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war

In The Loop

by James McNally on November 19, 2009 · 1 comment

in DVD

In The Loop
In The Loop was released on DVD in Canada on November 10 by Alliance Films and will come out January 10, 2010 in the US. You can help Toronto Screen Shots by buying it from Amazon.ca or Amazon.com.

In The Loop (Director: Armando Iannucci): On this side of the pond, the name Armando Iannucci likely doesn’t ring a bell, but for fans of British comedy, the man is con­sidered a genius. His col­lab­or­a­tions with Steve Coogan include the classic Alan Partridge shows (The Day Today, Knowing Me, Knowing You, I’m Alan Partridge). Most recently, he’s been writing and dir­ecting a blaz­ingly fast and funny series called The Thick of It, which mines the comedic ter­ritory of polit­ical media hand­lers working for the British government.

In The Loop takes almost all the actors from that show, mixes up the char­ac­ters a bit, and places them in the midst of the run up to the (unnamed but blind­ingly obvious) Iraq war in 2003. Peter Capaldi returns as Malcolm Tucker, the whipsmart press sec­retary with a mean streak. I’ve never heard more cre­ative swearing in my life, and if you’re offended by “f-bombs” then this film is def­in­itely not for you. But it’s my firm belief that no one can curse more cre­at­ively than our friends from the British Isles, and every char­acter reaches for the stars in this very funny movie.

Simon Foster is the min­ister for inter­na­tional devel­op­ment who puts his foot in his mouth by making off-the-cuff remarks about the pos­sib­ility of a war. The press runs riot and Malcolm Tucker tears young Foster a new back­side. The rest of the film fol­lows the boun­cing min­ister as he’s used by pro– and anti-war fac­tions in both the UK and the US. He con­tinues to fudge his “lines” and the res­ulting mess makes for some very funny situ­ations. While The Thick of It con­fines itself to English politics, In The Loop cre­ates sim­ilar char­ac­ters on the American side, with James Gandolfini clearly enjoying him­self as a peace-loving gen­eral who nev­er­the­less threatens to kill sev­eral of his polit­ical oppon­ents. It’s nice, too, to see Anna Chlumsky (best known for 1991’s My Girl) return in the role of a young aide to an anti-war assistant sec­retary of state.

In The Loop

Overall, though, the Brits get the best lines (as might be expected) and one of the fun­niest scenes is when Malcolm Tucker the angry Scot actu­ally brings in an even angrier Scot to handle yet another press leak. Steve Coogan has a small cameo as an irate local man trying to get his mother’s garden wall fixed in the midst of an inter­na­tional crisis. Though I would have loved to see more of him, giving him a bigger role might have unbal­anced the mostly star-free cast. In The Loop will be riot­ously funny to anyone with even a passing interest in the work­ings of politics. Though it’s not any­thing spe­cial cine­mat­ic­ally (think a longer episode of The West Wing), there’s enough crack­ling dia­logue to keep you laughing all the way through. In fact, it’s a per­fect film for DVD since you may find your­self having to rewatch cer­tain scenes, either because the accents are slightly unin­tel­li­gible, or because you were laughing so hard you missed the next piece of dialogue.

This was a film whose trailer let it down because it had to cut out all the swearing. So I’ve included instead an actual clip. Be fore­warned, though, that this con­tains some many naughty words.

8/10(8/10)

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The Hurt Locker

The Hurt Locker (Director: Kathryn Bigelow): I have only seen one other Kathryn Bigelow film, the oddly mis­cast Strange Days (1995), so I’m far from an expert on her work, but other critics have pointed out that she’s a first-rate dir­ector of action sequences. The Hurt Locker is not really an action film, but it somehow is able to ramp up sus­pense and main­tain it for the entire length of the film, and so I came out of the film with the same sense of release as if I’d just seen lots of stuff blow up.

In fact, it’s the job of the char­ac­ters in this film to make sure stuff doesn’t blow up. They are the three mem­bers of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit in Baghdad. The team leader is the absurdly macho Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner), whose pre­de­cessor was killed by a remotely det­on­ated bomb as he was trying to defuse it. Sergeant J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) are cau­tious and emo­tion­ally scarred men just hoping to sur­vive the 38 days left of their unit’s rota­tion in Iraq. They don’t appre­ciate the reck­less­ness of their new leader, and at one point nervously dis­cuss whether they should “frag” him.

But as the days go by, his reck­less­ness seems to inspire some­thing like con­fid­ence, or at least it reduces their fear a little. We accom­pany this small group of men on their daily rounds, and the level of ten­sion never lets up. The dif­fer­ence between James and his sub­or­din­ates is that he seems to thrive on the rush of danger his job gives him. As the days are ticked off, we feel relief for the men wanting to go home, but James never seems to change. Toward the end of the film, there is a very brief scene of him back home with his wife and infant son, and he looks com­pletely out of place. He mumbles some­thing to his wife about the need for trained bomb techs back in Iraq, as if it’s the war that needs him, rather than the other way around. The final scene doesn’t come as a sur­prise, James striding con­fid­ently off the heli­copter back into the hellish streets of Baghdad, but I was glad that at least I was not going to have to accom­pany him on another bomb-defusing mission.

Bigelow’s dir­ec­tion is excel­lent throughout, with some of the images approaching the sur­real, espe­cially when James is inside the spe­cial armoured suit that is meant to pro­tect him from bomb blasts. He looks like an astro­naut on the sur­face of a very dan­gerous alien land­scape, which is exactly what he is. Where the film isn’t so strong is in its overly expos­itory dia­logue. It seems com­pletely unne­ces­sary to tell us some­thing that is obvious from the actions of the char­ac­ters, which is why the quote that intro­duces the film, from Chris Hedges’ book War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning is also unneeded. Sergeant James’ char­acter, like many of the mem­or­able char­ac­ters from war films, seems almost like a cari­ca­ture, because he so single-mindedly pur­sues the high that war gives him. Jeremy Renner is well-cast, pro­jecting a square-jawed lump­ish­ness that hides any com­plic­ated thoughts he might be having. When Sanborn asks him why he doesn’t seem to be scared, he hon­estly seems not to know. He’s almost bemused by his lack of know­ledge. Perhaps there are people who are just born to fight wars.

Apart from a few short cameos, The Hurt Locker is mer­ci­fully free of “movie stars,” and it’s refreshing to see char­ac­ters first, rather than actors. All three of the lead actors are fine, but I think Renner will be the one we’ll be seeing more of very soon.

Official site of the film

8/10(8/10)

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Paris 1919
Editor’s Note: I’ve decided to begin posting some reviews of films screening at Hot Docs 2009 early, hope­fully helping anyone attending make some decisions about what to see. Paris 1919 is screening on Friday May 1 at 7:00pm and Sunday May 10 at 11:00am at the Isabel Bader Theatre.

Paris 1919 (Director: Paul Cowan): Having read the book by Margaret MacMillan on which this doc­u­mentary is based, I was a little dubious upon hearing that dir­ector Cowan would be using re-enactments to create the atmo­sphere of the Versailles Peace Conference. But wisely, he chose to use these strictly as atmo­sphere, let­ting the archival footage and espe­cially the strong nar­ra­tion by Canadian actor R.H. Thomson carry the weight of the story.

In the early months of 1919, the world, weary of fighting, gathered in Paris to hammer out a peace accord. But the Great War ended in an armistice, not a sur­render, and so there was much at stake for all the parties. The old empires had col­lapsed and into the vacuum stepped a man prom­ising self-determination for all the peoples of the world. US pres­ident Woodrow Wilson offered his own ver­sion of Obama-like hope, espe­cially to the smaller nations of the world who had here­to­fore been the pawns of imperial powers. The defeated Germans also hoped that Wilson’s steady hand would deliver peace with justice. Alas, it was not to be.

Instead, Britain and France were determ­ined to bleed Germany dry for war repar­a­tions. Both coun­tries had suffered enorm­ously, espe­cially France, and they had little regard for the suf­fer­ings of Germany. Voters in both coun­tries were put­ting enormous pres­sure on their leaders, David Lloyd George of Britain and Georges Clemenceau of France, to bank­rupt Germany as pun­ish­ment for her guilt in starting the war. In con­trast, Wilson was obsessed with the idea of estab­lishing a League of Nations, a body that would arbit­rate dis­putes between nations in the hope of pre­venting war. His idealism and naivete were soon chal­lenged, and gradu­ally he made many com­prom­ises in order to secure sup­port from the other leaders for the League.

The end result was dis­astrous for Germany and ulti­mately for Europe and the world. Maps were redrawn dis­pla­cing mil­lions of people, assets were seized and mon­etary dam­ages demanded. The German del­eg­a­tion went home angry and humi­li­ated. In the years that fol­lowed, the German people’s resent­ment was ripe for exploit­a­tion and rising nation­alism soon engulfed the whole country, leading to Nazism and another world war.

Cowan’s film couldn’t have encom­passed all the various nego­ti­ations that went on at Versailles, and huge chunks of MacMillan’s book are simply passed over, including the fate of coun­tries like Poland and Turkey. But he cap­tures the essence of the power struggle between the leaders, and makes some great choices in the re-enactments. By focusing on minor char­ac­ters like Harold Nicolson and espe­cially eco­nomist John Maynard Keynes, we get a real feel for what it was like for the bur­eau­crats labouring in smoky rooms to untie the Gordian knot of European griev­ances, espe­cially when they felt their leaders were pur­suing the wrong course.

I think the best com­pli­ment I can pay to Cowan’s film is to say that it left me wanting more, and for that, I will return to Margaret MacMillan’s excel­lent book, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World.

Official web site of the film

8/10(8/10)

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Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders
Editor’s Note: Doc Soup is a monthly doc­u­mentary screening pro­gramme run by the good folks at Hot Docs. It gives audi­ences in Toronto (and now Calgary and Vancouver!) their reg­ular doc fix each year from the fall through to the spring, leading up to the Hot Docs fest­ival itself.

Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders (Director: Mark Hopkins): Judging by the title alone, I was a little appre­hensive that this film would be nothing but a slick promo for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), the Paris-based crisis med­ical charity, but I’m happy to say that Mark Hopkins’ film is a many-shaded por­trait of some of the bravest and most ded­ic­ated people in the world.

I’ve always respected the work that MSF does, and the film does a great job of showing the actual con­di­tions that these volun­teer doc­tors work in. But it goes well beyond that, showing the effects of the strain of working a six-month “mis­sion” in places where there may be no other med­ical infra­struc­ture for miles around. We follow sev­eral doc­tors on assign­ments in Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, including two who are on their first mis­sion. The stag­gering stat­istics say that fewer than half of all doc­tors return for a second mis­sion, and it’s not hard to see why. Conditions are never ideal, but lack of med­ical sup­plies com­pounded with com­mu­nic­a­tion dif­fi­culties, and a sud­denly increased load of respons­ib­ility all take their toll. Some of the vet­erans speak openly of “run­ning on empty” and everyone smokes and drinks too much. One of the vet­erans, Dr. Chiara Lepora, encour­ages everyone to have as much sex as pos­sible, since they’re sur­rounded by death all day long and that “sex is life.” During one scene, an intox­ic­ated Dr. Chris Brasher boasts that MSF accom­plishes more than UNICEF, with its end­less meet­ings and plans. MSF volun­teers are doers, and they all seem to share that unfussy attitude.

But the man­date that encour­ages that spirit of doing also has clear lim­it­a­tions. MSF oper­ates solely as a crisis med­ical pro­vider, as in war zones and after nat­ural dis­asters. When those con­di­tions cease to exist, MSF close their bases and move on. Given that many of these coun­tries don’t have func­tioning med­ical infra­struc­tures, this can seem heart­less, but keeping their mis­sion focused on emer­gency help has main­tained the organization’s edge and responsiveness.

We do wit­ness the closing of a base in Liberia, and Dr. Lepora’s going-away party is bit­ter­sweet for the local med­ical staff being left behind, but MSF has stub­bornly refused to expand their man­date into devel­op­ment work, leaving that to other NGOs and the local min­is­tries of health. As Dr. Brasher bluntly points out, though, every person they help with emer­gency sur­gery or other inter­ven­tion is someone who likely would have died without their help. And though this good work takes a toll on the volun­teers, it also has imme­diate rewards. So although many of the doc­tors don’t return for second mis­sions, the ones that do often spend the rest of their lives in one far-flung and ill-equipped out­post after another. And they wouldn’t have it any other way.

Hopkins’ film drives home the point that no matter how much money we in the West donate to charity, there still need to be people on the ground actu­ally doing some­thing to help in these emer­gency situ­ations. I can’t think of anyone get­ting closer to the situ­ation than a doctor or nurse up to her wrists in gore, put­ting yet another broken body back together. It’s not an easy sight to look at, but that doesn’t mean it’s not beautiful.

I had only one small quibble with the film and that is that with so many people speaking accented English, the sound mix was too muddled. In the post-screening Q&A, dir­ector Mark Hopkins prom­ised a better sound mix on the theatrical/DVD release, as well as better use of subtitles.

Official web site of the film

Here is the Q&A with dir­ector Mark Hopkins from after the screening:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Duration: 15:02

8/10(8/10)

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Waltz with Bashir

Waltz with Bashir (2008, Director: Ari Folman): I think calling this an anim­ated doc­u­mentary might be stretching it a bit, but dir­ector Ari Folman has cre­ated some­thing really inter­esting. He’s used anim­a­tion to go where doc­u­mentary film­making hasn’t been able to take us before, into the memories, dreams and night­mares of its sub­jects. The film starts when Ari (looking uncan­nily like Italian film diarist Nanni Morretti) shares a drink with an old army buddy who describes his recur­ring night­mare of being chased by 28 dogs. After finding out that this relates to spe­cific incid­ents from the 1982 Lebanon war, we dis­cover that Ari Folman has little recol­lec­tion of his par­ti­cip­a­tion in that con­flict. But after this meeting, he begins having a strange recur­ring dream and after con­sulting a psy­cho­lo­gist friend, he decides he needs to try to figure out why his memory seems blocked.

As he inter­views other par­ti­cipants in the war, he begins to piece together his part in a larger nar­rative, that of Israeli com­pli­ance in the mas­sacre of thou­sands of Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut. “Christian” Phalangist mili­tias entered the camps and mas­sacred men, women and chil­dren for three hor­rific days, killing more than 3,000. Despite the mili­tias’ stated aim of rooting out Palestinian fighters, the vast majority of these fighters had been evac­u­ated weeks before. The blood­bath was widely seen as revenge for the assas­sin­a­tion of the Phalangists’ leader, the recently-elected President Bashir Gemayel. Although Folman’s memory is never com­pletely reli­able, he seems to remember his army unit firing flares so that the mili­tias could carry out their work at night.

The most shocking moment of the film comes right at the end, when the anim­a­tion sud­denly snaps into real-life video footage of the carnage, leaving a dra­matic impres­sion. Despite the unre­li­ab­ility of memory, and the nature of guilt (both sur­vivor guilt and that of someone who killed other human beings) and its effect on the mind, this footage is evid­ence of a real atro­city, and Folman and his com­rades have had to live with their part in this tragedy for more than twenty years. It’s no wonder that he used anim­a­tion; it’s the per­fect way to recreate nightmares.

Unfortunately, the dir­ector flew home after the film’s opening screening and wasn’t present for a Q&A.

Official site of the film
Trailer

8/10(8/10)

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