WCBE 90.5 FM (NPR): "Another Year at the Movies: The Culture Wars of 2004

“Another Year At The Movies: The Culture Wars of 2004”
Air Date: New Year’s Day, January 1, 2005

SEGMENT ONE (20:00):

HIT CD: (“YOU’RE A GRAND OLD FLAG” - GEORGE M. COHAN - FROM WWW.SCOUTSONGS.COM),THEN UNDER FOR

Clay
It was show time in America last year, from Hollywood to Baghdad to Washington the culture wars were quite the rage . . .

John
Anti-war protesters stood in line to see Robert MacNamara confess his sins in “The Fog of War” . . .

Clay
Super Bowl fans were shocked during half-time when Janet Jackson showed more than her dimples . . .

John
Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill 2” was a brilliant exposure of the ugliness of revenge . . .

Clay
And busloads of movie goers learned from Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” that the misuse of power was nothing new under the sun . . .

MUSIC UP, THEN TAKE UNDER FOR

Richelle:
WCBE presents “Another Year at the Movies: The Culture Wars of 2004” with your hosts John DeSando and Clay Lowe . . .

MUSIC DOWN AND UNDER JOHN AND CLAY’S OPEN

John
I’m John DeSando.

Clay
And I’m Clay Lowe.

MUSIC UP, HOLD, THEN CROSS FADE TO CD: "THE FOG OF WAR" (CUT 1), ESTABLISH, THEN TAKE UNDER FOR JOHN AND CLAY’S REVIEWS OF “FOG”

Clay (Continues)
John, the cultural warriors battled it out for the soul of America last year. To the Republicans, America was witnessing the dawning of a new age. To the Democrats, America was witnessing the end of the American dream. And to the independents, America was dazed and confused and caught in-between.

MUSIC UP, THEN BACK UNDER

John
Liberal vs. conservative, freedom freaks vs. control freaks, the bipolar ideologies were as apparent on screen as off whether in Troy or Baghdad.

Clay
And nowhere did they become more apparent than in Earl Morris’s Oscar winning “The Fog of War” . . .

MUSIC UP, BRIEFLY, THEN UNDER FOR

DeSando ("The Fog of War")
Clay, the liberal Earl Morris brought us "Fog of War," maybe the best documentary to fuse a controversial historical figure (McNamara) with his grandest moment (the Vietnam War). "Grand" is ironic because 58,000 dead soldiers cannot be grand, and McNamara's ambivalence about the event and his responsibility give the film an authenticity and humanity that last year was shared only with "Capturing the Friedmans."

MUSIC UP BRIEFLY, THEN UNDER AGAIN

John (Continues)
That he allowed the US to go deeper into the war than he personally believed it should is a possible inference from his carefully crafted dialogue about his responsibility. Although McNamara wanted to seem liberal in his veiled opposition to escalation, he could be the progenitor of Donald Rumsfeld and his take-no-prisoner conservatism.

Applications to human nature and current events abound. The cool necessary to operate under murderous circumstances is reflected in this wonk's slick hair, rimless glasses, and self-serving dialogue. The parallel to the war in Iraq is painful. He warns in his first "lesson" we must learn from our mistakes. If Vietnam was a grand mistake, why are we forgetting it again? Could the liberals themselves have turned conservative?

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Clay ("The Fog of War")
Good questions, John, and these were the questions the filmmaker raised when he accepted his Oscar last year:

"Forty years ago," Morris said, "this country went down a rabbit hole in Vietnam and millions died. I fear we're going down a rabbit hole once again -- "

MUSIC UP BRIEFLY, THEN UNDER

Clay (Continues)
In "The Fog of War" we see the former Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, admit he'd been wrong about Viet Nam. Just as back in 1975 we saw his successor, Clark Clifford make the same admission in Peter Davis's "Hearts and Minds": "I couldn't have been more wrong," Clifford said . . .

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Clay (Continues)
Who knows, John, maybe someday one of our grandchildren will make a movie about Donald Rumsfeld.

HIT CD: "THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST" (CUT: 4 “PETER DENIES JESUS- JOHN DABNEY), THEN UNDER FOR

Clay ("The Passion of the Christ")
But John, the Romans got it all wrong, too. In Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," their brutal flogging and crucifixion of Jesus simply radicalized multiple generations of Christians.

MUSIC UP, HOLD, THEN UNDER AGAIN FOR JOHN

John ("The Passion of the Christ")
If you push a Biblically conservative Agenda, then meanness and violence overshadow the humanism of the Sermon on the Mount.

I came into "The Passion of the Christ" an agnostic; I left a true believer in the power of marketing.

This much-heralded Mel Gibson version of Christ's suffering is a testimony to the fact that the meek won't inherit the earth. Be flamboyant about your film's controversies; watch the silver coins come in from the evangelical fervor over the film's realism.

Did I say "realism"? Not the right noun. How about "cartoon"? The torture of Christ is so unrelenting it becomes laughable. The Roman soldiers are so over-the-top brutal they are caricatures of all torturers ever filmed.

What's good about the film? The inspiration from Caravaggio's paintings (His "Taking of Christ" is one example) gives the film a darkly elegiac visual tone. Also, the relationship between Mother Mary and Christ has possibilities. But Gibson doesn't expand this possibility because of his obsession with the purgative province of violence. The selection of conservative conflict over liberal love mirrors the global choices of 2004.

I do hope there is a heaven, so I finally can ask to see a life of Christ
worthy of its subject.

MUSIC UP BRIEFLY, THEN UNDER

Clay (“The Passion of the Christ”)
John, I hope there's a heaven too because I'd worry about you in hell. But yes, Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" goes way overboard in its depiction of seemingly unmotivated violence that the Romans and the Jewish religious establishment inflicted on Jesus of Nazareth.

From Cecil B. DeMille's "King of Kings" to George Steven's "The Greatest Story Ever Told" to Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" it seems that Jesus Christ has always been one of Hollywood's favorite Superstars.

Driven by the stoicism of Jesus in the face of unexplained hatred and
violence, the rest of the cast are reduced to card board figures you expect to see on stage in a typical Biblical tableaux with a deep voiced narrator and majestic music telling you how you are supposed to act and feel about the events that are unfolding before your eyes.

Bad guys, one good guy, the weak-kneed disciples, and the passively
suffering women who love him standing helplessly by.

It would have taken a miracle to save him, but that miracle was denied.

MUSIC UP, THEN CROSS FADE TO CD: "MIRACLE" (CUT 5: “DON’T FEAR THE REAPER” - BLUE OYSTER CULT), ESTABLISH THEN UNDER FOR

Clay ("Miracle")
John, a miracle is what we had when Hollywood took us back into the midst of the Cold War to celebrate our off-the-battlefield victory over the Russians in the 1980 Winter Olympics.

MUSIC UP, THEN UNDER AGAIN FOR

John ("Miracle")
"Miracle" is what American filmmakers do best: a rousing true tale of an underdog overcoming insurmountable odds to win the prize. Director Gavin O'Connor's dramatization of the U.S. Olympic team's victory over Russia's juggernaut champions is even more exuberant than “Seabiscuit” because the team represented the renewal of American spirit for times gloomy in the recounting.

MUSIC UP BRIEFLY, THEN BACK UNDER

John (Continues)
"Miracle" is about veteran hockey coach Herb Brooks (Kurt Russell), a remarkable man whose vision was that only the most grueling practice will prepare them for the best team in the world. Americans prevailed in a victory the director makes immediate and visceral with Steadicam, close up, and swelling music. The spirit, while exalting the human joy of competition, is still decidedly conservative. Victory at almost all costs, USA uber alles.

Darrell Royal, commenting on football coaches, gives an insight into Herb Brooks' success: "A head coach is guided by this main objective: dig, claw, wheedle, coax that fanatical effort out of players."

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Clay ("Miracle")
"Seabiscuit,” DeSando? How about "Hoosiers" on ice? Change the names and the scripts are the same.

Two unsung coaches. Two unsteady young teams destined to go up against two seemingly invincible rivals. Real-life hockey coach Herb Brooks and real-life basketball coach Norman Dale were Hollywood-made-to-order. Infused with the respective personas of the doggedly-determined Kurt Russell and the ever-lovin' charms of Gene Hackman, there was nothing in heaven nor hell that could have prevented these two films from becoming two big box-office bonanzas.

John Wayne may have done it better back in the forties when he played the drill Sergeant in "The Sands of Iwo Jima" but, hey, folks, he was getting his guys ready to fight the Big War.

MUSIC UP, THEN CROSS FADE TO CD: "TOUCHING THE VOID" (WWW.MATRIXMEDIA.TV.FRAMES_JS.HTML>.VOID.HTM), THEN UNDER FOR

Clay (Continues)
The coaches in "Miracle" and "Hoosiers" were getting their boys ready to play their Big Game, but the two mountain climbers in "Touching the Void" were playing, win or lose, for the game of their lives . . .

John ("Touching the Void")
"Touching the Void" is what successful docudrama should be: thoroughly accurate and terrifyingly dramatic, a conservative emphasis on personal competition but a painful liberal love of another human.

In 1985 two adventurers, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, successfully ascended Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. It was the descent that caused the problems: Yates had to cut the lifeline that sent the wounded Simpson into the void of a crevasse.

The brilliance of the film is to keep suspense although we know the outcome, "Citizen Kane" on a mountain. The cinematography, with swirling vistas both hypnotic and menacing, and the editing, from narrators to actors and back, create movement and danger when the former is almost impossible and the latter a given.

Says Lafcadio Hearn, "You do not laugh when you look at the mountains . . . ." "Touching the Void" is satisfyingly serious stuff, ultimately harrowing because of the intense personal, private pain of the climbers.

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Clay ("Touching the Void")
John, that rather arrogant pair of young men in "Touching the Void," threw caution to the winds when they decided to scale the face of the Siula Grande in one long continuous climb.

Armed with a high-tech arsenal of self-contained equipment and gear they did bravely chip, dig, and claw their way to the top of that icy mountain. Their BRAVADO, however, was transformed into horror, when Simpson was injured, fell out of sight, and Yates was forced to cut him loose.

Did the abandoned Simpson think of god at the bottom of that crevasse? No way, he said. All he could think of were the lyrics from Boney M's "Brown Girl in the Ring/Tra la la la la" . . . A just reward for their hubris.

MUSIC UP, THEN CROSS FADE TO DVD CLOSING CREDITS FROM "SPARTAN," ESTABLISH, THEN UNDER FOR

Clay (Continues)
So there you have it, John, man against himself, man against man, and man against nature. What more could a fun loving movie-goer want?

John ("Spartan")
Maybe "Spartan," the best spy movie ever made by a practicing playwright/director. Director and frequent screen writer David Mamet has crafted a thriller peppered with his stylized, epigrammatic dialogue that takes on the presidency and world corruption.

Mamet lets us see that this plot is much more than a potboiler about lascivious, ruthless president's lost daughter, for it comments on the hidden forces behind the electoral process. I must remind myself to have students write essays about appearance and reality in Mamet's films or about conservative Florida’s ballot of victory in 2000.

Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus once said, "Those who are trained and disciplined in the proper discipline can determine what will best serve the occasion." Mamet best serves this occasion with a superior thriller about a man of discipline serving his country in spite of itself.

Clay ("Spartan")
John, a man of discipline indeed. Kilmer's Special Forces officer plays his part as though he were interviewing for a position at the Abu Gharib prison.

Slamming bodies against walls, breaking arms of those who resist him, threatening to cut out the eye of an uncooperative detainee, and even slapping around a rather fragile old woman. Val Kilmer's character is Bruce Willis, Alec Baldwin, and Clint Eastwood all rolled into one. No wonder you love him.

No doubt audiences will be caught up in the movie's fast moving plot, outrageous twists, and deliberate deceptions. But do you really believe they're going to accept the movie's preposterous premise? That a president of the United States is capable of willfully having people killed in order to carry out his political purposes?

MUSIC UP AND CROSS FADE TO CD: "THE LADYKILLERS" (CUT 12: “YOU CAN’T HURRY GOD” - DONNIE MCCLURKIN), ESTABLISH, THEN UNDER FOR

John ("The Ladykillers")
The Coens seem to have no political purpose in their new movie, "Ladykillers." The goons who dig themselves into a hole are a gang that can't shoot straight headed by Tom Hanks as shady Dr.Dorr.

The crooks are digging a tunnel from a Southern mansion to the money stored by a floating casino. It's Professor Dorr's job to con the elderly owner of the mansion, black Baptist Marva Munson (Irma P. Hall), into allowing him and his band of "Renaissance musicians" to practice in her cellar. She and her matronly friends partially fulfill Shakespeare's hope that "these ladies' courtesy might well have made our sport a comedy."

The Bible-belt gospel music is lively and Coen memorable.

The satire of intellectuals, opportunists, slothful sheriffs, and crazed congregations has a bit of wit, as if the Coens decided to bring back Amos 'n Andy without updating and didn't care what we thought about it anyway, perhaps the only politically conservative attitude of the film.

Clay ("The Ladykillers")
John, the Coen brothers did slip in a couple of political bites you’ve missed out on. Black Southern Baptist Marva probably wouldn’t have been making donations to right wing Bob Jones University while at the same time having a trunk full of left-wing “Mother Jones” magazines in her basement.

MUSIC UP, THEN CROSS FADE TO CD: "ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND" (CUT 1: “THEME”), ESTABLISH, THEN UNDER CLAY'S REVIEW

Clay ("50 First Dates"/"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind")
The good news last year was that two popular adolescent male heroes (Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler) did come up with two movies that were worthy of their considerable, oft wasted talents. Taking on the rather conservative theme of memory loss and the liberal obsession with romantic anguish, both of their movies forced them to court, rather than exploit their respective lovers.

In the light-weight "50 First Dates," Lucy Whitmore (Drew Barrymore) and Henry Roth (Adam Sandler) fall in love, but because Barrymore's character suffers from short term memory loss, Sandler's "Henry" has to begin each day trying to get her to fall in love with him all over again.

In the more emotionally and intellectually demanding "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," Kate Winslet plays "Clementine," a feisty young lady who has had so many bad moments with her lover (as played by a rather morose Jim Carrey), that she goes to a brain doctor who erases him from her mind.

Watching Adam Sandler and Jim Carrey mature as more fully developed on-screen human beings numbers high on my list of movie going pleasures this past year. Add to these pleasures the enjoyment of "Eternal Sunshine's" intricately woven script as penned by Charles Kaufman and you have yourself a surefire contender for an Oscar in 2004.

MUSIC UP, AND PLAY FOR TIME, THEN SLOWLY CROSS FADE TO CD: "ELEPHANT," (BEETHOVEN’S FUR ELISE), ESTABLISH, THEN UNDER FOR

John ("Elephant")
Well, Gus Van Sant’s “Elephant” is Oscar worthy but probably won’t be an Oscar contender.

So Clay, what's in the name of a place? Tombstone, Columbine? The former conjures up thoughts of heroic justice, the latter mass murder. Understanding the motives of Wyatt Earp or Dillon Klebold is not as easy as the place names; interpreting a film about either event as anti violence is not easy either.

So director Van Sant ("My Private Idaho," "Good Will Hunting," "Gerry") fictionalizes an average high school at which a Columbine-like massacre takes place. Interestingly, he makes no attempt to relay the underlying causes for the young men's decision to slaughter; in fact, he seems to try hard not to supply any reasons except for a brief segment with a boy watching a show on Nazis and a faceless mother serving pancakes. Even the lad whose father is an alcoholic is not one of the murderers.

It's just that the viewer must give in to the director's vision of teenage life as essentially devoid of humor, excitement, and rationale. For us Western rational types, this mirthless world may serve as a possible cause for the slaughter. As one of the murderers tells the other at the beginning of the rampage, "Have fun."

As Joseph Conrad said about the violation of the jungle, "It was reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without courage; there was not an atom of foresight or of serious intention in the whole bunch of them." Similar to the current debate about foresight and intention in the Iraq war, the neocons barely explain their wars, and the liberals deplore without alternatives. In other words, crime and its criminals are inscrutable.

MUSIC UP, THEN SLOWLY DOWN AND OUT

HIT CD: "KILL BILL 2" (CUT 14: “MALEGUENA SALEROSA” -CHINGON) THEN UNDER FOR

Clay ("Kill Bill 2")
Well, John, "Kill Bill: 2" takes as its setting the inscrutable plains and desolate barrens of Mexico.

Much slower moving than Vol. 1, "Kill Bill 2" has a pressure cooker beginning, that commences when Bill (David Carradine) makes a surprise entrance and goes face to face with the Bride (Uma) just before her wedding.

No flashy yellow jumpsuit for Uma in "Kill Bill 2," but lots of screen time for her to talk out HER feelings and her determination to revenge the death of her unborn baby.

You'll see her hunting down Bill, you'll witness the bloody battle between her and Elle (as played Daryl Hannah), and be breathless with disbelief when you see the Bride being buried alive.

There are even more surprises in store in the brilliant climax of this two-part movie that will bring to mind the close of Oscar Wilde's "The
Ballad of Reading Goal": ". . . all men kill the thing they love . . . The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!"

Hardly a man of peace, Tarantino’s “Kill Bill,” should take home some of the OTHER Oscar’s gold this year.

MUSIC UP, THEN CROSS FADE TO CD: "MY ARCHITECT: A SON'S JOURNEY," THEN UNDER FOR

John ("My Architect: A Son's Journey")
Clay, the man of peace in my life was my dad. I remember him through the countless hours I spent quietly riding with him as he made his house calls. He was a traveling buddy, not a physician. To this day I think of him when I travel and, coincidentally, when I'm sarcastic with you because that's also how he showed he cared.

Nathaniel Kahn's documentary about this father, Louis Kahn, called " My Architect: A Son’s Journey," stands in line this year with fiction films like "Big Fish" and "Barbarian Invasions" as sons search for their fathers, always finding them and themselves at the same time. In "Architect," however, son Nathaniel is different because he loves his roguish father from the start. Like me, he never doubted he loved his dad; he just needed to discover him wholly.

The film is Hollywood liberalism that exalts the humanistic search for self through parents and allows art to surpass the confines of ordinary existence.

As always, Shakespeare catches the scion longing:

My father is gone wild into his grave,
For in his tomb lie my affections;
And with his spirit sadly I survive . . . ."

This is the best documentary so far this Oscar year and an
unforgettable journey.

MUSIC UP, THEN UNDER FOR

Clay (Lead into Break One)
Coming up next: "Dogville," "The Village," and "Harry Potter" . . .

MUSIC UP THEN SLOWLY DOWN AND OUT

Break One