An Empty Chair But Not An Empty Suit: The Case for Re-Electing Barack Obama

NB: I know I'm not in a swing state. My vote doesn't count for much. But, the way I see it, if I keep voting like I do live in a swing state--and enough Texans do the same--that fantasy may very well become reality.

 

On November 4, 2008, a 16-year-old boy, his heart buoyant with joy and his stomach burdened with celebratory cake, logged onto his Facebook and dashed off a quick victory note:

"I don’t know where we are going from here
and if you do then chances are you know something I don't.
But I DO know that for the first time in my memory
We are awake
We are alive
We are invested
We are moving.
At last we are moving forward."

Four years later, much has changed. I'm now officially out of my teens. My musings (hopefully) no longer read like half-assed Maya Angelou rip-offs. And my belief in our president, if not my faith in our entire political process, has been tested. We now know that Barack Obama is not a 21st Century Savior, mending our cultural divides, easing partisan tensions, and singlehandedly bringing a Bushwhacked America roaring back to life. The blight of racism continues to plague the body politic, political gridlock is worse than ever, and we're still stuck with an expanding deficit and a sluggish employment rate. At first glance, it's an American tragedy, the tale of a transformational figure overwhelmed by the very system he promised to change.

But beneath that sob story is another narrative, one of subtle but measurable success, not of soaring poetry but of competent and effective prose. Our President has not eroded cultural division, but he's taken decisive and sensible steps toward all-around equality. Due somewhat to his occasional hubris and mostly to a nakedly partisan Republican House, he hasn't ushered in a new era of post-partisanship, but he's worked around obstruction to implement his agenda, and done so mostly without overstepping his executive authority. It's not yet morning in America again, but he staved off the storm clouds of another Great Depression, and now there are some very real indicators that the dawn is coming. In short, that's why the incumbent's got my vote. But this explanation is devoid of numbers, facts, and explicit references--all of which are sorely needed in this era of post-truth campaigning. Below, I offer what I consider to be a reasonably critical (albeit slightly biased) examination of Barack Obama's first term in office. I know that this post comes too late to change very many minds, but the very least, I hope you'll come away with a thorough and logically sound explanation of why I vote the way I do--the kind of explanation that all citizens of a democracy should have.


First, let's come clean; Obama is an unusually young President, and more than once his youth and inexperience have showed. So before I tell you why the guy's so great, a few concessions. Yes, he bungled the housing crisis. Rather than provide a broad bailout, as he did with the banking and auto-industries, he used a hunt-and-peck approach on that sent signals of uncertainty throughout the housing market. It may have been that after two massive bailouts, he wanted to dodge the "big-spender" label. That was a mistake. He was already stuck with that label anyway, and bailouts, while tremendously unpopular, are also hugely effective. He also made a true bleeding-heart-liberal world-relations blunder--an attempted "reset" with Russia. Yes, that Russia. The run-by-insanely-corrupt-ex-KGB-members Russia. The POTUS extended an olive branch to them, and in return was given leeway to broker a weapons-reduction agreement. For this one agreement, we abandoned, at Russia's request, previous defense commitments to the Czech Republic and Poland--a decision that one Polish politican called "catastrophic". Even after these staggering concessions, Russia chose not  to play nice with us, refusing to put pressure on Iran and balking at the idea of uniting against Syria. Most of the criticism coming at Obama from the right has been paranoid, partisan hogwash, but Republicans were right to say that Russia-gate was indicative of a certain amount of learning-on-the-job naivete.

There's an equally strong criticism coming at him from members of the disenfranchised left.  Over the past three and a half years, he's used cutting-edge technology to step up the War on Terror while shrinking US casualties. Overall, it's a great idea, the kind of nuanced, cool-headed approach so lacking in the last administration's foreign policy. The problem? It's not nuanced enough. We haven't perfected the weapons we're using on the enemy. Therefore, the collateral damage has been tragic and tremendous, particularly in Pakistan. Every death blow to Al-Qaeda builds a stronger America, but it also renders parents childless and children orphaned. To say that their blood is on Mr. Obama's hands is correct; it is, however, also worth noting that assuming leadership of the free world almost always involves making decisions about the life and death of other human beings, and that nearly every president is, however indirectly, also a cold-blooded killer. Bill Clinton oversaw the execution of a mentally retarded man. Harry Truman sat at his desk in the Oval Office while two cities turned to ash. It's also worth noting that Obama has waged a more humane war on terror than George W. Bush ever did, demanding a considerably greater amount of data and evidence before mounting an attack so as to minimize needless deaths. Still, the fact can't be ignored--Obama campaigned on peace and civil liberties, and while he's waged a smart war, it's still a bloody one, the kind he railed against as a candidate.

There are, to be sure, other arguments to be made against the President. Many on the right are claiming that the Obama Administration botched their response to a terrorist attack in Benghazi, costing four American lives. In time, we may find out that there's a dash of truth to that--however, it's becoming clearer and clearer that this was a CIA failure, not a White House one. Those concerned about civil liberties (which should be all of us) blanche at the NDAA, a piece of defense legislation that supposedly gives the federal government the right to imprison American citizens indefinitely without trail. Except not really. It's a piece of shit, for sure, but not some sort of Orwellian master plan.


Neither is Obamacare, by the way. Say what you will about the thuggish way he got it passed (ramming it through Congress on a party-line vote) or the sketchy tactics he used to sell it (refusing to call the mandate a tax, which it is), but the fact of the matter is this: we've given insurance to millions of Americans who were once either too poor or too sick to get it, allowed teens to stay on their parents' plans, and implemented some experimental cost controls that will help reduce our deficit, all while stopping short of the kind of the sort of government-run health care that, while effective in Europe, is, in many people's opinion (mine included), unconstitutional in this country. Pundit (and longtime conservative) Andrew Sullivan sums up it nicely: "This election is really asking you: do you believe everyone should be able to have access to private health insurance or not? When I examine my conscience, my answer has to be yes." Like any major law, Obamacare cannot be judged a success or a failure until it is implemented. Some of the cost controls may fail, and an influx of newly insured patients may lead to a shortage of able doctors--though that's ultimately fairly unlikely. But as a piece of legislation, it is commendable, radically transformative yet ideologically moderate, overhauling our deeply flawed health system without resorting to "death panel" style rationing or waging war on the insurance companies, taking its inspiration not from European-style socialism but from the highly conservative Heritage Foundation. Once the Tea Party demagoguery has died out and the law actually  goes into effect (assuming my guy wins), Obamacare will go down in history as one of the most misunderstood political efforts of the last several decades.

So will the $787 billion dollar stimulus package, a combination of tax cuts and government-funded projects that the POTUS signed into law to revive a gasping-for-breath economy. The tax cuts did two things--they gave some much-needed relief to struggling lower-middle-class families, and also injected some money into a lackluster economy, because, as reporter Michael Grunwald notes, "lower-income families...can't afford to hoard." The government-funded projects also served a twofold purpose; they advanced Obama's agenda by investing in education and green energy, but they also created new jobs in those industries. Admittedly not nearly enough jobs, but enough to stabilize the economy and avert a second Great Depression. This is a huge achievement, even a historic one; it also went, for the mostpart, unnoticed. After all, Obama didn't start a comeback, he merely stopped a crash. Grunwald puts it bluntly: "This was the counterfactual problem that would haunt the Obama presidency, the impossible task of persuading people to be glad their broken arm wasn't a crushed skull." The Grunwald quotes are from the most important book to come out during this election cycle--The New New Deal, a 500-page defense of a stimulus that was not just necessary, but at times visionary. With it, Obama and Joe Biden wanted to do four things; offer reassurance to the middle class, give the economy a government-aided boost, advance their administrative goals, and convince the American people that Big Government, when run efficiently and intelligently, can be a force for good.Four years later, consumer confidence has surged, the stock market is soaring, public education investments have paid off big-time, and the way in which the package was implemented set new standards in government transparency. As one Obama adviser put it, "We probably did more in that one bill than the Clinton administration did in eight years."  Paired with the hugely successful auto bailout, the stimulus is proof that Obama is a competent and trustworthy steward of the American economy--and that, more than anything else, ought to earn him re-election.

Of course, Obama's had other successes as well. Of course, whether some of these are successes or not is in the eye of the beholder. If you believe the word "marriage" refers only to a monogamous union between a man and a woman, you probably aren't pleased with Obama's decision to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act, his successful attempt to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and his declaration that he believes gays have the right to marry. However, for those of us who have long fought for marriage equality, and who have insisted that allowing people of the same sex to express their love for one another is A) an extension of the uniquely American promise of liberty and B) not likely to cause the universe to commit cosmic seppuku, Obama's approach to this issue has been a breath of fresh air. If you believe climate change is an overheated hoax, then Obama's unprecedented attempts to help solar-and-wind startups get off the ground is a waste of money. If you're concerned about the future of what most scientists agree is a sick and tired planet, then you, like me, applaud his decision to invest in green industry, which, while not nearly as effective as heavy taxes on heavy polluters, is still a step in the right direction.

Finally, there's Obama's foreign policy, which, according to Paul Ryan, is unraveling before our very eyes. Tell that to Bin Laden and Gaddafi. Admittedly, our men and women in uniform deserve a great deal of credit for the victorious War On Terror, but we mustn't forget that, in the end, where are troops go and what they do is a result of decisions made by whoever occupies the Oval Office. Faced with the populist uprising of the Arab Spring, Obama charted a careful course, intervening in Libya along with the Europeans, while making the tough but prudent decision to avoid sending resources and weapons to countries like Syria, where those products might've very well wound up in the hands of Al-Qaeda. He re-focused the War on Terror, dialing down troop involvement and ratcheting up drone strikes. And, of course, he defied his cabinet, ordering the operation that killed Osama Bin Laden. Several of these decisions, particularly the last one, were truly presidential. Obama knew that if he took a risk, he might make thousands of Americans safer; he also knew that if that risk didn't pay off, he might lose his job. He put our future in front of his, and we're all better off for it. Of course, foreign policy is ultimately measured not just by who we beat, but who we don't have to fight. In a turbulent four years, Obama's remained cool and collected, reinforcing our strong bonds with Israel without bowing unequivocally to its reactionary prime minister, leveling crippling sanctions against Iran to bring a peaceful end to a potentially deadly conflict, and playing tough but fair with China, calling them out on their cheating without resorting to the kind of unnecessary provocation that Mitt Romney's been advocating. Romney, by the way, is taking advice from the same guys who engineered Dubya's foreign policy. Which would you prefer? Four more years of restrained rationality, or a return to neoconservative bellicosity? 

So for me, choice is clear; I'm going with the guy who kept unemployment rates from rising, and who made sure the number of radical terrorists out there kept sinking. Yet I acknowledge that my decision is informed not just by data but by a set of values, by the delicate demands of my conscience. Some cannot vote for Obama because his pro-choice views clash with their understanding of human life; others because of his continued warmongering and drone strikes. I, on the other hand, feel that I must vote for Obama, because whatever his flaws, he shares my core beliefs; that equality is the cornerstone of any democracy, reason should be at the center of all diplomacy, and government is not the enemy of the people, but instead a force for good that can spur positive change and improve their quality of life. I also vote for the incumbent because, whatever my issues with him, I cannot for the life of me cast my ballot for the challenger. Once a sensible Republican moderate, Mitt Romney is now a cynical opportunist who has proven time and again that he'll do just about anything to get elected, repudiating his long held views on health-care and climate change, and even choosing to run with Paul Ryan, a reactionary zealot who plays the role of fiscal wunderkind while dodging questions of basic math, and who believes that slashing benefits for the elderly and making sure that billionaires are rewarded with less-than-1% tax rates is the ideal way to fix our economy. To check Romney's name on the ballot is to rubber-stamp an agenda of corporatist fantasy and social Darwinism--and to vote for Obama is to repudiate it. I'm also hopeful (perhaps foolishly) that, should Obama win, the GOP will be forced to do some soul-searching, just as the Democrats did after Reagan's landslide victory. During that period, the Democrats ran Bill Clinton, a pragmatic, centrist Democrat. Maybe, just maybe, a Romney loss would finally give us a pragmatic, centrist Republican--one a reasonably moderate guy like me might vote for.

There's one more reason the guy has my vote. When he assumed the presidency four years ago, he promised that he'd be the candidate of change. Today, it's clear that we all overestimated the magnitude of that change. Unemployment hasn't dropped below 6%. Guantanamo Bay hasn't closed. The Middle East hasn't cooled off, and neither has our planet. But even if he hasn't reshaped the whole world, Obama has proven time and again that, more than any president in recent memory, he understands how change really works. He has passed health care reform by procuring the insurance companies' blessing instead of their disdain. He re-focused the War On Terror and brought our greatest enemy to his knees, all while working with a Republican Secretary of Defense. Most importantly of all, he saved a freefalling economy, doing so with a mix of classically conservative tax cuts and typically liberal government spending. He got these things done because he was willing to get his hands dirty; because he knows that change is not decreed from a podium, but worked out in a series of messy compromises and necessary sacrifices. That's why I'm damn near certain  he'll keep us safe from harm for the next four years. That's why I'm hopeful he'll finally pass immigration reform. Most importantly, that's why I'm confident he'll strike a "grand bargain", setting us on the right track for the future by cutting government spending and raising taxes on the wealthy--a balanced approach that his opponent has already written off. 

So here we are. After four years of ups, downs, and a million Facebook statuses, I have the opportunity to say it for one last time. I, Mason Walker, proudly support Barack Obama in this election, not because his brand of change is perfect, but because it is, as we know now, change we can believe in.

A Journey Beyond Sight and Sound

Boy, am I late to the game on this one. I actually started writing this article before the S&S list came out, so I could post it to coincide with the release of said list. A full month later, it's at last ready for posting. Alas, stuff happens, and by "stuff" I mean heaps of homework, ever-present writers block, and a keyboard that  doesn't seem to understand that when I hit the "save" button, I mean it, gosh darnit! Thus, I pray you'll forgive me for this hopelessly dated (by today's standards) post. But just because it's out-of-date doesn't mean it ain't first rate. Hell, my dad still gets a kick out of Time magazines published during the Carter Administration. But I digress...

*****

The King is dead. Long live the King.

Every year, the good people at Sight and Sound magazine gather a who's who of critics and asks them all the same question; what are the ten best movies of all time? The votes are tallied, the films are ranked, and voila, there you have it--a list of the best films ever made, assembled by those who know the cinema better than anyone else. For fifty years, Citizen Kane, Orson Welles' massively accomplished pseudo-biography of William Randolph Hearst, has topped the list, the elder statesman of film, staring down at the competition from its unimpeachable perch and saying to all other motion pictures, "Go ahead. Make my day". One of them finally did.

In August of this year, movie buffs the world over spit coffee on their computers in shock as they gazed at the new list--Kane's reign had ended. Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo had taken its place, beating it out by almost forty votes.

What gives? Well, this year's poll was opened up to almost one hundred new critics, many of them quite young--and if there's anything the youngsters tend to love, it's an underdog. Vertigo's rise is also part of a broader re-appreciation of Hitchcock's work; the longer his movies are around, the more we glimpse the philosophical depths beneath their technically accomplished surfaces, and the more we regret writing him off as a workmanlike thrillmaster during his life.

Is this a good thing? Any attempt to answer that query leads to another; which movie is better? It's a question that's impossible to answer. The two films accomplish wildly different tasks in equally impressive ways. Kane uses technical innovation and a non-linear narrative to lend the saga of one man's life a staggering, mythological grandeur; Vertigo brilliantly repurposes the conventions of the mystery thriller to create a hypnotic meta-narrative, forcing the audience to think about the act of watching even as they watch. Neither film is objectively better than the other. Hell, neither of these movies are objectively greater than any of the other eight pictures chosen for the top ten. Quick, which  is better, Kane or the meditative Tokyo Story? How do you compare Vertigo to 2001: A Space Odyssey?

The simple truth is that there's no such thing as a "best of list". Then why, you ask, am I blogging about one? Because the S&S poll isn't a best of list, though it surely purports to be. It's really a time capsule, a record that, when re-examined in later eras, will tell us a lot about what we once valued and maybe even why we valued it. We can't learn much from asking what movies are on a list; we can learn a great deal by asking why they're on the list.

For example, take a look at the 1962 list, which is front-loaded with a whopping eight foreign films in celebration of the art-house boom that broke down cultural barriers and brought international cinema to our shores. Conversely, over half of the films on the 2002 list were made right here in the US of A, reflecting a desire to honor American cinema in the wake of a distinctly American tragedy. To this critic, the 2012 list indicates two things; a renewed embrace of silent film, brought on mostly by the release of The Artist and the advent of restorative projects like Criterion, and, more than anything, a deep-seated nostalgia for a more thoughtful and substantive kind of genre picture. With Vertigo in first place and the John Wayne picture The Searchers back on the list after a two-decade hiatus, it's not hard to see that the results of this poll reveal a collective longing for an era where art and commerce weren't such uneasy bedfellows. In this day and age, with the exception of the occasional Christopher Nolan grand-slam, it's hard to find Big Movies that harbor equally Big Ideas, and this is a cry of frustration in response to that sad fact.



If the Sight and Sound lists can tell us so much about what's on the collective mind of the critics at a given moment, then it follows that a personal list can also serve as a time capsule, a reminder of what motion pictures we once held most dear and why. That's why I've been hard at work over the past month assembling my own. It's been a fantastic, even revelatory experience, which is why I highly, highly recommend that any true movie lover try his or her hand at it. Write a gigantic treatise on each one or just jot down your favorites on a napkin. Then, send your lists to me, and we can compare and enable each other's nerdiness!

Anywho.

Making said list has taught me much about myself as a moviegoer. For one thing, I love movies that go to extremes, ones that are whimsically simple or dizzyingly dense, relentlessly bleak or persistently silly, madly verbose or dreamily meditative. It also reminds me of what I already know--that the motion pictures I hold most dear are all, in one way or another, celebrations. Some are deeply affecting glorifications of the human spirit, of the unique capacities for bravery and compassion that we are blessed with as a species. Others deal with the tragedy of our seemingly insurmountable flaws, but those films are exultant as well, for they reveal how the artist, armed with ingenuity and empathy, can lend beauty and meaning to the ugliest of human sufferings. There are comedies on this list, there are tragedies, and there is a film that features death by poison fish. But these movies all have one thing in common; they aim for and achieve what John Cheever once called the singular purpose of great art--"to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream."

So here they are, without further ado and, due to the insane difficulty of comparing the incomparable, in no particular order...


MY FAVORITE MOVIES EVARRR (2012 Editon)

Dr. Strangelove

Like all great satires--and make no mistake, no greater satire ever hit the screen--this one never slides into antiquity, but becomes more relevant with each passing year. That this blackly comedic tightrope act worked then and endures now has a lot to do with the work of Stanley Kubrick and Peter Sellers, a director-actor duo that wasn't as prolific as Ford-Wayne or Scorsese-DeNiro but proved just as powerful. Playing three wildly divergent roles with equal parts sincerity and savagery, Sellers is the manic Liszt to Kubrick's mercurial Schubert, taking the material and making it sing. Shot in stark black and white and studded with screenwriter Terry Southern's acid wit ("Gentleman, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"), the result is a devilishly inventive, icily furious indictment of nationalism, of the way that the struggle for unilateral, survival-of-the-fittest dominance ultimately leaves no survivors. "Man", Kubrick wrote in one of his journals, "now views his nation as the moral center of the Universe. Who will be our Galileo?" Turns out he was referring to himself.

Duck Soup

The Marx Brothers got their start in vaudeville and, lucky for us, carried to the silver screen the characteristics that made them such runaway hits onstage; flippant disdain for the conventions of plot and genre, an infectious love of wordplay, and a knack for physical comedy so intricately choreographed and flawlessy timed that it rivals Fred and Ginger's dance breaks for mastery of coordination and rhythm. Nowhere is this truer than in Duck Soup's immortal mirror scene, where Chico, disguised as Groucho, attempts to convince the guy that he's seeing not an impersonator but his own reflection. Like so much of the picture, this scene plays like a crackpot science experiment, one where humour is unshackled from the constraints of plot or theme and simply allowed to do its crazy thing. When I saw Duck Soup at a sold-out screening this summer, I heard a sort of laughter I'd never encountered in a theater before. We tend to use our carefully cultivated public laugh at the movies, but my fellow Duck Soup fans and I were letting loose with our private laughs, the brash, distinctive, deeply unattractive and wholly infectious sort of side-splitters we reserve for our closest friends and family. The movie, God bless it, turned us all into children again, disdainful of pretense or posturing, delighted by the palpable sense of the absurd that permeates nearly everything. Almost a century after its release, Duck Soup still endures, an eternal and eternally funny jeremiad against the mortal sin of taking oneself too seriously. Hail, Hail, Fredonia!!

Fiddler on the Roof

 

No matter where I am in my ever evolving religious search, I'll always be deeply moved by Jewish story--the tale of a people on an eternal journey towards a higher purpose, suffering setback after crippling setback but unbowed through it all, warming themselves by the light of truth and tradition, singing jubilantly in the face of a seemingly relentless sorrow.  No movie captures the essence of the Jewish experience quite like Fiddler--a film of effervescent joy, weary optimism, and an aching, bone-deep anger that's as affecting as it is subdued.Adapting one of the greatest Broadway musical of all time (of all time), director Norman Jewison takes full advantage of the camera's ability to hone in on the kind of illustrative flourishes that can't be conveyed from the proscenium--the barrage of sacred symbols in "Tradition", the kindling of the candles in "Sabbath Prayer", and, most memorably, the faces of the crowd in "Sunrise, Sunset", all watching a village wedding, all lost in either yearning for the past or uncertainty about the future. It's the very essence of melancholy, and you feel as if you're experiencing it not just as a viewer, but as a member of the crowd itself. In the end, that's the simple, timeless genius of Fiddler--it reminds us that, in the end, we are all move than a little like these village people, each of us trying to scratch out a simple tune without breaking our necks.

Hannah and Her Sisters

You all knew it would be here: the Woody Allen spot. Annie Hall could go here, as could Manhattan, depending on my mood or the day of the week or the hour of the day. Yet I choose this one for three reasons; firstly, because it is certainly Allen's warmest, most emotionally generous film, and also his wisest, a picture with a keen ear, a truthful eye, and an open heart, probing the most pressing issues of life and death and daring us to laugh and learn all at once. It also serves as eternal proof that those who pan Allen as visually flat-flooted are wrong--the unforced fluidity with which he handles that opening Thanksgiving scene and the restaurant confrontation among the titular siblings are a reminder that, while he isn't a showy stylist, he is a skilled one.

Finally, this movie contains the best of Allen's famed star-power ensembles. As a lovesick accountant and a venomously self-obsessed writer, Michael Caine and Dianne Wiest picked up well deserved Oscars, and they're matched every step of way by Mia Farrow, the master of neurotic slow-burn, and the highly underrated Barbara Hershey, who makes sexual confusion and raw heartbreak both affecting and effulgent. Yet even if none of the above were true, I'd still love the film because of Allen's own character, Mickey Sacks, a religiously confused, bitingly sarcastic hypochondriac who's as close to a personal doppelganger as anyone I've ever met, onscreen or off. To watch his story is to see my own, and to witness his triumph over existential fear and self-doubt is as intensely vicarious and moving an experience as I've had watching a movie. Indeed, I’ve been moved by the picture so often and in so many ways that it’s become something of a self-disciplinary ritual for me to sit down and try not to be affected. So far, no luck.

Kill Bill Saga

In 2006, young filmmaker attempted to remake Kill Bill, Vol 1. He used Old Navy flip flops as Japanese sandals, wooden "weapons" as Hattori Hanzo swords, and his dog as David Carradine. I confess that filmmaker was me. I was trying to pay tribute to Quentin Tarantino, and I suspect he would've approved--after all, Tarantino's movies are tributes themselves, gifts of gratitude lain at the altar of the movie gods. Almost every shot of this feminist revenge fantasy pays homage to the B-movie genre flicks that shaped Tarantino's wonky worldview. Yet, as Godard reminds us, it's not what you take things from but what you take them to, and if this movie borrows liberally from kung-fu epics, blaxploitation pics, and westerns, it also has level of technical accomplishment those movies couldn't afford, a sense of self-referential humour that they probably could have probably used, and a set of endlessly complex characters that they never, ever possessed.Tarantino's specialty is exploring the strange ordinariness of killers, excavating the universally relatable thoughts and desires they exhibit when their lethal weapons are sheathed. Nowhere does he hit on this theme more entertainingly and incisively than with the Bride and Bill, who, even as they're locked in a deadly pas de deux that spans continents and costs scores of lives, come off as nothing more than a tragically dysfunctional couple. It is a mark of Tarantino's distinct brilliance and oft-overlooked moral compass that by the time we've reached the inevitable final confrontation, we aren't rooting for one of them as much as we are pitying both of them.

Atonement

Atonement is the tale of young Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan in one of the most astonishing child performances), who, putting her artistic imagination to toxic use, convinces herself that she saw her older sister's lover (James McAvoy) commit a rape. The fabrication sends him to prison and then to war, and Briony sets out on a decade-long quest to make things right, her efforts culminating  in a twist so overwhelming in its impact that it literally redefines every moment that came before, from the biggest setpiece to the smallest glance.

The more I watch this film, the more I'm convinced that it's not just the greatest movie released in the halcyon year of 2007, but one of the best movies made in my lifetime, unforgettable not just because of McAvoy and Keira Knightley's ravishing romance, because of its singular vision, for the overwhelming unity of image, word, and music in pursuit of a grand idea. This unity is most obviously evident in the picture's most famous scene, an awesomely harrowing five minute shot of the postwar wreckage at Dunkirk, but it's just as present in the film's opening hour, which captures the rhythms of a summer on the English countryside with a series of indelible images--Knightley laying out on a diving  board, dressed in immaculate white; McAvoy immersed in a cold bath, staring dazedly at the merciless sun; and Ronan watching from a window, Dario Marianelli's hypnotic score pounding away, Seamus McGarvey's immaculately fluid camera honing in on her darting green eyes, which, even as they conspire to deceive, lead us ever closer to true understanding.

8 1/2

Pauline Kael right was right when she called 8 1/2 "a structural disaster". She was wrong to use the term as an insult. The movie's refusal to follow a distinct narrative pattern is not a sign of laziness, but a distinct and effective creative choice linked directly to its overall message; though the artist can explore life through their art, they cannot truly control or contain it. They may create works that alter our perception of the world, but they cannot remake the world in their image, or force it to play by their rules. They may be visionaries, but they aren't gods.

In the film's early sequences, Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni, the essence of the roguishly charming signore) is a director on the verge of a nervous breakdown, constantly on the run from reality. If he's not holed up in an exotic spa, immersed in elaborately conceived daydreams, he's prepping his new film, a half-baked sci-fi spectacle that's really a flimsily disguised attempt to work out his mounting personal problems through the lens of a camera. By film's circus-like finale--perhaps the greatest, ballsiest, most infectiously joyous visual spectacle ever conceived for the screen--he's embraced at last the ungovernable, inescapable madness of reality, and, well aware he can't direct his life as he does his movies, surrendered to the real world's glorious lunacy and surreal beauty. The journey from the opening dream to that final parade is an embarrassment of riches, a defiantly indulgent and sensually intoxicating parade of Rome's loveliest landmarks, Europe's most talented starlets (including Anouk Aimee, my favorite of all foreign beauties), and the best and strangest of director Federico Fellini's trademark fantasy sequences, which convey better than any I've seen the queer and indescribable feeling of dreaming, of being pulled gently but resolutely into a world that belongs to you and to no one all at once. Top it off with Nino Rota's score, as thematically intricate and sublimely evocative as anything Mozart wrote, and you have a movie that breaks all the rules and gets away with it, a work of art that acknowledges and then celebrates the shortcomings of art itself. You may love 8 1/2. You may hate it. But you'll never, ever forget the first time you saw it.
 

 Casablanca

What is there to say that hasn't already been said? The best of all Old Hollywood Studio Films--your argument for Gone With the Wind is invalid.  Movie adverts like to say that a picture "has it all". This one really does. There's tough-as-nails noir courtesy of Humphrey Bogart, swoony romance via the inimitable Ingrid Bergman, comic relief via a saucy (for 1942) Claude Rains, and a generous helping of political intrigue via a pair of exit visas, which sends all of these people down a path very different from what they--or, for that matter, we--could have ever anticipated. For what it's worth, it also has cinema's greatest theme song, its most immensely satisfying ending, and the gold standard of traditional screenplays, a model of narrative economy and storytelling energy.  Each time I watch Casablanca, I play devil's advocate, searching for a scene that doesn't do exactly what it aims to do, that doesn't skillfully advance the plot or touch honestly on a human emotion. I'm still looking. I suspect this will be the most enduring film of the twentieth century. After all, the fundamental things apply, as time goes by.

Taxi Driver

Martin Scorsese is, in his own way, as astute a religious philosopher as Pascal or Thomas Aquinas, though to my knowledge Aquinas's work never featured a woman flushing a mountain of cocaine down a toilet. In Taxi Driver, he's dealing with man's search for meaning. Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro) is so determined to find purpose in an existence that consists mainly of steering a wheel and wiping body fluids off of cab seats that he follows his darkest impulses as if they were dictates from a higher power. He grafts the will of God onto his own anger and shame. In his mind, his sexual attraction to a campaign worker (Cybill Shepherd) is really about protecting her from lesser men ("They. Cannot. Touch. Her."). When she rejects him, his plan to assassinate the Senator she works for is the opening salvo of a much needed revolution. His violent dislike of a street pimp is really a part of an attempt to liberate a young prostitute (yes, that IS Jodie Foster) who isn't even sure she wants to be liberated. That last objective culminates in an operatically grisly bloodbath, one that secures Taxi Driver's place among the darkest and most deeply unsettling of films. In Bickle, Deniro fashions a truly Shakesperean character, specific and universal all at once. Through him, we come to understand the danger of religious delusion--of letting your own raging id as control you as if it were a deity unto itself. Travis may be a lonely man, but he's "God's lonely man", and for him that makes all the difference in the world.

A Star Is Born

 
If the only good thing about A Star Is Born was the "Born In A Trunk" scene, it would be good enough. That scene, a twenty-minute musical medley that culminates in Garland's indelible hat-and-cane rendition of "Swanee", is perhaps the greatest standalone  in any classic movie musical.  But this one has so much more--lush Technicolor cinematography, an instantly recognizable Gershwin score, and Moss Hart script that's honest and spry where so many are cheap and maudlin. Best of all, it has a crackingly charismatic power couple at its center--James Stewart, beautifully devastating as a fading celeb whose courtly charms mask a steadily metastasizing instinct for self-destruction, and, as the up-and-comer who falls hard for him, Garland herself, who somehow seems both aware of and urged on by her impending real-life decline, and thus lays every last ounce of her formidable focus, nuance, and sheer talent on the table, blessing us all with one last burst of her singular light before the end of the rainbow. I love me some Grace Kelly, but her triumph over Garland on Oscar night represented the biggest, most blatant snub in awards show history.

 If you've made it to the end of this staggeringly lengthy post....me love you long time. May the odds be ever in your favor. Live long and prosper.  And remember---make a list of your own!

Goodbye to Gotham

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES

You can get away with an awful lot in a Christopher Nolan movie, but this central fact remains--if you're in our universe, you're playing by our rules, operating under our day-to-day constraints of nature and physics. Nolan's blessed with a Lean-ian sense of scope, but his movies are, for all their shot-for-the-big-screen opulence, the most down to earth of movie epics, constantly pushing the bounds of the plausible while never straying too far from the possible It's this dizzying contrast, this constant tension between nostalgic grandeur and taste-the-grit realism, that make Nolan's films so distinctly his. They tower, yes, but they also keep their feet on the ground. And, when it comes to sheer size, none of Nolan's films has ever towered quite so high as Rises (or TDKR, at the Batboys and girls call it), the monolithically ambitious, staggeringly complicated swan song of his Batman series. Boiling over with ambition and reveling in a beefed-up budget, Nolan has made a true a big-ticket behemoth, the likes of which hasn't been seen since the days of Ben-Hur and Spartacus. One thinks of the lyric from Moulin Rouge:

"Spectacular, spectacular, no words in the vernacular/can describe this great event/you'll be dumb with wonderment!"

And, indeed, as sheer spectacle, TDKR is a bet-the-farm success from start to finish. With Hans Zimmer's score filling the speakers and Wally Pfister's camera sweeping gracefully over Gotham's neon-and-smoke skyline, there isn't a single frame of this movie that isn't impressive, that doesn't bear the mark of some creative strength or technical accomplishment. As a follow-up to The Dark Knight, however, its record isn't quite so spotless. This is a movie with a spotty but absorbing first act, an exhilarating second act, and a wildly bipolar final act, one that's equal parts fascination and frustration as the furthest-reaching director of our time struggles to get control of a story so unwieldy it escapes even his grasp. Nonetheless, as the lights came up and the movie settled in my mind, my gut told me, and still tells me,that this is a worthy successor to one of the greatest sequels of all-time--albeit just barely.

The movie, as most sentient beings now know, is the concluding chapter in what is widely considered the single greatest on-screen superhero saga of all time. I agree with the sentiment, but take issue with the wording. These are at their core anti-superhero movies, obsessed not with feats of strength but with the frailty of even the strongest of the strong. Honing in heavily on the protagonist's dark past and damaged psyche, they aren't so much the story of Batman as the tale of Bruce Wayne, a man so fucked up that he exorcises his demons in by dressing up in a big costume and whaling on thugs, and of a city and a world so fucked up that, well, they actually kind of need him. By deftly deconstructing the binary opposition between man and superman, and introducing a truly savage rogues gallery (Cillian Murphy's Scarecrow, Heath Ledger's deservedly legendary Joker) to further blur the line, Nolan and co. dealt with a question--how should an ordinary person in an orderly society respond to chaos?--that's been at the forefront of our collective minds ever since the smoke cleared at Ground Zero.

It's a dark, gutsy, and timely approach, and it works in no small part because of the man inhabiting the Batsuit, a man who just happens to be the most forcefully committed actor since Daniel Day-Lewis stepped on the scene. The Bruce Waynes of summers past have been, for the most part, one-trick ponies; Michael Keaton was the nerdy one, Val Kilmer the brooding one, and George Clooney the suave, Bat-nipple lovin' one. But Nolan's Wayne is not so neatly compartmentalized; as played by Christian Bale, he's a seething, wounded mess of a man who pacifies himself by trying on and discarding a series of masks; not just midnight vigilante but blithe socialite, spoiled playboy, and savvy technocrat. Yet underneath it all is a scalding, desolate fury, forged in the crucible of his tragic past and perpetuated by a worldview that perceives life not as something to be lived but as something that keeps happening to him, no matter how far into seclusion he slips. Indeed, it's Bale's unflinching immersion in the character that keeps a good portion of his first-act scenes afloat, as Bruce skulks around his manor, mourning his dead sweetheart Rachel and trading barbs with an increasingly frustrated Alfred (Michael Caine). Nolan and his screenwriter brother Jonah have never been terribly adept at back-and-forth dialogues, and these angsty diatribes are a far cry from the ready-steady-go immediacy of TDK. At their leaden worst, they run the risk of coming off as lugubrious--as expendable musings by a duo of pent-up Eeyores. But, with Bale and Caine in the driver's seat, these scenes rarely try your patience, and, at their best, they acquire an impressive, pseudo-Shakespearean heft. They serve as a prime example of how skilled acting can redeem middling material, with a single spurned glance from Bruce or throaty plea from Alfred coming off just as cathartically combustible as any of the picture's flashier fireworks.

That said, it wouldn't be a Nolan movie without some trademark pieces of flair, and if Bruce spends the first part of the picture in a Howard Hughesian rut, the other characters are fired up and ready to go, as is their director, who punctuates the European ennui of Wayne Manor with a trio of crackerjack action setpieces, including a real doozy of a planejacking and a meticulously crafted stock-market holdup that plays like an adrenaline-soaked throwback to TDK's opening bank heist. Sandwiched between the two is a devilishly clever piece of business involving Catwoman (Anne Hathaway), a switched-out cellphone, and a loaded gun. About that feline femme fatale; she is, far and away, the best thing in the picture. "I'm adaptable", the former Princess Diaries star purrs in one scene, and she ain't kidding. Her eyes alternately radiating the sensual ravenousness of a cat in heat and the pitiable listlessness of a wounded puppy, Hathaway is a slinky, kinky wonder, internalizing the animalistic tendencies of Catwomen past and introducing an irresistible dash of eros into a series dominated by top-heavy mythos. Yet even at her most deliciously sinuous, she's powered, like Bruce, by something much deeper and much darker; a gnawing sense of regret. "Once you've done what you have to", she laments, "they'll never let you do what you want to." That's why she jumps at Bruce/Batman's offer of a record-wiping software program, an offer he makes in exchange for information; she must tell him what she knows about Bane (Tom Hardy), a masked mass of throbbing muscles and nihilistic mind who's recently made a scene robbing the aforementioned stock market and--yes--bankrupting Wayne Enterprises.  In a sequence that will surprise no one who's read the comics or even seen the trailer, she takes him to Bane's lair, slams the door, and leaves him to endure what isn't so much a fight as an all-out, blood-spattered beatdown.  Batman's strength is no match for Hardy's villain, who is, fittingly enough, the polar opposite of Ledger's Joker--whereas that character was an anarchic loon, this one's disturbingly detached and methodical in his mortiferous cruelty, espousing a series of clear-cut objectives ("Search him, and then I will kill you") that he enforces with his unmatched brute strength. Accompanied only by the cavernous echoes of falling water and Batman's agonized shrieks, Bane thrashes our hero within an inch of his life and, as he does, a movie that's been humming along fairly well beforehand comes blisteringly alive.

Batman's defeat sets the tone for the movie's middle, in which both Batman and Gotham are subjected to a seeming endless series of physical and psychological humiliations. For years, these people have kept evil at bay, but in doing so they've paid a terrible price, and in TDKR, evil comes a-knocking to collect. With our hero battered into submission and locked away in a Middle Eastern hellhole as punishment for his intrusions, Bane upends the city's social order, overthrowing civic leaders, stifling outside interference, erecting martial law, and subjecting ordinary citizens to rigged kangaroo courts, all the while brandishing, unbeknownst to citizens, an incessantly ticking nuclear bomb. Like the zealous jihadists of today's War on Terror, he doesn't just want to destroy his enemies--he wants to torment them, to subject them to the sum total of his own inner suffering. Achieved through a potent mixture of threats, lies, and sheer strength of will, Bane's takeover is deranged but deliberate, borderline implausible and yet viscerally, horribly real--in other words, it's classic Christopher Nolan. The man's always had a remarkable knack for that most important of filmmaking skills, infusing an image with ideas, and this second stretch of the film is chockfull of the sort of violently charged visuals we've come to expect from him. Men and women in fur coats fleeing a small army of freed prisoners; entire blocks plunged into darkness; leaders of the old regime cast out by the new, exiled onto massive sheets of thin ice and left to fall through and drown; these scenes are marvels of merciless ingenuity, conveying a world where the delicate societal structures that keep our darkest impulses at bay have collapsed.

Greatest and most terrible of all these scenes is Bane's opening salvo, an all-out assault on a packed-to-capacity football stadium. It's one of the two or three strongest moments in Nolan's trilogy, and certainly the one most indicative of his knack for eschewing PG-13 studio convention and going straight for the throat. As a boy soprano sings "The Star-Spangled Banner", the film cuts back and forth between patriotic silence of what's going on inside the stadium with the deafening confusion of what's going on around it; a suspicious detective (Joseph-Gordon Levitt) closing in on a lead, thousands of Gotham's finest marching straight into a trap, and, of course, Bane himself, trudging into the arena, detonator in hand. It's the most startling, savage, and dead-on sequence in the movie, with music, image, and camera movement seamlessly converging to underscore a hymn to the strength and solidarity of a republic with the beginnings of its imminent destruction. If The Dark Knight was a thorny crime thriller about the price paid by a hero, then TDKR is, at its best, a sobering horror film about the price paid by ordinary citizens when said hero goes absent. Yet, even at its most terrifying, it's not painful to watch, for, like the best horror movies, it kindles a sense of gratitude and exhilaration by proving just to us just how deeply it understands our fears.

With so much focus on the destruction of Gotham, and on the two lawmen left to stabilize the crumbling city (Gordon-Levitt and Gary Oldman's Commissioner Gordon), it's easy to overlook Bruce's second-act scenes, which find him nursing his wounds and preparing to embark on a strange ritual that gives prisoners the opportunity to climb up an impossibly tall tower and clamber their way to freedom--or die trying. As soon as the prison warden tells Bruce that no one ever makes it out alive, the Action Movie Bible tells us all we need to know about what's going to happen next. Plus as critics have pointed out, a prison with a ready-made escape route for the strong is both cliche and, well, kind of silly. They're right, but they're also missing the point. The question isn't whether Bruce Wayne will escape, but what it will take for him to escape. As Bruce struggles to regain not just his physical strength but the mental mindset required to do the impossible, Bale turns in some of his strongest work to date,  pouring every ounce of his energy into relaying the ecstasy and agony of spiritual rebirth. These scenes also feature the Brothers Nolan at their most psychologically astute, forcing Bruce to wrestle with the dark truth at the poisonous core of his persona; having lived long enough to see himself become a villain, he wishes nothing more than to die a hero. It's not Bruce's climb out of darkness that's stirring; it's his realization that having something worth living for is  a much, much more powerful motivator than having something worth dying for. It's an epiphany that runs counter to the traditional superhero themes of humility and self-sacrifice, and it makes Bruce's transformation genuinely surprising and unexpectedly moving. And so, with Batman back in the cowl and ready to take on Bane, I steeled myself for one helluva finale, for a full-on Christopher Nolan war movie--but, alas, it never came. The film's final half-hour comes at you in a deluge of uninspired melees, telegraphed plot twists, and sloppy resolutions, and are less a dignified denouement than a shaky sprint to the finish.

What's to blame? The fanboys lighting up the message boards will tell you that Nolan was just plain old tuckered out--that after two BatBlockbusters in the space of half-a-decade, his heart just wasn't in it with this one. I'm not convinced that's the problem. What I see in this film's botched climax is the work of a director who was trying desperately to give us what we wanted, but deeply mistook what it was we desired. Ever since Memento, Nolan's been known for his one-of-a-kind Wowzer endings; in the last half-hour of a Nolan picture, moviegoers have always been guaranteed both a whopper of a last-act twist and a knockout of a final shot. Well aware that people expected these things from him, I imagine Nolan sitting in front of his Word document and thinking that, since this movie was the biggest cosmic event since that whole Big Bang thing, he ought to exceed those expectations. Convention be damned. Let's have six twists and sudden deaths and many, many endings! You thought Inception's dream-within-a-dream framework was complicated? Good luck navigating all five of these subplots! You thought TDK's finale was fucked-up? This one's even darker!! Indeed, as he offs major characters in mere seconds, reveals massive twists at the drop of a hat, and cuts between one Giant Action Sequence and two other Giant Action Sequences, one pictures the guy standing at the front of the movie theatre and pulling a Maixmus, shouting so even the back row can hear; "ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!"

Not as much as I could've been, Mr. Nolan. Because, in attempting to top yourself, you neglect to include the very thing that took you to the top in the first place. The big-budget trickery and narrative sleight-of-hand are cool, sure, but Nolan's finales are usually so good because they take their time, slowly and steadily settling the affairs of each major character. Quick; name another comic book movie other than The Dark Knight that would spent a sizable part of its last twenty minutes letting the villain talk and talk and talk, even though he's been defeated in battle. Or, alternately, riddle me this; name another thriller other than Inception that would stop an action sequence dead in its tracks to focus on a  conversation between two characters sitting at a table. Nolan's always known that an impactive ending is best achieved by taking the time to let the story come deliberately and organically to its natural conclusion. Or at least, I thought he knew; based on TDKR, he seems to think that we're impressed not by the way he shepherds each storyline to a memorable and satisfactory end, but at his ability to throw in twists and complications along the way.

Yes, I was mildly surprised at a last-minute reveal regarding Bruce's ingenue, Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard), a character so insignificant to the movie's first two hours that I totally forgot to mention her up until the sentence you're reading now.

Yes, it was kind of neat to see Nolan cut back and forth among five different points of view with all the effortlessness of a  maestro sitting down to play "Chopsticks".

But I was more preoccupied with what I didn't see; a fully realized conclusion to the central conflict of the movie. After their physical and psychological beatdown at the hands of Bane, we desire nothing more than what the title promises; a rousing pushback against the encroaching darkness, centered around the looming rematch between the Bat and the Baddie. What we get is a sixty-second fistfight amidst a barely choreographed horde of brawling cops and thugs, resolved in a cheap and arbitrary way that strips Bane of all his carefully established gravitas and mystery and turns him into a bad joke. This leads us to blink-and-you'll-miss-it battle centered around the Cotillard character, but just as we're settling into that, Nolan drops it, too, tossing in a ticking-clock gambit straight out of a Rush Hour movie. Stacked on top of each other, the multiple climaxes deflate; the impact of whatever came before is negated by whatever rapidly unfolding Biggerer and Betterer thing comes after. It's as if Nolan's trying to prove to you that in tying off his trilogy, he left no leaf unturned, no stunt untried or plot machination unused. But I'd much rather have a perfectly prepared meal than a helping of every single thing you have in the kitchen. The plot's natural path leads to a confrontation between the film's central hero and central villain, and I'd've much preferred a generous and protracted resolution of that conflict to the introduction of a hundred new ones. By sending his film down a single pathway with finesse and focus and then circumventing the last stretches of that pathway by going in a hundred directions at once, Nolan hobbles his movie, keeping it from the classic status attained by its two predecessors.

An overburdened climax isn't the only problem with this picture. There are also, as every website ever has now pointed out, sundry plot holes (How does Bruce get back to Bane-occupied Gotham? Why can't SEC just overturn Bane's fraudulent stock market takeover?) and lapses in basic common sense (On what planet does a city send its entire police force to the same place at the same time? What is the Gordon-Levitt character smoking that makes him such a damn good guesser?). There's also a last-minute coda that elicits tears without really earning them. I wept through it the first time, but the more I think about it, the more I roll my eyes. Nolan creates a touching final tableau to put the finishing touches on the fates of his main characters, but here the emotions come at the cost of basic logic. While you're reaching for your Kleenex, it's worth remembering that this scene, however affecting it may be, depends on:

1) A sudden revelation regarding the relationship of two characters that runs counter to everything we've learned about them in the past two hours.

2) A character having an almost robotically subdued reaction to a situation that would reduce any sentient human being to hysterics.

and

3) Frankly, a lead character being kind of a douche, ushering in countless hours of pain and grief that could've been allayed with a phone call or a post card, all in the service of creating one final "gotcha" moment.

I hesitate to ruin an ending that many moviegoers have deemed flat-out sensational, but, then again, Pauline Kael used to say that critics ought to "help by explaining the ways in which (movies)...can work over your emotions in unworthy or dishonest ways." Or, put plainly, if you're eating shit because it looks like Godiva, you have the right to know that it's actually shit.

Yet, ultimately, the greatest handicap to this picture isn't the anything that's in it but something that's not; the voices and faces of the citizens of Gotham as they endure some of the greatest hardships imaginable. In his first two Batman films, one of the  advantages of Nolan's realist approach was the way it reminded us that all of the hero's cape-and-cowl derring-do didn't just occur in a vacuum, that his mistakes could cause the suffering of thousands and his successes might alleviate it. The frightened boy fleeing the Scarecrow's chemical attack, the citizens on the boat, bickering over the Joker's bomb plot--these people served as urgent, potent reminders that the lives of real citizens, not just the welfare of a couple of set extras, hung in the balance. In TDKR, when Gotham's citizens are more directly affected by Batman's actions--or lack thereof--than ever, Nolan never bothers to zero in on their emotions, to add a shade or two of true emotional dimension to their predicament.

 Take one of the action sequences at the end, where Gordon-Levitt is trying to shepherd a group of kids onto a bus and get them out of the city. If this movie followed the blueprint set by its predecessors, we'd actually see inside the bus, plunging headfirst into the childrens' confusion and fear. We'd remember that these are the faces of actual citizens, and that, unless someone steps in and does something, well, super, their lives will be short and terrible in ways that we'd never wish on anyone. Instead, Nolan focuses exclusively on Gordon-Levitt shouting directions to a fellow cop--on Movie Bravery instead of Real Terror. This is a story that cries out more than ever for the voices of ordinary Gothamites. With Bane running the show, wouldn't it have moved us to see these people set up support groups or thrilled us to see them assemble a citizens army? As it is, the vox populi is silent, and its absence is deafening. It is this silence, not the logical loopholes or the cluttered climaxes, that truly keep TDKR from reaching its potential. In the end, TDKR is not this trilogy's Spider-Man 3, nor its Return of the King. It is instead the Return of the Jedi of the series, a deeply problematic but often thrilling and always honorable finale.

And yet I have to say that, in their own way, the disappointing aspects of the picture seem fitting, given its themes. As Nolan cut back and forth among subplot after subplot, with each lead character doing their part to save the city or damn it, it realized the chief message of this movie and of the whole series, a message that's deeply antithetical to the rah-rah individualism championed by most comic-book epics, and by American action cinema in general;


One man can only do so much.

It's a ballsy, deeply complicated message, one made almost unbearably poignant and prescient in the aftermath of the deplorable massacre that happened at a screening of this very picture in Colorado. It's a message that cuts both ways; it is true, sadly, of the Batmans and Barack Obamas of our world, and, luckily, of the Banes and James Holmes's. And, indeed, in the aftermath of this unspeakable tragedy, this message is central to what ought to be our goal as a nation; diminishing the achievements of the criminal who perpetrated it. We have already reached out to the good people of Aurora, joining Facebook groups and donating to charities, saying prayers and sending good vibes while all the while shepherding our families into the house to hold them a little closer. We have already done our part to comfort those affected by this crime; now we must turn our attention to the criminal, and, exercising our right to free speech and our gift of human ingenuity, show him just how little he got away with. Admittedly, killing twelve people is no small crime, but I have the feeling that Holmes, who purportedly modeled his bloody actions on those of the Joker, was aiming to leave more than just a pile of dead bodies; by opening fire on a group of people engaged in one of our most sacred and enduring past times, I think that, consciously or not, this man wished to damage not just our day or our week, but the very act of going to the movies, infecting one of our greatest venues for reflection and escape with his own suffering and razor-sharp mania, so that every time we stared at a cinema screen, we envisioned his haunted face rippling just underneath it.

Well, sorry, big guy.

When we listen to "Imagine", we don't think about a man who fired a few shots outside of the Dakota; we think about unity, about peace, about a harmony that escapes all understanding. In the coming weeks, we must remind Mr. Holmes that the same is true of the movies; that he has not sullied the sheer thrill of stepping into a dark room, plunging headfirst into another world, and coming out a little surer about your place in this one. As soon as I heard the awful news, I knew instinctively what I had to do; buy a ticket and see the picture again. Admittedly, for the first half-hour or so, my fellow audience members and I were clearly on edge, throwing jerky, nervous glances at the exists and keeping a close eye on backpacks and purses. But, around the sixty-minute mark, I could feel it; that beautiful, unquantifiable moment when, eyes focused on the screen, we were unbound from ordinary reality, and, for two and a half hours, permitted to experience something extraordinary. In that moment, I knew we'd already won. It's not a concrete, historical victory, but it is a real one, and it's a victory you can perpetuate by going to see a movie, whether it's a brilliant gem like Moonrise Kingdom, an escapist romp like Ice Age: Continental Drift, or a flawed but deeply satisfying franchise film like The Dark Knight Rises, which, for now, gets a B in my book. It's a verdict that may change over time, but for now, I'm sticking with it.



I'm sure that my final judgement of this picture is one that many will take issue with. Some have suggested that I ought to really tear into it, to castigate Chris Nolan for letting so many of us down.  There are others, much greater in number, who will insist that I've gone overboard, that I've deliberately looked for ways to tear holes in the seamless fabric of a film that's actually a masterpiece. To both groups I say this;

I'm tough on Christopher Nolan because he can take it.

Because, when he's at his best, he's the director we need, and probably a better one than we deserve.

But, I'm merciful because, even when he doesn't hit all of his targets, he's still a brilliant artist.

A studio-movie savior.

A Dark Knight.

Wrapped in the Flag, Carrying the Cross: A Response to the 2012 Texas GOP Platform

After my previous political post, I promised myself that I'd leave well enough alone for a while. With the torturous tempest of the GOP nominating process behind us and the whiplash-inducing spin zone of debate season ahead of us, it seemed like a good time to give both the reader and the writer a break--to trade my liberal-tarian worries for a bag of popcorn, and leave the concerned-citizen hand-wringing to Rachel Maddow whilst I told you what I thought of Brave (the verdict: it's the best Dreamworks kids flick Dreamworks never made). And yet, to steal a phrase from the third Godfather picture, just when I thought I was out...they pull me back in. 


In this case, the "they" in question is the Texas Republican Party, who, earlier this week, issued a proclamation of war on a man whose values stand at odds with their own.

I'm talking, of course, about Ronald Reagan. Ever since the dog days of the GOP debates, where Newt Gingrich took a stand against child labor laws and Rick Santorum reiterated his infallible expertise on mommy-parts, there's been a collective, bipartisan nostalgia for the even-tempered Reagan-Bush years, combined with the sentiment that in these polarized days, Ronald Reagan, Republican hero, couldn’t get elected President. Elected? Reagan, a one-time Democrat who fought against anti-gay discrimination, hiked takes, and, granted mass amnesty to immigrants, wouldn't have even been nominated. 




Yet the gap between Reagan-style conservatism and the current Tea Party brand isn't just about policy--it's about philosophy. No matter what you thought of Reagan's doctrinal decisions, it was hard to argue with his publicly stated vision for the nation--that famous "shining city on the hill", an ideal America that was "wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace. A city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity." And if this city must be guarded with walls, he said, those walls ought to have "doors...open to anyone with the will and the heart to get [t]here". As much as the Democrats and Republicans of the past fought bitterly over how to get to that city, it was always clear that such a place was their ideal destination--an America of pride and principle, one that accepted diversity, embraced community, and encouraged upward mobility. However, in the party platform they released last week, the Texas Republicans expressed intentions to steer us towards a very different sort of city--one where the radiance of reason is dimmed, the peaceful hum of coexistence is drowned out, and those sacred doors are shut to all but a select few.


For those of you who happened to be home with the swine flu when your teacher talked about this in government class, a platform is a compilation of a political party's official positions on major issues. They aren't the most exciting reads, especially when you consider the fact that both parties have held the same basic positions since the seventies-Republicans spring for pro-life, natural rights, limited government, and hands-off economics, while Democrats defend the right to choose, government involvement in social change, a strongly centralized national government, and higher taxes on the wealthy. These things are usually as workaday and predictable as car manuals. What's more, they probably should be, as this predictability reflects a rigorous and consistent values system. Thus, Texans of all political stripes ought to be shaken and stirred by our state’s 2012 Republican platform, which contains a series of truly startling proposals that combine stateist ego-stroking with a tacitly declared war on the open society. To wit:


“We affirm that the public acknowledgement of God is undeniable in our history and is vital to our freedom, prosperity and strength. We pledge our influence toward a return to the original intent of the First Amendment and toward dispelling the myth of separation of church and state[1].”




“We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs....which have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority[1].”
“We recommend that local school boards and classroom teachers be given more authority to deal with disciplinary problems. Corporal punishment is effective and legal in Texas[2].”


Each of these proposals has made national news, and, believe it or not, most have agreed that each individual statement is bad policy. That’s a claim we can prove with as little effort as Kristen Stewart puts into her acting. Firstly, while the words “separation of church and state” never appear in the Constitution, they appear multiple times in some of our earliest legal documents, and, as years upon years of Supreme Court cases show, it may not be a binding law, but it sure as hell ain’t a myth, either.[3] Secondly, while corporate punishment is indeed legal, the American Academy of Pediatrics says that it is ““of limited effectiveness and has potentially deleterious side effects”, and I think I’ll take their word for it.[4]  And to say that the anti-critical thinking bit is based on flimsy reasoning is the understatement of the year; the Texas GOP may claim that they discourage such thinking in order to protect a parent’s right to educate their own child, but it’s hard to believe that, with their dedication to tearing down the wall between church and state, they’d have any problem trying to “undermine” the parental authority of two atheist parents. If mom and dad wanted a total monopoly on teaching their kid, they’d homeschool ‘em.


It’d be easy to stop here; however, taking on these claims individually isn’t enough. My real point here is this; these claims are deeply disturbing when addressed one-by-one, but, when taken together, as parts in a belief system, they constitute nothing less than insult to us and a threat to our children. In order to understand what unites the above passages other than the overwhelming smell of bullshit, that is—we must examine two more;


“Our [foreign] policy is based on God’s biblical promise to bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse Israel and we further invite other nations and organizations to enjoy the benefits of that promise.”[5]

It may seem odd that such a passage would in fact offend a Jew, even one as unconventional as myself. Yet it does. Who is it that defines exactly what it means to “curse” Israel? Should the Palestinian struggle for land redistribution be viewed as a “curse” or simply as a misguided initiative? More to the point, what does it mean to “bless” Israel? Some, including me, would say this means nothing more than forking over a reasonable amount of foreign aid. Others, including several Christian Right standard-bearers like Falwell and Pat Robertson, believe that this means supporting Isarel’s policies without question, even if those policies are driven by some of the most openly militant fundamentalists in the Israeli government. The point is, that while one can take several different approaches to interpreting a policy briefing, one can take countless approaches to interpreting religious scripture. You can’t base something as objective as government policy on one of the most subjective documents in the world. Nonetheless, that’s exactly what the writers of this platform are trying to do—to interpret the world not just through deeply subjective document, the Bible, but through their singular understanding of it. How else can one explain this passage?:





“We believe the current teaching of a multicultural curriculum is divisive. We favor strengthening our common American identity and loyalty instead of political correctness that nurtures alienation among racial and ethnic groups.”[1]






Once again, this passage attempts to distort the subjective into the objective. How is it, exactly, that we can agree upon a definition of “American identity”? Luckily, Texas Republicans have provided one for us, one that suggests that this identity is not just inextricable from Christianity (remember the “myth of church and state” shtick), but, from their specific, deeply errant version of Christianity. Of course, such a radical agenda might rub kids the wrong way, and here we arrive at the true purpose of the critical thinking proposal. It was snuck in under the bogus guise of protecting “fixed beliefs”, but, as I’ve already shown, that argument doesn’t hold water. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that the real purpose of the provision; to make sure that, if students disagree with the “objective truth” perpetrated by their teachers, they lack the intellectual acumen to fight back. What we have here is a simultaneous weakening of education, the teaching of the unknown, and strengthening of indoctrination—the repetitive instilling of the same ideas, over and over again, until they become woven into the fabric of the soul. We have now seen how these isolated passages, when linked together, form a true reactionary powder keg.



As far as the corporal punishment passage, if you’re expecting me to argue that the Texas GOP endorses beating kids for fleeing Jesus, you’re wrong. Our teachers are better than that, and our school administrations are smarter than that. But any sane human should be disturbed by a paragraph that a) asserts that beating a child is an effective form of punishment and b) argues that such a punishment is still not adequate. I’ll simply leave this question right here; how often does the desire to enforce a new, government-propagated worldview, combined with expanded coercive and combative abilities to carry out that enforcement, lead to anything other than unmitigated disaster?


George Orwell, eat your heart out.

This platform a rebuke to the very notion that lies at the very heart of our constitution—liberty. Michele Bachman and Rick Perry may argue that true liberty means only the freedom to follow what their diseased breed of Christianity deems correct beliefs, but it should stand as self-evident that giving us the liberty to be only one sort of person isn’t giving us liberty at all. What’s more, enacting this platform would actually weaken organized religion. What if, for example, the Episcopalian Church came out in favor of gay adoption, but the government-propagated version of Christianity stood in opposition to it? Mixing church and state means that, when the state changes, the churches who disagree with the change are invalidated. This is, in fact, why many of the first pilgrims came to the United States—they were tired of being persecuted because the King or Queen switched the state religion every time they went to tea. What’s more, mandating a particular way of believing destroys one of the central tenets of the religious experience—embarking on a personal journey of deistic discovery. A leap of faith is a lot less life-changing when it’s as mandatory as bubbling in an answer on a TAKS test.

It probably seems like all this huffing and puffing is a little excessive. After all, how could ideas this absurd actually work their way into state or national law? Then again, we also asked “how absurd can it get?” when Rick Perry appointed anti-science “scholars” to the Texas Board of Education, when the most radical members of the Tea Party ran for office, and when Rick Santorum stumped for President. Each time, the answer was the same: ‘pretty freaking absurd’. The Texas Republicans aren’t alone in these views—many of them have been espoused in countless states by the far right—who have, unfortunately, seized control of the GOP.

While Democrats are the ones doing most of the public kvetching about this, it’s the moderate, reasonable Republicans who are truly taking a hit, those who endorse the conservative principles of smaller government and fewer taxes, but abhor the zealous extremists overrunning their party. I feel for these rational members of the right. These are the people who understand that conservatives ought to be about conserving, but must sit by and listen to Michele Bachmann say flat-out that carbon monoxide isn’t harmful to the environment.[1] These are the people believe in paying our debts and balancing the  budget, but were appalled to see the most inexperienced Tea Party members of Congress push the whole government to the brink of total shutdown in order to prove that point. These are the people who are protective of their religious rights, but who shudder when they realize that they are represented by people like Allen West, who once went on a tirade against people with “coexist” bumper stickers, claiming that they “would give away our country”[2]. And these are the people who must take back the Republican Party. 


Indeed, kicking the far-right out of Congress is an essential task for all of us, for as long as those unwilling to compromise remain in power, our political process will remain fatally crippled. In states where Democratic wins are hugely unlikely and voting across party lines is possible, liberals must consider lending their support to moderate Republicans in order to unseat extremist candidates. In states where there are no moderate Republican candidates, conservatives must consider doing what they can to lend their support to a Democrat. Compromises like this are painful now, but in ten years, with Congress restored to the friendlier, more functional 20^th century model, they will seem a small price to pay. Texans in particular must speak out against this platform until November, when we will, if there’s any justice, make people who espouse its most extreme ideas hurt at the polls.


I gaze at my computer screen and realize that, despite all my intentions to finish this behemoth before dinner, the clock has struck midnight. It is the morning of July 4, 2012. It is a day of American pride, and while the folks who drafted this platform might not make me proud to be an American, the countless people, who, regardless of party or personality, unite to stand up against this sort of dangerous rhetoric, make me very proud indeed. And, come Election Day, I hope liberty-loving Americans will make me even prouder by unseating those who draw their Dark Age, distinctly un-American philosophy not from the idea of the shining city on the hill, but from those haunting final lines of The Great Gatsby:


“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

---

[1] Ibid, p. 11

---

[1] Ibid p. 12

[2] Ibid p. 20

[3] If you have no life like me and would like to see some major separation-of-church-and-state SCOTUS cases, check out Engel vs. Vitale and Allegheny County vs. ACLU.

[4] “When does spanking become abuse?” Toth, Sheree L. CNN. November 11, 2011

[5] Report of Platform Committee p. 30

---

[1] Report of Platform Committee p. 14
-------------------------------------------

[1] http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/republicans/a/michele-bachmann-quotes.htm

[2] http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/02/16/417174/allen-west-15-worst-quotes/