Four Films Worth Mentioning

On a recent flight back to the US from Albion I watched four (count 'em - FOUR!) films. All were fairly decent, and worthy of a mention. If they have anything in common, it was that all four did something slightly different than expected.


I expected District 9 to be a standard aliens v. humans film (ala Independence Day), with standard battle scenes and some political overtones relating to apartheid and private military contractors. Instead, it is much more of a drama, centered on a small number of characters. There are some fun action moments, but that is hardly what the film is about.


Sticking with aliens, I next watched Battle Los Angeles. Small, intimate stories must be in: this movie followed a single small unit of Marines through the battle. Although there were occasional allusions to the larger conflict, really all we as viewers care about is the fate of roughly a dozen men and women. Humanity as a whole is not really a factor. The other surprising thing here was that when there were not aliens in the frame, much of this looked like a war about Iraq today. In that sense it is much more of a war movie, and less of what you might traditionally think of as sci fi. (Oh, yes, the aliens also have crew-served weapons.)


Aakrosh (2010, not to be confused with the 1980 and 1998 films of the same title) is a fairly standard story: two cops from the central government visit a small town where the locals are kept in the thrall of corrupt leaders due to fear and ignorance. Outsider cops have to win the trust of locals and solve the murder mystery before all the witnesses end up dead. The unusual thing here is that it is set in India, and most of the film is in Hindi. (Yes, there are also a couple musical numbers - could it be Bollywood without them? - but they're integrated fairly well.) In fact, I learned afterward that the film is a scene-by-scene recreation of Mississippi Burning.


I finished the flight with The Adjustment Bureau. If you are expecting Dark City or The Matrix, you are likely to be disappointed. The plot is simply too predictable, the weirdness not nearly compelling enough. Curiously, if all you ask for is a romantic drama with a few moments of comedy, and you don't mind a strange sci-fi type resolution, it works considerably better.

I doubt any of these films will go down in the annals of cinematic history as canonical works. If you never saw them you'd do all right. But all four have points of interest in terms of genre and expectations and what they do (or don't do) with that.

Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor

Being in Britain for Independence Day is slightly odd. If all goes according to plan, my wife and I today will travel from Ipswich, visit the site of Sutton Hoo and then make our way back to London, hopefully arriving in time for a drink in the local pub. There will, however, be no fireworks. I doubt anyone will be singing "The Angry American Song", or even "The Star-Spangled Banner". Indeed, to do so might be a little offensive to our hosts. (After all, the third verse of the National Anthem does refer to the British as "hireling[s] and slave[s]" who "so vauntingly swore" but whose "blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution." Ouch!)

Nevertheless, though I may be an Anglophile (as any reader of this blog could fast discern), and one currently in Britain, today is a day for remembering when the British were in the wrong, denying British subjects their due rights. But the full splendor of Independence Day is not simply the winning by Americans of their due rights as subjects. Nor is it simply a commemoration of the blood, sweat, toil and tears which Americans shed to secure those rights. (Yes, I stole that line from Sir Winston. No, he would not mind. Yes, I'm happy to let him have it back on any other day.) What American Independence Day truly is - or ought to be - about are universal rights. That was the great insight of the American Founders: that their cause, though just within the terms of the British legal tradition, was ultimately about natural rights, rights given by God.

This year I have omitted the list of grievances, fun though the repetition of "He has..." may be. But here is the rest of the Declartion's text. Give it a moment's consideration:

* * *

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident:

That all men are created equal,

That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,

That among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,

That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world....

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare,

That these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states;

That they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and

That all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and

That as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.

And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.


Today's image is John Trumbull's Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown.

Happy Independence Day!

Though a participant in the revolutions of 1848 (about which I have my qualms), Carl Schurz strikes me as the embodiment of much that is great about America: An immigrant from Germany, Schurz settled in Wisconsin where he was admitted to the bar, lending his services to the anti-slavery movement. He joined the Republican Party, supported Abraham Lincoln, and led the Wisconsin delegation to the 1860 Republican National Convention. He served as Lincoln's ambassador to Spain and then as a general in the Union Army, commanding troops at Gettysburg, among other battles. After the war he became editor of the Detroit Post, before moving to St. Louis and the Westliche Post (Western Post). In 1869 he was elected to the US Senate, the first German-American in the chamber. He served as Secretary of the Interior in the Hayes administration, working hard to reform the Indian Office. After leaving the cabinet he moved to New York and resumed his newspaper work. He died in 1906.

In 1859, Schurz explained the nature of freedom to an audience in Massachusetts:

When the rights of one cannot be infringed without finding a ready defense in all others who defend their own rights in defending his, then and only then are the rights of all safe against the usurpations of governmental authority....

That there are slaves is bad, but almost worse is it that there are masters. Are not the masters freemen? No, sir! Where is their liberty of the press? Where is their liberty of speech? Where is the man among them who dares to advocate openly principles not in strict accordance with the ruling system? They speak of a republican form of government, they speak of democracy; but the despotic spirit of slavery and mastership combined pervades their whole political life like a liquid poison. They do not dare to be free lest the spirit of liberty become contagious. The system of slavery has enslaved them all, master as well as slave. What is the cause of all this? It is that you cannot deny one class of society the full measure of their natural rights without imposing restraints upon your own liberty. If you want to be free, there is but one way--it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other.

Forty years later in Chicago he gave an exposition on patriotism:

I confidently trust that the American people will prove themselves... too wise not to detect the false pride or the dangerous ambitions or the selfish schemes which so often hide themselves under that deceptive cry of mock patriotism: "Our country, right or wrong!" They will not fail to recognize that our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: "Our country—when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right."

Today I tip my hat to our Founding Fathers, Charles Schurz and all the men and women who have made the United States of America the great place it is.

Happy Independence Day!

In years past I have been known to post the full text of the Declaration of Independence, on account of how so few actually read it these days. This year, I thought I would instead provide the audio. The good people at NPR have put together a reading, utilizing voices both old and new (along with the full text of the Declaration). Give it a listen! There are passages in there you have probably forgotten...