RUNAWAY TRAIN (1985): The Philosopher Convict

Hollywood does fairly well at depicting the loner.  This is probably because of the type of person who attends movies.  The lonely rebel who feels misunderstood by everyone and wants to be free to roam resonates with teenage and young adult males – the kind of person who buys movie tickets.  In literature the loner has all but disappeared.  Scholarly readers want their heroes to be more refined and less violent or confrontational.  Also, the pseudo-intellectual followers and critics of Ayn Rand have hijacked the kind of individuality that the loner used to represent.  The literary loner is now the capitalist who preaches the virtues of selfishness and greed.  Back in the 1930’s and 1940’s it meant rebellion against the status quo.  Unfortunately, the hard living, freethinking, hard-boiled loner and loser mostly disappeared from the American literary scene (with the exception of pulp novels by writers like Elmore Leonard or Larry McMurtry that were adopted for the movie screen) at about the same time that Hemingway blew off the back of his skull. 
 
Movies like The Big Sleep, Hud and One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest are actually better than the books in which the films were based.  On the screen, the quirks of a character often pan out much better than they do on the written page.  Few writers today know how to describe action sequences in a way that does not bore the reader, and these sequences are usually where we can learn the most about what a character is like.  In prison flicks in particular, we get to see characters act out and often get punished for preferring to be more than just a toady for someone else.  Obviously, the movies tend to glamorize some of the inmates and do not reflect reality.  But in any case, it’s the perfect backdrop for giving us characters that will not fit in anywhere else.
 
I don’t care for movies where the prisoners are educated and sensitive to the needs of society.  The Shawshank Redemption gave us the same sickeningly wizened old man that Morgan Freeman plays in just about every other movie that he is in.  The Birdman of Alcatraz sanitizes the character of Robert Stroud to the point that we wonder how he could ever have earned himself a sentence in a maximum-security prison.  (Take a tour of Alcatraz sometime and find out what Robert Stroud actually had done.)  The prison movies that I do like include Angels with Dirty Faces, one of only a handful of good performances put out by James Cagney, The Great Escape with Steve McQueen as the Cooler King, and my personal favorite, Cool Hand Luke with Paul Newman playing the irreverent and irresponsible prison icon who never knows when to quit.
 
Runaway Train is another such movie.  The plot of the movie is improbable, but the characterization of the three lead characters is superb.  Oscar Manheim (“Manny”) has been welded in his cell for three years after making his third escape from a maximum-security prison in Alaska.  Warden Ranken (John P. Ryan) is ordered to let Manny out of the hole by the courts.  When Buck (Eric Roberts) and the other prisoners find out that Manny is to be let out, they celebrate by setting everything on fire in the prison that will burn.  We find Manny (Jon Voight) doing push-ups in the cell when Ranken gives him the news.  There can be no doubt that Ranken wants to kill Manny.  A prison stooge for Ranken attempts to kill Manny while he and his friend Jonah are watching Buck in a prison-boxing match.  This leaves Manny with a knife wound to the shoulder and hand, but it fails to leave Manny any less defiant.  Jonah mortally stabs the prisoner that attacked Manny, but Jonah is then badly beaten by the guards.  Manny visits Jonah in the hospital ward and tells Jonah that he’s about to make one more escape, despite the fact that the temperatures outside have reached thirty below.  Jonah tells Manny to “get on with it” and wishes him well, but says that he can’t go himself.  Buck then helps Manny escape and much to Manny’s chagrin decides to tag along with Manny.  Buck is a petty criminal who is not in the same league as Manny.  Buck is a hero worshiper.  He worships Manny and Jonah without understanding what the two of them really are like.
 
Manny and Buck make their way across the Alaska wilderness and hop a ride along a freight train.  Unfortunately, they picked the wrong one; the engineer dies of a heart attack as soon as the train gets going and the brakes on the train are burned off.  Nobody else is on board the train that can stop it.  A young believer in reason and science, Barstow (Kyle T. Heffner), designed a computerized system to control the trains, and he attempts through use of his computer to stop the train in hopes that no one will be killed.  Barstow’s a dull person and the movie would almost have been better off without him if not for one interesting scene.  Barstow is pressed by Ranken to tell on what track the train is located.  When Barstow refuses to cooperate, Ranken sticks Barstow’s face into the toilet that Barstow just urinated in.  Ranken then explains to Barstow that he needs to get his prisoners back to avoid a prison riot.  Ranken tells him that Barstow’s “brains are too puny” to imagine what a prison riot is like.  Barstow understandably decides to be cooperative.
 
Meanwhile, back on the train, Manny and Buck discover another railroad employee on board.  After
clubbing the employee once over the head, they discover that it’s a woman named Sara (Rebecca Demornay).  Sara doesn’t add much to the movie, but she doesn’t detract either.  (Despite the sex kittenish reputation of Demornay, it’s to the credit of the director, Andrei Konchalovsky, that they do not make her look glamorous.)  She mainly plays Buck and Manny off against each other.  It’s over Sara that Buck fights Manny in a fight that could have ended either prisoner’s life.  It’s in this fight that we see Buck redeem himself.  And in that fight scene, we also see the dark side of Manny and why he was in prison to begin with.  Manny comes very close to killing Buck for no other reason than Buck was getting in his way.  Buck discovers an unpleasant truth about Manny, and Manny discovers an unpleasant truth about himself.
 
Now Barstow being his pathetic self is unable to stop the train.  It’s up to Ranken to reach the train by helicopter, climb on board the front engine, and shut the engines down.  Unfortunately for Ranken, he did not anticipate that Manny was going to make his way up to the front engine by leaping from the second car to the first.  Manny catches Ranken by surprise, handcuffs Ranken inside of the front engine, says a few parting words to him, disconnects the front engine from the rest of the train (thus saving Buck and Sara), and then climbs to the top of the train to await the final crash that will kill both him and Ranken.
………………………………………………………………………………………..
Manny is a strange one.  He quotes Nietzsche, gives career advice to Buck, disdains all human contact (outside of Jonah), is capable of great deeds and great cruelty, and at first relishes the idea of achieving victory over Ranken.  Manny is too untamed to ever fit in anywhere.  Ranken is a disciplinarian and tyrant (as Buck says, “upfront with his bullsh*t”) who secretly admires Manny and publicly lets it be known that he wants to kill him.  Buck is ignorant and brash, but he is capable of growing up. 
 
Voight and Roberts as Manny and Buck wonderfully display the looks, speech and mannerisms of felons.  Ryan as Ranken looks like G. Gordon Liddy and conveys the contempt that Ranken has for everyone so adeptly that he’s perfect as a law and order warden.  Yet this movie is more than just social realism.  It exemplifies both the limitations and potential greatness of human beings.  Ranken believes that his prisoners are less than dogs, despises the great intellects (like Barstow) that can’t see the prisoners are beyond hope and not worth saving, and reasons that most men are only motivated by fear.  He can anticipate every move that Manny makes upon his escape from prison.  Ranken is always right in all things that count except about one thing.  Ranken cannot envision himself as being a lesser man than anyone else, especially if that other person is a prisoner in his charge.  He underestimates Manny and this costs him his life.  Manny is the Ubermensch.  Manny shuns comfort and the company of other men, and this makes him unfathomable and dangerous.  Manny rejects conventional morality and distant gods.  Manny wants freedom, but understands that freedom ultimately comes from ones own courage and audacity.  Though understanding that most people neither comprehend nor even desire real liberation, Manny cannot live fulfilled without it.
 
This movie is weak whenever Manny, Buck or Ranken are not on the screen.  It’s powerful when the three are present.  It should bring solace to no one.  Social conservatives will be offended by the offering up of a genuine felon as a hero.  Utopian liberals will be offended by the notion that a society generally cannot remedy its own ills – that true freedom comes from within.  In the movie as a whole, everything comes together.  The screenplay of this movie was by Akira Kurosawa who knows how to convey adventure.  The spectacular film footage of Alaska gives the movie a feeling of isolation, and the overly dramatic soundtrack gives the movie some additional vibrancy.  Yet the movie would have been nothing without Voight and Roberts playing their best and most atypical roles.  Roberts, in particular, plays a role that is more authentic than anything his famous younger sister ever played.  I’ve seen no other film in twenty years since the movie came out as rugged or raw as this movie.  I’ve also seldom seen a movie that teaches a lesson like this that touches on the hidden and potential greatness in each of us.
 

September 25, 2006 
©  Robert S. Miller 2006

WORLD TRADE CENTER (2006): A Cautious Saga

With one possible exception, there are no big surprises with this movie.  The New York Police reported to duty as usual that day.  Then the jet planes hit the two towers.  A group of Port Authority policemen led by John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and which includes Will Jimeno (Michael Pena) are ordered to travel downtown to attempt to bring some organization to the evacuation process.  However, while inside of the World Trade Center complex, the first of the two towers begin to collapse.  McLoughlin orders the crew to take shelter in the elevator shaft.  McLouglin, Jimeno and one other officer survive the collapse, but both McLouglin and Jimeno are badly injured and are immobilized by the debris that is on top of each of them.  The third survivor is later struck by some additional falling rubble and soon after dies.  McLoughlin and Jimeno, with about twenty-five feet between each other, try to keep each other’s spirits up through humor and by telling each other about his respective family.  McLoughlin hallucinates about his wife who keeps reminding him that he has to finish up the work he has begun on their kitchen, and Jimeno sees a cheap replica of Jesus who tells him that he will survive.
 
 The families of each officer are informed that their family member went inside of the complex.  They react and sometimes overreact to the news.  Donna (Maria Bello), the wife of John, has four children.  One of her sons feels that Donna does not care what is to become of his father.  Allison (Maggie Gyllenhaal), the wife of Will, is five months pregnant and also has another daughter.  There are concerns about the stress she is under.  Other family members suggest she talk to her doctor about taking medication to help her relax.  Each eventually make their way towards downtown Manhattan in hopes of finding their husbands.
 
 An ex-marine, Dave Karnes (Michael Shannon), prays in a Connecticut church and comes to the conclusion that he must go to New York and help out.  He gets a haircut, dons his old uniform, and heads to the World Trade Center complex.  It is he and another marine who locate McLoughlin and Jimeno.  Also, a medic whose license was stripped because of a drinking problem he once had, is instrumental in keeping McLoughlin and Jimeno alive as they are excavated from the rubble.  There is great applause as McLoughlin and Jimeno are carried out on stretchers and we see all of the individuals from throughout the country that came to New York to help out.  The family is informed that their loved ones are alive and, though we celebrate their determination to live, we also see the many pictures of those who died when the two towers collapsed.  Both McLoughlin and Jimeno face many surgeries, but two years later a celebration is put on in both of their honors and we see all of the family members together.  They were two of only twenty people inside of the complex that survived.  Close to three thousand others died.
 
 Director Oliver Stone appears to be growing conventional with age.  Few movie viewers could predict that he would make a movie like this one that for all practical purposes celebrates Americans coming together in a time of crisis.  Cal Thomas, former spokesman for the moral majority went so far to call this film a “pro-family, pro-faith, pro-male, flag waving, God Bless America” film.  I’m guessing Stone would be embarrassed by this praise and even deny any patriotic connection.  Many critics on the left have criticized this movie because, so they say, many of the unconventional Oliver Stone touches are missing.  And this probably is Oliver Stone’s least controversial movie to date.
 
 However, though Stone is open to criticism for not making any substantial statement with this movie, I give him more credit than the many one-dimensional political hacks that cannot see anything in other terms than left or right.  Stone’s politics are not all that obvious from his films.  This is the same person who directed Salvador and Wall Street, two movies that those on the right (especially the Christian right) would not celebrate.  This is also the same person who co-wrote screenplays for Conan the Barbarian, directed by the notoriously conservative John Millius, and Year of the Dragon, the violent and controversial movie about the policing of the Chinese mafia in America.  And this is the same person who directed Natural Born Killers and helped write the screenplay for Scarface, movies that offended practically everyone.
 World Trade Center like United 93 before it were both careful movies that tend not to offend anyone.  World Trade Center is slightly more conventional than United 93, however.  United 93 is more impersonal and used the unorthodox storyline of not having any of the passengers named during the movie before the plane eventually crashed.  We are closer to the characters in World Trade Center and get to know their stories in some detail.
 
 There are a number of the old Oliver Stone touches present in this movie.  For example, no one spoofs clichés better than Stone.  There is humor that probably is missed by Stone critics in having Karnes shout down the hole at the stranded officers: “We are marines.  We are not leaving you.  You are our mission.”  In every modern day movie about marines, the same banal line is uttered.  Also, the hallucinations of Jimeno seeing Jesus remind one of the plastic icons that a Catholic churchgoer would see as a child.  The inclusion of these elements in this movie does not mean that Stone has gone over to the side of Cal Thomas or Pat Robertson.
 
 On the other hand, there are some Stone touches that would be better left out.  The narration at the end of the movie summing up the tragedy is almost as annoying as the narration at the end of the movie Platoon  (Charlie Sheen telling about being sired by two men, one evil and one good).  Also, Stone has never been particularly good at portraying women - they being merely the supporters or destroyers of the men that they are close to.  There always seems to be a dimension missing in all of them.  And Stone always romanticizes the working class male - who, in his movies, always works hard and never have a break.  He frequently does this to the point of non-sense.
 
 Most of my criticisms are quibbles.  But it is tough to get away from the fact that a movie called World Trade Center tells us a story about what happened that day yet tells us little about why it happened.  We get to know the characters that are injured in the tragedy.  We don’t get any sort of approach to understanding the characters on the other side.  And we don’t get any idea where Stone stands upon what happens next.  Maybe no director, including Oliver Stone, could get a movie made in Hollywood that would delve deeply into the issues.  The first real movie to do that may have to be brought out by an independent movie studio that’s willing to pay the price for adverse publicity.  As it is, it’s difficult to imagine that this movie would have been significantly different if Ron Howard had directed it.  Like United 93, this was a well-paced movie that tells a good but limited story of a tragic day.  And it’s a story not so different from what we already saw on the news during the three or four days following September 11, 2001.  It’s been five years since the tragedy, so we should be farther along than that.

September 1, 2006

©  Robert S. Miller 2006

THE CANDIDATE (1972): A Cute Political Movie

The tagline for the movie posters of The Candidate went like this: “Too handsome.  Too liberal.  Doesn’t have a chance.  He’s perfect!”  The promoters of the movie also threw in a cynical aside when advertising the movie by saying, “Nothing matters more than winning.  Not even what you believe in.”  And the reviewers (and practically nobody else) bought into the hype of this movie as much as the voters of California bought into the political promises of candidate, Bill McKay.  Here’s an example: Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, writing for Spirituality and Practice, say of this “timely and aesthetically unified view of the contemporary political scene” the following in their February 13, 2002 review:

 

“ ‘The Candidate’ hits the bull’s eye revealing the hollow center of a campaign manipulated by media mercenaries and political Machiavellis who value victory over integrity and substantive moral issue.”

 

So, since we are now once again in election season, and since the two major parties have already revealed the names of the candidates running for President in 2008, I felt like being the only reviewer to suggest some thirty-six years later that The Candidate is neither a major motion picture nor a prophetic piece of work.

 

Bill McKay (Robert Redford) is a crusading attorney that defends labor and environmental interests from the corporate bad guys.  Like Jerry Brown (who was the California Secretary of State at the time this movie was released and who soon was to run for Governor of California), McKay happens to be a lawyer that is also the son of a former governor, John J. McKay (Melvyn Douglas).  The father and son at first are not really on speaking terms because John is a realist and Bill is an idealist.  All that is about to change.  Marvin Lucas (Peter Boyle – with a beard) comes up with a brilliant strategy to unseat the current California Senator, Crocker Jarmon (Don Porter).  Lucas persuades Bill to enter the Senate race by telling him that, since he has no chance of winning in any case, Bill can speak out on any issue during the campaign as forthrightly as possible.  Bill likes the idea.  Bill’s gorgeous wife Nancy (Karen Carlson) also likes the idea.  And so, predictably, he decides to run.  Equally predictable, all the incendiary comments that Bill would like to tell his audiences are toned down to make him more palatable as a candidate.

 

The campaign staff is made up of a cranky media consultant (Allen Garfield) and a bunch of Bill McKay groupies (one of which seduces Bill inside of a hotel room).  By the time that Bill receives the Democratic nomination for the senate seat, most everyone wants to vote for him because he’s so damn good looking.  The voters don’t really seem to care that he’s no longer speaking about the issues.  Bill does have one problem, however.  His father does not seem to be all that supportive of his son and this is being noticed in the media.  Somehow or other, the campaign staff has to get John McKay on board.  This is done in two ways: (1) Bill, if elected, implicitly agrees to give political favors to a labor leader that happens to be a friend of John McKay in return for the labor leader delivering to Bill a large number of blue-collar votes; and (2) Bill does such an outstanding job in a televised debate with Senator Jarmon of avoiding speaking directly about any issue that John McKay now becomes convinced that his son has a chance to win.  Bill almost let the debate slip away when he suggested that the United States was on the threshold of a violent revolution in the streets, but his father assured him that nobody would notice this gaff.  Anyway, Bill with his good looks and impeccable demeanor made Senator Jarmon look folksy and unsophisticated.

 

Bill, of course, wins the election.  In the words of former Minnesota Governor, Jesse Ventura, he “shocked the world.”  At the end of the movie, he corners Lucas in a hotel room and asks him what he’s supposed to do now since he’s the only one in the state of California that didn’t realize that he might just win.

 

Most critics were in awe of this film’s credentials.  Jeremy Larner, a former speechwriter for Eugene McCarthy, wrote the screenplay for this movie.  However, the reviewers should keep in mind that it was directed by Michael Ritchie who also directed The Bad News Bears, The Golden Child, Fletch and Fletch Lives (speaking of “cute”).  If one looks at the list of movie critics on the Rotten Tomatoes website, the movie The Candidate receives a 100 percent approval rating from those critics so inclined to provide a review.  (I’m ineligible to provide any reviews to the Rotten Tomatoes website since I am not affiliated with any film critics’ society.  Thus, from my own biased perspective, it seems implausible that a truly independent take on a movie can be given by joining such a cooperative.)  In any case, the unanimity of praise for this movie that only political junkies have ever even discussed makes one suspicious that critical acumen is lacking in the analysis of this film.  At one point in the movie, Melvyn Douglas as John McKay utters a line to his labor leader friend as to why he’s convinced his son will win the election: “Because he’s cute.”  Granted, it’s a good line, but the same thing could be said about this film - it being cute.  The Candidate is too perfectly packaged to be believable.  Redford is too polished, eloquent and attractive to be running for political office.  Even JFK was not this perfect in his outward presentation.  And Don Porter as Crocker Jarmon so instantly appears so insincere that we’re practically convinced he was a used car salesman that has violated the California State Lemon Law.  To sum up, this movie is totally slanted.  Even if the voters knew in advance everything about Bill McKay that the movie audience knew, they would have voted for McKay in any case when the alternative was Crocker Jarmon.

 

To be fair, the film has its strengths.  For example, I don’t have a problem with the storytelling technique.   The Candidate does not become sidetracked by meaningless side dramas (like marital tiffs or petty underworld schemes) to make the movie unwatchable.  It instead tells us a simple story.  Being 114 minutes in length, it actually moves well.  Melvyn Douglas and Peter Boyle are both well cast in their roles, and Redford even excels here and does an average job of acting.  (A mild criticism is that The Candidate does have a somewhat dated feeling in that none of the characters make us forget that we’re watching a 1970s movie.)

 

Unfortunately, there are many more serious flaws with this film.  The Candidate is simply not as timely, contemporary or relevant as the many critics would like us to believe.  For one, rumors about fixed elections, voter fraud, dirty tricks, manipulation of the issues and voter gullibility have been present for as long as we have had democracy. If Bill McKay did not understand in advance that some packaging was essential for running for political office perhaps he truly was as big of a rube as Crocker Jarmon.  For two, it uses a dated formula that has more successfully been used in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (however naïve the ending of that movie may have been) and All the King’s Men.  The voters in political movies are always duped by the bogus pleasantries of the candidates.  And finally, The Candidate suggests no solution.  It’s easy to imply that our system for selecting candidates is imperfect.  It’s another matter to come up with a solution any better that does not allow for the appointment of politicians by a relatively small number of people.

 

We are led to believe in The Candidate that it would have been better for Bill McKay to stick to his ideals, even if it meant losing.  Never mind that it is possible to value victory and integrity at the same time.  The voters would have lost here in either case because neither Bill McKay nor Crocker Jarmon gave us much to be desired.  As far as Bill McKay was concerned, I’m not sure remaining a fuzzy minded idealist would have enhanced his qualifications in any way (idealists of that type have a difficult time ever comprehending that they might be wrong), but victory was not the worst thing that could have occurred for him or his party.  Most Democrats still regret not achieving victory in the 2000 Presidential election some eight years later.  And we can rest assured that Republicans would be bemoaning their fate to this day if Al Gore had been elected President for two terms.  Right or wrong, most voters want something specific from a candidate when they go into the voting booth (as long as they know the candidates at all – which is not always the case and I guess is the point of the movie).  They’re voting for what they consider the lesser of two evils.  That’s not to say that the voter’s analysis of the issues was precise, or that they’re not prone to error.  It’s just that there are a lot worse methods for choosing a leader.  Besides, holding elections every four years means that no mistake in choosing a leader is likely to become permanent.  The positive side of the way most elections are held is that if the voter does recognize to making an error, they can take that vote back in the very next election.  You don’t get that sort of benefit when only a small number of people (however qualified) make the decisions for the rest of us.  Though it doesn’t happen often enough, we are still one of the few societies to run a head of state out (Nixon in 1974) without having to resort to “revolution in the streets.”  Yet The Candidate almost sends out the unintentional message that what the voter thinks is of no value because he is being duped in any case.  The Candidate is a piece of witty nonsense wrapped up in the cloak of something profound.  It contains some clever satire along with the pretension of some insight.

 

June 24, 2008

© Robert S. Miller 2008

KINSEY (2004): Let’s Talk About Sex

Alfred Kinsey (played as an adult by Liam Neeson) released two books during the late 1940s called Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, which contained the findings of case studies for over 18,000 men and women in the United States.  These books probably did revolutionize the ways that Americans thought about sex and many of his findings were scandalous.  The events of Kinsey involve his life from late childhood until just before the researcher’s death.
 
Kinsey was raised by a fanatically prudish father who tried to instill the fear of God in all of his children.  Kinsey was an introverted child who wandered the woods alone during the daytime and spent his nighttimes masturbating in bed.  He eventually rebelled against his father by pursuing his studies in the field of biology during college.  Socially awkward as a young man, he prided himself in becoming a world-renowned expert on gall wasps and because of this became professor of zoology at an Indiana university.  His first sexual experience (besides with himself) was with his wife (Laura Linney) on their wedding night, and this turned out all wrong.  The two went to a doctor and discovered that the problem involved Kinsey’s penis being too large.  Because of the doctor’s assistance, the two were then able to resume having a normal sexual relationship and have three children.
 
Kinsey began tutoring his students about sexuality and persuaded the university to allow him to teach a class on the subject.  He then began his famous studies and hired on a number of students to assist him.  He was determined to view human sexuality in pure clinical terms without being influenced by social morality or convention.  He had at least one homosexual encounter with one of his assistants, and this same assistant had at least one sexual encounter with Kinsey’s wife.  At first, backed by the Rockefeller Foundation, Kinsey had no problem funding his studies.  However, eventually with the onset of the McCarthy hearings much of his funding was cut off.  He was also being sued by the federal government for a customs violation as the result of sexually explicit photographs from his study being shipped across state lines.  Despite health problems, occasional marital difficulties and social ostracization, Kinsey persevered and eventually was able to release his two books.  In the end, he was a happy man both in his marriage and in the knowledge that he had helped a few people along the way.
 
The movie certainly does not romanticize Kinsey.  Kinsey often comes across as a humorless and pedantic bore.  It probably would surprise no one that he had some hang-ups, but this probably motivated him to pursue human sexuality as a study.  Despite his repeated message that the only constant in human behavior is variation, he could come across as being quite dogmatic with everyone that was close to him.  In this, he was much more like his father than he would ever have cared to admit.  But though the movie does try to touch upon items that might be unsavory in his character, it just as often glosses over these very same things.  A few examples of this include:

• Though raised in a religious environment, we learn nothing about his religious beliefs in later life.
• Though he has at least one homosexual encounter with his assistant (with the one obligatory kiss on the mouth that now has to be shown in all movies of this kind), we never learn if this happens to be only one isolated incident.
• Though his wife had at least one sexual encounter with Kinsey’s assistant, we never learn if this happens to be only one isolated incident.
• Though his wife once finds Kinsey in the bathroom alone with blood on the floor and though Kinsey admits that he has just mutilated himself, we never learn if this happens to be just one isolated incident.
• After once collapsing in the hospital and admitting to being addicted to barbiturates, we never learn if he ever is able to get himself off of the drug.  (We often see Kinsey throughout the movie taking a hand full of pills and putting them in his mouth, but it would seem odd taking barbiturates in the middle of the day.)
• Though his name comes up during the McCarthy hearings resulting in a loss of funding for his studies, it never seems like he personally suffers because of a lack of money.
• While trying to raise funds for his studies, he responds to a question by stating he is not familiar with the arts (though he is a gifted piano player).  He seems to have an aversion to anything not strictly related to science and we never learn why.
• When learning that funding from the Rockefeller Foundation was about to be cut-off, Kinsey makes the startling confession that his methodology was flawed but was in the process of being corrected.  If we were to give Kinsey’s findings any credence, we certainly would need more than just this admission to find out what the problem really was.   (I’m guessing that the problem with the methodology of Kinsey’s studies was that he relied totally on the findings of questionnaires that were orally given to volunteer participants.  Volunteer participants in a study concerning human sexuality are going to have different attitudes concerning sexual convention than are those who are uncomfortable in sharing their sexual histories with someone else, or with those who decline to participate because they are indifferent to the results.)

What strikes me as plausible but still odd is that Kinsey could be so completely inept in his social relations and yet be such an accomplished author and lecturer.  Even before he began his studies on sexuality, his students liked listening to his lectures on gall wasps.  In isolated social settings, he had problems communicating with just about everyone – even though he could talk to these people in a clinical setting while interviewing them.  He could never talk to his father, which is no surprise (though we do learn the reason later on why his father was such a prude).  The first time he kisses his wife he just about falls over on her.  He annoys his son by always talking about sexuality at the dinner table.  And he can’t understand why his wife might be upset with him when he confides to her that he’s had a homosexual encounter.
 
Kinsey’s insistence (at least in the movie) that he only views sexuality in scientific terms is of course bogus.  Perhaps he doesn’t want to give credit to the arts for helping in opening up people’s attitudes towards human sexuality.  After all, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Marcel Proust, Andre Gide and Henry Miller were writing about all sorts of sexual practices long before Kinsey’s studies were ever conducted.  Kinsey also seemed unwilling to admit that religious practices and social conventions may sometimes play a positive role in the influencing of our attitudes.  But in trying to break the bonds of sexual inhibitions by arguing that human sexuality is purely a biological act without psychological or spiritual repercussions, Kinsey actually comes across on screen as an extremely inhibited individual.  Whether this was the ultimate message Director Bill Condon was trying to bring across is doubtful.  Unfortunately, Liam Neeson as an actor comes across as clumsy as the character in which he portrays.  (Laura Linney does a much better job of acting, though we never get to see the same depth in her character.)
 
To call this a “provocative drama” as many critics have is somewhat correct.  I imagine that every viewer would experience discomfort in watching it because it does still deal with a subject matter that is taboo.  That we have made so little progress in fifty years is not the fault of Kinsey because Kinsey obviously was a man of courage.  However, neither his studies nor, especially, this movie are the final say on the subject of human sexuality in America.  Much that was said before Kinsey was suppressed or forgotten.  Much that was said since his time was artlessly spoken or was swallowed up by the indignant response.
 

January 3, 2007 
©   Robert S. Miller 2007

KITE RUNNER (2007): Growing up in Afghanistan

How could a nation so pivotal in bringing down the Soviet Regime also have introduced to the world The Taliban?  As Rahim (Shaun Toub - the voice of reason in Kite Runner) observed as the nation was facing the impending Soviet invasion, the Mullahs wish to guide the nation by destroying souls, and the invading Communist nation wished to put in place a system of government that had “no soul.”  In many respects, the storyline in Kite Runner is identical to the one in the current drama about World War II, Atonement.  However, Kite Runner is straightforward and less flashy and, therefore, better than Atonement.  And there is much to be atoned for in the plotline of the movie, Kite Runner.  Amir and Hassan (respectively played by Zekiria Ebrahimi and Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada) as children are best friends in Kabul, and spend much of their time flying kites.  Amir is the son of a wealthy businessman, Baba (Homayoun Ershadi) and Hassan is the son of Ali (Nabi Tanha), a servant for Amir’s family.  Amir is of Pushtan descent, which puts him in the majority of southern Afghans.  Hassan’s mother was Hazara (Afghans from Mongoloid descent), who generally are of the Shiite faith, and this in almost every respect made Hassan a minority in 1970s Kabul.  Though Amir is educated and raised to be less subservient, in almost every respect he is less wise than his friend.  When a kite breaks lose, it is Hassan who always knows where the kite will land.  When picked on by the older boys, Hassan is at least willing to fight back and never give in.  Though Baba loves his son, Amir, it is Hassan (and Ali) for whom Baba has the most respect.

 

It is through an encounter with older boys that Amir betrays Hassan.  When a teenage bully, Addef (Elham Ehsas), a Pushtan, demands that Hassan hand him over a kite (a kite won by Amir), Hassan refuses to do so.  Hassan is then beaten by Addef and friends and even sodomized.  Amir witnesses the incident but is too afraid to do anything about it.  In fact, Amir is so unable to face Hassan after this incident (and so ashamed that his father will discover his cowardice), that Amir makes it appear as if Hassan has stolen his (Amir’s) watch.  When Hassan is asked by Baba about the watch incident, Hassan refuses to tell what really happens; instead he “confesses” that he stole the watch.  Baba probably does not believe Hassan.  Baba in any case tells Hassan that he’s forgiven.  Unfortunately, Ali feels such shame at what his son has “admitted” that, over the protests of Baba, resigns as servant, and he and Hassan leave.

 

We need to understand something about Baba to understand what happens next.  Baba is a magnificent man with extremely human flaws.  He drinks too much, likes to show off his wealth (he buys a Ford Mustang like the one driven by Steve McQueen in Bullitt), and he very loudly spouts his unfavorable opinions of both the Mujahideen and the Soviet Government.  Seeing that the Mujahideen and the Soviets were about to engage in a ten-year war on Afghani soil, there really was no option for Baba and his son other than to leave.  Baba arranges for he and Amir to be smuggled to Pakistan and from there fly to the United States.  And it is as they leave Afghanistan that we see Baba’s sense of dignity.  At the border of Pakistan, Baba confronts a Soviet Soldier who nefariously is trying to make a deal to molest a young and married Afghani woman.  Baba tells the soldier (in front of Amir) that he would rather take a “thousand bullets” than to allow such an indecency to take place.  The soldier is forced to back down when Soviet officers arrive at the scene, and the truck for which Baba and Amir are passengers is allowed to drive into Pakistan.

 

Amir (played as an adult by Khalid Abdalla) graduates from college in the United States, becomes a popular novelist, and later takes Soraya (Atossa Leoni), of Afghan descent, as his wife.  Baba puts his son through college by working in a gas station (a matter from which he takes great joy), and his pride never diminishes even as he is dying from cancer (even while very ill, he cannot abide being treated by a physician of Russian descent).  But after he dies, he is no longer there to guide his son. And in the year of 2000, after Baba has died, Amir is forced to come to terms with his own conscience.

 

Rahim, now living in Pakistan, calls Amir and begs him to fly to Lahore.  In Lahore, Rahim tells Amir about the fate of Hassan.   Hassan and Hassan’s wife, who have been killed by the Taliban, have now left a son, Sohrab (Ali Dinesh), to be orphaned in Kabul.  Rahim, now also sick and dying, begs Amir to return to Kabul to find Sohrab.  Amir reluctantly agrees to do so, dons a fake beard (to avoid arrest by the “beard patrol”), and travels across war torn Afghanistan (that is unrecognizable from when Amir was a young boy).  He sees a land devoid of trees (the trees all were cut down by the Soviet invaders) and buildings that have been gutted out, and witnesses women “adulterers” being stoned to death.  Amir locates Sohrab at a Taliban haven.  (The young boys are there to satisfy the sexual urges of the Taliban faithful since women are forbidden.)  Amir discovers that one of the leaders of the Taliban haven is a grown-up Assef (Abdul Salam Yusofzai), whose bullying ways have not changed.  Amir attempts to confront Assef (in the film’s only poorly shot scene), but is badly beaten by Assef.  Amir is only saved by Sohrab’s use of the slingshot that his father Hassan had given him.  Amir and Sohrab eventually do make it back to America and Amir and Soraya adopt Sohrab.  In San Francisco, Sohrab is now free to pursue flying of kites, just as his father had done as a child, and he uncomfortably adjusts to his new surroundings.

 

Kite Runner is different from just about any movie that’s ever been released in America.  Though Hollywood has made a handful of powerful movies in recent years, practically none of these movies have remained untouched by cynicism.  (And Kite Runner is weakest when it becomes most like Hollywood.  The escape scene, the reemergence of a teenage bully who comes back as a Taliban leader and who has no redeeming qualities, is formulaic.)  But Kite Runner is not cynical or crass.  Contrasting Kabul pre and post Afghani war, presenting a simple and compelling tale, and providing remarkable characterizations of Babel as the father, and Amir and Hassan as young boys, make this the best movie I have seen in 2007.  I don’t call it an objection that amateur actors were used for many of the key roles.  Filming actual Afghans in almost every role provided authenticity.  And the acting of Homayoun Ershadi as Baba and, especially, Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada as Hassan was irreplaceable.  Some reviewers have criticized the filming of portions of this movie in China.  It’s ironic to note that the topography of China and much of Afghanistan is remarkably similar.  And others have claimed the movie was too sentimental - to which I would counter it was more positive in message than sentimental.  Some scenes, such as Hassan’s ultimate ending, were tragic.  One reviewer smugly dismissed the movie by saying: “Nostalgia for the good old days of kite running and merely coping with childhood bullies is crunched out on the screen with almost a sense of vulgarity, as the filmmaker conveniently ignores exploring things more vital to our understanding of the Afghans such as class differences, the immense poverty, the way women are treated and insights into the stern Afghan culture and its almost feudal ways.”*  I’d ask this critic to note that the movie does reference the differences between the Pushtan and Hazara; that kite flying was a national pastime of Afghans before it was banned by the Taliban; that the film depicts a culture strongly dominated by men; that it is widely known that the practice of stoning women for various offenses (including not wearing veils) was brought back into fashion by the Taliban; that Hassan was treated differently than Amir because of his ethnicity and class; that the childhood bullying as depicted in the film was not inconsequential; that the events of Amir’s life greatly mirrored the events of the life of Khaled Hosseini, the individual who wrote the novel, Kite Runner; and that the downplaying of the disastrous consequences for the Afghani people concerning the Soviet occupation and rule of the Taliban by this critic is a symptom of feeble-mindedness.

 

I was surprised to discover that Marc Forster, the director of Kite Runner, also directed Monster’s Ball (which I’ve never seen, but am now very interested in).  I was not surprised to discover that the novel was in many respects autobiographical.  Hosseini and his family were forced to emigrate from Kabul, though they ultimately settled in Paris rather than the United States.  I’m guessing that the movie was a fairly accurate depiction of the novel as I’ve been told that Hosseini reveled in his childhood.  The early scenes in Kite Runner portraying the children playing in the streets were passionate and alive.  And the movie never condescends to its audience or attempts to throw dirt on the Afghani people that are depicted.  Babel, for all of his flaws, is a character we should want to emulate.  He is neither a wooden nor romanticized figure in the movie.  Hassan also was a wonderful creation, noble to the core and too subservient to his very goodness to ever survive an indecency such as the Soviet invasion or the rule of the Taliban regime.

 

* The link to this review is as follows: http://www.sover.net/~ozus/kiterunner.htm 

 

January 8, 2008

© Robert S. Miller 2008