as a malpracticing doctor, a hotel manager, a nuclear power plant employee, a thuggish novelist, as an actor, and as a member of a survivalist tribe after the apocalypse. In each case, viewers can recognize the Tom Hanks we know and love underneath the cosmetics, no matter how heavily or skillfully applied.

Our recognition of Tom Hanks in every instance gestures towards the film’s (dare I say it?) spiritual question.  What is it that enables us to say that each character is Tom Hanks?  Or put more generally, if reincarnation is a reality, how can we say that the same person appears across eons of time? If I was a woman, but now am a man and don’t even remember having been a woman, how can I really be described as “reincarnated?” In what sense does the reincarnation represent a continuation of me?

Buddhists and others, of course, have a ready answer to such questions. However this is not the place to address them. But in provoking the question, “Cloud Atlas” will create suitable places for doing so across coffee tables, in classrooms, and in those quiet moments when each of us considers our final destiny.

As OpEdNews’ Rob Kall has indicated, “Cloud Atlas” is a movie for revolutionaries – perhaps the best since “Avatar.” Like “Avatar,” I also see it as a deeply spiritual film. But don’t expect your right wing brother-in-law to like it, or that it will get favorable reviews in the corporate media.

This is a film for the ages – but maybe not for ours.