"Game" Time: "Game Change", "The Hunger Games", and the Politics of Spectacle

 As a piece of cinema, Game Change is no game changer; it's as a well-crafted and sturdily conventional as its HBO TV-movie predecessors. However, it is one of the most radical adaptations you'll see in a while. The non-fiction novel on which it is based, an impressive work of cultural reportage by Mark Halperin and John Heilleman, was almost George R.R. Martin-esque in it's obsessive expansiveness. At the heart of the piece was the idea that far from being a matter of Republican vs. Democrat, the 2008 election was a massive shift in countless cultural paradigms that worked itself out in a messy, dizzying tangle of cause and effect. The actual ballot-checking may have been up to us, but what Halperin and Heilleman make clear is that this was a contest decided not just by American voters, but by senators, ex-Presidents, media personalities, crusading journalists, civil rights figures, fierce feminists, Bible-belt preachers, black-power extremists, hockey moms, corporate czars and, yes, one Katie Couric. Game Change the movie is the story of the McCain-Palin campaign, plain and simple. The multifarious perspectives that gave the book so much of its kick are mere peripherals here, with Obama relegated to a cameo and Hillary dumped all together. Yet, even if it ditches all of the novel's structure and most of its spirit, it pulls off an impressive task; it assembles a straight-faced, reasonably sympathetic interpretation of the rise, fall, and rebirth of America's most powerful and polarizing moose hunter. Employing the eponymous book, as well as interviews with several senior McCain-Palin campaign staffers, screenwriter Danny Strong and director Jay Roach do something rather unexpected; they play it straight. This is no Primary Colors-esque rumination on power, no Sorkinized riff on the seedy backdoor politics of politics. 

It doesn't ask, as many of us bewildered liberals did in the midst of the Mama Grizzly madness, "How could this happen?!" Propelled by a superfluous cast, it observes the events of Palin's VP run with something resembling bemused curiosity. The picture takes its share of cheap shots (one word: "O'Biden"), but it's also impressively earnest in its desire to answer its true central question: "How did this happen?" That this approach works is in no small part a testament to the skill, precision, and sheer gumption of the eternally underrated Julianne Moore, who is, simply put, as great as you'd expect and then some. Her red hair darkened to a rootsy brown, her earthy alto swooping up into heretofore unheard octaves of sing-songy Ah-leeya-skun, she nails the down-home swagger that made Palin such a hit on the campaign trail, as well as the barely suppressed fish-out-of-water neurosis that made voters think twice at the ballot box. Perhaps most impressively, she keys into Palin's more compassionate side, into the radiant, unforced sense of sugar-cookie maternity, which allowed her to parlay an inarguably genuine love of faith, family, and country into a brand spankin' new political archetype--the Ultimate Concerned Parent, if you will. Whether she's shaking hands on the campaign trail or treading water in that infamous Couric interview, Moore strives not for cheap impersonation, but for alchemy. The result is a remarkably calibrated, even empathetic performance that gives us striking glimpses of what Palin might've been thinking and feeling and, by doing so, recenters a national figure who has been long oversimplified, slotted into the binary opposition of warrior patriot or uninformed hockey mom.

That said, the movie's not afraid to question the woman's competency, entrusting that task to aspiring President McCain (Ed Harris, subdued and startlingly accurate) and to a string of campaign aides and advisers who also serve as a handily politicized Greek chorus. There's the husband and wife team (Ron Livingston, Sarah Paulson) who doubt Palin's credentials from the get go, the lawyer who vets her (Brian D'Arcy James), the consultant they bring in to brush up her foreign policy and withstand media scrutiny (Colby French). And, at the head of it all, there's Woody Harrelson's Steve Schmidt, the embattled campaign veteran who believes in Palin's potential as a high-risk, high-reward candidate, but steadily morphs into her greatest critic. As a man exhilarated by Palin's rhetorical fireworks and then bowled over by her dangerously persistent flightiness, his character's journey of disillusionment mirrors the one many of us took during those last months of the elections, when the VP wannabe's approval ratings plummeted so steeply. He turns in an agile, exquisite slow-burn of a performance, navigating Schmidt's bumpy descent from country-first idealism to businesslike frustration to an incredulity too far-reaching and deep-seated for words. When he finally goes off on Palin on election night, it's not just the movie's most compelling scene, it's a tragic microcosm of the modern political climate. In these five shining minutes, the picture takes the temperature of our fevered two-party culture, and gets one hell of an accurate reading. 

These is acting at its finest. 

Now where are the technical credentials to back these guys up?

You've heard many a politician ask; why don't we have a government as good as the people?

Well now, I'm curious: HBO, y u no have a crew as good as the cast?

This isn't just a specific critique of Game Change--it's an issue I've had with almost every one of HBO's made-for-TV movies. As their serialized shows prove week after week, "made for TV" doesn't necessarily mean "cut-rate production". Game of Thrones and True Blood boast a good cast and a phenomenal sense of mood and mise en scene. Jay Roach does a decent job with this one, but the director of Austin Powers and Tuck Everlasting doesn't do much but station the camera in front of his actors and let them at it. Wouldn't this picture have benefited from a director who really lured us into the campaign mania that drove Sarah mad? Danny Strong does a nice job interspersing original dialogue with sound bites and now-famed speeches, but, apart from the aforementioned Schmidt-Palin meltdown scene, do any of his lines do half as much to hammer home what Palin is thinking and feeling as Moore's most perfunctory glance? I think of the way David Fincher's jittery edits ratcheted up Jesse Eisenberg's laser-sharp anxiety in The Social Network, the way Peter Morgan juxtaposed time, space, and location to turn Frost v. Nixon's litany of facts into high drama. Then I think of Game Change and sigh. As with Something the Lord Made and You Don't Know Jack, the actors aspire to greatness. The picture aspires to competence. B

That's the case with The Hunger Games has as well. 

**

Now, for those of you who just got back from your vacation to North Korea or chose hibernation as your chief hobby in the past half-decade, The Hunger Games, based on the blockbuster YA novel of the same name, takes place in Panem, a postwar dystopia lorded over by a totalitarian capital. Years ago, when rebellion broke out, the Capitol nuked one of Panem’s “districts” and forced the surviving ones to compete in the Hunger Games, a vicious winner-takes-all embroglio where government-selected competitors fight to the death on public television so as to provide the entertainment-starved populace with some bloody satisfaction--and to reinforce the iron-fisted strength of those who lord over said populace. Oh, and did I mention the competitors are kids? 

One of those kids, the aforementioned Katniss Everdeen, is both the story's protagonist and its and the focal point of its popular appeal. Handy with a bow but also vulnerable to the machinations of Cupid's arrow in the form of fellow competitor Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), Katniss is refreshingly complex addition to the often oversimplified gallery of modern pop culture heroines. Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post hits the nail on the head when she deems the character a "transitional figure between the masochism of Bella Swan and the avenging ferocity of Lisbeth Salander". Unlike mopey-mugged Bella or castrating Lisbeth, Katniss is not easily mocked or conveniently classified. She  struggles honestly and extensively with real-life lady problems. The Hunger Games are ostensibly masculine--violent, irrational, covetous of brute strength. Can Katniss win them without totally losing sight of her emotions, her sensitivity to others, her compassion for even her most dangerous enemies--her femininity? Katniss's battle to stake out a place in an overtly masculine world without straying from her fundamental femininity is all too familiar in this day and age. Because this girl's fictional battle strikes a real-world nerve, she will outlast her literary competitors. That's true of her cinematic ones as well, due in no small part to Jennifer Lawrence, who own this movie so hard that they might as well sign over everyone's salary to her and call it a day. Lawrence, whose resume is chock-full of battle-hardened beauties (Ree in Winter's Bone, Mystique in X-Men: First Class) slides into Katniss's skin with astonishing ease, projecting her keen resourcefulness and sinewy resolve while masterfully teasing out glimpses of an inner child forced into hiding. There's a steely wit to her scenes with childhood friend Gale (Liam Hemsworth), and a raw vulnerability in her moments with Hutcherson, who nails Peeta's appealing sensitivity but misses his understated humour. Even her small solo scenes play like effortlessly applied brushtrokes of illustrative detail, her most minute gestures imbued with that unique, Katniss-y combination of a daughter's tenderness and a hunter's certitude. As with Game Change, The Hunger Games is grounded by a powerful female performance. And, as with Game Change, Woody Harrelson provides top-notch support. As Haymitch, a washed-up, rum-sozzled former victor who schools Peeta and Katniss in the rules of the games, Harrelson approaches an innately showy role with appreciable nuance and empathy. His boozy stupor is so morbidly, contagiously tragic that his sudden eruptions of ration and reason have both comic and dramatic heft. 

Once again, here's a well-acted movie. 

Once again, the actors are underserved by the folks behind-the-scenes.

Stylistically speaking, the movie isn't a total boondoggle. The grim conditions of District 12 are rendered with a grainy, desaturated palette that makes the sense of impoverishment startlingly concrete. And, when the film heads to le Capitol, director Gary Ross eschews the fat-cat stereotypes and portrays the wealthy as a deliciously gaudy blur of bad candy-colored fashion and odious personae. Screenwriter Billy Ray helps Ross out by smartly economizing the backstory, condensing some of Collins' lengthier exposition into a clever piece of Capitol film propaganda. This picture is sleek, reliable, and thoughtfully assembled. But so is the ceiling fan that's keeping me from schvitzing my head off as I write this review. For all its faithful competence, something is missing from The Hunger Games--not a brain, nor a heart, but a voice. Specifically, Katniss's voice. 

It's that voice that kept the novels from turning into a glorified riff on Survivor. Because of the first-person narration, we were effectively presented with three narratives at once; the actual games, the televised coverage of said games, and Katniss's personal experience of the games, which unearths the thoughts and emotions the cameras can't capture. Those who write off the novels as oversimplified young adult hokum would do well to appreciate the structural brilliance of this decision; by placing the reader not alongside Katniss but inside her, Collins creates a whopper of an emotional effect. We're repulsed by the infinite agonies of our heroine's fight for survival, but, as with the people of Panem, we're just too compelled by the intensity and insanity of the bloodshed to stop watching. It's like being the gladiator and the Colosseum hordes all at once. Plus, there's just something infinitely appealing about the style of the voice; plain-spoken, light on wordplay, and heavy on brittle, battle-hardened declarations ("I move into the range and give myself three arrows to get the job done"), it sends the story hurtling from event to event with a ruthless efficiency that makes JK Rowling look like a literary loiterer. The book feeds off the narration; the movie deep-sixes it. It's an understandable move---movie voiceovers are, more often than not, airheaded exercises in big-screen redundancy. If you can show something, why say it aloud as well? Yet here, with Katniss's voice effectively silenced, the movie loses that very qualities that lifted the book above hundreds of other pieces of kiddie sci-fi drivel and becomes, for all intents and purposes, a reasonably well-made action flick. 

Great adaptations start with a familiar story and then attack it with a style all their own, yielding new insights into an old narrative. For a recent example, look at how David Yates used a deliberate slow-burn structure and a delicate attention to light and shadows to locate untapped reserves of heartache and longing in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Now look at The Hunger Games. It's not the bloody sprint to the finish that the books were, but, couldn't it've been a futuristic gladiatorial epic? A Kick-Ass-esque opus of delusional violence? An imperiled love story to get the taste of Twilight out of our mouths? Hell, even the movie's soundtrack offers an interesting possibility. Sculpted by roots-music impresario T Bone Burnett, the album is chock-full of earthy folk-rock ballads that play like accompaniment for a post-apocalyptic Western--a fascinating approach to the material that's more emotionally charged and stylistically stimulating than the actual movie. Find a moment in the film that conveys, as forcefully as "Come Away to the Water", the horrid, hypnotic hold the Games have on Panem, and on the contestants.  Listen to 'Safe and Sound", the lead single, and tell me which captures the wounded fragility of the book's most prominent death better--the song or the movie scene. It is worth mentioning that, right after that death, the movie makes its one major deviation from the novel, an extended riot that, for once, pulsates with genuine emotion. For a stunning moment, it takes on an unforgettable mood of its own--it pulsates with the angry heart of the masses, becomes a trembling threnody for lost freedom. All my bitching about voice and mood and tone may seem overheated and snobby, but if the filmmakers can come together and make a scene this raw, this focused, this great, why should I settle for anything less in the picture's other two hours?

This is by no means a bad movie. In fact, it is a pretty decent one. What it is, however, is a missed opportunity, and not even the exemplary work of the radiant Ms. Lawrence can blot out that fact. Later this year, Catching Fire starts production. Maybe this time, those involved will adapt the source material not just faithfully, not just skillfully, but meaningfully. And, as a hopeful fan, I eagerly await a movie as good as the soundtrack. C+

***

I'll say it again; these movies aren't failures. What they do, they do pretty well. But the great political drama of the New Millennium, the biggest teen fiction phenom since Harry Potter--don't they deserve adaptations as arresting, original, and unshakeable as the source material? Here we have two singular cultural watersheds that made history by shattering convention like a bull in a china shop, transferred to cinema with all the go-for-broke daring of a maid doing dishes in a house kitchen. In Angels In America, Al Pacino's unscrupulous lawyer put it bluntly: "Do you wanna be nice, or do you wanna be effective?" Jay Roach and Gary Ross have chosen the former, making movies that please most but fully satisfy few, for one reason; they want to be approved of by studio execs, and modestly enjoyed by as many ticket-taking patrons as possible. They want to be liked by powerful people. That's why these movies never really achieve liftoff, and that's why, after millions of dollars, countless man hours, and more slogans than you'll see on the back of a pick-up truck in Waco, we're all so damn unhappy with our 2012 presidential candidates. 

I'm sure it seems a stretch, but think about it; is a director compromising his artistry to please an audience really all that different from a politician shifting his positions to please the voters?

I'll say it again; they want to be liked by powerful people.

I can't think of a better example than Mitt Romney. Regardless of what you think of his political or personal experiences, the fact of the matter is this; no human since Marilyn Monroe has displayed such a constant, cloying, no-holds-barred need to be adored by the right people. During the left-of-center Clinton years, those people were Massachussetts progressives, to whom he said he'd be "more of a friend to gays than Ted Kennedy". A decade and a half later, he's doing his "marriage=man+woman" shtick at Liberty University, a school that openly turns away LGBT students. Now, I've got no problem with a little bit of well-reasoned flip-flopping, regardless of the candidate---listening to Newt Gingrich for long periods of time gives me cramps of the soul, but I did appreciate his nuanced shift on immigration reform. But from Mr. Gay BFF to Mr. Federal Ban on Gay Marriage? It's like promising your kid a puppy, and then, once it's grown up, shipping said puppy off to the Arctic. Of course, it's no secret why he did it--the Religious Right is now the biggest single subsection of the party, and he has to assure them that he's exorcised his demonic social liberalism. But he needs fiscally conservative, socially progressive centrists to love him too--thus the recent video where he declares gay marriage to be a state issue, mere hours after he called for a national amendment prohibiting it. I assumed Romney's post-primary strategy would be to taper back to the center, but on this issue and countless others, he's adhering to the bizarre strategy of taking nearly every position at once, a feat of intellectual gymnastics that would give Cirque De Soleil pause. Like Ross and Roach, the guy can't settle on a consistent narrative, preferring to please as many people as possible without stating what would please him.

Beating up on Mitt Romney isn't hard for a Commie Socialist Liberal Wacko Jewish Intellectual Type like myself, but ragging on President Obama is the equivalent of a root canal--agonizing, but necessary. First of all, I need to emphasize that this is the man who, barring some Messianically revelatory Mitt-cident, I'm voting for come November. He is a savvy master of the bureaucracy and a skilled player on the world stage, with laudable foreign policy chops fit for an increasingly global society. He is, most of all, a masterful Commander in Chief, overseeing the end of a war and the death of Public Enemy Number One--two achievements the guy deserves serious credit for, as I'll argue in a later post. But that's not what he's running his campaign on. "This is a make or break moment for the middle class", he stated at his recent rally, and that crucial moment provides the crux of his campaign; forging a compassionately regulated free market where those of moderate fiscal means and aims can do their thing. Purportedly, that’s what the JOBS, or Jumpstart Our Business Startup Act, is all about. (Jumpstart Our Businesses Startup? Who names these things, George Lucas?) The stated goal: help start-up companies attract business by exempting them from reporting certain expenses for their first five years. In fact, for five years, they need not be audited or examined by a single independent accountant. So, as Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi cleverly puts it, an executive-investor conversation could actually look something like this:

SILICON VALLEY EXECUTIVE: Listen, IJustThoughtOfSomething.com is the hottest thing on the internet. We're so huge it hurts... I can't even walk to my corner bodega without women throwing me their phone numbers!

INVESTOR: I'd love to invest. Can I see your numbers from last year?

SILICON VALLEY EXECUTIVE: Well, that's just the thing. We painted the bathrooms last March, and then we also had that Vitamin Water machine put in the lounge. You know, the one next to the ping-pong table? So we just didn't have any money left over for an accountant. But I estimate our revenues for 2014 to be $4.2 billion.

INVESTOR: Sounds hot! Where do I send the check?

Yup. It's basically a bill that lets big businesses hawk their projected (aka their ideal) future accomplishments without saying a single word about their current ones. It'll help start-ups, yes, but mostly those willing to lie, cheat, and steal to get to the top. It encourages fraud like Cheech and Chong encouraged reaching for the Maui Wowie. It wasn’t Obama’s idea, but it was A) Endorsed by Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, a committee that Obama started and shaped, and B) Lauded in a statement from Le Whitehouse. Oh, and then El Presidente physically put pen to paper and signed it. He didn’t veto it. He didn’t even try to stir up a healthy debate about it. He didn't even have a committee take a look at the final product. He just passed it--signed, sealed, delivered, Stevie Wonder style. In the midst of this "make-or break moment for the middle class", this Act gets filed unquestionably under "break"--and it was made law by the man who claims to be, more than anything, all about "make". But hold on, Fox News. This isn't the sort of mustache-twirling skullduggery you falsely accuse the President of on an hourly basis. It's something a little more complex but almost as infuriating; a cold, calculated political move. This grand deregulatory gesture will, ideally, ease fears that he's trying to trying to impose stricter policies on Wall Street--which is what he IS doing. Which is why I'm checking his name on the damn ballot. 

What gives? 

Say it with me: He wants to be liked by powerful people. 

So far, it sure it seems like I'm saying the most obvious thing in the whole world--the politicians we elect are power-hungry and shifty, no matter their party or their position. But, it’s worth pointing out that, more than ever before, it's true in this general election. Indecision 2012 is, at its core, a battle between a man who obscures his views on the Big Issues, and a man who states his strongly but enforces them bashfully. They're both driven by the very force that hampered the directors of the two moves I reviewed--an aversion to strong, bold action in hopes of appealing to the broadest base possible. But--and it pains me to say this--the fact that we've reached this sorry point is not entirely their faults. Because, you see, while we can only watch the version of The Hunger Games that they release in theaters, we are not confined to a single presidential candidate--we get to evaluate and pick from a pool of them, in a process that Wikipedia tells me is called "voting". So, if it's a popular election gone wrong, the populace must shoulder at least a little of the blame. In fact, I'd contend they should shoulder a lot of it. Their voting choices are biting them in the ass for one major reason; They want to be liked by powerful people. This brings us to the sad, strange tale of Mr. Jon Huntsman.

If the Republican Party had a theme song this year, it’d undoubtedly be “Holding Out For A Hero”. There’s always been tension within the GOP between small-government fiscal conservatives and religiously motivated values voters, but come election time, the two groups would always unite to elect someone who they agreed was better than the liberal alternative. But in the past decade or so, the party opened its gates to a handful of fringe movements—live-and-let-live-libertarians, hawkish neocons, riled-up Tea Partiers—that won them votes but also fractured the uneasy alliances within the party, with every group insisting it was the true voice of American conservatism. More than ever, the Republicans needed a candidate who could unite the disparate factions of the party and draw in independent voters, and it seemed that in this year of crash-and-burn Cains and Perrys, no one fit the bill. Seemed is the operative word here, because, in reality, the Republicans did have someone who could’ve energized the party and given Obama a run for his money; Jon Huntsman, a two-time governor of Utah. Despite his Mormon faith, his religiously motivated stance against abortion was almost perfectly in line with that of Evangelical Christian voters. His experience as an ambassador to China ought to have impressed neoconservatives worried about our role on the world stage. His nuanced position on gay marriage (he’s against it personally, but acknowledges that the Constitution guarantees them certain rights) hews closely to libertarian ideals, and his anti-war stance and interest in the environment, both unusual for a modern Republican candidate, should’ve played like catnip to independents. So why did this guy flame out in the first weeks of the campaign, deeply in debt and with only 3% of the vote? The same reason a whip-smart, impressively experienced big-name politician lost out to an optimistic underdog in 2008.

***

 To reflect on Barack Obama’s 2008 run is to flip through a mental slideshow of indelible, even historic moments; the candidacy announcement in front of the Old State Capitol, the “More Perfect Union” address, the “Yes We Can” chants and, of course, the iconic “Hope” poster. The Clinton campaign’s contribution to pop-culture history? That “3 AM” ad. If we’re telling a story of campaigns, than this is the tale of how an articulate, spirited newcomer melded old-fashioned grassroots efforts with cutting-edge technology to surge past a series of well-oiled establishment candidates and trounce his opposition in the general election. To look at the candidates is to see an entirely different story; the bizarre saga of an immensely qualified front-runner quashed by an inexperienced upstart.

Hillary Rodham Clinton helped litigate the Watergate case. During Bill Clinton’s eight years in office, she was the most politically involved First Lady in our nation’s history, fighting for children’s health care initiatives and even searching for a peaceful solution to the Taliban problem. As a Senator, she spent six years visiting war-torn Iraq, reforming the PATRIOT Act, and serving on the Committee on Budget. Plus, let’s be honest—the woman’s battle-hardened. Between her universal health care fight and the Lewinsky scandal, she’s learned the ins and outs of our political institutions the hard way—and she’s learned how to play a little hardball herself. By comparison, Obama’s pre-presidential experience seems miniscule. He worked as a corporate lawyer, a community organizer, and a voting registrar. He taught polisci classes at U of Chicago. He worked in the Illinois State Senate, reforming local hospital laws. During his three years in the US Senate (he started his presidential campaign before finishing his first term), he worked to establish relationships with African governments, and to counteract voter fraud. Important and praiseworthy accomplishments all, but presidential? Nahh. If elections were won and lost by resumes, Obama would’ve been groveling at Hillary’s feet for a cabinet position. But resumes don’t win elections, and that may be the heart of this whole epic election problem—we give in to the politics of spectacle. As a nation, our thought process goes something like this:

“Invisible Americans”….Hillary has a point. Her position on college loans is—THIS OBAMA GUY IS SO KEWL!!! OMGSH HEZZZ TLKIN BOUT H0pE!!!

Hmmmmm…Huntsman really knows his tax policy. I like the way he—LOOK!! ROMNEY’S SANGING AMURRIKA THE BEUUTIFULL AND TAWKIN’ BOUT DA FLAG!!!!$

They always say that if you’re a politican in this country, you’ve gotta learn how to pander. But, the media being the doodyface that it is, it never poses the real question: What’s with our ludicrous, juvenile need to be pandered to? Or, as Bill Maher puts it: “Does any other country in the world need this much sunshine up its ass?!” Optimism and exceptionalism, no matter how ungrounded, trump realism every time. Clinton’s man-of-the-people peppiness beat Bush the Elder’s down-home decency. Bush the Younger’s “compassionate conservatism” message pwnd Al Gore’s droll recitation of inconvenient truths. And, though, in my opinion, Obama had better policy ideas and a more appropriate temperament for the job than John McCain, he won not because of those qualities, because his vague-but-resonant message of hope and change resonated at the polls. We voted the guy in based on “Yes, we can!”, not “How’s he gonna pull it off?” At the heart of it all is our collect insecurity, our need to be (here we go again) liked by powerful people. And the less they talking about liking us, the more likely we are to fire them. Imagine hiring a CEOlike this. “Okay”, you’d think to yourself, “this guy’s worked his way up the company for years, and really fits the bill. But that other guy had the best handshake, and was SO nice….”

Say it with me. “Do you wanna be nice, or do you wanna be effective?!”

Or, paraphrased for the current political climate: “Do you want nice, or do you want effective?”

Do you want Jon Huntsman, who told the American people to “get their act together” and suggested a complex plan to do just that? Or would you prefer Mitt Romney, who speaks of “restoring America” despite his prior involvement in the very kind of creative destruction that caused this economic crisis?

If you had to choose between one of the most successful centrists in the history of politics, or a man who, according to columnist Drew Westen, “had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he occasionally, as a state senator in Illinois, voted ‘present’ on difficult issues”, who would you choose? The second one? Well, we did. And all because of the politics of spectacle, of our need to turn our elections into reality television shows instead of what the really ought to be; a smart, sensitive job interview for the position of Most Important Leader In The World.

Until we figure that out, the wrong candidates will get nominated and get into the White House. Or, almost as bad, the right candidate will get voted in for the wrong reasons. Hell, if you buy my liberal-biased pitch, that’s what’ll happen in 2012; Obama will win this year not because he’s learned how to delegate important tasks, grown some cajones in his legislative negotiations, fought for energy independence and finally taken some steps to move us away from Bush’s nation-building policies. He’ll win because he better fits our media-aided conception of a prez; an eloquent intellect who is, at heart, just another one of us. Indeed, until we stop giving preference to that image, until we start voting on qualifications instead of charisma, we’ll continue to pay the price. Who knows what it’ll take to make this happen. On Capitol Hill, a 1-term, six-year presidency would help, encouraging candidates to enact their real plans without fear of losing re-election. On TV, the folks with the microphones must stop giving undue attention to Romney’s dog or Obama’s ex-girlfriend and focus on the issues. Believe me, I know a pipe dream when I see one, and I know both those solutions are as likely as an Oscar for Lindsay Lohan. Perhaps the most feasible option, then, is rethinking how we think about politics. Perhaps history educators could focus a little less on the ready-made legends of past presidents and encourage students to debate their policies. Perhaps English classes could wade through a speech and learn not just about the beauty of the rhetoric, but its dangerous power, its ability to simplify and mislead. We should consider creating courses not just about civic history but about intelligent citizenship, and make them mandatory for graduation or (please don’t scream “socialism”!) for new voters. Or maybe one day, we’ll just all wake up and shake off our addiction to spectacle like a cheap hangover, and realize that the problem isn’t that low-key politicians can’t “mobilize us”. It’s that it takes far, far too much effort for us to be mobilized. The narrative of a democracy is, ideally, written by an informed electorate. But the narrative’s gotten away from us, and we need to snatch it back—like Katniss and Peeta do in The Hunger Games when they turn a handful of berries into an object of protest, or like John McCain did, both in Game Change and real life, when he grabbed the microphone back from a xenophobic audience member and did the unthinkable—stood up for his rival.

I don’t know how we’re going to do this.

But I know we need to.

And I hope we can.

And as they say to the competitors of The Hunger Games—

May the odds be ever in our favor.

In Oscarville, Silence is Golden

Before we dive into my 3rd Annual Oscar Predictions You Can Bet $$$ On Piece (my 7th, if you count the ones I scribbled on Post-It's for my parents), I must warn you; my crystal ball's getting a little hazy. Yes, my foresight is still accurate a good 75% of the time, but I'm also the guy who claimed that Avatar would win Best Picture and insisted Annette Bening would take home last year's Best Actress prize. But here's the thing; I don't think it's entirely my fault. The Academy, you see, is having an identity crisis. More than any other awards show, the Oscars are constantly in the midst of an ideological tug-of-war, being pulled every which way but loose by any number of fiercely devoted movie-lover sects; the old white males itching for a nostalgia trip, the crusading critics demanding the Academy throw a bone to the indie scene, the zeitgeisty teens expecting their favorite franchise to take home an award or two. Oscar is doing his best to please each of these demanding mistresses, but, as my dog knows, trying to mark every territory is an exercise in futility. As such, each year's show veers so far from the prior one that it's enough to give you whiplash. One year we have five Best Picture nominees, the next year ten. There's Chris Rock slamming Dubya---oh look, there's Alec Baldwin having a laugh at Billy Crystal. Hey, what if we go all edgy and give the award to a fledgling Iraq war drama?  But next year, let's swallow the easiest Oscar bait, because we're, you know, old-fashioned like that. In this bipolar cultural climate, predicting the winners becomes as easy as selecting a Republican presidential nominee. Oh, and the toxic cherry on top is this--tell me if I'm wrong, but I think we've all come to realize just how silly this whole Oscar business really is. How can you compare Saving Private Ryan and Shakespeare In Love? What makes No Country for Old Men any better than Juno? Former host Jon Stewart said it best: "At some level, deep in our hearts, we think it's stupid." 


So why watch? I'd say there are two good reasons. Firstly, let's face it--while there's no such thing as an objective "best", there are some cinematic contributions that most of us agree are hugely superior to a lot of what we see on screen. Brando's performance in On The Waterfront, John Williams' score for Star Wars--work like this raises the bar for cinema in general, and seeing those who did the raising recognized for their work can elicit an ecstatic surge of gratification. But what about the years when such Must Wins are absent--a la this year? Well, regardless of who takes home a trophy, the Oscars, when done right, are the best ticket in town. A great Oscar broadcast (think 1999) offers enough laughs, tears, drama, and grandeur to fill any silver screen production. It has more stars than any movie since Around the World in 80 Days. It has fashion. It has music. It even has a sort of implicit plot (this actor's been waiting his whole life for an Oscar...is tonight his night?) So, at this crucial moment in Oscar history, perhaps the Academy should stop going demographic-fishing and simply sell the ceremony for what it is--a Show with a capital S. With Billy Crystal as this year's host, it should be a good one. Along with Johnny Carson and Bob Hope, Crystal's one of the Great Oscar Vets, someone could host this thing with his eyes shut and his limbs tied to a chair. He won't bring anything new to the proceedings, but what he does, he'll do pretty well. With Crystal hosting and "the collective joy of going to the movies" as the theme, expect an overwhelmingly traditional show that, like this year's nominees, is heavy on the nostalgia. If we're lucky, it'll ascend to the height's of 2009's Hugh Jackman extravaganza, easily the best Oscar show of the previous decade.  Even if we aren't, it can't possibly be worse than last year's James Franco debacle. My advice for the coming years? Pick a host that bridges the gap between old-timey classiness and New Millenium moxy--George Clooney, perhaps? Or, hey, in my dream world, Zooey Deschanel? Joseph-Gordon Lev...hey, 500 Days of Oscar, anyone? 

PREDICTIONS YOU CAN (CAUTIOUSLY) BET $$$ ON:


Best Picture: 
Will Win: Just look at the nominees--a romp through film history, a war epic, a race-based period drama--and you'll see that this year's Oscars is one giant flashback. Therefore, the movie that pays the most homage takes home the Big Prize, and that's unquestionably The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius's so-old-it's-brand-spanking-new paean to the pre-talkie years.

Should Win: This is not a year where I'm up in arms about any of the nominees. None of them were awful. The presumed winner is pretty damn good. Still, I'd be a little sick to my stomach if a cliche repository like The Descendants went home with the gold, and I'd get a kick out of a Tree of Life win, more as an Industry Thank You to Terence Malick than anything else.

Best Actor
Will Win: I'm hedging my bets on this one big time. George Clooney and Jean Dujardin are in a dead heat, and I doubt that anyone short of a divination specialist can really predict the winner. Still, I'd say the outpouring of Artist love will lend everyone's new favorite Frenchman a hand.
Should Win: Brad Pitt's work in Moneyball wasn't just the performance of his career--it was the most complete and unaffected performance by a Major Star since Charlize Theron in Monster. It redeemed the picture's weak parts, and sent the good stuff into the stratosphere. If the Clooney-Dujardin fight becomes too divisive, he might just sneak a win. Split those votes, folks!

Best Actress
Will and Should Win: Viola Davis--This woman is not just our greatest black actress, but also one of the most consistently underrated female thespians of the past decade. After her quietly wrenching work in The Help, Hollywood's finally done underestimating her--and so is Oscar.

Best Supporting Actor:
Will Win and Should Win: Christopher Plummer--Chance to reward long-respected industry standby?-check. Opportunity to acknowledge the year's indie darling--check. Possibility of setting a record (oldest Oscar winner)?--check. It's Plummer's night, and nothing short of a shift in the space-time continuum is going to change that.



Best Supporting Actress:
Will Win: Miss Minnie is one helluva character, and Octavia Spencer will mostly likely be recognized for sheperding her faithfully to the screen. However, I don't think her win is as sure as the teeming masses believe. If you want to bet against the system, consider the possibility that a combination of guilt (we shut that movie out of Best Picture?!) and generosity (we need to award it somehow) will win Bridesmaids' Melissa McCarthy just enough votes to get her out of her seat and on to the winner's stage.
Should Win: While the Hallelujah Chorus that erupted over the Davis-Spencer duo was well-deserved, it drowned out one of the best parts of The Help--Jessica Chastain, whose refusal to play Celia Foote for cheap irony or one-dimensional sympathy added a few extra layers to an already-fascinating character.

Best Director:
Will Win and Should Win: Everyone says that Hazanavicius will clench a victory as part of an Artist sweep, but I've got to play the devil's advocate here. After all, Hugo has the weight of the NBR and Golden Globes behind it, it's a critical darling, and even after his long-delayed 2006 win, many (including myself) claim that Oscar still gives Martin Scorsese the cold shoulder too often. My brain tells me to go with the flow, but my gut tells me that a potent combination of insecurity and adoration will put Marty just a hare ahead of the competition.

Best Adapted Screenplay
Will Win: The Descendants, conforming to the Academy's classic "reward-the-script-to-reward-the-whole-movie" law. Too bad the screenplay is the weakest facet of the whole film.
Should Win: Turning a play into a good film isn't easy, but The Ides of March screenwriters did just that, shaking off the inherent staginess of the piece without deep-sixing its cathartic power. This is the George Clooney movie that should be at the head of the pack.

Best Original Screenplay
Will and Should Win: Woody Allen is one of our five or six greatest screenwriters of all time. Midnight In Paris is his best work since his late-70's-early-80's Golden Age. The question isn't if he'll win, if it's he'll show up to accept.

Your Pocket Guide to the Nominees

The Tree of Life--A deeply deliberate meditation on Everything That Matters, this philosophical cine-treatise is occasionally impenetrable, but more often than not, it's great, a fearless gaze into the heavens that does Kubrick one better by tying it's spacey stargazing to appreciably complex characters. A.
Hugo--Giddy and charming without skimping on Scorsesean complexity, this children's book adaptation simultaneously chronicles and celebrates the history of the cinema while immersing us in the most fully imagined universe in the history of 3-D. A.
The Artist--Sizable chunks of the picture are lugubrious and repetitive as all get out (how many times do we need to play Sit and Watch George Mope?), but when this radiantly acted and cleverly executed movie is focused, it pulses with a simplicity and sincerity that feel like a drink of water in the desert. B+. 
War Horse--Assembled with masterful technique and alive with honest sentiment this is a full-on Spielberg movie, and even if it's not the director's best, it's a fitting return to form for the guy who's spent the past few years producing the Transformers movies. A-.
Extremely Loud--I haven't seen it, but let me take this opportunity to say; Read. The. Damn. Book.
Midnight In Paris--Perfect? No. Brilliant? Yes. More details? See my nine hundred previous writings on the picture. A.
Moneyball--It tells a pretty good story pretty well, but Moneyball is most notable as a cultural moment. It signifies Aaron Sorkin's ascension to the role of modern movie poet laureate, Bennett Miller's return to the director's stage, and, at last, Brad Pitt's ultimate assertion of his endless versatility and commitment. A-.
The Descendants--A smart, gratifyingly mature film that holds your attention even as the script falls into trough after stereotypical trough. Clooney's typically flawless work makes it watchable, relatable, and enjoyable, but it's never lovable. B-.
The Help--First-time director Tate Taylor can't quite marshal all the storylines to a satisfactory conclusion, and you never really feel the grit, sweat, and suffering of 60's era Mississippi in your bones. But a solid screenplay and a who's who of great female actresses go a long way towards helping this adaptation overcome its weaknesses. B+

Don't Be A Square!

Don't Be A Square!: The Hitchiker's Guide to the Tarantinoverse

What is there to say that hasn't already been said about Quentin Tarantino? We all know that the man's a cinephile turned awe-inspiring auteur, working out his kitschy, video store clerk obsessions in sprawling action pictures that gush gab and guts in equal measure.And we all know that his splatter-tacular final acts and obsession with the linguistic possibilities of the F, S, and N words make his pictures the ultimate in leave-grandma-at-home scuzziness. To write a column about QT is to run two grave and simultaneous risks. There's a chance that, in attempting to pin down what makes the man so great, you'll just wind up blindly restating the usual critical hosannas, but there's also a very real possibility that you'll get so lost in the specifics, in lists of film references and music cues and pretzeled plot structures and double meanings that you'll go movie-geek obscure and overshoot your target. In an attempt to avoid both these potholes, I'll do my best to strike a balance. For those who've never seen one of his pictures before (you poor souls), I'll examine some of the basics that make Tarantino tick, and, hopefully, provide some access points into a world that will seem appalling to some and insane to most. However, Tarantino's flicks aren't as overlooked and underrated as most of the pictures I write about, so I also hope unlock some new ways of re-seeing them, for one of the singular joys of this man's work is its inexhaustible bigness, the way it constantly expands and contracts depending on which lens you view it through. Think of it as movie football camp. Learn the plays, and then I'll teach you the game. That's how sports work, right? Also, congrats to our Cowboys on their World Series win!

Quentin Tarantino makes pure cinema. What is pure cinema, you ask? Well, purity implies essence. So...what is cinema's essence? I'd say motion. I mean, "move" is part of the damn word. Plenty of movies are good without being pure, because of the story or the talent or the ideology. Just as a pure singer ought to sound extraordinary, a pure movie ought to move extraordinarily, give us a galvanizing glimpse of image and time set free to dance. Tarantino's makes movies move like no one since Scorsese. His chief interest is stretching the form until it bursts, seeing all he can do with the light and sound and motion at his command. His movies are intricately plotted and, I'd contend, deeply moral (we'll get to that later), but most of all, they are talent shows on a grandiose scale. For so many pictures, the essential image is the victim of all other factors.

Take Love, Actually, for example.

It's possible that, in the finale, the filmmaker's wanted to linger on Colin Firth's journey to Portugal, really take a good look at that beautiful place. They wouldn't dare! With only twenty minutes of plot left, screenwriting structure dictates that it's time to hurry the plot along. Plus, when we go to see a romantic comedy, we'd be all out of sorts if we were subjected to a ten-minute travelogue that interrupted our stars journey towards HappyEndingVille (TM). So, more often than not, convention dictates the moving image. Not in the TarantinoVerse. Here, the image dictates itself. Spoiler-freeish example: in Pulp Fiction, John Travolta's hitman Vincent takes his boss's wife, Mia, out for the night. They return to Mia's house. Mia does something very stupid. I wouldn't dare give it away. In your average film, these events would serve to kickstart a Plot Crisis, and as such would be briskly attended to, to help "move things along". But, in between two major events--the night out and Mia's epic boo-boo--Tarantino leaves Mia alone next to a radio, swaying to a Neil Diamond cover. At first, we think he's doing this to further the plot. As it continues, we surmise, as we've been trained, that, since it's lasted more than .5 seconds, it's progressing past plot to tell us something about "character development". But even after that phase, Mia continues, segueing into a full-on dance as the camera glides in tandem with her. That's when you ought to realize that something extraordinary has happened. The choice of song, the nature of Thurman's dancing, and the use of camera language have conspired to create a moment that stands independent of plot and character. Because of the way the character is moving and the way the filmmakers have captured that motion, we get a sense of something electric and ecstatic going on, a sense of movie-life that occurs outside of the particulars of the story. Not convinced? Take a look at the way the camera spins around Pam Grier in Jackie Brown's shopping mall sequence, or follows Lucy Liu up the stairs in Kill Bill, Vol. 1. I believe that such moments are the best starting point for appreciating QT's work. The man's movies may offend you, or, confuse you, or even downright bore you, but I think it helps to avoid labeling them as "violent" or "controversial" before you've even seen them. Start with the understanding that these are liberations of the moving image, and you'll be able to appreciate them, even if you don't enjoy them.

But what to say to those that do enjoy Tarantino's work, and have enjoyed it time and again? Let's start with what you already know. Tarantino loves him some language. He also loves him some violence. But while both are picked apart, few have looked at the tension between the two. It's not uncommon for artists to worship what they're good at. It's no wonder Christina Aguilera idolized Etta James; they're equally adept at high voltage riffing. And of course Toni Morrison adores William Faulkner; her scrambled plot structure would be right at home in his fictional Yoknapatawpha County. It's a circular process; they imitate these people because they idolize them, and then they idolize these people because they began their career imitating them. Tarantino loves Scorsese and Leone because they preceded him in the liberation of the moving image; more to the point, he adores film noir and screwball comedy because they inspired his love of language. Hold that thought. Take a look at these scenes--the name game in Inglourious Basterds, the final confrontation in Kill Bill, Vol. 2, and that most famous of QT scenes, Samuel L. Jackson's Ezekiel rant in Pulp Fiction. All of these scenes luxuriate in language before exploding into tragic violence. What's significant about this? Well, take a look at the Transporter movies. You never see Jason Statham discussing the finer points of life before hanging Ethnic Criminal No. 4 out to dry. More often than not, Tarantino's fight scenes are preceded by lengthy, lengthy dialogue. Why? Well, back to the idol complex. Tarantino loves language because he is good with it, and is good with it because he loves it. Is it any surprising then, that he puts his characters to the test with it? If they are able to use it cunningly to defuse a situation--watch Thurman's plea in KBV2, or Jackson's final monologue in PF--they are rewarded with safety and survival. If they screw up, as in the scenes mentioned at the beginning of this train of thought, they tend to die. And I tend to laugh as they do so. I'm no sociopath, though. It's funny! Think about it. Tarantino, lover of language, acquits or punishes his characters based on their creativity with words, or lack thereof--based on whether or not they are like him! Such is the whacked-out power of the storyteller. In the Tarantinoverse, Tarantino himself would survive and thrive.

The above presents a psychoanalytic way of looking at Tarantino; let's close with a moralistic view. I insist that most of Tarantino's movies have moral fiber. Well, not IB and Death Proof, which are, for all their ingenuity, glorified splatter pieces. But I think we can uncover something in his other pictures. For all their zappy style and zingy movement, look how they all end; oddly enough, with a scene of genuinely affecting emotion; with a woman holding her offspring, or a long-awaited kiss. That's not how crime dramas or kung-fu flicks end! What to make of these surprisingly touching finales? Well, for one thing, they're always anomalies; not a single scene leading up the finale delivers half the emotional heft. Furthermore, these scenes are almost discomfortingly still; that constant purity of motion I discussed earlier has tapered off. And yet, these moments don't feel out of place. They come off as perfectly proper denouements. The key to this conundrum, I think, lies in one of the last lines of Pulp Fiction: "You're the weak, and I'm the tyranny of evil men. But I'm trying, Ringo. I'm trying real hard to be the shepherd." For all their whup-assery, the Bride and Jules Winnfield and all of Tarantino's other creations are ultimately placid sheep, frequently led away from what's best by their base instincts for survival and superiority. "That girls deserves her revenge", Michael Madsen says in KBV2, "and we all deserve to die." But he isn't about to sit by and let justice happen; indeed, it is he who subjects the vengeful heroine to her most torturous of obstacles. He is rendered almost helpless by his animalistic instinct. He knows what he just, but is compelled to avoid it time and again. It is in the resolution of this tension that QT's films find their moral genius. In these pictures final moments, they cut away from the dead bodies--from those who succumbed to their instincts--and give us a brief glimpse of goodness in the most depraved of characters. Here, content does indeed dictate image; as we move from instinct to thought, the camera stops moving, zeroes in on the characters. Suddenly, the movement of the movie drops out, and we focus with great intensity on these people, finding an unexpected kernel of goodness. Tarantino does not absolve these people of what they've done. They are killers, liars, and thieves, some of whom may very well continue to murder, cheat, and steal. But, he does shine a compassionate light on them as the curtain falls. Many people in the Tarantinoverse will be led like sheep to the slaughter. But QT reminds us that, even in his mad, mad world, it's possible to be the master of one's fate, the captain of one's soul. It's possible to be the shepherd.