I would strongly recommend you simply click on the link above and read his comments, titled "The Revisionist Imperative: Rethinking Twentieth Century Wars." They are well worth the time. But for the sake of the discussion here, let me give the very brief summary: Bacevich argues that the US drew the wrong lessons from the 20th century because we look at the wrong bit of history. We focus major attention on the Second World War, and conclude that massive applications of American military power can defeat tyranny and restore justice. While Bacevich quibbles somewhat with this interpretation of World War II, his larger argument is that we forget lots of history which teaches different lessons.
I'd like to suggest that greater knowledge of the period prior to America's entry into the war might lend lessons which better suit the present day. America had only a limited presence in the wider world, much of it characterized by businessmen, journalists, and diplomats. Our power was far short of omnipotent. What could we do in Manchuria or Sudetenland? Very little.
This situation is well attested in that most popular of media: Hollywood. Think of Rick in Casablancaor, more recently, Mr. Jackson in The White Countess. From watching films such as these - rather than The Sands of Iwo Jima or the like - one learns that Americans are in constant danger of being overwhelmed by the complexity of foreign locales and the pace of events that happen there. Our American protagonists are not powerless to effect change, but their power is considerably circumscribed by events beyond their control. Moreover, men like Rick and Mr. Jackson bring about change only rarely through the power of the gun; more often their American dollars or their intimate knowledge of local cultures and politics carried the day.
A foreign policy based on this set of historical memories - rather than on the Second World War - would not simply retreat from the world, but would choose its battles wisely. It would not abolish the use of military force, but rather than seeking to build fleets of aircraft, it would focus on diplomacy, intelligence, and the application of soft power, particularly through NGOs and businesses. It strikes me as precisely the kind of foreign policy the present age demands.
In any event, if you're interested in reconnecting with the Grimm brothers, the FT has a story on Germany's Fairy Tale Road, through their old stomping grounds.
The other evening my wife and I watched Triumph of the Will, a film some of my history students will be watching. This piece of Nazi propaganda depicts the 1934 Parteitag, an annual week-long festival for the National Socialists at Nuremberg. There are a number of directions in which to take a discussion of this film. I will point out to my students, for example, the chilling fact that the Night of the Long Knives had happened only two months before the rally, at which Hitler tried to persuade members of the SA and SS - the latter of which he used to murder the leaders of the former - that there were no disagreements within the Nazi Party.
But the film also reminded me of contemporary US politics. No, I do not think Barack Obama is the next Hitler or that Mitt Romney is going to establish a totalitarian Mormon state. Allow me to explain...
Triumph of the Will is, in many ways, a very appealing film. There is some great cinematography, lots of pomp and spectacle, and thousands of nifty uniforms. The film - and the party it idolizes - denounces class conflict and Communist revolution, instead calling for national unity and cooperation. On a practical level, the Nazis highlight the jobs they have created and the roads they have built; on a higher plane, the Nazis utilize religious-style symbolism and Hitler calls upon a generation of young Germans to commit themselves in sacrifice for an ideal larger than themselves.
All of this, in the narrow terms I have described it, is quite good. The problem is that the casual observer might not think further - indeed, the Nazis hoped they would not. Because behind the pageantry and the soaring rhetoric are empty lies at best and utter wickedness at worst.
Why all the militant uniforms and talk of "victory" when Germany is not at war? What is to become of those not deemed fully German? Why is Hitler identified as the embodiment of both the nation and the party? What qualities make him pre-eminently German, or who put him in charge? And to what end is all this national effort and striving? For what are Germans asked to sacrifice? The more one considers the Nazis and their program, the less it makes sense. In the end, it is nothing but the worship of Power for its own sake.
Some in Germany saw through the Nazis' propaganda, and thus Hitler was opposed by the likes of Blessed Clemens von Galen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Claus von Stauffenberg and the July 20 Conspirators, and a number of others. Some of these men recognized the bankruptcy of the Nazi ideology early on; others only came around later. Unfortunately most Germans lacked the intellectual insight or moral courage to perceive what was happening in their country and do something about it until it was too late.
Here in the US the stakes may not be quite so high, but the task is the same: we must see through the half-truths and the hollow rhetoric of those who would use our political support as pawns in their own games. We must wage intellectual resistance against the political shams of our day; we must convert, ourselves first and then others.
On 9 December John la Carre's 1974 novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy comes to the big screen in the US. I recently re-read the novel in preparation. This has got to be one of the most classic spy novels of all time.
(Those reading this post on Facebook, click here to see the trailer.)
Then on 21 December The Adventures of Tintin hits the US. If you are not familiar with these comic books by Hergé, you should be. They are beautifully drawn, with compelling plot lines, often inspired by historical events such as South America's Chaco War, the Japanese invasion of China, and the Anschluss. Sadly, the film draws on some of the non-historical strips, but it should be good fun anyway.
And finally, next spring, opening on 9 March, we have John Carter, a film adaptation of The Princess of Mars (1917), by famed pulp fiction writer Edgar Rice Burroughs (best known for creating Tarzan). I intend to read this one before watching the film.
And if that's not enough cinematic anticipation for you, don't forget that The Hobbit and the Red Dawn remake are coming in 2012, and there are rumors of a District 10.
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.
If ever someone makes a movie about the founding of Britain's Special Operations Executive, Joan Bright Astley, who was a secretary at one of SOE's precedessor agencies, should be played by Carey Mulligan. The resemblance is striking.
Around the third grade I took to writing a series of short stories set during my favorite conflict, World War II. They were all written in the first person, and although I knew that the exploits of the protagonist were not exactly my own, this form of narrative had an extra thrill for me. And thrilling these stories were. Their protagonist was a sort of super hero of the conflict, seeing action in all theaters, on land, at sea and in the air.
In one of these stories, the narrator, while flying his fighter plane, encountered a flight of Nazi aircraft. He engaged them and shot down the flight leader, who managed to bail out. As the enemy pilot bailed out, the narrator recognized him as none other than Adolf Hitler!
When I submitted this particular story to my father for his comments, he said he was nigh certain that Hitler was not a pilot, and even if he was, he would not have been flying patrols along the front. At the time I thought this a rather unnecessary fixation with historical detail. Moreover, I found this bit of information about Hitler rather disappointing: we all know he was the leader of the Nazis, a fearsome band of warmongers. So why wasn't he out front personally warmongering, like a modern-day Alexander?
When I recently saw Quintin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, I immediately recognized what he was doing. The film, about which I have written here and here, centers on a group of Jewish-Americans who operate behind enemy lines, scalping Nazis. Their plans to kill all the top Nazi leaders - who are in Paris for a film debut - merge with the efforts of the French Jew who owns the cinema in question.
Not only does the visual style of the film hearken back to an earlier age of pulp comics and movies, but the basic notion of over-the-top pseudo-history is something I think you can find in the childhoods of most little boys. Why do we dream in this kind of way? I have not yet definitively answered this question to my own liking, but I have some theories.
The kind of super pseudo-historical character I created as a child lends a certain clarity to the historical narrative. No single historical individual actually served in all theaters, fighting every enemy, engaging in every form of combat; thus, to tell the story of the war as a whole we are forced to tell the story of vast forces, of military committees and other impersonal bodies which waged this global conflict. By creating a decidedly unhistorical character, my third grade stories were able to capture the entire war in a single person's experience. The other day I was reading an essay from a collection in honor of M. R. D. Foot, which noted that Foot enjoyed writing the history of the resistance during World War II precisely because it placed the focus on individuals rather than the divisions, corps and army groups of the conventional forces. I suspect that Tarantino's unhistorical tale accomplishes something similar: we know that Hitler was the single most important element in the Axis bid for power, so why not put him in the sights? We know that the Jews were some of the most hounded victims of the Nazis - and vigorously hunted them down after the war - so why not makes Jews the Nazi's face-to-face enemy? And why not tell this story with roughly a dozen characters, to keep things neat?
I think a second reason I wrote counterfactual stories as a child was that I wanted to be able to change things. I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to have a role in the victories and reverse the defeats. But in writing historical fiction of the usual sort, characters' actions have to fit within the framework of what actually happened. They are prisoners, in a sense, of history; their actions are not allowed to change anything significant. Hitler may not have been a pilot who was shot down, nor was he ever ambushed by Jews in a Paris cinema, but these kinds of stories allow their authors, readers and viewers to partake in new outcomes, not simply reading about the defeat of evil in the past, but defeating it in new ways in the present. For a child in the third grade, the present age has rather few evils; if there are dragons to be slain, Nazis make excellent candidates. But even for adults, the evils of the modern age can be quite complicated. A story like Tarantino's may not provide detailed programs for solving modern ills, but it does provide moral clarity and the possibility that evil can be defeated again and again, in ever new ways. And that's not such a bad lesson, now is it?
On a related note, Sally Menke, Tarantino's editor on every film he has ever made, passed away the same day I happened to watch Inglourious Basterds. May she rest in peace.
I have been intrigued by Israeli films at least since seeing Time of Favor, Joseph Cedar's debut film, five or ten years ago. A string of much-acclaimed Israeli films I have not yet seen make me think some sort of movie series may be in order this fall.
Waltz with Bashir, Ari Folman's animated account of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, came out in 2008, garnering high praise for both its form and content.
Last year Samuel Moaz released Lebanon, another account of the 1982 conflict. In spite of critical acclaim, Lebanon has yet to receive widespread release, perhaps because of its controversial depiction of the war. However, it has received plaudits for a variety of reasons, including its powerful portrayal of the main character's (very limited) visual perspective.
Now Scandar Copti (a Palestinian) and Yaron Shani (a Jewish Israeli) bring us Ajami, a drama set in the rival Jewish and Arab neighborhoods of Tel Aviv-Jaffa.
After reading Nigel Andrews' recent review of Ajami, I realized how much I have neglected this corpus of films. Israel is arguably the single most important nation in the modern Middle East, an important and war-torn region. These films address fundamental issues of war, religion and identity, some of the most important in life. That they do so with a high degree of insight and artfulness only heightens my desire for more Israeli cinema in my life.
The winner of this year's runner-up Grand Prix at Cannes was Of Gods and Men (Des hommes et des dieux), a French film directed by Xavier Beauvois, about seven Trappist monks who were martyred in Algeria in 1996. The film also received the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, composed of Christian film makers, film critics and other film professionals.
Alas, there seems to be no trailer floating about the internets. There is, however, the clip above which presents, in simple fashion, the monks' dilemma. Here too is another clip, in which we see the life these Trappists were leading in Algeria. And if you know French, you may find this short bit with interviews from the film's creators interesting.
A little while ago the trailer for An Education came across my desk, probably because it was nominated for three Academy Awards.
The film, starring Carey Mulligan, tells the story of a British school girl who runs off to Paris. I watched the trailer once, then again a few days later, and then a time or two more. The question that kept floating in the back of my mind was, Why am I attracted to this?
I am a traditionalist in my ideology and a conservative by temperament. I favor old stuffy schools and extensive planning; I oppose both extramarital affairs and spontaneous trips to Paris. So why am I so intrigued? Am I simply that big of a sucker for love stories? Is it the British accents that do me in? Or, as a friend suggested, do I simply "crave a little spontaneity in [my] very busy, structured and cerebral life"?
In addition to my own personal questions, there are larger ones in the background: Why are we ever attracted to things that are different from us? Simply a break from monotony? The glamor of evil? The light of truth? Perhaps even deeper than that, what is attraction? I don't mean that in a definitional sense, but an anthropological one. What is going on inside a person when he becomes attracted to something? Clearly this is different from attachment, and yet, there is something of that here, when we can't seem to look away. In a world full of stimuli, why do some things, even relatively unimportant things, catch our eye?
I have a confession to make: I play miniature war games. Many years ago I got my start with these guys, though I never owned more than a handful. But now I've acquired an army of crusaders for this game, an army which is only slowly getting painted and assembled, but should take the field some time in the spring. However, there is yet a third genre of war gaming which has caught my fancy... Pulps. Yes, like the sleazy dime store novels. Well, sort of. Let me share the description of miniatures craftsman Bob Murch, whose figures you can see below and left:
Pulp Figures and Rugged Adventures are primarily designed for a fictionalized historical setting we call the 'Pulp Era'. The pulps were entertainment magazines of the early 20th century and reached their peak of popularity in the period between the first and second world wars. The pulp magazine venue introduced tough guy detective stories with famed characters like Sam Spade and Philip Marlow, occult action/adventure stories from authors such as Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan or Sax Rohmer of Dr. Fu Manchu fame. They also introduced the jungle fantasy adventures of Tarzan of the Apes. Within the pages of the pulps you might join an expedition into distant lands in search of a lost city. You might sail an airship through a polar gateway to a pre-historic world at the center of the earth. It was an action packed world of brave heroes standing alone against sinister villains plotting world conquest, tough dames, spies and even the occasional brilliant scientist with a newly invented rocket ship. It was a brightly coloured world of action packed, spine tingling adventure.
Is it any wonder that folks want to game this stuff? To get in the mood, I've assembled a few films:
Zulu(1964). Too late for the golden age of pulps, this classic film nevertheless has a lot of the key elements: Europeans in nifty uniforms, exotic setting, guns, danger, heroism... The Battle of Rorke's Drift was a tad early, but there are plenty of figures from slightly later decades of the British Empire.
The adventures of IndianaJones (1981, 1984, 1989, 2008). This fedora wearing, whip wielding, Nazi (and Communist) fighting archaeologist is probably the most iconic pulp hero known to contemporary audiences. He's also the reason any game worth its salt had better include at least a smattering of these.
The Rocketeer (1991). Though this movie came out in 1991, I have never seen it. But clearly the film (and the comic books) were the inspiration for these guys.
Michael Collins (1996). Not exactly a pulp action film, this historical biopic is nevertheless set in a real conflict featuring soldiers and policemen, spies, guerrillas and gun-runners, and a real-life hero.
The Mummy and sequels (1999, 2001, 2008). High cinema? Probably but. But they feature archaeological adventurers. And a librarian. I don't know; maybe I just have a thing for librarians... The Aviator (2004). It's a movie about Howard Hughes. Featuring a lot of amazingairplanes. Need I say more? Incidentally, this film references a film Hughes made about World War I: Hell's Angels (1930). Which might open the door to these guys. Alternatively, one could envision a scenario built around Hell's Angels involving these folks.
First on the Moon / Первые на Луне (2005). This fictional documentary of a Soviet lunar landing in the 1930s could be quite interesting, if one could get one's hands on a copy (which might not be easy). Space travel? you ask. Sure: mad scientists are a classic part of the genre. Soviets? Well, true, the Nazis are the totalitarians of choice, but sometimes they're so overused they get a bit out of hand.
The White Countess (2005). This is not really a pulp film; it's more of a historical drama. But it's set in one of the wildest cities of the 1930s: Shanghai. I think the film does a superb job depicting that world of American businessmen, Chinese warlords, Japanese spies, Jewish refugees and White Russian exiles that it deserves inclusion here.
Public Enemies (2009). There are plenty of gangster movies from which to choose. Indeed, Bonnie & Clyde (1967) might be a better film, but a gamer's interested in shootouts more than cinematography. Likewise, The Untouchables (1987) also deserves mention.
The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn (2011). Nevermind that this film has not yet been released. The threecomicbooks upon which it's based are quite fun and Tintin has more than enough pulp hero qualities: intelligence, bravado, world-wide travels and a faithful sidekick (even if he is just a dog).
Some people might worry that the pulp fiction genre - along with the movies and games it has spawned - is violent, racist, sexist and jingoistic. This is all probably true. I would, however, note two things. (1) Modern pulps tend to exaggerate, even caricature, these vices, reducing the danger that we might notice them, even while imbibing them. (2) Modern pulps knock-offs often caricature these vices to the point of mocking them. And it's rather hard to accept ideas you don't even take seriously.
While living at the Quincy House I developed a love of Wes Anderson films (and of one of Anderson's gurus, Whit Stillman). At the time I noticed that Anderson was working on a version of Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox. At last, that effort is coming to fruition.
I remember enjoying Fantastic Mr. Fox quite a lot as a child. It would be interesting to read it again, (a) to see if I still enjoy it and (b) to see if Anderson's take is a faithful one. From the looks of it, he has taken certain liberties with the story. This is not, in my view, necessarily a bad thing. When translating a work from one genre to another, slavishness can sometimes fall flat. I am hopeful, however, that Anderson has produced a film which works well on the screen and is faithful to the heart of Dahl's work (even if not quite every line).
Thanks go out to the oodles of people who simultaneously brought this trailer to my attention.
Murder mysteries can be fiendishly difficult things to unravel. However, there are certain assumptions we often take for granted: the laws of physics are constant, time moves linearly, the human perception of reality is - by and large - an accurate representation. But what if these basic rules of existence could not be assumed?
What constitutes a human being? More specifically, what makes a human being act? The Marxists tell us that class and the economic realities of society condition our behavior. The chemists, pushed to their farthest extremes, might tell us that chemicals in our brains explain all our actions. Likewise, the psychologists would tell us that past experiences condition our behavior in the present. But are any of these answers fully sufficient?
Do those who possess great power know how to utilize it? This is frequently our assumption, but what if those with superhuman powers could only exercise them clumsily?
These questions may seems quite disparate, but Alex Proyas' Dark City (1998) manages to address all of them, and quite artfully. Set in a surreal 1940s-esque future, Dark City might seem confusing or disjointed at first - or even just plain weird - but the loose ends pull together in a way that is quite satisfying. Visually compelling, intellectually rich and narratively satisfying, Dark City is a winner.
(Sadly, I think the trailer fails to quite capture the feeling of the film. Think more noir and less techno.)
I have a confession to make: I have not yet seen Inglourious Basterds. This may not, in and of itself, be a bad thing. Except that I am now writing a follow-up to my last post on the film.
At first I was worried that Tarantino doing a nominally historical film would be a dangerous thing, blurring the line between fact and fiction in a way that a film like Kill Bill - with its Texas sword fights and anime flashback - could not. The completely over-the-top ambush of the Nazi leadership, seen in the trailer below, seemed to lay my fears to rest: at last, we could sit back and enjoy the show, knowing that this had very little to do with any actual history.
But now the New York Magazine's Vulture blog reports that the film has received an overwhelmingly positive response from German critics. One of them wrote:
This isn't camp, it isn't pulp — you miss the point using such categories with Tarantino — but rather a vision never before seen in the nearly exhausted world of cinematic images.... It took 65 years for a film-maker, instead of bringing Germany's evil 20th century history to life once more to have people shudder and bow before it, to simply dream around it. And to mow all the pigs down. Catharsis! Oxygen! Wonderful retro-futuristic insanity of the imagination!
Perhaps. But if the film is "retro-futuristic insanity," can it really exercise the daemons of Germany's Nazi past? Doesn't "Germany's evil 20th century history" need to first be brought to life, if it is be finally slain?
Some might contend that expecting a cathartic release from the nightmare of Germany's Nazi past is asking far too much of this film; instead, we should be expecting nothing more than a sort of World War II Rambo. Fair enough - except that the German critics think they see more, a film in meaningful dialogue with history.
Yes, I realize that any invocation of the Nazis is, necessarily, historical in some way; but it seems to me that the relationship between a film like Tarantino's and the actual events of history is complex, at best. That so many German critics are raving about the film suggests to me either (a) that they all have great insight, successfully navigating this complex relationship or (b) some of them are missing the point. And that's a tragic, even scary, thing, when we're dealing with the legacy of something as appalling as the Third Reich. Special thanks to Santiago Ramos for bringing this Vulture blog post to my attention.
Quentin Tarantino is well known for his love of bloodletting: films such as Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994) and Kill Bill (vol. 1 2003, vol. 2 2004) are chocked full of violence. So it should come as little surprise that his latest project, Inglourious Basterds - due for release on 21 August - features "a group of Jewish-American soldiers... [who] ambush and kill Nazi patrols, desecrating their corpses whilst leaving one alive to tell others," according to The Hollywood Reporter. Tarantino is quoted as saying that the film is a "spaghetti-western but with World War II iconography."
Inglourious Basterds alludes to Enzo Castellari's 1978 movie of the same name (but conventional spelling), though Tarantino's work is apparently a new story and not simply a remake. (Castellari's film follows a group of American soldiers who are on their way to prison for various infractions, try to escape to neutral Switzerland, but inadvertently end up on a secret mission to steal Nazi technology with the help of the French Resistance.)
Even prior to the film's release, there is plenty to talk about. There is, of course, the question of Tarantino's use of stylized - dare we say Homeric? - violence. But the question that that first came to my mind upon seeing the trailer was that of history. So far as I know, the United States never organized Jewish units during World War II. This is in contrast to the British, who recruited the Jewish Brigade and the Special Interrogation Group from among Jews, primarily - though not exclusively - from Palestine. Both saw action in North Africa, and the Jewish Brigade (along with Arab elements of the Palestine Regiment) saw service in Italy. Though members of the SIG disguised themselves as German soldiers - an action which put them outside the Geneva Convention - their goals were basic commando objectives, not terror. After the war, some members of the Jewish Brigade formed assassination squads that hunted down German officers, some of whom claimed to belong to the fictitious Tilhas Tigiz Gesheften, to allow themselves to travel more easily around occupied Germany. However, none of this extracurricular was sanctioned by the British, much less the Americans. (Remember, the British Empire itself was the target of militant Zionism.)
I have been reading through OSS files in the National Archives lately. Though this American outfit has a reputation for playing dirty, and engaged in its fair share of black propaganda and covert operations, I have been surprised by the extent to which OSS insisted that its operations be conducted on the up-and-up. Interrogation manuals read about like business interviews, without so much as an elliptical reference to coercive methods. One series of memos I encountered mooted the idea of OSS special forces posing as civilians - as Tarnatino's characters do - but the idea was rejected for two reasons: (1) It would place American soldiers outside the bounds of the Geneva Convention. Our enemies had violated the Convention on plenty of occasions, but did also follow it from time to time - downed airmen in Germany, for example, were well-treated - but American leaders insisted that we play by the rules, in the hopes that prisoners might receive fair treatment. (2) There was a keen sense from American leaders that we would lose the moral high ground and could not pass judgment on our enemies if we violated the laws of war.
I think it safe to say that Tarantino has not taken a historical story and simply changed a few names, nor has he even imagined a plausible historical scenario which might have happened, but did not. He has made up a story which runs contrary to the facts of history on several key points. I am inclined to take offense at this not so much as an American - whose side is made to look bad, even morally equivalent to its Nazi opponent - but even more as a historian. Is the past simply a malleable thing we can reconfigure to fit our narrative needs? How many people will view this film and conclude that the war was more or like this (even while acknowledging that the details are fictional)?
Some might argue that Tarnatino is reaching deeper than simple facts and revealing the fundamental truth that war is hell. This is true to a point, but failing to make any kind of distinctions can be dangerous. Vindictive brutality on both sides was the rule on the Eastern Front; it was the exception in the West. War may be hell, but there is no reason to make it more hellish: that is why a great many nations have not only agreed to laws of war, but even follow them more often than not.
But even aside from these particular questions, is Tarantino's use of history licit? Is history a mere assemblage of names and dates, the re-writing of which only constitutes a kind of white lie? Or does that assemblage contain a kind of deeper truth, which is obscured and violated by changing too many details?
Ultimately the question is that of fiction: What are its bounds? How closely must it conform to "reality"? Fiction reveals certain truths by imagining situations that have not existed, to gain greater perspective on those that have, or will. This is the basic premise behind the fantasy genre. But I worry Tarantino may be blurring the line between history and fiction in a dangerous way that is not faithful to either. But perhaps the jury should remain out until after 21 August.
We recently lost the internet at my house for several days. One realizes just how much it has become a part of everyday life when it is gone. Rather than listing all the things I could not do, suffice it to say I found something I could: watch movies. So I did.
Darren Aronofsky’s Pi is a story about the search for meaning in the universe. It tells the tale of Max Cohen, a mathematician obsessed with finding patterns to explain phenomena around him. More to the point, he is interested in finding the pattern which will explain, well, everything. In the course of the story we encounter Wall Street types who are interested in such patterns primarily for the ability to predict the stock market, but we also meet kabbalists who seek to decode the Torah and find the long-lost name of God which will help usher in the messianic age.
The film reminded me of Eric Foner’s Story of American Freedom, a text I had to teach this past semester. Foner’s objective seems simple enough: to explain the changing definition of freedom from the time of the American Founding to the present day. However, as I tried to point out to my students, implicit in his presentation was another message. To help them tease that out, I gave a (very, very, very!) quick-and-dirty history of western philosophy, since such courses are not required at A&M.
Plato argued that there were such things as forms, things in heaven which embody ideas. Or rather, more to the point, are ideas, which are imperfectly embodied in particular occurrences. There is the form of the Tree, in which all trees participate, and by that participation they have something in common. There is the form of the Cat as well, along with abstract – but no less real – concepts such as Justice, Truth and Freedom.
Aristotle, though he spoke of substance and accidents, rather than forms, broadly agreed with Plato that there are fundamental categories at work in the cosmos, categories which transcend physical characteristics and abide in the very fiber of a thing’s being. But in the Middle Ages a fellow named William of Ockham denied that there were categories at all. Yes, he said, we can point to this fuzzy thing with whiskers and that fuzzy thing with whiskers, and we can call them both cats, because that would be a very useful thing to say. But in the end, Ockham argued, each is a unique object without anything fundamentally in common with the other. We apply labels for our convenience, but they do not correspond to any deeper meaning in reality.
Some centuries later Immanuel Kant tried to steer a middle course between these two positions, contending that there may be categories to the cosmos, but we cannot know them. Thus, in practice, he was an Ockhamite, arguing that the labels we affix may be handy, but may not actually correspond to the fundamental being of things. Finally, the nihilists – most famous among them being Friedrich Nietzsche – contended that there is no meaning to the cosmos at all, categorical or otherwise, a far cry from the ancients.
How did all this connect to Eric Foner and American history? While charting the changing meanings of “freedom” over the years, I would submit that Foner assumes – and implicitly argues – that there is no meaning to the term “freedom”; it does not really exist. Yes, Foner is willing to talk about it as a label we place on things, even a very convenient label, but in the end, does it correspond to anything in reality? Is there a right answer to the question, “What is freedom?” Foner demurs and – I would argue – ultimately denies.
Returning then to Mr. Aronofsky’s film and the pressing question it asks: Is there meaning to the cosmos? And if there is, what is it, and what does that meaning demand of me?
Agnosticism, exceedingly vogue in the ivory tower of academia, seeks to avoid these questions. Perhaps the answers simply are unknowable, though I doubt most have ever truly sought them. And if the point of all our academic endeavors is to know the truth, what does it say about us that we have abdicated any responsibility for knowing the highest truths?
This post first appeared yesterday on True. Good. Beautiful., a forum about entertainment and the film industry.
I am not particularly interested in the new Star Trek film, but this interview of the director, J. J. Abrams, is just fantastic. I found his vision for what a film ought to be, and how it ought to work quite exciting. Who knows, I might actually see it. Or take up watching Lost, Abrams' other project.
(You are welcome to ignore, or watch, the second half of the video, with James Carville, as you will.)
Special thanks to Nick over at The Trifector, for bringing this to my attention.
The other day, while at the cinema to see The Watchmen (my review here), I happened to see this trailer for Dan Brown's Angels and Demons. Anyone notice a problem in the very first shot? I got a nice chuckle...
Just further proof that Dan Brown & Co. are preying on people's ignorance.
Last night I went to see The Watchmen with some friends. Though I've not read the comic book, I like superhero movies, so I figured I would enjoy it. I left the theater with mixed feelings, but on reflection I've increasingly turned against it.
What didn't you like? you ask. The gratuitous sex and violence are worth a mention (though they're not the biggest issue). In superhero movies, I expect violence. Bad guys get blown up - that's the way it goes. But there were several scenes in The Watchmen that were just plain gratuitous. Not bad guys getting their comeuppance (with awesome special effects), just violence for its own sake. Likewise, sex scenes have become something of a staple of modern populist films. I don't like 'em, but in a certain sense, I can accept them: in the language of modern film, we know the hero and heroine love each other because they have sex. It's a wrong-headed notion, of course, but it often has a plot value. Not so the extended sex scene of The Watchmen: it's just an excuse for several pornographic minutes of actress Malin Åkerman.
**Warning: Spoilers, or elliptical references to them, follow.**
Beyond all that, I found the film's plot and attempt to struggle with moral questions sorely wanting. This is not a standard superhero film with good guys who - in spite, perhaps, of occasional foibles - are clearly good and bad guys who - in spite of occasional moments of charm - are clearly bad. A comparison may illustrate the point: Batman Begins is a film which grapples with the moral ambiguities and difficulties which arise from trying to do good in a world filled with evil. Bruce Wayne/Batman refuses to join the League of Shadows; whereas they see death and destruction as the only answer to a decadent and corrupt society, Wayne believes mankind can be saved. The ends do not justify the means. Justice must be tempered by mercy. I was less satisfied with the sequel, The Dark Knight. It seemed to me the desire to paint moral ambiguities at times overwhelmed the basic struggle of good versus evil. This is most clearly seen at the end of the film, when Wayne convinces Lt. James Gordon, his police sidekick, to blame Harvey Dent/Two-Face's murders on Batman, arguing that the people of Gotham City will lose all hope if they find out the truth about Dent. Batman flees as a fugitive. The painful lesson seems to be that doing good can require falsehood and not just the deception of Bruce Wayne hiding behind a mask, but an inversion of the truth about who has committed good and evil deeds.
Now take that trajectory from Batman Begins to The Dark Knight and follow it several steps further. There you will find The Watchmen. The villain, Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias, motivated by a desire to bring peace to the world, kills a few million people and blames it on Jon Osterman/Doctor Manhattan, his former colleague. In the end, his scheme does bring world peace, and no one dares reveal the truth, lest it all be ruined. (We are given a hint at the end that the truth may come out, but through circumstances set in motion before our heroes knew about Veidt's plan.) There is no doubt that Veidt is the bad guy here, and yet... it's hard to hate a man who brings about world peace. One of the subplots mirrors this strange moral ambiguity: Sally Jupiter/Silk Spectre reveals to her daughter that the reason she could never bring herself to hate Edward Blake/The Comedian, a man who tried to rape her, is because he fathered her daughter, Laurie Juspezyk/Silk Spectre II. The suggestion is that the means (Blake) justify the ends (Laurie).
Other contradictions and problems abound: Dr. Manhattan, Laurie's boyfriend, becomes increasingly disenchanted with her and humanity generally, though he ultimately defeats Veidt to save mankind. In spite of his conversion of sorts, eventually concluding that life may not be totally worthless, he nevertheless goes into self-imposed exile in the distant reaches of the galaxy, leaving her and everyone else behind. The Comedian is a psycho-killer and a sex-addict. Rorschach, our most morally consistent character, enjoys exacting psychotic revenge on evildoers. Laurie and Daniel Dreiberg/Nite Owl II are happy to take up an affair when her boyfriend - who left his previous love, Janey Slater, for the younger Laurie - grows more distant. These are not model citizens.
However, bad people don't necessarily make for a bad story. Indeed, one of my favorites, Homer's Iliad, is full of bad people. They're part of what make it compelling, actually. So what makes The Iliad different from The Watchmen? The difference, I think, is in the way that the Iliad's plot confronts these problems, whereas The Watchmen's accepts them. The Iliad opens with the problem of Achilles' honor being offended. Does he choose to withdraw from the fighting and protect his personal honor, or does he acknowledge his communal responsibility, continue fighting with the other Greeks and swallow the dishonor? He chooses to sit it out. However, when the Greeks are hard pressed, his sense of communal responsibility kicks in and he tries to paper over the problem by allowing his friend Patroklos to fight in his place. Does this seeming compromise solve the problem? No. That is made painfully clear when Patroklos is killed and Achilles accepts that he should have been fighting (which he promptly resumes). But then the whole question of personal honor versus community responsibility is circumscribed when Priam comes to Achilles to ask for the body of Hektor. Empathy triumphs over rage, providing the peace of mind that neither Achilles nor Priam could heretofore find. At each turn the plot introduces a moral quandary, allows the reader to dwell on it for a time, and then, through the action of the story, shows the consequences of a particular response to that quandary. Moral difficulties are not ignored, they are confronted.
It's been a few years since I read any of Aristotle's Poetics, but as I recall, one of his big points is that the plot must carry a story. You cannot try to describe a character as X, if his actions reveal him to be not X. You cannot say that the moral of the story is Y, if the action reveals it to be not Y. By this standard, the Iliad deserves high marks. The Watchmen, on the other hand, fails. More than just a story of mostly despicable people often doing despicable things, the action of the plot fails to interrogate whether or not these people are exemplary, whether or not they provide a valid window into the nature of reality. That is not only woefully disappointing; it is dangerous.
PS: Intrigued by what Barbara Nicolosi, a respected movie critic, had to say about The Watchmen, I took a look at her review. "WE WALKED OUT. Awful. Disgusting. Degrading. Vile. Barbarous. The kind of entertainment the Roman mobs were watching just before the barbarians came over the walls. Did I say depraved? I meant to. If you let your kids go to this piece of absolute unmitigated garbage, you deserve whatever nightmare lives they end up inflicting on you. I fear I haven't expressed myself strongly enough..." Wow.
Even The Dark Knight didn't get a review that bad, though it wasn't a lot better: "Too Dark. Too long. Too fast. Too pretentious. Too loud. Too many characters. Too much steady cam. Too little substance. Too little fun. The whole world has lost its mind." So I looked up her review of Batman Begins. Far more positive (though not without reservations): "Batman Begins is a very solid movie. It is well-produced, structured for suspense, and incorporates a number of satisfying - if not hugely compelling - characters. It just isn't what you expect it to be as a comic book movie, which might be the kiss of death with the comic book genre fans who want some mystery under their capes. We'll see. I'm giving two bats ears up."
