Tuesday, November 5, 1996
FILM:
‘A Time to Kill’ and its ilk pale in comparison to Watergate-era
dramasWell, this is it.
All the debating, all the issues and all the decisions get
settled today, right?
Yes, my fellow democracy denizens, it’s time to once again roll
up our sleeves and mold the resilient clay of government into a
shape of our liking.
As cynical, and dare I say it, pessimistic as I tend to be, I
cannot bring myself to not cast my vote, even if I am dubious as to
the ultimate worth of my actions. So once again, I go off to the
polls to make my opinion about who gets to run the country count
for something.
Politics have occupied a unique and fluctuating space in my
life. I went from the staunch apoliticism of childhood and
adolescence to very lefty leanings as an undergraduate, and now,
perched on the hump of my twenties, I have abandoned my earlier
lefty fervor in favor of good, old fashioned misanthropic
anomie.
Yet, the drama of politics continues to captivate me. As an
aspiring filmmaker, politics to me isn’t the dry art of compromise
as conducted by bloodless bureaucrats. The inherent power grappling
of politics always gets my attention, especially how
larger-than-life monsters (Richard III, Stalin, J. Edgar Hoover)
crop up periodically and manipulate the system to their own
diabolical ends.
Unfortunately, Hollywood isn’t serving up much of these spicy
dishes lately. In fact, the political drama/thriller as such is
pretty much a dodo bird in Hollywood, an interesting, colorful
breed that fell into extinction sometime ago. Well, not completely,
but we’ll come to that later.
Someone recently pointed out what a marvel "Speechless," that
Geena Davis-Michael Keaton vehicle of a few years back, was. Not
because of its brisk plot, insightful characterizations or fresh
ideas, but because only 1990s Hollywood could set a film in the
political arena without letting political commentary color the
narrative in any way.
Regrettably, this is quite a normal state of affairs in the
movie industry. Cinema always acts as a barometer for the political
climate of whatever era it’s produced in, and what our cinema says
about the political consciousness of ’90s America is not
encouraging.
Obviously, the more turbulent the era, the more overtly
political its cinema will be. For this reason, one of my favorite
eras and subgenres is the post-Watergate political thrillers of the
paranoid ’70s. Still reeling from all the social upheaval of the
’60s, and then bombarded with the unprecedented scandal that was
Watergate, these films perfectly capture the insecurity and
distrust of the government that had by then reached unprecedented
levels.
These films include "All the President’s Men" and "The Parallax
View," both directed by Alan J. Pakula; "Three Days of the Condor,"
starring Robert Redford; and Roman Polanski’s classic "Chinatown,"
whose period depiction of political corruption and souls withered
by evil rang all-too familiar in 1974.
And while it came over 10 years before the aforementioned films,
"The Manchurian Candidate" must also be included in any list of
great political thrillers. This rather right-wing Cold War
potboiler may clash ideologically with its ’70s descendants, but
paranoia is the thread that unifies these films, and it ran rampant
in the both the ’60s and ’70s.
These films mirror their times, and leave future generations
with a genuine artifact of an age.
So what will our scions have to remember the ’90s? Frighteningly
enough, the answer may be films like this year’s "A Time To Kill":
a bubble-headed film that makes characteristic missteps in handling
its touchy subjects of racism and retribution in the New South (the
flaws of "A Time To Kill" are so myriad that they could fill the
rest of these pages, so in the interest of the classified and
sports sections, I will refrain from stating them all). What’s most
scary is that Hollywood has largely given up on serious films,
political or personal, about the here and now. Sure, they trot out
the Oscar bait about this time of year. But once upon a time, Oscar
bait was more plentiful and was released year-round. I personally
have seen that change, and now most of what Hollywood puts out is
for kids and adults who think like them.
Worse yet, the dopey approach "A Time To Kill" takes is pure
Hollywood. With no understanding for the complexities of the South
(the story could just as well have been set in Petaluma, Calif. as
Mississippi), the film endorses some rather appallingly reactionary
views towards vigilantism, de-contextualizes and simplifies racist
brutalization, and pits the NAACP against the Ku Klux Klan as if to
suggest that the civil rights organization is just as terroristic
as cross-burning lynch mobs in sheets.
The film congratulates itself for being liberal, while actually
being moderate at best and being clueless about the issues at hand.
This dopey faux-liberalism is stunningly representative of the
Clinton era in general (and I say that having voted for him four
years ago, and having done so again today).
So, in the words of one of my favorite political figures, what
is to be done? Not much. As long as foolishness like Grisham’s
yarns continues to rack up the profits (although the short shelf
life of "The Chamber" is cause for optimism) Hollywood’s going to
continue making it. So ultimately, just as in politics, we have the
power to cast our votes for change. But more than likely, we’ll
just keep our heads in the popcorn and wait for things to get
better all on their own. Good luck.
Brandon Wilson is a third-year graduate student in film
directing who will one day reverse the extinction of the political
thriller, damn it.
Brandon Wilson