Burn After Reading

From time to time, I like to consult long-time colleague and mentor Ace McGee for his insights on a film. His storied career began in 1969 when, at the age of 8, he entered the world of critical letters with his razor-sharp excoriation of the dumbed-down fumblings of his elementary school's Thanksgiving Day Play. The piece, Turkey Time Is the Real Turkey, is a must-read for any fan of the Elementary School Theater, and his ribald, profane take-down of the play is even more astonishing when you learn that McGee had a small role in the production. The same year, he wrote his classic book, Moonshot, Woodstock, and Nixon: An Eight Year Old's Letters from Vietnam, still considered to be the seminal work on the experience of the juveniles who were drafted into the service during that turbulent era in American History. After seeing Burn After Reading, the latest Coen Brothers film, I sent him a text that read "wot did u thnk?" and only three minutes later, he texted back with the following response, reprinted here as he sums it up better than I ever could.

"Where do these guys get off? Do they think we're stupid or something? They keep saying the same things over and over again, with absolutely nothing new to their nonsense. It's like they think we forget every time the new Coen Brothers movie comes out that we've heard it all before, but they just go right back to the well and give us the same-old, same-old stuff. These imbecilic critics see the movie and then they start tossing out the word 'misanthropic' like it's supposed to be a bad thing, or like it means anything. 'Oh,' they cry out, just about to faint like a Southern Belle, 'these guys don't have any sympathy for the stupid characters that populate their narratives! They look down upon these simps and judge them harshly! Oh no!' Forget that it's not true, and that, while the Coens often bring an ironic, detached perspective to their narratives, they're still able to present clear, relatable characters that are nonetheless absurd cartoons of humanity. Forget that. What these people, these critics are talking about is themselves. They are the ones who can't face the dumb, obsessed idiocy of themselves, and so, while they identify with the stupidity, they are also repelled by it. They mistake the consequences of the characters' actions for judgement by the filmmakers. And then they feel judged since they've empathized with the dum-dums in the movie, and they boo-hoo-hoo all the way through their published columns about the poor saps that these mean old directors went and gave a spankin' to, and their hearts grow three sizes because they fought for the little guy characters of a movie, and meanwhile I'm crackin' it up because I know I'm stupid and that life's not fair and that's what makes life funny sometimes.

"So forget them. This is a hilarious trifle of a Coen Bros film, and it's only a trifle because it's missing that visual splendor. Remember in even their first movie, Blood Simple how they made little ol' Texas look just as alien as the Sea of Tranquility (where the astronauts landed)? Not a lot of that here. There are one or two moments where they find that groove of epic Otherness that they bring to all of their movies (even The Ladykillers--a movie that suffered from too much sympathy for their characters), but it's not nearly as visually rich in design. I almost didn't care, though, because they replaced that rich mise-en-scene with something different and wonderful: great faces. You almost want this to be like The Passion of Joan of Arc where the entire movie's done with closeups. Everyone's face is hilarious, especially Brad Pitt's. The dude's great at vacuity, no doubt about it, but he's not just stupid, he's got a childlike earnestness that is quite endearing. It's a spiritual cousin to his movie-stealing stoner part in True Romance. But then, the whole cast is great, and their looks of perplexity, or confusion are priceless... if you just watch the movie for the faces you'll probably enjoy this movie 50% more than if you're watching it for, like, the plot (which is a fun parody of espionage thriller conventions). Yeah, they all overdo the dumbness just a tad at times, but they're all playing at the same levels of cartoony, and no one's 'playing' dumb. Even Clooney who, after two movies playing dumb with the Coens, has finally gotten it right. Everyone's eyes are stupid, I guess, is what I mean. You look in their eyes and just see stupid, not an actor who knows better winking at you and saying, 'Shucks, aren't I a dweeblehead!'

"And maybe it's just a trifle of a Shaggy Dog story, or something, man, but I don't know because I keep thinking about it. I couldn't help but think about Modern American Problems while watching it. Gimme a few days and I'll whip up the right words for it, but you know, we just saw the movie, and I'm waiting for you to get out of the bathroom so I can get a ride home from you. Not enough time! But there's something there, particularly in the way Frances McDormand wants to get plastic surgery to "remake" herself, so that she'll be more attractive to men. It's like, we all think we can just buy love that way. You know what I mean? And we're all pretty stupid and uninformed about geopolitical matters, so maybe we'd take a classified document to the Russians, even though they're not so much our enemies anymore. And the CIA is a 3rd person omniscient force in the world over who can and will control our lives if they need to. I thought the story was somewhat meaningful, anyway, in a subtle way, not a way that screams out "I AM ABOUT MODERN AMERICAN PROBLEMS."--Some guy just stepped on my foot. What's taking you so long?

"I loved it, I gotta say. I loved every microsecond of it. Remember when Lebowski came out and you and I loved it, but everyone was kind-of rolling their eyes and saying, 'They did that after Fargo?' but now it's lauded as this classic and people love it? And we got into that fight because those two critics from the Post and the Times were mocking us as pot-heads for liking it? And I had to go to the hospital because I'm a hemophiliac and that dude from the Post cut me? And now they've eaten their words? I don't know if this is going to age as well as Lebowski, but I think people are going to look back on this one more fondly than they're treating it now. It's a bleak movie, sure, but it's very, very funny and I'm still crackin' it up about that ending. It might be seen as a jab at the audience by the dweebleheadeds, but I think it's a grand joke the Coens are making on themselves for spinning such an elaborate yarn about nothing. And anyway J.K. Simmons and David Rasche are so funny, they'd make it a worthwhile movie even if you hated everything else in the picture. You know, the most important thing about the movie, though, is

"I just broke off my thumbnail on my phone. You gotta get out here and get me to the hospital, man, I'm gonna bleed to death."

Ace McGee is currently in stable condition at Legacy Good Samaritan Hospital and Medical Center.

Bullet in the Head

John Woo's films (particularly his early Hong Kong works) owe more than a little to the films of Sergio Leone. Like Leone's, they tend to center on tough, violent loners who've lost the ability to relate to other humans but through violence and, many of his films deal with the wolfish, masculine camaraderie that develops between two or more characters with these qualities. Further, all of these films subvert this machismo a bit, paying lip service to the emotional emptiness of lives lived without trust or compassion. But despite this superimposed complexity, Woo and Leone's films are really reveling in the simplicity of their characters' outlook on the world. The hardest moral choice facing these characters is whether or not they should shoot a man that they've sort-of, kind-of come to like.

Bullet in the Head is only a little different in that it takes a stab at something a little less arch. The film is set during the Vietnam War and features three Chinese buddies traveling to the war-torn region in order to make some money out of the chaos. The three are quite naive in thinking they can catch this particular tiger by the tail, and soon they're in trouble with both the North Vietnamese army and a powerful gangster in the region. As they attempt to flee back to Hong Kong with their lives, their friendship begins to splinter and they are forced to face the ugliness within themselves.

I have a weakness in me for movies dealing with the burgeoning or fracturing friendships between tough, angry men, quality be damned (to wit: I actually found the relationship between Obi-Wan and Anakin genuinely involving in Star Wars: Episode 3, despite it being part of a truly risible film), so it's hard to not like these aspects of this movie. But overall, it's a ludicrous film, particularly when asking the viewer to take the effects of bullets seriously. All through the movie, the characters leap about with guns blazing, but there's absolutely no sense that these things actually fire bullets. Rather, they seem to emit a generalized swath of destruction that explodes windows, drywall, and t-shirts. There's nothing wrong with this; indeed, the hyper-reality is a large part of what's appealing about Woo's work. Bullet in the Head, though, is hilariously inconsistent. It tries to give us the fun of shoot-outs where people empty clips at one another, but then asks us to contemplate how horrible various war crimes are. About as horrible as being shot by a man leaping at you in slow-motion, I'd wager.

At the shootouts and the tough guy archetypes, Woo is aces. His style of staging action scenes has been labeled "balletic" ad nausea, but it's as true now as it ever was, even after the years of Hollywood folk borrowing his technique for their own shallow purposes. Watching these sequences is very much like viewing the oft-coveted, too-rarely-seen dance-off and one wonders when Woo will let his characters put down the guns and pick up the ballet shoes.

But, at least in Bullet in the Head, Woo fails at just about everything else. The first half hour or so when Woo sets up the characters is confusing and overedited. In these opening moments, every shot feels too short, and every scene too long. It's like the movie is hiding behind the editing, trying to hide its character development or make the dialogue scenes as exciting or thrilling as the gun play. It isn't until the violence kicks in that one gets a sense as to who these people are, and even then they're pretty much reduced to one character trait apiece. There are some actresses in this film that should be ashamed for agreeing to appear as such weak-willed fantasy objects. And in the movie's final act, the characters brood endlessly over their suffering with nary a hint that they bear any responsibility for it. Like the guns, they bear no resemblance to anything from our world. But rather than using that to achieve a larger-than-life mythos for any of these characters as sometimes results from similar endeavors (see: Plissken, Snake), it serves to make them seem like the half-formed fantasy characters created by breathless children playing guns. And then we're supposed to care about their suffering and feel pleased when one of them takes revenge in the final, interminable scene? Please.

It's been some years since I've seen Woo's major Hong Kong works, Hard Boiled or The Killer, and so can't account for the quality of either excepting the voice of myself as a delighted sixteen-year-old (who also, it should be noted, totally, completely, without any reservation dug Woo's Jean-Claude Van Damme starring American debut, Hard Target, and would probably have had trouble seeing how absolutely shitty the Star Wars prequels were). While watching Bullet in the Head, though, I began to wonder if my previous affinity for these John Woo films was not solely due to my aforementioned weakness for the cry of the lonely, afflicted men that populated them. Aside from the opening, the film works in individual scenes, but they feel pulled out of different films. When glorying in the movement of excessive violence, Bullet in the Head soars. When trying to show serious consequences to this violence, it shoots itself in the foot.

Day 83: Being There

Ah, Hal Ashby. Somehow you found the soul of disaffected American romances with Harold and Maude, pushing the lovers united against the world, Bonnie and Clyde-esque, "even if no one in the world agrees with us, we'll love each other no matter what!" genre into a corner, prodded it, and came out with one of the most loveably sweet, endearing movies of all time. And here's another sweet, endearing, and poignant film about an unlikely hero who's got everything to lose, but pushes on and finds happiness. God damn you, Hal Ashby, for getting it so right... for including in your film, the fact that Chance, the gardner, could not have done all he does here if he were black... for complicating the myth of the sweet retard who makes everyone else's life better with his unassuming. selfless ways by insinuating that he's Jesus!

Hal Ashby... if I could reanimate you, I would: to pat you on the back for knowing how not to tip your hand while doing an entire movie in deadpan. For understanding that Television is not the problem, so much as the fact that we're all as dumb as the shows on TV and so self-aggrandizing, we think our lives are worth being on TV. For being prescient enough to know that all a man has to do to be elected president, is get his face on TV, spout a few simplistic, yet smart-sounding analogies, refuse to talk about his past (or better still, insist that he has none), and have the right corporate connections. For giving Peter Sellers this role near the end of his life, the character somehow a fitting tribute to how he made us all feel.

Being There is a beautiful, sad little film with much wit. The premise is labored from the get-go (dumb guy wanders around, affects people with homespun gardening parables or a lifetime of television-inspired platitudes) and yet, the acting is too good, the writing too funny, and the way it's all captured too assured to do anything but fall for the damn thing. Though there were times that I thought the territory the movie was steering me into might get far too schmaltzy and Gumpish, it never, ever went there and every emotional beat was fairly earned. Good show, this one. I like to watch it.

Day 47: Bringing Up Baby

My face hurt from laughing after watching this.  It hurt most after watching a dinner scene during which Cary Grant left the table frequently to follow a dog.  After leaving a couple times, he returns, looks at the table and complains to the flabbergasted people at the table, “My soup’s gone!”

There’s something so effortlessly charming about this movie, due in large part to the chemistry between Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn.  She’s on fire in this role, shooting out fast paced dialogue with a devilish grin and an infectious lust for life.  Her character is impulsive (to the point of madness, I thought) and forgetful.  In lesser hands, the character would be completely annoying in how she disregards the other people around her, but Hepburn adds an element of caring and class to the role that, ultimately, avoids this pitfall (though it’s a close call at first).  Cary Grant is a great match for her too as an ineffectual nerd, bursting with latent aggression.  His bumbling and stuttering would also be annoying in lesser hands, but the way Grant bursts out of it from time to time is a joy to behold.

These characters have a volatile relationship from the start.  But after a psychiatrist informs Katherine Hepburn that the male love impulse often expresses itself in terms of conflict, she decides that Grant loves her and that she’ll love him too.  Then, the plot places a leopard named Baby between the two, and their efforts to control the volatility of the wild animal teaches them how to control the volatility between themselves.  

As you can see, this is an entry in the “couple hates each other until they fall in love” genre, featuring the staple mismatched characters and many plot contrivances to bring them closer together.  But where other movies fail, this one succeeds because most of the contrivances are character-driven.  After our introduction to the characters, we could honestly believe that Hepburn would be sent a leopard by her brother or that Grant’s character is good-hearted enough to see a task through to the end, no matter how horribly he’s treated.  And the leopard is, I must say, a nice touch.  It gives the couple an external force to reckon with, causing them to unite (and it does it without all the super-serious fuss of something like a war to hone in on the fun).

To be sure, it left me a little exhausted with all of the running around and fast-paced talking.  And a couple characters are played so broadly that they were never, ever funny (the Constable being the worst offender to my mind) though they were clearly trying to be.  And, you know, there’s not much on the surface of Bringing Up Baby that differentiates it much from something like Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine.  There’s a lot of mugging and a lot of jokes that fall flat because of this.  The action onscreen is, at times, as stupidly zany and reckless as it was in Goldfoot.  And, yeah, some things bugged me, like Hepburn deciding on a whim to love a man she hardly knows.  But it’s all so whimsical, anyway, and the movie hits more often than it misses, so why bother?  This is a solid effort all the way through with good writing, a sure-handed pace, and wonderful chemistry between its co-stars.  The chemistry is so good that I forgave all of the absurd (and ultimately unconvincing – Grant’s fault) declarations of love in the final scene the way everyone forgives them in the last act of Shakespeare’s comedies.

Eh, I’m thinking too much.  This is an utterly charming movie and a funny one at that.  The dinner scene mentioned above is a perfectly pitched, farcical scene.  It’s played so well that peals of laughter came out of me, and I don’t use the word peals lightly.

Day 39: Bad Company

Big Joe: I'd like to get my hands on the son of a bitch that told me to go west.

As far as revisionist Westerns go, this is pretty nice.  Bad Company uses its time period and setting to good effect, period details that are often ignored in other Westerns affect the characters and their story.  It works a great deal to interrogate the myth of the American West propagated by countless movies and dime store novels (much as Verhoven’s Flesh + Blood and Tarkovsky’s Andreiv Rublev explode any romantic notions of Medieval society).  It’s also quite funny about the mythology it’s working to interrogate without descending into parody or diminishing meaningful beats within the story its telling.

In a performance that feels oddly like Jason Schwartzman and Johnny Depp combined their powers, Barry Brown plays Drew Dixon, draft dodger and all-around good kid.  He flees to St. Joseph, Missouri in order to avoid fighting for the Union in The Civil War.  The plan is to “go west” and out of Union jurisdiction until the war is over.  The line to get on the wagon train is six months long and the soldiers in town are suspicious of him, so he throws in with Jeff Bridges and his merry band of outlaw youngsters (shades of both Oliver Twist and Robin Hood here).  

They’re all teenagers (and there’s one little kid) trying to be grownups and, accordingly, there’s a lot of self-deception in the movie.  Bridges tells his gang, and himself, that he’s got what it takes to lead them when he’s clearly just making it up as he goes.  Though they’re clearly up to a Dickensian sort of thievery, Brown thinks he can use the gang to get out west (where he thinks he will become a wealthy silver miner) without compromising his beliefs.  The other kids buy into the fun of it all: they think they’re far more competent than they are, but, as we soon see, it takes them a gazillion bullets to bring down one rabbit and none of them know how to clean it.

As they head out West to escape the army and find their fortunes, the reality behind the myth of the cowboy intrudes at every turn.  They can’t find food on the trail, prove to be ineffectual at stealing what they need, and can’t defend themselves from the real bad guys roaming the plains.  Brown finds he has to compromise his principles if he wants to survive and Bridges receives many harsh lessons about the consequences of boastful lies in extreme situations.  There are shifting alliances within the group, motivated by circumstance, and a number of funny complications (the movie also has one of the funniest and most realistic fist fights I’ve ever seen on screen between Brown and Bridges: in one moment, Brown picks up a chair, intending to bash Bridges with it, and instead misses and smashes it into a glass-fronted cabinet.  The chair doesn’t fall apart, either.  Those pioneers knew how to make some sturdy god damned furniture.  Also during the fight, a boot goes into some soup.)

The characterizations in the film are witty.  I was worried at first when Brown’s diary entries were used to frame the story.  The character is uptight and pious and I’m usually bored and frustrated by main characters like him.  Eventually, though, it becomes quite clear that the movie’s poking fun at his attitudes, challenging the ridiculous idealism the character holds to be true.  But the movie doesn’t dismiss him either; in fact, it never takes sides between Brown’s uprightness and Bridges’ shameless audacity.  It sees value in both characters, pitting their ideologies against one another and finding that both attitudes are useful.  

The conflict between Bridges and Brown is also reflected by two great character performances from David Huddleston (strangely reminiscent of M. Emmet Walsh in Blood Simple [notable because he was the “real” Lebowski in The Big Lebowski, which, of course, also featured Jeff Bridges]) and Jim Davis (I assume not the guy who does Garfield) as a Kansas Marshall and a professional criminal, respectively.  Both of these men represent the extreme of the two ideologies in conflict for most of the movie, the Marshall doesn’t care if he hangs an innocent man and the criminal is unconcerned about anyone other than himself.  When confronted with these two men, both boys find a common cause to unite against and find a place where their differences can mesh.

The movie is scored by a solo, honky-tonk sounding piano and it’s easily one of the best choices for a movie score I’ve heard in some time.  It apes, in its composition, conventional Western scores, but the sound of the solo piano struggling to fulfill its obligation to some of the epic shots in the movie reflects the incompetence of the characters as they struggle to become legends deserving of such epic shots.  The score isn’t entirely successful, there are some moments where its simplicity trivializes the events onscreen or where it goes for a laugh when it’s not even needed.  For the most part, the choice adds a layer of meaning to the entire film, instead of just acting as the omniscient and emotional narrator we’re all used to.

I didn’t mean to write so much about this film, but it demanded more of my time the more I thought about it.  It’s a great Western about the Westerns, but it’s not just a meta-criticism of America’s mythology about itself.  It’s also a finely wrought, character-based story and the characters are shaped and affected by their time period more than most movies of this sort.  As a result, it almost seems as if it’s a happy accident that the movie critiques the common Western.  That is, of course, until the last line of the film: a great punchline to a very enjoyable, yet as far as I can tell, unfairly neglected movie.

Day 37: Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

Bennie: You guys are definitely on my shit list!

The title alone makes this one worth watching.  The title of this film also makes it worth claiming as your favorite movie, even though you might be lying.  This is not my favorite movie, though it is an enjoyably gritty and grisly crime movie and I loved how it jumps into the existential question that all of cinema’s hardened anti-heroes ask themselves (it’s usually something along the lines of “can I love?” but here it’s “how much is love worth?”) with giddy abandon.  It suffers only from some awkwardness in its first act and obedience to some of the limitations of its genre.  But, still, it’s a finely executed movie with a real film noir-like nihilism to it.

Somewhere in Mexico: Alfredo Garcia impregnated the daughter of a wealthy man, a guy not above having his goons break his daughter’s arm to reveal the name of her lover.  Upon learning the name, he offers one million dollars to whoever brings him the head of Alfredo Garcia.  Thinking I knew what kind of film I would be seeing, I settled in, expecting the familiar beats of some bounty hunter tracking him down, having second thoughts, and maybe doing it anyway for the money.  I was pleasantly mistaken.

Instead, the movie plays around with the familiar beats.  The joke on everyone (both watching the movie and in it) is that the titular head belongs to a man who’s already died.  So, Bennie, our hardened, cynical anti-hero, is hired by some mysterious operatives to bring the head back for ten thousand dollars.  And instead of killing Garcia, he must dig the grave up and chop the head off.  When he arrives at Garcia’s grave with his ready-to-settle-down-and-get-married Mexican girlfriend Elita, she balks at the grisly task.  But, there’s another delightful wrinkle in the plot: he was an ex-lover of hers.  So, rather than just have the woman acting as spiritual guide to the sexually insecure Bennie, it’s now unclear (at least to Bennie) if she wants to prevent him from chopping the dead head off of Garcia for spiritual reasons, or to preserve a man she might have loved.  Indeed, Bennie’s severing of the head becomes a strange effort at macho posturing, proving his permanence in Elita’s life by destroying the corpse of her ex.

This sort-of storytelling continues throughout the film, with the movie twisting genre conventions in order to dig deep into what motivates Bennie, what he lives for, what he would die for.  It’s always fun to have one’s expectations thwarted in a movie like this and I was never more pleased in this way than when Bennie was confronted by Alfredo Garcia’s family (They wanted the head back).  The movie is also successful at joyfully mixing the sacred with the profane.  To wit: Bennie strides through the party following the baptism of Garcia’s baby with Garcia’s head in a sack swarming with flies.  

Warren Oates shines in the role of Bennie, grimacing under a huge pair of dark sunglasses for almost the whole picture.  He growls menacingly at the severed head, his only companion for a long car ride home, asks it questions, and, in a weird way, befriends it, much as Tom Hanks befriended the volleyball in Castaway.  He physically embodies the desperation well. Looking at him, you can almost smell the alcohol oozing out of his pores.

This is all good stuff, twisted and unapologetic.  But the movie falters at the beginning in finding its pace, establishing the main characters in fits, starts, and oblique gestures that don’t really connect until half-an-hour in.  (Bennie’s musicality at the beginning of the movie is all-but forgotten, replaced by a tough-guy machismo that doesn’t mesh well with how he’s characterized at the start of the flick)  It’s also got some improbable gun fights and car chases, stuff that I can overlook for the sake of genre, but still bother me since it seems like they’re stuck in for sensationalist reasons or pure plot, rather than informing or developing aspects of the characters involved.  This is not to mention the misogynistic streak that runs through the movie (though to its credit, it is struggling with its misogony and not explicitly endorsing it, though it comes close a few times).

I liked Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia quite a bit.  It felt like a meshing of the grittiest film noir with the emotional and visual landscape of a Leone film.  It’s my third Peckinpah film (following The Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs), and he’s certainly a competent director and good at getting male frustration out of his actors and onto the screen.  But for all the fun trickery and twisting, the movie never goes inward deep enough for my tastes or tries to be anything much more than a solid, three-dimensional genre film.  This is something to be appreciated (particularly in this age of films slavish in their adherenece to genre, or acting as if meshing many genres together automatically questions the genre [oh George Lucas…]) but not necessarily applauded.  Since the movie dips its toes into the pool of complexity, I waited for it to wade further in.  I got a bloodbath ending, one borne of questioning the character a wee bit.  Not bad.  Not entirely good.  Still, ask me what my favorite movie is.

Day 26: The Battle of Algiers

Note: This review has not been thoroughly edited or proofread.

It’s impossible for me to watch this movie without thinking of the current American campaign in Iraq. Of course, it’s also a relevant film if you want to talk about Vietnam or the American Revolution, or any case of asymmetrical warfare. But yesterday, when I watched this film, the 2000th soldier was killed in Iraq and new details about the whole Valerie Plame investigation leaked out. This film depicts a struggle between a powerful Western force, in this case the French (insert joke about the French and war here if you like and then shut the fuck up), and a growing Islamic insurgency, screaming for independence. The location is Algiers, capital of Algeria where the French have established a prosperous colony. The movie is a prescient, patchwork look at the future of warfare, switching perspectives from the revolutionary Islamic side to the French side. The movie is fairly even handed, giving credence to both perspectives, though it’s weighted toward the revolutionaries.

But, sociopolitical concerns aside, the movie is a feat of faux-documentary style. A lot of the movie is shot on the streets with a shaky, handheld camera. The movie has some spectacular set pieces involving large crowds on the verge of rioting and some footage of terrorist attacks with large-scale explosions. Like <i>My Dinner with Andre</i>, the aesthetic of the film is pulled off with such skill and accuracy that, had I not known differently when I sat down to watch it, I would have been convinced that there was some true documentary footage mixed in with the narrative.

The movie is commendable for showing both sides of the conflict with equal compassion. As the terrorist attacks in Algiers increase, the French send in Colonel Mathieu to be in charge of the armed forces there. Mathieu has respect for the revolutionaries, but he knows the job he has to do and endeavors to complete it. He tells his men, quite plainly, that they will need to torture people to get the information they need in order to find the members of the insurgency. Meanwhile, on the other side of the conflict, we see the effect of bombings on the Islamic population and the cathartic sway of violence on a young Arabic man named Ali La Pointe. Ali is exposed to revolutionaries in prison and, once out, joins up with them. As he rises in power in this organization, he gleefully avenges the mistreatment he’s had at the hands of Europeans, gunning down enemies with abandon.

But herein lies another wrinkle presented matter-of-factly by the film. Due to the asymmetry of the battle being fought, my cultural and personal inclination is to side with the underdog (Americans being the descendents of dissidents and terrorists, after all). Yet there is a fantastic scene in which we’re shown exactly what the revolutionaries are fighting for. The revolutionaries ban drinking and prostitution among their people and, shortly thereafter, a drunken man is attacked by a throng of children who identify him as a wino and, thus, an enemy. This is followed by Ali ruthlessly gunning down a pimp in the name of the revolution. Now, my cultural and personal inclination is to not side with them since I loves me some hookers and beer. Or at least the option thereof. And then there’s the fantastic... excuse me, FANTASTIC... sequence in which three women take off their shawls, cut and dye their hair, carry timebombs in their handbags, and place them at strategic locations. The bombs are timed in such a way that after the first bomb explodes, the citizens nearby have enough time to dismiss it as a propane tank explosion before being caught up in the second. And yet, who are our sympathies with here? The civilians or the women who planted the bombs? For me: both.

The movie achieves this straddling of sympathies by presenting honest and coherent motivations for everyone involved. It’s as matter-of-fact as most documentaries, brilliantly shot and edited. I have a few quibbles. The score (otherwise wonderful) does fall prey to sentimentality a couple of times. I was also not pleased by the ending of this film: it presents documentary-style riots long after the characters we’ve been following are gone from the scene, depicting an event that could have been properly explained by a final title card. It seemed a bit show-offy and tipped the hand of sympathy squarely to the side of the revolutionaries. The way Ali’s backstory was placed in the movie felt a bit more arch than necessary. But these are all minor issues, nothing that detracts from the fundamental core of the film. This is a fantastic film.

(Author’s note 2: I’m going to make the controversial statement that I’m against torturing people, but the candidness of the commander’s plan to commit torture was refreshing in light of current events. So was his intelligence. He studies the enemy, analyzes the structure of their cells, and works to understand them better so that he can defeat them. When word of the torture leaks out, the press questions him on the subject. And, while he’s very coy about the whole deal with the press, he also asks the press (and, thus, the world) if France should even stay in Algeria anymore. His message is that France should withdraw from Algeria if the people are going to be too concerned with the humane treatment of the enemy. Additionally, he never, ever engages in any dehumanization of the people he’s fighting and speaks of his respect for the leaders of the revolution often. This is so starkly contrasted with the bumbling, overzealous, and ultra patriotic rhetoric coming from certain portions of the government [and the news media] as to make me wish for the umpteenth time that I were a sissy Frenchman with an understanding of nuance and subtleties. End of line)