There’s a film about a pivotal labor activist, and with a peculiar title, that tells a sad story within its title, “10,000 Black Men Named George.” Thousands of “nameless” African American men worked as porters on the railroads. The man was Asa Philip Randolph, although his first name is rarely spelled out.
This is Martin Luther King’s weekend. His birthday is on Jan. 15th, while we await Monday to celebrate his profound legacy. Next to the most publicized personalities of January and Black History Month – Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Thurgood Marshall, Langston Hughes and William E. B. Du Bois – Mr. Randolph might be the least known.
It’s remarkable that the most palatable icon, Martin L. King, has not yet had a biopic made about him. In 1992 Spike Lee gave us “Malcolm X.” Ten years later, Julie Dash gave us “The Rosa Parks Story” with Angela Bassett for cable. And then, also in 2002, Robert Townsend, brought Showtime TV and us A. Philip Randolph (portrayed by André Braugher) and the porters’ story of toiling to improve Sleeping Car Porters’ work lives. “10,000 Black Men” potently sheds light on a little known portion of American labor relations, at the crossroad of African-American history.
The film’s first scene shows how their work might go, illustrating a common sort of clash with a client: when a porter sees a woman steal and stow Pullman towels into her luggage, he diplomatically reminds her not to do that. He tells her that the porters are charged for items, that end up missing. “Stunned,” she insists on telling his boss, the conductor, of this daring, uppity offense. When the conductor arrives, the porter stands there and take the situation.
While Rev. King deserves our reverence, he’s one of a small cadre of comet-bright icons – out of the 100s and 1,000s who deserve as much recognition. It’s an irony that so many activists in that list, above, had no films made in their names, save for Justice Marshall with CBS’ “Separate But Equal” in 1991. One worthy question is “why so few the movies have been made about even that set of almost 10?”
“10,000 Black Men” is a delight to watch, sneaking history lessons into a great story. The under-recognized André Braugher’s portrayal of Randolph is key. Late in the film there are pivotal scenes that highlight loyalty and betrayal. One climactic scene has a kindly elder porter, zealous about the movement, found out as a Judas, a double-agent. And then we see the hardship that Mrs. Randolph, an entrepreneur, endures when protests against on her husband force her to shutter her salon.
According to an excerpt of “Marching Together,” from google books, “the porter [union] election results forced the Pullman Company to recognize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters as the porters’ and maids’ legitimate representative. More than two years passed before contract negotiations were completed,” 12 years to the day after they began their struggle.
In the 1920s and 1930s the porters were paid such meager respect that the patrons and Pullman Company didn’t care what the porters’ mothers had named them. It was easier to call “them” George, after George Pullman, the company’s founder. According to Rising from the Rails, a website that honors the porters, “They were hired…because they epitomized Pullman’s vision of safe, reliable, and invisible servants.”
Taking a way-back look at a movie reminds us of films that could be memorable and give us something, if we take the time for them. While some movies are “always” on cable TV, these aren’t.
Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
Author Gene Fowler once said that. That raises a question. Well several…
What is bad writing?
Can it be bad?
Who cares?
Why ask?
Whether or not you’re creative or artistic, if you’ve attended an English class or especially one on creative writing, you’ve been asked, or have asked yourself these questions?
poster (courtesy Morris Hill Pictures)
A smart, seriously funny documentary is taking a round about road to our screens, no matter which kind you watch. “Bad Writing” is a fun, witty and mostly great documentary from Vernon Lott. The film, from Morris Hill Pictures, deals with writing good – or well, that is.
If you’ve written before, at least before twitter came, you’ve wondered whether “it” was bad writing or good? And if you’re serious and diligent with your writing, that anxiety is deeper. For many people this is a routinely serious, even Sisyphean personal trial. The prospect of writing anything, especially something creative and that people will like, stirs agony among writers.
The early- and mid-20th Century had the Great American novel as the ultimate literary artistic goal those generations’. Vernon Lott, the film-maker, knows this. He strove for several years to be a poet, half-way sure that the stereotypic and romantic agonies of an artist’s path were needed. Then he woke up, shook himself and decided to ask renown writers about the craziness of that craziness.
Vernon Lott and George Saunders (courtesy Morris Hill Pictures)
According to imdb, “Bad Writing” was released on December 10th. It’s treading a narrow, cautious college-like screening tour. It’s a small, unconventional, fun and potent film that deserves attention. But it’s a documentary; few people seek out documentaries for an evening’s pleasure. In late October 2010, “Toronto Globe and Mail” columnist Liam Lacey concluded that the web, under the guises of Mubi and SnagFilms, is the new art house cinema.
“Bad Writing’s” a gem because it’s funny, has wit and answers many questions, both writerly and not, which nag people. You might call it a literary or artistic courterpart to Woody Allen’s 1972 film “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex,* But Were Afraid to Ask,” (if that movie had taken that question seriously, that is. …But not too too serious.) One of the dozen or so take aways comes when one of the writers tells Mr. Lott that “it’s” bad writing “if it doesn’t make sense outside the writer’s head.” That’s a howl. Hers is also an earnest answer. The film is just this reverent and serious.
Movies about writing are hard, or hardly dramatic because it’s a solitary activity. That’s probably part of why those movies made about it are about either people’s aptitude for or access to social support network, like “Freedom Writers.” Otherwise where’s the conflict? “Bad Writing” shows us.
But it’s flaws show in the last act. Sadly, this 60-minute film, on the romance, the rigors and the realities of writing, and one’s own ability, for it, is stuck in a 90-minute form that someone forced up on it. That last act peters into considering digital technology and Web 2.0 bode for writers meant for the tactile; it clashes with the romance and fun of the first hour. The clash doesn’t damage it, but wastes much of that hour’s momentum.
Vernon Lott and Steve Almond (courtesy of Morris Hill Pictures)
He interviews renown authors and professors to ask “what’s bad?,” “who cares?” and “why ask?” Of those dozen or so, Nick Flynn, George Saunders, Steve Almond and Daniel Orosco are among the funnest.
The mediated and educated worlds take writing seriously enough that “Bad Writing” strives not to; instead it releases some of the most rank of that bad, hot and self-congratulatory air. That technical irreverence sets the filmmaker up, and us, for a cute aside. While Mr. Lott meets with the founder of a San Francisco writers’ community, “Mortified,” (where people read often private, even intimate pieces that were never meant to be heard – and certainly not in public) He stumbles at least twice as he edits himself in the middle of asking it’s founder a question.
This documentary stands out in another funky way. The lighting stands are in the shots at least half of the time, cameraman’s hands and it even boasts screwed-up shots of only David Sedaris’ hands. It’s interesting to find a film that plays with or mocks the fourth wall, which is rarely discussed outside of film lectures. This film isn’t slick in the usual way. But it is; it’s potently executed (except for that darned last act). The substance of “Bad Writing” is more important to it than, how it’s dressed. You can laugh out loud while learning. How long’s it been since you did that?
The “New York Times’” writing on film trends is idiosyncratic. While the lead film critics often spend more and bigger words than are necessary to make their points, as in intellectual self-congratulation, it’s rarely easy to slight their insights, even though reporting is rarely involved. On December 26th, their Brooks Barnes wrote about “Hollywood Moving Away from Middle-brow” movies, and having opted to improve its bottom-line and culture in the process. He thinks it’ll focus on new, original voices.
The problem is that he relies on 2010′s box office numbers and infers that the implied strategic trend will be stable. That’s a lot of faith to invest in a brief dip in box office profits for a small portion of titles. It’s premature.
Imagery based on "American Graffiti" (Creative Commons)
Now those cinephiles, who routinely avoid the middle-of-the-road movies, have yearned and awaited a return to this “trend.” If he’s correct, that’ll be splendid. Some people are frustrated by those movies that merely serve viewers who want to “relax, laugh, and empty their minds” as a French philosopher, Bernard-Henri Lévy, recently described to the “Wall Street Journal” the European and in-turn the masses’ interests in different though related questions.
After the recent flopping of high-concept films and the triumphs of higher quality ones, he wrote, “As a result, studios are finally and fully conceding that moviegoers, armed with Facebook and other networking tools and concerned about escalating ticket prices, are holding them to higher standards. The product has to be good,” Barnes said. And as morose as it is, this urgent sensibility too will pass. It’s a recurring attitude and posture that defies the masses’ desires.
This is merely one of several opinions of which he is certain, but with weak and meager evidence. This is disappointing. Commenting on this presumed about face in film tastes, according to Mr. Barnes’ reporting, ‘“We think the future is about filmmakers with original voices,”’ said Amy Pascal, Sony’s co-chairwoman. ‘“Original is good, and good is commercial.”’ That doesn’t even make sense. That circular reasoning flops like people used to say “Ishtar” did 20 years-ago.
According to Mr. Barnes, 2010′s box office is projected to fall less than 1% to $10.5 billion. While that sum is enormous, reflecting nothing of the lives of anyone we know, proportionally, it doesn’t even amount tip money. According to imdb, at least 70 percent of those top 30 titles from 2007 through 2010 were studio-made star vehicles with the “quality” ones, which emphasized story over pyrotechnics, amounting to maybe five or six out of that 30. While a “quality” film experience, as with beauty or even intelligence, is in the eye of the beholder, here’s a go at critiquing the meat or soul of Barnes’ argument.
In 2007, according to imdb, those “quality” films were “Ratatouille,” “Juno,” “American Gangster.” In 2008, those were “The Dark Knight,” “Quantum of Solace,” “Wall-E,” “Gran Torino,” “Slumdog Millionaire” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” At best those amount to 20% of that year’s 30 best titles. From 2009, “Public Enemies,” “Inglorious Basterds,” and possibly “Avatar,” “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” That bodes no 2011 indie film boon, or at least neither a compulsion nor an impulsion toward it. From 2010, you might concede that a few more from the top 30 emphasized “quality” than in prior years, with “Black Swan,” “The Fighter,” “The Town,” “True Grit” and “The King’s Speech.” That’s the film-goer’s call. Does this slightly taller list of substantial films show a trend, a reliable, strategic increase?!
Maybe that fact skipped Mr. Barnes’ mind as he considered the crevasse between insipid middle American appetites and the discriminating ones which typify indie film-lovers? According to the Motion Picture Association of America in 2005, that audience accounts for about 15 percent. Middle-of-the-road movies account for more than (this ain’t scientific) 3/4′s of the titles put out in wide release (2,000-plus screens). He gives meager compelling or reliable reasons for us to buy his argument. The main problem, and the mass cultural reality is that, just as money rules the world, or most of ours, Hollywood is itself a beacon of that.
Hollywood veered toward the new, original voices two generations ago, when Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were striving and toiling to establish themselves, around the time of 1973′s “American Graffiti.” Theirs was the film school generation of 20th-Century film lore; Hollywood played with them, Martin Scorsese and several others, and kept those who made and kept making money. But there after, they discovered and clutched the blockbuster.
The phenomenon was described pithily in a more than 10-year-old episode of “Law & Order,” that took place in Los Angeles. The line is “we don’t make anything we haven’t seen before.” It’s terrible and repulsive if you presumably want to be engaged in a cinema or film experience and not to just check-out as the French philosopher acknowledged before. The meager if also middle-class sliver of society that subscribes to public radio is probably part of, if not the heart, the indie crowd.
Bottom-line is that his argument is silly without stronger reporting, compelling data and quotes that speak specifically to the situation. Mr. Barnes’ essay is disappointing and lazy. It matches the French verb “essayer’s” definition, which is “to try.”
Upon seeing this week’s headlines indicating that the Los Angeles and Toronto Film Critics Associations and the New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC) had all lifted “The Social Network” as 2010′s best film, a question leaped to mind: what?! That?!
Yes. The masses typically highlight conventional, studio-produced films as “the best.” Those films also typically have brawny budgets lifting their wings.
Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg in David Fincher's "The Social Network"
A different question, one of money and exposure or hype pops to mind as much as the incredulousness. So which criteria did these groups use? How much of the choice came down to the intensity of the promotion? Was there some budget-based bias?
When a film critic hasn’t seen a film, and when he or she has scant if any interest, they’re a fool to write about it. Hoards are preoccupied by and have latched onto Facebook, fascinated with its lifestyle utility. People are hungry to see the backstory, particularly if that boasts dirt.
A vital question: why don’t the New York film critics, in that metropolis that hosts New York University’s film school (i.e., a storied training ground for indie film-makers: Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Oliver Stone, Jim Jarmusch, among other lesser icons), at least consider an independent movie, a phenomenal one? The NYFCC is the one organization that stands out from its East Coast and Canadian peers by declaring, on the history page of his website, in part, to “…have consistently recognized, championed and defended films that may otherwise have been slighted by audiences and the entertainment industry.” Neither the Toronto nor the Los Angeles groups’ websites distinguish themselves with that stance on behalf of film art.
But Metropolis’ film critics circle has stood up for a film that needs no one to stand for it.
Hmm. What should a viewer make of that when the circle lauds a movie that suffered from no want for publicity? That’s ironic. It’s incongruent. After you’ve lived long enough, you learn, accept or resign yourself to the fact that organizations don’t always walk their talk. But it would be nice.
Out of a few engrossing independent stories, at least one stands out: “Winter’s Bone.” This isn’t a story many people have yet seen: a young resilient, perseverant woman must engage an odyssey in order to keep her family together, even while some of that family clash with her.
This story made its Minnesota premier this summer, around early June. What an awesome treat. It’s a new, innovative story about a young woman whose strength is way beyond her years, beyond the call of family. Also, “Winter’s Bone” was made by a woman. As a feminist, the chronic, persistent want for strong, engrossing female characters is old and tired – just backwards.
People will say that independent movies are just less popular or less profitable than profit-oriented ones. Reportedly according to Motion Picture Association of America’s numbers from early 2005, “approximately 15% of US domestic box office money came from independent films.” 2010′s Academy Awards broadcast had an average of about 41.3 million viewers over its more than three-hour-long program.
With the U.S. population at 310 million that stacks up to about 13% of America that watched the Oscars. An equal percentage of film-lovers seem to attend commercial movies as attend independent ones. Even if twice as many movie lovers attend movie theaters as watch the Oscars, that still connotes that commercial movies aren’t bludgeoning independent movies by the numbers.
Dec 10, 2010 marks 60 years since Ralph J. Bunche, Ph.D. became the first person of color to earn the Nobel Prize for Peace. He a mid-20th-Century icon, whom many – far too many – people have forgotten. He earned the Nobel Prize for his work in 1950 as the UN mediator who brought about the armistice between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, all Arab neighbor countries. In Bunche’s era, as much of an institutional insider as he was the “ultimate model Negro,” he was also seen as an “international Uncle Tom. An enigma.” Except for the last item, Mr. Bunche was Sidney Poitier’s diplomatic contemporary.
If you wonder about Black diplomat characters in movies, Secretaries of State Colin L. Powell and Condoleezza Rice, from Oliver Stone’s 2008 film “W,” might pop to mind. But Ralph Bunche probably won’t. Most Americans probably presume that the other two were the first renowned peace-makers of color.
Ralph J. Bunche, Ph.D.
Mr. Bunche has been described in many more ways: Mr. UN. Diplomat. Scholar. Professional optimist. Nobel Laureate. Enigma. African-American. Peacemaker. That final duo is the most remarkable here: He was the UN’s first black undersecretary-general, and the first black person to earn a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard.
The dearth of educated, cool-headed, urbane characters of color is a part of a chronic stereotypes that plagues North America’s culture, psyche and attitude: the black thug, or black buck. He is malevolent, barely educated and a committed criminal, often epitomized by at least one character in myriad “keepin’ it real” type homeboy movies, which had a zenith in the 1990s. The black diplomat’s image smashes that stereotype nicely, showing a non-violent, goal-oriented alternative to quashing conflicts. We just rarely consider these characters or their stories.
There are well-known films about Anglo diplomats, even though we rarely see those stories that way:
Fernando Meirelles’ 2005 film “The Constant Gardener,” adapted from John LeCarré’s novel, about a mid-level Foreign Service officer who investigates and scrutinizes his wife’s suspicious death across real and political borders.
Robert Harmon’s 2004 made-for-HBO film “IKE: Countdown to D-Day” recounts Gen. Dwight Eisenhower’s diplomatic feat in orchestrating the joint force Invasion of Normandy, Operation Overlord.
Stephen Frears’ 2006 joint European production “The Queen,” portrays the delicate diplomacy between both Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Tony Blair as they dealt with Princess Diana’s death in 1997. It’s a compelling window into the taciturn world of the Royals.
But when you want to consider brown, black and beige diplomats in movies, there are slim pickin’s. Still there are some…engrossing, even atypical choices.
The $64-million question, “why are peacemakers of color, formal or not, rarely movie characters?” is best posed and considered away from here, amongst friends, over a meal. These portrayals don’t simply matter – they’re vital, so that those youngsters of color, who are curious and engaged by questions that cost them their cool points, or their street cred, can see worlds beyond their neighborhoods.
Let’s consider the few, which you can embrace:
Sir Richard Attenborough’s 1982 film “Gandhi” recounts Mohandas K. Gandhi’s extraordinarily and exceptionally patient toil toward India’s independence from Britain’s tyranny. Never
mind, that an Anglo actor, Ben Kingsley portrayed Mr. Gandhi… (shaking head – with vigor) He became more than a diplomat, transcending that over more than two generation’s time, to personify a cause.
Spike Lee’s 1992 film “Malcolm X” recounts Malcolm Little’s equally exceptional transformation: he grew from a Zoot suited hipster, through a period of self-education and ill-informed zeal for Elijah Mohammed’s version Islam, to someone, who after an epiphany in Mecca on a Hajj, commits to conventional Islam. After this, he acted as a peace maker. The film nearly omits this final phase.
Pete Travis’ 2009 British-made film “Endgame” tells a nail-biting story about the African National Congress’ [ANC] Minister of Information, Thabo Mbeki’s, negotiations for Nelson Mandela’s release and toward majority rule in South Africa.
Coming to terms with a South African black majority
As we consider commercial movies, we must visit a difference sort, the documentary, if we want to watch a film about this anniversary man: William Greeves’ 2001 documentary about him for PBS, “Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey,” makes the “Uncle Tom” and enigma questions clear, but also shows why Mr. Bunche deserves to be revered.
“Gandhi” begins with a surprise, Gandhi’s assassination. This convention biopic about this simple man who became much more than simply a man is difficult to compare to the others. The film’s style is very different from, maybe older than, the others. The scenes in “Gandhi” seem to cycle through sequences: he speaks, he then observes the masses’ response and he leads another protest and the government responds. This with increasing tension and peril.
Few people probably consider Malcolm X a diplomat or peace-maker, either in Lee’s epic film, or because of pop culture. With the movie it’s easier to explain: it had to move at a break-neck pace. Investing a mere three hours on a person, who’s formidable and potent legacy was four decades in the making, entails agonizing cuts in order to make a film that people will go to. The film has a “History vs Hollywood” moment, as in the History Channel’s program, because Mr. Lee omits the diplomatic outreach that Mr. X did in the wake of his pilgrimage, and while he was in the Middle East and North Africa.
His fiery, volatile rhetoric fell on conservative Anglos’ ears like merciless blows, while he was never connected with violence (Ossie Davis referred to this in his eulogy), his passion, wit and candor made him seem like he was.
The most potent peace making comes at the mid-point. And it boasts shock and awe: after a member of the Nation of Islam is injured while in police custody, Malcolm leads a march from that police station to a Harlem hospital, where he patiently deals with the police. An NYPD captain [Peter Boyle] confronts him about a mass – what the captain calls a mob – of black Muslims and an angry, raucous bunch behind them. Theirs is a professional, but brusque confrontation. After Malcolm dismisses his men, the captain declares, “that’s too much power for one man to have!” Ironic.
While the last 45-mins of “Malcolm X” takes place during and after the Hajj, all the peace making that Lee’s break-neck pace gives us was a news conference. He candidly answers questions about bringing charges against the United States to the United Nations.
Thabo Mbeki sits among the minority, asking that his people not be treated as one
The negotiations in “Endgame” between Mr. Mbeki [Chiwetel Ejiofor] and Prof. Willie Esterhuyse [William Hurt] were scenes of suspense without pyrotechnics, other than rhetoric. But that rhetoric held two people’s rights, freedoms and sources of pride at stake, or maybe for political ransom. In reality, while the film emphasized Mbeki and Esterhuyse’s coming-together, it also suggests that two other supporting personalities were at least as potent as they were: Willem de Klerk, Pres. de Klerk’s brother, and Michael Young.
In a YouTube video Mr. Ejiofor describes, a minute into it, how the director, Mr. Meirelles, chose to exploit the political thriller genre in order to grab viewers to what might otherwise be a piece about talking heads. This is a quiet and cerebral experience that demands viewers’ patience.
Even though there are three titles and three exceptional films that show brown and beige men as peace makers, the most recent one, and closest to feature-length, is also tells the most direct engrossing story of peace making work. “Endgame” is that. Far fewer people will sit down for a three-hour film experience. Patience is a quickly evaporating trait. But a political thriller that lets viewers peer through an oft-guarded window can win viewers.
The pilgrims wanted to find or create liberty for themselves by creating a new home away from Britain’s crown. (Never mind the conceit that they showed in taking the aboriginals’ land.) As moviegoers we go to foreign film, in part to move our experiences beyond America’s conventional-come-insipid, though often entertaining titles. Some of those are free from the constraints of American films’ style and grammar.
We do so much for love, or out of our idea of it. No matter whether that’s in pursuit of a special man, a special woman, or a film that reminds us that something can be special.
It could be for love...or a crime, with "The Secret in Their Eyes"
Forget “Love, American Style,” (which was an American TV program from 1969-1974) think beyond the North American borders, and those mental borders and the biases, which you might harbor toward American-style film storytelling. Let’s be thankful that we can watch foreign films that give us different, even disparate vantage points on romance (and tumultuous questions of justice, which are often and easily as thorny as those of love).
How about Love, Argentinean style?: “The Secrets in Their Eyes” ["El secreto de sus ojos" in Spanish] tells a tangled tale of the pursuit of justice and a second chance for an unrequited romance. A retired court officer, Bejamin Esposito, writes a novel in order to banish the demons of his career… The “New York Times’” take on it might be the most potent: is it “both a detective story and a tale of unrequited love.” “The Secrets in Their Eyes” boasts smart humor, a mature, sensitive a compelling investigative yarn that clashes with the “Law & Order” North American procedural way of considering crimes.
Who gets to see those often..?
Often enough..?
Think about Love, Spanish style: “Cell 211″ ["Celda 211" in Spanish] tells of a tangled prison riot where good is mistaken for bad. It’s an uncommon prison riot film, with a love story. This story, critiqued here, is a perverse melding of a charming love story, which turns wistful, and a prison uprising spanning one day, and which might remind you of the Attica prison uprising in 1971. Juan Oliver, a do-gooder, becomes a criminal, while he hiding for his own safety among violent criminals. He must bide his time until his new world returns to a realm of sanity, and he can squeeze his wife again in a hug.
These two films provide strengths and twists in narrative and character development that rarely happen in North American movies.
Love, French style is…such a worn out idea – a cliché. We have “Mademoiselle Chambon.” You might ask “why bother; what new angle is there!?!” Even if we consider the crush on teacher trope… What if it were your dad? What if he did nothing but respond to your teachers steady, increasingly intense interest in your dad?
Love. Lust. Mid-life questions. Wanderlust. These are at the foundation of “Mademoiselle Chambon.” The trouble starts after she asks the dad, Jean, to talk to her class about his work, construction. She likes him – a lot. As sordid as their tryst might become, their story demands and expects viewers’ patience.
We are treated to these innovative, challenging stories so rarely in North America (those viewers who want better concede and consent to conventional, banal film experiences). Be thankful for countries and cultures that defy America’s standards and expectations for the routine, the typical, the retrod.
“Private Eye” is a great, interesting, smart and amusing South Korean genre detective yarn from director Park Dae-min. It’s title in Korean: “Geu-rim-ja sal-in.” This story takes place in 1910 Seoul, South Korea. A former policeman, now private detective, Hong Jin-ho [Jeong-min Hwang], concentrating on typical, banal cases of cheating lovers, helps a young, talented and ambitious medical student, Oh Yeong-dal [Dal-su Oh] who’s in a weird – awk-weird – situation: this med student finds a dead body (some government official’s son) in a grassy area and brings it home so he can do anatomical practical studies – this, instead of calling the police!
Wow. That is ambition..! …and a gouge in his ethical compass – but this yarn (for amusement not forensic intensity) drives that detail for a chuckled and nothing more. Enjoy and escape with this film. Don’t consider it. Just sit back with some friends and watch.
If the director, Park Dae-min, chucked about two of the story’s twists, it would be clearer, simpler and that much more potent. And about 20-minutes shorter. Every time the yarn seemed to be two beats from its end, there seemed to be at least one more 10-minute sequence and a new twist opening up. It was like “this just in! – Another story and character twist! One twist involved a suspect who, while cunning and somewhat politic, also had a twin who seemed pretty identical. The array of twists wasn’t bad, but it was tiring, especially when one twist entailed sexual perversion that did nothing to advance the narrative, the characters’ stories, or the potency of either.
A Danish media producer, Mads Brügger, draws two fellow Danes, and Korean adoptees, to perform bad, amateur comedy as an effort at cultural exchange with North Korea. His Korean-born comrades are Jacob Nossell, a self-described spastic, and Simon Yul Jørgensen. The “documentary” is called “The Red Chapel” (“Det røde kapel” in Danish). The exchange is merely a ruse for Mr. Brügger: he wants the opportunity to film inside this sealed state, to record and expose the state’s brutal, repressive system.
The Danish-Korean adoptee "comics": Simon and Jacob
In the beginning, after having shown just how meager Jason and Simon’s skills are and how amateur their intentions, Mads asks the viewer via voice over: why would North Korea allow a comedy show that’s this bad to go forward unless they intended to exploit it for propaganda? Good question. That’s an interesting premise for a documentary.
How many reality-based, comedic documentaries are out there, or how many political documentaries have been made for laughs? Hmm. This documentary, a guerilla version, is strange. The humor is semi-amusing, more silly than funny. Simon and Jacob are sympathetic and very smart when Mr. Brügger leaves them enough on-screen long enough for this to register.
It’s too bad that Brügger named no non-partisan sources – no sources at all – for his often haunting assertions. His opinions or conclusions are his currency here. He uses no international public documents are cited to corroborate his words. This bodes poorly if this is to be taken as a real documentary, instead of documentary style, or just called verité.
There are documentaries and documentary-style (verité) films. The New York Times’ chief film critic, A.O. Scott, recently wrote about how the description or definition has become murkier and murkier. A “documentary?”: documentaries are essentially long-form journalism. To document. To record and then report.
According to Merriam-Webster:
“to provide with factual or substantial support for statements made or a hypothesis proposed;
especially : to equip with exact references to authoritative supporting information.”
Among Scott’s observations, he recommends that people who watch docs ask themselves what agenda the film or its maker has. In a perfect world, journalism‘s lone agenda is to build a story on a foundation of accurate, reliable and corroborated facts. People can insist that reality TV is documentary, but that hot air coughs up into frost when you consider that those scenarios are contrived and conjured.
The verdict: if you accidentally bump into the DVD, why not take a gander? Otherwise…
