The theme for the day: war movies, and all the different forms they can take. [Hint: It’s not all about WWII.] What’s interesting is that each of these movies are from perspectives other than American’s, and that alone makes any of them different and interesting, even if not all of them are very good. [But one absolutely is, stay tuned…]
War Story…Catherine Keener is one of those great actresses that it feels like we don’t even know what all they’re capable of since they’re rarely given enough to do. Well, here she takes on a rare lead role as a war photographer who was taken hostage in Libya, and is trying to manage post-war life jugging PTSD and desperately wanting to help a young woman get to Europe. Sadly, too much of this film is stagnant and overly quiet (there are countless scenes of one character doing mundane things and we’re supposed to get character development out of that). There’s a solid scene with Ben Kingsley late in the movie, but that’s one of the few that feels like it’s actually getting at character insight instead of just pretending to. Grade: C-
Two Lives…An interesting, twisty take on the “War Children” of Norway who were taken during WWII and then released back into Norway as spies for East Germany. Taut and beautifully filmed, but it strains credibility during some far-fetched plot developments. A haunting final shot though. Grade: B-
Half a Yellow Sun…Finally, a war movie that doesn’t involve America at all as it details the Nigerian Civil War of the early 60’s. Thandie Newton and Anika Noni Rose (both of them luminous) play twin sisters dealing with that conflict while getting entangled with very different men (a revolutionary played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, and an underdeveloped British guy who’s given maybe 12 lines of dialogue in the whole movie). I haven’t read the famous novel this movie is based on, but I wasn’t a fan of that same author’s follow-up book “Americanah,” and this adaptation has a few of the same problems: certain underdeveloped characters, a main focus on the less interesting ones, misery for interracial relationships while pretending to be sympathetic towards them, and murky Nigerian politics that are hard to understand for non-natives, even while some characters are prone to speechifying. The movie works less as a war story (it’s sometimes hard to follow who’s killing who and for what reason) than as a domestic soap opera, and the best sections follow Newton’s disapproving (would-be) mother in law’s attempts to tell her son who to marry. Weirdly enough, the duel between those two very different women seems to have more direct passion than the war scenes. Grade: C+
Canopy…Whereas the first three movies primarily follow women’s journeys through war, this one is squarely focused on two men in combat during, sigh, WWII, BUT all isn’t completely stale as this is one Australian fighter pilot’s trek through the jungle with a Chinese soldier. They don’t speak the same language, and the movie has very little dialogue, but it’s different at least. Still, is it a movie I can really recommend? No. It’s too remote, too abstract, and doesn’t really have enough going on. [We don’t even see a person on screen for the first five minutes.] I admired it as an exercise in minimalism, but most audiences will hate it. Some beautiful scenery makes you feel like you should be watching it on fast-forward, and that might be the best way to experience it. Grade: C
Virunga…The only film of the bunch I can say is excellent, but also the only documentary. [Hmmmm, coincidence?] It begins with a detailed, clear history of Congo that concisely tries to explain why the country has been plagued with conflict for generations. Then it starts unfolding the real plot: the battle of control for Virunga Park, a nature reserve that is home to some of the last mountain gorillas on Earth. An oil company wants to pillage it under the guise of “creating jobs” (how many times can they use that one?), and the film lays out a convincing case that that same company may be willing to finance a coup to get control of that park. The next time someone wants to know why “Africa can’t get its act together” I think showing them this documentary—where it is nearly impossible to untangle their conflicts with foreign interests and companies wanting to exploit Africa’s resources with weak governments that will sell their commodities on the cheap—would be as good an educator as any. Grade: A