By Joe Bendel. Judah P. Benjamin was the first Jewish cabinet officer in North America. He served as Secretary of State for the C.S.A. The historical irony is obvious. In fact, Jewish Americans willingly enlisted on both sides of the Civil War at disproportionally high rates, yet their service remains largely overlooked. Intended to rectify Civil War historians’ unfortunate slights, Jonathan Gruber’s documentary Jewish Soldiers in Blue & Gray compellingly surveys Jewish participation in the Civil War. Produced in time for the war’s sesquicentennial, it screens this Tuesday and Wednesday as part of the 2011 New York Jewish Film Festival.
Benjamin was not the only Jewish Confederate. Though it clearly discomforts several of the contemporary Jewish historians interviewed throughout Soldiers, many Jewish Americans so appreciated the welcoming home they found in the Old South that they rushed to take arms on her behalf, despite the significance of slavery within their religious faith. Likewise, Jewish Northerners also readily volunteered as an unambiguous act of patriotism, while embracing abolitionism with a special import as the descendants of the slaves of Exodus.
More than simply dressing up historical footnotes, the film identifies several instances of battle-turning valor, leading to five Congressional Medals of Honor for Jewish soldiers, a wholly remarkable total given the relative overall size of the Jewish-American population. Yet, perhaps the most unfairly ignored historical figure receiving his just due in Soldiers is that of Isachar Zacharie, Lincoln’s self-taught podiatrist, who served the President as a spy and a diplomatic envoy to the Confederate States.
Frankly, Soldiers might challenge some pre-conceived notions, essentially implying that the Confederate Army was somewhat more congenial to Jewish serviceman than the Union forces. Still, it singles out one Northerner who overturned injustice for Jewish Americans whenever he confronted it. That man was indeed Abraham Lincoln.
Though Soldiers definitely looks ready-made for cable or PBS broadcast, it is legitimately educational. It also boasts some notable talent in the audio-booth, with Oscar-nominated screenwriter-director John Milius providing the authoritative narration and Sam Waterston giving voice to Pres. Lincoln.
It sounds like a tall order, but Soldiers should manage to increase most viewers’ appreciation of Lincoln. It definitely seems to have been produced from the perspective that America is a place where justice and tolerance ultimately triumph, albeit at a tremendous price in this case. Well paced and informative, it screens this Tuesday (1/18) and Wednesday (1/19) with a special panel discussion scheduled to follow the latter night.
By Jason Apuzzo.THE PITCH: Seth Rogan drops 400 lbs. and attempts to bring nebbish humor to the role of Britt Reid, wealthy Los Angeles scion to a newspaper dynasty who is also secretly the masked crimefighter-vigilante The Green Hornet.
THE SKINNY: It’s a film that might’ve worked had the spectacularly miscast Rogan not been its star, co-screenwriter and executive producer. Not even a slick, stylish Jay Chou as Kato, a fabulous stunt-car (The Black Beauty) or a perky Cameron Diaz can save this colossal turkey from the boring, bloated pseudo-star/narcissist at its core.
WHAT DOESN’T WORK:
• Seth Rogan, the film’s black hole. His titanic ego – unsupported by any actual talent or personal warmth – sucks all life out of the film, and basically ruins whatever slim chances The Green Hornet had to entertain.
• Christoph Waltz, playing a neurotic Russian gangster. His entire role is like a joke that someone keeps re-telling at a party, even after nobody laughed the first time. I felt sorry for him. With that said, it’s nice to finally see Russians replace Italians as the urban villain-of-choice.
• The film’s erratic stabs at humor, which never really gel. Rogan is simply not funny enough as a writer, and is otherwise way out of his league as an actor carrying a film of this size. His lame efforts, paunch and Borscht Belt schtick remind you of how good the Lethal Weapon films were back in the day when they were clicking.
• The action scenes, which never really take flight – although it was fun seeing The Black Beauty take an elevator ride late in the film. I didn’t know cars could fit in elevators.
WHAT WORKS:
• It seems almost impossible that anyone could step into Bruce Lee’s shoes as Kato, yet Taiwanese singer-actor Jay Chou does a nice job of it – exuding a stoic cool, unexpected humor and great martial arts moves. The fight sequences, shot in ‘Kato Vision’ (a combination of ‘bullet-time’ and exaggerated, forced-perspective 3D) worked nicely enough – although there weren’t nearly enough of them.
• The stylish Black Beauty (an Imperial Crown), a car almost as iconic in its day as the Batmobile, is brought back to life with some nice weaponry and gadgets (‘infra-green’ headlights!).
• Cameron Diaz somehow manages the unthinkable by extracting humor and warmth out of a nothing role as Lenore Case, Britt Reid’s personal assistant. I really hope she got paid a lot for being in this film.
Cameron Diaz as Lenore Case.
THE BOTTOM LINE:
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but Hollywood – Sony in this case – has just ruined a great ‘property’ from its past.
A few months ago I happened to pick up a bootleg copy of the entire, original Green Hornet TV series – starring Van Williams and Bruce Lee – and I’ve been enjoying it ever since. (I’m aware, by the way, that there have been many incarnations of The Green Hornet – including on radio, in film serials and in comic books.) The old show was stylish, cool, and somehow more menacing than most standard comic book-style fare. In fact, The Green Hornet may be the only comic book character I actually like, and I was eager to see him brought to the big screen.
What’s great about the original TV series is that the Britt Reid character has no superpowers whatsoever; he’s just this cool, retro-mod guy, with the ultimate bad-ass kung fu partner (I will not stoop to calling the great Bruce Lee a ‘sidekick’) – who spends most of his time acting like the underworld hoods he’s secretly pursuing. And when he’s off work, he kicks back with a cocktail and plots strategy with his sexy secretary. What’s not to like here?
Van Williams brought a subdued intensity to the role; his overcoat, mask and fedora were really the entire character – there wasn’t much else to speak of. And the music – with the jazz trumpet solo by Al Hirt – gave the show the perfect, swinging vibe for the time.
But I was under no illusions about what this new film was going to be like, once Seth Rogan got involved. A project that should’ve been done straight – and most definitely not like a Woody Allen routine – Rogan has instead turned this new film into a vehicle for stupid humor, gross-out jokes and cheap sentimentality. You might say that Rogan has the reverse Midas touch, in that everything he touches turns to lead rather than gold. Someone like Hugh Jackman, or maybe even Affleck – the newer, wiser Affleck – might’ve been perfect to play Britt Reid … but in any case, Seth Rogan should’ve been kept by armed guard about 2,000 miles away from this film. What the hell did Sony owe him to give him this?
Anyway, save yourself the trouble of watching this mess – whether in 3D, IMAX or on a cheap bootleg. Rogan will sting you in any format you choose.
By Joe Bendel. Imagine the Keystone Cops with a severe mean streak. That is pretty much what you get from the Chinese military police stationed in a hardscrabble village on the North Korean border. Watching a full day of these officers on the job is not a pretty picture, but it is often quite absurd. Such is the nature of Chinese criminal justice subversively documented by Zhao Liang in Crime and Punishment (trailer above), which screens at the Anthology Film Archives in conjunction with the long-awaited theatrical release of Zhao’s devastating Petition.
Distributed by dGenerate Films, the specialists in independent Chinese cinema, Punishment watches fly-on-the-wall style as the recruits of the People’s Armed Police (PAP) gruffly patrol the isolated border town in hopes of a more permanent and prestigious assignment at the end of their two year tours. Essentially temps, the young men do not seem to be concerned with forging any rapport with the locals. Beatings are pretty much par for the course, as the soldiers quickly demonstrate during their first case of the day.
A severely hard-of-hearing man is hauled in on suspicion of stealing a cell-phone, with the obvious irony therein completely lost on the PAP. When their interrogation flounders, they first resort to public humiliation, eventually falling back on a good old-fashioned beating. “Turn off the cameras” they instruct Zhao. We will be hearing those words several times more before the film ends.
Although they do not physically assault the subject of their next investigation, their behavior towards a dirt poor farmer collecting scrap metal without a dozen government permits filed in triplicate is arguably crueler. Watching them badger and berate the clueless old man feels like one of the longest, most uncomfortable sequences ever captured on film.
As the day progresses, it looks like the coppers might be doing some legitimate police work when they launch a manhunt for a suspected killer. However, the only prey we see them bag is a desperate farmer poaching firewood to sell for New Year’s gifts for his children. Even the arresting officers have misgivings after seeing the suspect’s truly mean living conditions. Unfortunately, they had already administered the requite beat-down by this point.
Although Zhao basically cuts the camera when he is told, he still leaves no question as to the nature of what happens shortly thereafter. Like most Digital Generation filmmakers, Zhao eschews artificial conventions like voice-over narration and talking head interview segments. Aside from a few Dragnet like title cards explaining what happened to suspects after their questioning/thrashing, Zhao simply captures the scene in his lens, letting each character speak for himself through his behavior.
While Punishment does not have the same emotional heft as Petition, it is still a rather shocking expose of the Chinese criminal justice system. Yet, for all the abuse and intimidation meted out by the PAP, their actual results are less than impressive. After three investigations and much thuggery, they have less than one thousand Yuan in fines to show for their efforts. Daring in its own right, the unvarnished Punishment is definitely worth seeing when it screens at Anthology Film Archives Saturday (1/15) and Sunday (1/16) in conjunction with Zhao’s staggering Petition.
By Joe Bendel. They are the dregs of society. Scorned and maligned, they live a dangerous existence in crude shantytowns as they pursue their quixotic quest. They seek redress from the Chinese government and for filmmaker Zhao Liang, these “petitioners” are his country’s greatest heroes. The product of over ten years spent with these marginalized justice seekers, Zhao’s Petition stands as arguably the most damning documentary record of contemporary China to reach American theaters since the initial rise of the Digital Generation of independent filmmakers. A special selection of the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, Petition finally opens in New York this Friday at the Anthology Film Archives.
Throughout Petition it is crystal clear that the Chinese government has institutionalized corruption and hopelessly stacked the deck against the petitioners. Those victimized by unfair rulings have limited options locally for appeal (from the same corrupt bodies), so their only recourse is through the Kafkaesque “Petition Offices” in Beijing. Never in the film do we see the bureaucrats there actually give a petitioner satisfaction. They do keep records though. In fact, the local authorities have a vested interest in maintaining low petition numbers. Hence, the presence of “retrievers,” hired thugs who physically assault petitioners as they approach the petition office.
Petition is definitely produced in the fly-on-the-wall, naturalistic style of Jia Zhangke and his “d-generate” followers, but there is no shortage of visceral drama here. Each petitioner we meet has an even greater story of injustice to tell. Perversely, it seems it is those who do not take bribes who usually find themselves prosecuted in China. Petitioners are arrested, beaten, and even die under mysterious circumstances. Yet, it is through Zhao’s central figures, Qi and her daughter Juan, that we experience the emotional drain of the petitioning process with uncomfortable immediacy. Frankly, even if you have seen a number of Chinese documentaries, this film will still profoundly disturb you.
Zhao deserves credit for both his significant investment of time and his fearlessness. Not surprisingly, filming is strictly prohibited in the Petition Offices, but that did not stop him from trying, often getting more than a slight jostle for his trouble. Indeed, Petition represents truly independent filmmaking.
Petition is the cinematic equivalent of a smoking gun. It is impossible to maintain any Pollyannaish illusions of about the rule of law in China after watching the film. Yet, like Zhao, viewers will be struck by the petitioners’ indomitable drive for justice. May God protect them, because their government certainly won’t. A legitimately bold and honest film that needs to be seen, Petition opens this Friday (1/14) in New York at the Anthology Film Archives.
From Puccini's "La Fanciulla del West" ("Golden Girl of the West") HD series at The Met.
By Patricia Ducey. Giacomo Puccini’s Wild West opera, La Fanciulla del West (“Golden Girl of the West”), is the latest offering from The Met: Live in HD series (Encore: Wednesday, January 26, 2011, 6:30 PST).
Commissioned 100 years ago by the Metropolitan Opera, Fanciulla is Puccini’s homage to the conventions and themes of the American Western—and to America itself. Puccini gave his patrons exactly what they were looking for, and after 19 standing curtain calls on opening night, the Met knew they had a durable hit in their first commission.
This year, the Met celebrates Fanciulla’s centenary with a boisterous, lyrical restaging featuring American soprano Deborah Voigt and Italian tenor Marcello Giordani and a delightful ensemble chorus of gunslingers, miners and banditos—a wonderful addition to a movie season that includes other shining examples of Americana like True Grit and the lesser Country Strong.
The music is Puccini-gorgeous, from one of his most beloved arias, “Ch’ella mi creda” (see here) sung by Dick Johnson as he begs his executioners to spare Minnie the knowledge of his perfidy, to the orchestral passages that reportedly inspired Andrew Lloyd-Weber’s Music of the Night.
Fanciulla’s story centers on frontierswoman Minnie, a saloon owner and Bible study teacher to a gold mining camp’s barely civilized miners. These are rough men: they drink their whiskey straight and shoot first, ask questions later. The only trace of sentiment emerges when they share stories of the dear mothers and big old dogs they left behind. Minnie and her “boys” are courageous loners, striking out for the fabled Sierra gold mines, for personal freedom and for adventure. Minnie with her book-learning and Bible lessons is the slim thread that ties them to civilization, and they are all in love in one fashion or the other with her. She helps them write home and tempers their anger in their many arguments and brawls. In one scene, when they catch one of their own cheating at poker, she instructs them, Bible in hand, “Every sinner can be redeemed.” Later, we suspect she will have to walk that talk herself.
In Minnie we have a new kind of Puccini heroine: a self-made woman, owner of a thriving business, cheerful in adversity and fiercely independent. Her pistol is her best friend, she recounts to an overly amorous miner, and she breaks up more than one unruly mob with a few well-aimed gunshot blasts. Puccini looks more to Annie Oakley than Mimi for this Minnie. She would rather live alone than be trapped in a loveless marriage with any of the several men in camp who endlessly woo her–as soon as she asserts that independence, though, in walks the handsome stranger. Of course she falls totally in love, but her love leads her to triumph here rather than to a pitiable death, as in most of Puccini’s other operas. In the final act, she singlehandedly holds back the lynch mob and at the same time inspires her man to renounce his banditry and dedicate his life to goodness and love.
Deborah Voigt as Minnie.
In Fanciulla, Puccini weds the traditions of operatic tragedy with American optimism. Like the deservedly praised True Grit, Fanciulla exults in themes of Americana as well as in the Judeo-Christian heritage that anchors them. From True Grit’s Bible allusions–read without irony–to the rollicking barroom brawl in Fanciulla, both honor the eternal truths expressed by the Western genre and thus revive its classical expression. Puccini recognizes that the Western is the essential American morality play, and that goodness eventually will triumph in this land caught between wildness and civilization. That’s the real American Dream and the sense of possibility that drew so many of Puccini’s countrymen to our shores.
Writer/Director Shana Feste, on the other hand, is all mixed up about her Americana in Country Strong. She misses entirely the reason country music is so popular: there is no self-hating in Nashville. The movie starts out as a melodrama about Kelly Canter (Gwyneth Paltrow), a fading country singer sprung a little too early from rehab by her emotionally distant husband James (Tim McGraw) because … well, we’re never told why. He insists she needs to start touring before the docs release her. Do they need the money? Is he trying to gaslight Kelly because he loves a younger singer? We hope to find out, yet McGraw’s character and motivation remain a mystery.
Kelly wants rehab orderly Beau (who also conveniently happens to be a singer) to open for her on the tour, but James chooses newcomer Chiles Stanton (Leighton Meester) instead. Kelly is jealous of the younger woman and imagines her flirting with James—or maybe she is flirting with him?—yet Kelly herself has been bedding Beau since rehab. Who’s zoomin’ who? Eventually all four of them are on tour together, in the crucible of Kelly’s comeback. They hook up, break up, fight and make up, with lots of streaked mascara but little discernable rationale. With all possible plot points on the table, the histrionics and plot twists remain vaguely mystifying. No much is at stake here: not principles, life and death, nor even love. In hipster movies, love hurts.
The actors do a heroic job, and a few of the tunes, even though we never hear one in its entirety, are iPod worthy. Paltrow proves again what a rich, emotionally layered actor she is, and Meester, of Gossip Girl fame, wrests depth and nuance from a most shallow stereotype. Garrett Hedlund from Tron could have a singing career. Tim McGraw, one of the most radiantly masculine stars on screen, though, is seriously misused or underused. McGraw’s James is written as cold and distant, but this behavior is never explained. Maybe a prequel will explain his pinched rejection of the whole lot of them?
Country Strong is a serviceable enough musical melodrama, but it’s hard to tell what the point is. This is either a script-by-committee mashup, or Feste is another screenwriter gripped by existential confusion towards her subject. She cannot decide if CountryStrong is a classic melodrama or hipster hit-piece. On the one hand, the script panders to the bien pensant with jabs at what she envisions as flyover country: Christians are hypocrites, patriots are jingoists, pro-lifers are haters, crossover country is insipid and beauty queens are stupid, etc. Then why is Kelly’s triumphant comeback song an insipid pop song itself, presented without irony? On the other hand, sometimes Country Strong seems to be playing it straight, as with the actors’ performances, and that does work. Her method seems to be to throw tropes and clichés on the wall, however contradictory, and see what sticks.
Puccini’s Minnie and the Coen brothers’ Mattie Ross would be perplexed at so much wild emotion in service of such small stakes. Minnie probably would chuck Kelly out of her saloon at the first whine, and Hattie would sniff and ride off, head held high, to right another wrong. They knew that their journey was the American journey, into the wilderness and into the human heart, and that “strong” is more than just a word in a song.
In related news, the inevitable: the Royal Opera House’s Carmen is soon to be released in 3D (see here). I’m down with that.
By Joe Bendel. Attention to detail and a long memory might be all well and good for office drones, but they are not so hot in dictators. Stalin was a case in point. He always remembered the little people he encountered—much to their woe. However, the tyrant saw a potential usefulness in one political cartoonist that proved to be his salvation. Indeed, the late Boris Efimov would outlive Stalin and his successors, surviving well past his centennial. It is a telling episode in Soviet history, even if Efimov himself was somewhat ambiguous about his relationship with his brother’s murderer in Stalin Thought of You (trailer above), Kevin McNeer’s documentary profile of the Communist caricaturist, which screens on the opening day of the 2011 New York Jewish Film Festival, co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Jewish Museum.
Efimov and his brother Mikhail Koltsov were both ardent Communists who had permanently adopted their revolutionary nom de plumes. Koltsov was the more outgoing sibling, rocketing up the ladder of the Soviet journalism establishment while secretly working for the NKVD. He is widely accepted to have been the inspiration for the Karkov character in Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. Despite (or more likely because) of his prominence, he was executed during Stalin’s Great Purge, although he recanted his forced confession.
The role of satire in a tyranny.
Obviously, this put Efimov in a difficult position as the brother of a declared class enemy, but it was Stalin himself who threw the struggling artist a lifeline with a personal request for a very specific cartoon supposedly well suited to his talents. While it was only during Khrushchev’s anti-Stalin campaign that Efimov was fully rehabilitated, his lingering sense of indebtedness to the fearsome dictator is evident all through Thought.
To his credit, McNeer presents an unvarnished portrait of Efimov, often challenging him on his loyal service to the Communist system that murdered his brother. He also often broached the subject of Efimov’s Jewish identity, but the centenarian shut him down each time. While he might simply be ambivalent, McNeer shrewdly includes footage of old Soviet newscasts using Efimov’s Jewish heritage as cover for the virulently “anti-Zionist” cartoons he was required to produce.
If not an explicitly hostile witness, it is clear Efimov was not entirely forthcoming with McNeer. Yet, rather than papering over his evasiveness, McNeer wisely exploits it to make larger points. Frankly, one comes away from Thought with a much higher regard for Koltsov than its ostensive subject.
Throughout Thought, McNeer consistently asks the right questions and provides the necessary context to fully understand the propaganda under discussion. The resulting film offers fresh insights into a dark time in human history fueled by a poisonous ideology. Selections of the New York Jewish Film Festival frequently play at subsequent regional Jewish themed film festivals, so viewers outside the City should definitely keep an eye out for it. For New Yorkers, Thought screens this Wednesday (1/12), both in the afternoon and evening, as the 2011 NYJFF kicks off at the Walter Reade Theater.
Benjamin was not the only Jewish Confederate. Though it clearly discomforts several of the contemporary Jewish historians interviewed throughout Soldiers, many Jewish Americans so appreciated the welcoming home they found in the Old South that they rushed to take arms on her behalf, despite the significance of slavery within their religious faith. Likewise, Jewish Northerners also readily volunteered as an unambiguous act of patriotism, while embracing abolitionism with a special import as the descendants of the slaves of Exodus.
