Weekly Rant: The Blind Side

Because most sports movies are mediocre, and because most movies starring Sandra Bullock are worse than that and because I have read the book upon which it is based, I had no intention of seeing The Blind Side. That’s why I spent my lunch hour last Friday clicking through Metacritic to read about it: I wasn’t worried that my own experience with the film would be colored by my prior exposure to these reviews, because this wasn’t a film I was planning to experience. But the more reviews I read, most of them negative, the more interested I became. At a time when Precious, a sensationalistic story about a black woman who is used as a dramatic punching bag, is being widely celebrated as worthwhile art, The Blind Side, the true story of a black man who rose from homelessness to a career in the NFL with a lot of help from a white family, has been derided by some as condescending toward black people. That I had to see to understand.

And so I saw The Blind Side, only to leave the theater as confused as when I went in. Is the film offensive? Yes. If Precious takes itself too seriously, The Blind Side doesn’t take itself seriously enough. This is a film with a high school football coach who doesn’t use the headset hanging around his neck but does take a cellphone call on the sideline during a game. It’s a film in which a teenage Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron), now a starting tackle for the Baltimore Ravens, gets whipped into shape by an elementary school kid. It’s a film in which Bullock’s saintly yet spicy Leigh Anne Tuohy confronts a threatening gang leader by threatening him right back – in his neighborhood, on his porch, in front of his homeboys. More often than not, The Blind Side adopts an air of preposterousness that suggests it’s more comfortable emulating a made-for-Lifetime melodrama than approximating reality. For me, at least, that’s offensive. As for the film’s supposed condescending treatment of its black main character, that’s where things get tricky.

In The Village Voice, Melissa Anderson suggests that The Blind Side “peddles the most insidious kind of racism, one in which whiteys are virtuous saviors, coming to the rescue of African-Americans who become superfluous in narratives that are supposed to be about them.” Scott Tobias of the AV Club argues that The Blind Side “finds a new low” in the sports genre’s “long, troubled history of well-meaning white paternalism, with poor black athletes finding success through white charity.” Both critics support these arguments by citing scenes in which white people must act upon Oher in order for him to act for himself. They also note how the film treats Oher, in Tobias’ words, as a “gentle, oversized puppy in need of adoption.” Frequently their arguments are compelling. Tobias notes that the Tuohy family “literally picks (Oher) up from the streets during a rainstorm, like a stray,” quipping: “All that’s missing are the children pleading, ‘Mom, can we keep him?’” One only needs to read such descriptions to see how neatly The Blind Side rests within the shamefully deep mold created by all the tactless “whiteys”-as-“virtuous saviors” films that have come before it. But I’m not sure that means that The Blind Side is automatically as tactless or shameless as its predecessors.

The thing that struck me about John Lee Hancock’s film is how faithful it is, a few indulgences aside, to Michael Lewis’ nonfiction book. Does that mean the film is capital-T True? Of course not. As I suggested, the film has a wink-wink demeanor about it that manages to undercut even the things that are factually accurate. Nevertheless, if Lewis’ account of the story can be trusted at all, many of the elements that might seem especially condescending toward black people are in fact based on truth. Indeed, Michael Oher was taken in by a rich white family. He did attend an almost all-white school. He was given special treatment by some of his white teachers to help him along. He did have a white tutor who guided him through high school and even college. He was inward and slow to reveal his feelings and history. He had been homeless. He did lose a father he barely knew to a sad death. He did have siblings he hadn’t seen in years, if ever. He didn’t take to football immediately and really was coached to equate offensive line play with the protection of one’s family. Perhaps most important of all, the black Oher really did form a bond with the white Tuohys, and they became a genuine family in the process – not just during high school, not just for the span of the film, but then and now. Any way you slice it, Oher was in fact “rescued,” in almost every sense of the word, by white people who, through their acts, were both “virtuous” and “saviors.”

None of this is to suggest that the film doesn’t take liberties in the specific depictions of these broader truths. Nor is it to suggest that The Blind Side gives us the “whole truth,” whatever that is. Furthermore, I don’t mean to imply that this is a good film. (When the professional actor playing the high school coach delivers a performance more forced than that of the career college football coaches who make cameos in this film, you’ve got problems.) Yes, it’s true that we leave The Blind Side better understanding Leigh Anne Tuohy than Michael Oher. But explain to me why this isn’t her story as much as his? Seems to me that without a Leigh Anne Tuohy we'd never have heard of Michael Oher. Sure, it would be condescending to depict Oher as the family pet being taught to sit, stay and play football. But I’m not convinced the film portrays him that way. I’d suggest the film portrays Oher as a young man in need of a mother and a lot of guidance, which by virtue of the formula means that Oher is placed in the role of a child. Is that offensive? If untrue, I suppose. But here’s the thing: What if it's accurate? Has our political correctness gotten so out of hand that stories about whites saving blacks are now taboo? That doesn’t sound like progress.

More than a decade ago, then living in Oregon, I eagerly followed the development of another sports-related film: Robert Towne’s Without Limits, which proved to be the better of the two Steve Prefontaine biopics released almost simultaneously. One thing I remember from the prerelease buzz is that Without Limits, which dedicates quite a bit of time to Prefontaine’s efforts to medal at the 1972 Olympics, didn’t score well with test audiences. Their complaint? Prefontaine didn’t redeem himself by winning gold at the 1976 Olympics. Why? Because he died in 1975. In that instance the real story – one of promise unfulfilled – wasn’t the story that (many) audiences wanted, but it was the story of what really happened. I have a feeling that something similar is happening here. In this era of heightened sensitivity to political correctness (which is a good thing for the most part, don’t get me wrong), The Blind Side is indeed hampered by Hancock’s sometimes overly simplistic approach to his subject matter. Just as often, though, what hurts The Blind Side isn't the depiction of its subject matter but the realities of it.

2010 Oscars: More Films, Less Fun

Newsflash: The purpose of the Academy Awards isn’t to honor achievement in filmmaking. The purpose of the Academy Awards is to market the movie industry. If you didn’t know that already, you certainly must know it now, a day after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences announced that next year, and for the foreseeable future, there will be 10 films nominated for Best Picture instead of the (recently) traditional five. The purpose of this increase isn’t to decorate five more films, of course, because in a sense all the AMPAS has done is expand the list of Oscar night also-rans. The goal, without question, is to make five more films – and the star-studded live TV event that pimps them – more profitable.

Do I sound jaded? I don’t think I am. Because even though the AMPAS seems to be taking an embarrassing step toward the MTV mentality that celebrates films for their teen-biased performance at the box office, at the same time the Academy also is expanding the opportunities for small, controversial, abstract, and otherwise box-office-challenged films to reach a larger audience, and the latter might be worth the pains of the former, because, ideally, the latter might eventually influence the former. See, something like the big-budget Transformers 2 doesn’t need an Oscar nomination for the average moviegoer to be convinced that it’s a “must-see” film, but something like Two Lovers does. The difference between your 8-movies-a-year coworker having already seen The Reader over Revolutionary Road comes down to the fact that one of those films earned multiple major Oscar nods (a Best Picture nomination and a Best Actress win for Kate Winslet) and the other one didn’t. If that same 8-movies-a-year coworker could be convinced to see five more movies each year, he/she might realize that Frost/Nixon isn’t a top-5 picture of any year. Simply put: the more movies the average moviegoer sees, the greater the chance that he/she discovers a truly great film. In that respect, both sides seem to profit from the expansion of the nominee pool. But there is a significant downside.

By adding five films to the Best Picture slate, the Academy has sucked some of the fun out of Oscar season by eliminating the very thing that makes it interesting: controversy. For example, had the AMPAS expanded the Best Picture pool a year ago, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight almost certainly would have received the Oscar nomination that its fanboys so desperately craved. But what would that nomination have been worth? What does it mean to be one of the 10 best pictures of the year? The 2009 Oscars were four months ago, but already I’ve forgotten the five Best Picture nominees. There was Slumdog Millionaire, Frost/Nixon, The Reader, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and … and … Doubt? No, Doubt dominated the acting categories. So what was the fifth film? I’ll look it up in a bit. For the moment it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I can easily name five films that were considered unfairly “snubbed” in the last Oscar race: The Dark Knight, Gran Torino, Revolutionary Road , WALL-E and The Wrestler.

Because the Academy Awards have more in common with a political campaign than Olympic competition, there is power in controversy. In sports terms, the Oscar race better resembles college football’s BCS format than college basketball’s March Madness tournament. Though an Oscar nomination always raises a film’s profile in the short term, what often elevates a film to celebrated long-term greatness is the debate stirred up by the Academy’s dismissal. Fanboys might still be pissed that The Dark Knight didn’t get the validation of a Best Picture nomination, but as a result its fans get to spend the rest of time arguing that their favorite film got screwed, that the system didn’t support it, that at worst The Dark Knight was the sixth-best film of the year in the eyes of people who were prejudiced against it in the first place, which means it has to be awesome just to be in the conversation.

People will remember The Dark Knight in part because of its Oscar outsider status. Had it been included in a pool of 10 nominees, The Dark Knight might have become as forgettable as … as … as that fifth nominee from last year that still isn’t coming to me. Even worse, the validation that The Dark Knight fanboys hoped to receive through the Academy’s reluctant recognition of the superhero genre could have been spoiled with a 10-picture slate if the Academy also nominated 2008’s other wildly popular comic book movie, Iron Man. If that had happened, The Dark Knight wouldn’t have looked so special after all.

The Oscars will still be fun, of course, and they’ll still inspire debate, and maybe these extra nominations will allow the Academy to be more daring while also appeasing the mostly naïve masses. Maybe it will be a net gain. But it’s always been exciting to discover which five films would get a chance to compete for the big prize. After the announcement, it’s always been fun wondering which film just missed the cut and debating why. At the end of 2009 and in the initial weeks of 2010, there won’t be the same joy in Movieville. When there are 10 films competing for one statuette, the word snubbed no longer applies. That argument is now obsolete. Until recently, the Best Picture nomination system created lovable losers. Now, if you’re not a Best Picture nominee, you’re just a loser.

Hunger’s Weighty Issue

Robert De Niro went one way in Raging Bull. Matt Damon went the other way in Courage Under Fire. Tom Hanks went both ways in Cast Away. For decades now, actors have been fattening up or thinning down for movie roles. For every Renee Zellweger (Bridget Jones’s Diary), there’s a Christian Bale (The Machinist). For every George Clooney (Syriana), there’s Jeremy Davies (Rescue Dawn).

That’s why I wasn’t shocked by the conclusion of Steve McQueen’s Hunger, which includes ghastly images of a sickly looking Michael Fassbender as Bobby Sands, the IRA activist who died of starvation in 1981 after 66 days on hunger strike. Still, I was troubled by the almost sexual ogling of Fassbender’s emaciated frame over the film’s final act, and I remain troubled today.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Fassbender lost 40 pounds for the role by “living on nuts and berries for 10 weeks.” That’s 40 pounds off a guy who didn’t have an ounce to lose in the first place. The result is unsettling, to say the least, though not to McQueen. “That’s the job,” the director told the Times. “The film is called Hunger. It’s not a vanity trip. It’s an essential necessity for the film. The guy (Sands) didn’t eat in order to be heard. It’s work. He’s a professional actor.”

On that last point, we agree: Fassbender is a professional actor. But is starving one’s self to replicate starving “acting,” or is that “doing”? I’d say the latter. True enough, Fassbender’s weight loss was inspired by history; in that respect his starvation wasn’t a “vanity trip,” nor was it some kind of flippant artistic choice, as in Clooney’s rather unnecessary filling-out for Syriana. But was it “an essential necessity”? Mere months after Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett were aged and de-aged digitally for The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, I’d say no. Sure, Hunger lacked the budget of David Fincher’s Oscar-luring epic, but McQueen wasn’t without options; good old fashioned makeup effects would have worked, too.

Regardless of the method (or the Method, for that matter), McQueen’s best decision would have been to suggest starvation without actually replicating it. In other words, he should have asked Fassbender to, you know, act. Not only would this have been the more humane choice, I’m not alone in thinking that it would have been more dramatically effective, too. As Peter Rainer of The Christian Science Monitor puts it in his review: “In the end, it is not Bobby Sands but Michael Fassbender we are looking at, and this realization takes us out of the movie.” Indeed, that’s true. The horror I felt at the end of Hunger wasn’t for Sands, who believed he was fighting a life-or-death cause; it was for Fassbender, who was starring in an ultimately trivial movie.

Of course, Fassbender is an adult who can make his own decisions about how he treats his body. On an individual human rights level, I support that. But I’m saddened at the thought of any actor feeling compelled to take such measures in order to land a part. If McQueen views Fassbender’s weight loss as “an essential necessity,” it’s safe to assume that Fassbender wouldn’t have gotten the role without agreeing to fast. At that point, one could argue that Sands had considerably greater control over his decision to starve himslf than Fassbender did. That’s disturbing. What’s even more troubling is the sense that such weight games are becoming somewhat commonplace, despite the primitiveness of the stunt. And, effective or not, that’s what Fassbender’s weight loss is – a stunt.

Speaking of stunts, near the end of Tarsem’s The Fall, there’s a terrific montage of death-defying stunts from the silent film era. Death-defying when they worked, that is; simply deadly when they didn’t. No filmmaker today would ask a stuntman to take the unharnessed risks of those latter day acrobats, so why, with all that we know about human health, digital effects and makeup, are we unnecessarily turning our actors into silent era stuntmen? As Rainer suggests, “filmmakers don’t often give enough credit to the imaginations of their audiences.” Or maybe it’s the filmmakers and actors whose imaginations are limited.

Wrestling With The Reader

“Oscar-worthy” wasn’t the term running through my mind upon seeing The Reader in early January, prior to the movie picking up Academy Award nominations for Best Picture and Best Actress (among others). “Disappointing” was the word it inspired. Here is a film that is tantalizing in stretches but ultimately frustrating. It ends about 30 minutes too late, using that excess time for some extremely ill-advised plot developments that sour an otherwise respectably assembled film. In the final act, Lena Olin suffers through a scene that attempts to go so many directions at once that it ties itself in a knot. Meantime, poor Kate Winslet is forced to cap off a mostly engaging performance by donning heavy makeup and adopting a hunchback in order to portray decades-worth of aging, while the character opposite hers is played by two men almost 30 years apart. Oscar tends to like that kind of stuff, but I cringed at the indignity of it.

To the degree I was offended by The Reader, it was for those sins, and nothing more. I intended to write a review of the film at the time, but I found myself too busy. Days and weeks passed, and I was prepared to leave the film uncommented upon here … until I caught up on some reading. Earlier this week, I learned that there are others who were greatly disappointed by The Reader, and who, like me, are anything but excited about the prospect of the film picking up some golden hardware on Sunday. But that’s where the similarities end. Ron Rosenbaum for Slate has suggested that The Reader is the “The Worst Holocaust Film Ever Made,” while Rod Lurie for The Huffington Post writes that the film “gives ammunition to Holocaust negationists, to the Archbishop Williamsons of the world, to the people who would tell us that the Shoah is a mass exaggeration.”

These are heavy charges. In lieu of a typical review, I’d like to provide some thoughts in response. (Warning! Nothing but spoilers ahead.)

Before I go any further, take a moment to read the Rosenbaum and Lurie pieces linked above. Go ahead. I can wait. Ready? OK.

Let’s begin as Rosenbaum does, with the implication that The Reader is “The Worst Holocaust Film Ever Made.” He might be right about that. See, I don’t think of The Reader as a “Holocaust film” in the first place.

What is it about? I think The Reader explores two interesting topics, the first having to do with identification and the second having to do with ethics. When Michael (David Kross) learns that Hanna (Kate Winslet) was a guard in the SS who was complicit in the deaths of at least 300 people, his first emotion is shock. Hanna’s SS sins were committed before Michael knew her, before she comforted him when he was sick, before they became lovers, before he formed a youthful admiration of her. His first conundrum is to rectify these two disparate realities. Truth: Hanna is an accessory to mass murder. Truth: Hanna was nothing but a friend to Michael. This presents an interesting scenario with universal appeal. What would you do if you found out that someone you greatly admire had a checkered past? Would you disown your relationship with this person? Would you forever look at it differently? Should you?

Michael doesn’t know. He also doesn’t know what to do with his knowledge that Hanna willingly accepts a prison sentence that is based on an inaccurate charge. This is his ethical debate: Michael knows that Hanna is being judged incorrectly, but he thinks she is being punished fairly. (When it comes to the murder of hundreds, does it matter whether you acted alone or stood by with a half-dozen others?) But is this Michael’s decision to make? Does his previous relationship with Hanna, and his firsthand knowledge of her positive attributes, oblige him to come to her defense? Or does Michael owe his allegiance to those victims who aren’t alive to testify against Hanna? Aren’t some crimes so abhorrent that they can never be forgiven?

These are the issues of The Reader. In exploring these elements, yes, the plot structures itself around the Holocaust – an atrocity so well known that it doesn’t need further explanation (that’s why it’s handy). But does that make The Reader a “Holocaust film.” When you think about it, Michael’s ethical dilemma isn’t too far off from the one explored in A Few Good Men. Is that a film about the Marines? In a way, sure, but not at the heart. Same here.

Rosenbaum goes on to suggest that a New York Times article calling The Reader a story about “personal triumph” is a “depressing indication of how the film misreads the Holocaust.” But, wait. Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that the New York Times misreads The Reader? And if The Reader isn’t even a “Holocaust film” in the first place, isn’t Rosenbaum misreading the film as well?

I don’t disagree with Rosenbaum entirely. He argues that Hanna’s illiteracy provides an all too convenient (partial) pardon for her sins. I agree. But then he goes a step further, suggesting that Hanna’s illiteracy is a metaphor for “the German people and their supposed inability to ‘read’ the signs that mass murder was being done in their name, by their fellow citizens.” In other words, Rosenbaum believes that Hanna’s illiteracy pardons all of Germany. But this is rubbish. First, this reading ignores that the movie is told from Michael’s perspective and that even he doesn’t absolve Hanna. Meantime, Hanna doesn’t forgive herself. She accepts her sentence, rather than fight it, and upon earning her freedom she kills herself. These things suggest guilt, not innocence.

Still, I respect Rosenbaum’s discomfort when he calls The Reader (and Downfall) “revolting” for portraying the laypeople of Germany as “poor, unknowing … victims.” Yes, Hanna is a victim of sorts in The Reader. Yes, the character is made more appealing thanks to the beauty of Winslet and the use of “manipulative nudity” (though it’s hardly unusual to see unusually attractive individuals in movies). Yes, Hanna experiences a “triumph” late in the film as she learns to read. Yes, that triumph is an ill-advised development, first because it’s a sloppily executed distraction from the film’s established themes, and second because it creates doubt about its intent by briefly showcasing this mass murderer in an endearing light. But these things never made me fond of Hanna. I never felt sorry for her. And she ends the film remembered by Michael not as a lover but as an instrument of mass murder. This didn’t escape me. So why is Rosenbaum convinced it will escape everyone else?

It’s here that Rosenbaum’s case against The Reader gets messy. He quotes a Barnes & Noble summary of the novel that inspired the film that calls Hanna’s illiteracy “a secret more shameful than murder.” Yes, that’s irresponsible and sickening. But that’s a book distributor’s synopsis of a novel, any faults of which shouldn’t be held against Stephen Daldry’s film. Likewise, Rosenbaum is potentially misleading when he describes Daldry’s justification for why the church fire isn’t portrayed in the movie. Rosenbaum writes: “As I learned from the director … the scene was omitted because it might have ‘unbalanced’ our view of Hanna, given too much weight to the mass murder she committed, as opposed to her lack of reading skills.”

Please note that “unbalanced” is the only word Rosenbaum directly attributes to Daldry. The rest, at least potentially, is his interpretation of what that word means. Yes, it could mean that Daldry was afraid we would feel worse about Hanna’s injustices as an SS officer than about her illiteracy. Or it could mean this: Daldry wanted us to be able to see Hanna through Michael’s eyes. Remember, it’s Michael’s story. If the audience witnesses murders that Michael must force himself to imagine, then we might fail to relate to Michael’s conflict. According to Daldry’s design, our view of Hanna is the same as that of the main character: First we fall for Hanna, and then we learn about her past. Somehow we, like Michael, must figure out how both these Hannas could be halves of the same whole. Not depicting the church catastrophe enhances the mystery of the story and its ethical debate.

But Rosenbaum and Lurie don’t want debate. More than anything, they seem offended that Hanna is allowed to be painted with shades of gray, that she is anything less than a stereotypical red-blooded, Jew-hating Nazi. Essentially, they take issue with the fact that Hanna is humanized. This mystifies me. Isn’t the humanness of Holocaust orchestrators a key element of what makes their inhumanity so haunting? Aren’t we obligated to learn from the Holocaust precisely because these almost unthinkable atrocities were carried about by “regular” people? To this effect, Lurie quotes Winslet quoting Daldry saying, “These were young men and women who didn’t know what they were getting into.” It sounds overly understanding, I know. But both Winslet’s comment and Daldry’s are conveniently out of context. Couldn’t Daldry have meant that many World War II era Germans failed to imagine the full magnitude of Hitler’s ethnic cleansing, even if they were aware of it? (Never mind, by the way, that Winslet’s interpretation of the film and the film itself are two different things that should be tried separately.)

In my mind, if the Holocaust wasn’t started by “normal people,” we have less to worry about. Then we can just be on the lookout for psychopaths. The reality is that Nazis weren’t born with some unique genetic makeup. They were conditioned into a belief system that made evil seem permissible. This doesn’t make their actions acceptable in hindsight. It makes them terrifying. And while Rosenbaum and Lurie are busy ravaging The Reader for failing to provide us with yet another one-dimensional Nazi Jew-killer, they miss that perhaps The Reader is a metaphor for recent history instead.

Sure, there are few, if any, atrocities in the history of the world that are on par with the Holocaust, so maybe The Reader is too careless with its references. Nonetheless, perhaps Rosenbaum and Lurie need to see Errol Morris’ Standard Operating Procedure. What they’ll find within that documentary are “normal” people who enlisted in the military and wound up doing abnormal, horrific, shameful things – things that were done in our name, whether we were aware or not, whether we endorsed their methods or not. (Does that make each of us culpable?) Certainly Lurie is correct that Hanna is “not guilty of the crime for which she is sentenced.” But she’s still guilty. The Reader makes repeated efforts to get that point across. And in the meantime many Americans who ordered, performed or condoned torture at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere have avoided being charged with anything. But the guilt still applies. At least Hanna does time.

Lurie argues that The Reader is to blame because its audience, “many of them young people uneducated about the Holocaust, will take as fact what they see on screen.” If this is true – if this R-rated film is the only window to the Holocaust that we give “young people,” and if these “young people” are taught that this film is “fact” – then we’re the ones at fault. If people are so uninformed that The Reader could have such a profound effect on the definition of the Holocaust, we should be ashamed not of the film but of ourselves. In the end, blaming The Reader is a little too convenient. Almost like telling the story of a mass murderer who is made quasi-endearing through her sexuality and quasi-helpless due to her illiteracy, I’d say.

What say you?

Debating Documentaries

At its simplest, Errol Morris’ documentary Standard Operating Procedure is an exploration of the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib. Beyond that, though, it’s an examination of the reality – or lack thereof – of the filmed image. Some folks like to say the camera doesn’t lie, and that might be right. But the camera doesn't always tell the truth, either. And it was in that vein that Yours Truly, the opinionated host at The Cooler, began a friendly e-mail debate with Fox, the equally opinionated host of the feisty mostly-movies blog Tractor Facts.

The discussion began early this month, just before the release of Religulous, and it continued sporadically from there. Over the course of our exchanges, we debated the very nature of the documentary while touching on Religulous, Michael Moore, Ben Stein’s Expelled, Werner Herzog, The Fog Of War, The King Of Kong, Tarnation and more. Almost 5,000 words later, we felt that we’d explored some interesting topics … and that we’d barely scratched the surface.

A transcript follows …

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JB: Let’s get into this discussion by talking about Religulous, which hits theaters tomorrow. At this point, neither of us has seen the film, but judging by the trailer it appears to be a documentary in the Michael Moore style, which I suppose might be best characterized thusly: (1) more liberal than conservative, (2) at least as entertainment-minded as education-minded, (3) shiftily manipulative and (4) stunty, to coin a term. The movie is directed by Larry Charles, who also directed Borat, a comedy with elements of the Moore-esque documentary. I know you loath Borat, which – correct me if I’m wrong – you think is disingenuous, agenda-driven and predatory, for lack of a better term, especially in its portrayal of conservative Southerners. Religulous looks as if it will prey on a similar audience, perhaps in similar fashion. Borat wasn’t considered a documentary because its key subject is a dramatic creation of actor Sacha Baron Cohen. Religulous is considered a documentary because Bill Maher is playing himself. So my questions for you are: Is that fair? Is Religulous a “documentary” in the traditional definition of the term? Or is Religulous, along with the rest of its Moore-inspired brethren, a bastardization of the documentary genre? And if so, so what?

Fox: I think the definition of the traditional documentary itself has been bastardized. The root term "document" implies that truth, or proof, is what the viewer will be getting. Now, most viewers have come to know – especially in our "sensational documentary" era – that documentaries are just as much about a point-of-view as they are a treatment of facts. Certainly there are truths in these films, but never have I encountered a documentary where opinion or point-of-view isn’t the dominant mode. Not that there is anything wrong with that. The best thing a documentary can accomplish is to introduce the viewer to topics or information.

So: "Is Religulous a ‘documentary’ in the traditional definition of the term?" I would say no, but … so what? What we've come to think of as a documentary is anything that is a nonfictional narrative/short, and that's fine. To me, the real battle lies with taking on what I see as irresponsible filmmaking and/or manipulation of reality (which I think every documentary does). That doesn't mean I think that these manipulated films can't present enjoyable entertainment or useful information, but as an art form I think the documentary is inherently flawed because it can never truly achieve what it sets out to do. I wouldn't qualify myself as an expert of the genre, but personally I've never seen a documentary that moves beyond the quality of a well done news segment.

Borat lies somewhere between documentary and mockumentary because only half of the party is in on the joke. In fact, Borat is truly a mockumentary in that it "mocks" its subject matter. What I despise most about Sacha Baron Cohen is that he cowardly hides behind a persona when he ambushes his subjects. (He also picks mostly passive, easy targets, but that's for another conversation.) At least someone like Maher confronts his subjects in an upfront, honest manner. I will give him the credit of sitting side-by-side with his opposition.

Religulous appeals to me because I too have problems with organized religion. However, I respect a fellow citizen's personal beliefs as long as they don't encroach on my life. I could give a crap if my neighbor worships Jesus, Mohammed, Satan, or his parrots, but if that bleeds over into society in a negative way then I have a problem with it. Now, Maher seems to have a problem with religion on a large scale. Not just with the fanatics, but with people of faith in general. What I'm curious to see is who he goes after in Religulous. Just the militants? Or the militants and the peaceful believers as well? A last compliment I can give to Maher before seeing his film is that he doesn't hide his intentions. He's got a chip on his shoulder and he makes that clear. Michael Moore's films are simply propaganda. He's never been interested in trying to understand anything outside of his agenda. Will Maher take the same path? We shall see.


JB: Terrific points. Let me take this back to the beginning by noting that a couple days ago Maher and Charles were on NPR’s “Fresh Air” talking about Religulous. They did their usual shtick. Then their segment was followed by an interview with Steven Waldman, founder and editor in chief of Beliefnet, which host Terry Gross described as “the largest website devoted to religion and spirituality.” Gross asked Waldman about Religulous and he was both praiseful (“funnier” and “more challenging” than he expected) and critical (“offensive” and “slippery”). Waldman then noted that most of Maher’s film is an attack on fundamentalism, and offered that for each example Maher provides of religion having a negative societal impact he could think of many more in which religion is a positive influence. Fair enough. All of which leads Waldman to say the following: “To only look at one part of the story is not really a ‘documentary,’ as (Maher) calls it.”

Now, this observation from Waldman is similar to what you just said when you talked about the bastardization of the term “documentary.” And I’d say that the view that you and Waldman share – that documentaries are supposed to be truthful and perhaps somehow balanced – is widely shared among the movie-going public. In general, I think people equate documentaries with “truth” or “nonfiction.” But I’m wondering how we got to that definition. You said that you think every documentary manipulates reality. So how did we ever arrive at the notion that documentaries are or should be entirely truthful (which is to say void of bias or inaccuracy)?

To answer my own question: I think that the “documentaries” many of us first encountered were nature films in school. Now, even nature films can be untruthful – for Winged Migration, several scenes were staged – but in general a nature documentary shows you animals being animals, responding to their own instincts. You can’t get much more truthful than that. Thus, part of the problem, is us. We carry from childhood this notion that documentaries reflect total and complete truth, only to be offended when we spot shades of gray among the black-and-white. And so I wonder if the documentaries have actually changed (been bastardized) or if instead we’ve just wised up.

Look at it this way: When we were kids, we read our history books and encyclopedias and thought both were undeniable, inarguable truth. Then we got older and we realized (most of us, anyway) that history is written by the victors of war, that different countries have alternate views of world history, that even our own country’s version of historical “fact” has changed over the years as our social norms have changed. All of a sudden we realize that short of something like Andy Warhol’s Sleep, which is nothing more than five hours of footage of his lover sleeping, there’s very little that can be documented on film that is as accurate as it seems.

I think we have a bad habit in this country of equating consensus with truth. They aren’t always the same. For example, we all agree that the Nazis were evil, so no one would ever expect a documentary on World War II to be “fair” to Adolph Hitler or to give the Nazis “equal time.” But when Maher provides a dissenting opinion on religion, he is going to get torn apart for “ignoring” certain “truths.” Is that fair? By my definition, a documentary needs to document. Simple as that. What I object to is when documentary filmmakers stage events and pass them off as unscripted. What I object to is when someone like Moore tells you that a plaque says one thing when really it says something else. Those are lies. But as a concept I think Religulous is truthful: it’s an accurate representation of Bill Maher’s views. I’d say that’s enough to be called a documentary.


Fox: You make a really wonderful distinction that I hadn't thought of before – that's what these discussions are all about, right? – and that is that a documentary is a document of the filmmaker's personal opinion, rather than a dead honest portrait of the subject they happen to be focusing on. I can live with that. Also, you beat me to something I had been thinking about: that the only true documentary – if the definition of that is "a document; a true portrait of events” – would be a camera filming a location in some sort in real-time – uncut and unedited.

I think you're right that our perception of what a documentary is supposed to deliver may place a lot of unfair expectations on the director. On the other hand, I think it's the responsibility of the director to not act like they are an authority on a topic simply because they've made a film. Unfortunately, this is the attitude I get while watching a lot of the historical and/or political documentaries today.

To be honest, while watching older documentaries like Hearts & Minds or Winter Soldier, I got the impression that this is where that trend started. Surely, during Vietnam, it was one of the first times a generation felt openly deceived and had the media tools to express their rage, confusion and distrust. Yet, there is no doubt that Hearts & Minds and Winter Soldier come off as their maker's one-sided opinions and not as a balanced dissection of events. Surely, there is no problem with someone wanting to make such a film if that is their desire, but I fail to see it as anything more than propaganda or selfish catharsis.

Again, nothing wrong with that, but the way the critical establishment has lauded these films as highly-rated works of art bothers me. I haven't seen Ben Stein's Expelled, but it was curious to me the absolute across-the-board denunciation of that film when it sounds like it follows the same one-sided, biased set of rules as any other button-pushing documentary. I expect to dislike the film for the same reason I dislike any other agitprop, but it was telling how critics pushed that film away, seemingly for no other reason than for disagreement with their ideology and/or belief system. In a way, that reaction of theirs kind of proved my point that these films – whether it be Moore or Stein – shouldn't be taken seriously as films.

"Taken seriously as films" was the last thing I said, and that kind of leads into the much dreaded phrase I have used in the past that has started fights among loved ones (in fact, it led to the only time that my dear, sweet wife cursed at me...): "Documentary is lazy cinema." It's something I stand by, and have yet to be shaken from. Now, I don't mean that documentarians are lazy, or that the work that goes into making documentaries is less than pushing 10 boulders up a hill. What I mean is that documentaries tend to betray the aesthetic of what I feel is beautiful about cinema, and that is cinematography, framing, lighting, spatial relationships, acting, color, screenplay, set design, etc. Some documentarians, like Errol Morris, definitely bring a more artistic eye to their films (I'm thinking Fast, Cheap & Out of Control and Mr. Death, for example), but even then, someone like him is bound to limitations since they are filming "real life."

The exception to this would be Werner Herzog, but then he is probably the exception to documentaries in general. For example, I think The Wild Blue Yonder is a beautiful, wonderful film. I think what Herzog does in the few "docs" of his I've seen (I haven't seen Grizzly Man, by the way) is flip the idea of documentary. I think he knows that true documentary is impossible, so he takes real footage and implements it into his fiction. In a way I think this liberates the real footage and gives it a freedom that something like Religulous, or Why We Fight or The Weather Underground doesn't.


JB: See, I think that’s interesting: Having seen only Herzog’s recent Grizzly Man and Encounters At The End Of The World, I think he’s right in the Moore/Maher camp. Those two documentaries are very personal – not only narrated by Herzog but actually experienced through him. I don’t object to this in theory, but as a viewer sometimes I find myself wishing he’d shut up and get out of the way. Show me the footage. Give me the subject. Let me be the judge. Let me experience the story on my own.

By comparison, Morris is far more removed from his subjects (heck, he doesn’t even sit in the same room with the people he interviews). But his films are still influenced by his personal views. As the interviewer, he gets to ask the questions (not all of which we get to hear), and he gets to edit his subjects’ responses after the fact. In that way Morris can comment on the overall subject of his film without actually opening his mouth. To me, this is obvious. But I’m frequently astonished that so many people see Morris’ films as somehow more factual or unbiased than the stuff of a Moore or Maher. I’m not sure that perception is accurate.

Specifically, I remember being perplexed by the reaction to The Fog Of War, which is basically a long interview with Robert McNamara intercut with some b-roll of falling dominoes. In the interview, McNamara admits that he lied to the American people when he was U.S. Secretary of Defense amidst the war in Vietnam. Then he goes on to tell us the “truth.” But can we really trust that “truth”? McNamara was in spin mode before and he’s almost certainly spinning in his interview with Morris. This doesn’t detract from The Fog Of War as a documentary. To go back to the previous definition, The Fog Of War documents McNamara’s version of the truth in that time and place. But I don’t think there’s any deeper actual historical truth to the film than Moore’s stunt-filled antics in Bowling For Columbine. Yet I think I’d be the minority there.

And that brings us to your terrific point about Stein’s Expelled. I haven’t seen the picture either, but I suspect you are correct that critics rejected it for its ideology and ideas rather than its technique or general entertainment value. On cinematic grounds, that seems unfair. Then again, a film like Expelled (which to my understanding argues in favor of Intelligent Design) brings up an interesting conundrum: When it comes to documentaries that make an argument (Religulous, Fahrenheit 9/11, An Inconvenient Truth, etc), rather than those that more or less just observe (Spellbound, Mad Hot Ballroom, Wordplay, to name a few semi-recent ones), doesn’t an evaluation of that film need to consider the persuasiveness or soundness of that argument?

As I alluded before, I cringe at the way we so often misinterpret popular opinion as fact, because it takes us right to the core of the Stephen Colbert term “truthiness” (things we know “from the gut,” often despite evidence to the contrary). But can an argumentative documentary “succeed” if its arguments are unsound? For example: I haven’t seen that straight-to-DVD documentary that argues that 9/11 was an inside job, but the whole concept is laughable. (I mean, really: Our government, eager to go to war, decided to attack itself during daylight hours? Give me break!) Can a documentary like that succeed as art if it’s filled with ideological gibberish?

If the answer is no, that would support your idea that documentaries are “lazy cinema,” because certainly we agree that the list is long of dramatic films that are mindless, absurd or simply boring that stimulate anyway because of their visual splendor. But on the flipside of that argument there’s a documentary like King Of Kong, about a modest dad’s quest to set the points record in Donkey Kong. As documentaries go, King Of Kong is as void of artistic flourish as one could imagine. From a cinematic standpoint or even a journalistic standpoint I’d find it difficult to argue that it’s one of the 10 best documentaries I’ve seen in even the past decade. But having said that I’d be hard pressed to name 10 films (fiction or non) from the past 10 years that I’ve enjoyed more. I mean that. And yet when the film garnered praise but failed to find a mainstream audience, what did distributor (New Line) do? It signed up director Seth Gordon to adapt the documentary as a narrative feature. What the fuck!? Why? The story succeeds on its own. Efforts to enhance the story via aesthetic flourishes would only expose the emptiness of aesthetics.


Fox: To Morris first: I haven't seen his recent Standard Operating Procedure, but what I've always appreciated about him (vs. a Michael Moore, a Peter Davis, or a Eugene Jarecki) is that I feel he has a genuine respect for his subject, even though he presumptively strongly disagrees with what they represent. This is most apparent to me in Mr. Death, where Morris almost turns a Holocaust denier into a sympathetic character without sympathizing with his views. Same for The Fog of War. Morris could have given McNamara the "gotcha" treatment. Instead Morris lets him speak. Of course, there is much more of the "political" attached to The Fog of War because it is ultimately Morris trying to uncover hidden truths about the decisions that led us into and kept us in the Vietnam War. With Mr. Death, it feels more like a character study and, maybe on greater reflection, an examination of the cost of free thought and free speech (albeit, in a very extreme and controversial manner) in a free world.

So, I would say the difference between The Fog of War and Bowling For Columbine is that Morris has a respect for his subjects while, to me, Moore despises them and is unwilling to grant them an ounce of slack. I know there are those that would say, "Well, fuck them! Those people don't deserve to be given any slack! K-Mart had it coming! Heston had it coming!" I don't subscribe to that. One, I think it's a narrow-minded reaction to a narrow-mined accusation by Moore, and, two, I think it’s an example that two wrongs don't make a right.

Now, I'm glad you brought up King of Kong. I caught moments of it one night while my wife was watching it and instantly got wrapped up in the drama. Afterwards, her reaction – and the reaction of many of my friends – was similar to yours: ecstatic, tear-inducing, joyous. I'm not questioning the honesty of those emotions. What I'm skeptical of is the way in which the director (through editing) was able to take footage of real life and create a type of Hollywood story arc out of it, thus manipulating emotions as if we were watching a fictional narrative like The Karate Kid. Now, the events in Kong are true, but what about the gravity and emotional pull of those events? Would you have felt as sympathetic towards Steve Wiebe and as bitter towards Billy Mitchell if director Seth Gordon hadn’t framed the two men to come off that way? Not to mention, all of this is crammed into 79 minutes! And here is where we really get at the heart of my problem with documentaries. Ethically, I have a major problem with taking real-life footage and making popcorn entertainment out of it. Is Billy Mitchell really a cocky S.O.B.? Maybe... probably... who knows? Regardless, he will now go down as a bad guy in the eyes of people who watch this film. I think that's unfair, and I think it is a major negative of documentaries.

Take Tarnation, a movie I might hate more than any other that's come out in the 00s. Director/camera whore/exhibitionist (forgive me, my hate is coming out!) Jonathan Caouette practically crucifies his grandfather and grandmother on film for the rest of history to judge. The deal is done. They did not get chance to defend themselves because they were so old and senile that they weren't even aware what Caouette was doing. He set up flesh-and-blood grandparents like sitting ducks and attacked them with a camera. Further, Tarnation is 100 minutes long. It's supposed to be about the entirety of Caouette's life, merging old video footage he recorded as a child in Houston up with footage he took of himself as an adult living in New York. So, basically, we have a life compressed into 100 minutes. A life that many critics and fans fawned over and adored and felt sympathy for... in 100 minutes! This drives me nuts.

And to bring that around to the beginning of this entry you might say, "Well, Morris evoked sympathy for Fred Leucther by editing and twisting time?" Yep, and that's why I think documentaries are inherently flawed, and it's why I think fictional narrative filmmaking will always be superior because it automatically excludes itself from distorting reality for the sake of entertaining an audience (and to the detriment of it's subjects). I might think Morris’ film is a more respectable method of distortion, but it's still distortion.


JB: Those are interesting arguments. To put it in a nutshell, you think that since the majority of documentaries can’t completely and accurately portray truth (the truth of their subject matter; the ‘whole story’), and since many documentaries don’t even strive for such depth, that dramatic films are in essence more honest because they aren’t striving for truth in the first place. Is that about right? From that standpoint, I see the “inherent flaw.” But this goes back to the idea that documentaries must achieve perfect truth to be truthful. I don’t think they do. Think of it this way: Beethoven is going to sound different whether it’s played by your local symphony orchestra or mine. But it’s still Beethoven. Whether abridged or imperfect, it has the same core truth.

To go back to King Of Kong, does it have an entertainment agenda? Absolutely. But so what? (Billy Mitchell claims he’s unfairly represented, but watching the film it’s pretty clear that Mitchell hangs himself, even if it was Gordon who tied the noose.) Meanwhile, though I agree that Morris’ films feel as if he approaches his subjects with sympathy and an open mind, we can’t be sure. Perhaps he is just as manipulative and merely better at hiding it.

In the end, no documentary or other form of journalism can cover every facet of any complex subject. But I don’t think that means these stories are inaccurate or even incomplete. Imperfect, sure – despite best intentions, in many cases. But these “nonfiction” stories can still deliver the underlying truth, which is what we’re after. I feel like all we should expect from a documentary filmmaker is an honest effort. Then it’s on the audience to be just as open in our approach.

On that last point, something that gets under my skin is when opponents of a documentary’s ideals dismiss it as “propaganda.” Depending on the definition you choose, just about any film is propaganda (information distributed to advance an idea). The dangerous kind of propaganda is deliberate misinformation. There’s a huge chasm between the two. But when someone hears, “That’s propaganda!” they imagine the second, worst definition. Yet the reality is that most of us swallow whole the propaganda that supports our ideals, whether it comes from advertisers or politicians or movies. We don’t even think about it. We just accept because we agree. It has “truthiness.” Sure, it might have more than that. But often our critical filter takes a backseat to our emotions.

As a lover of journalism, who thinks that good, researched journalism is becoming ever more difficult to find (what with the slow death of newspapers and the deterioration of television news due to the demands of the 24/7 news cycle, etc), I’ve been thrilled by the recent documentary boom, made possible by cheaper equipment, the growth of documentary-friendly theaters and the ever widening of alternate distribution platforms (DVD, YouTube, etc). Once a year, I watch Ken Burns’ terrific Civil War, and I appreciate that kind of long-form documentary filmmaking. I don’t want to see that disappear. But No End In Sight – a film that covers recent and still evolving history – includes the kind of reportage that only PBS’ Frontline tends to provide. Some have criticized such films by saying that they feel like something you’d see on 60 Minutes. True, to a point. And false, as well. It gives 60 Minutes too much credit.

I think the core difference between the two of us in how we approach to documentaries is that I’m thrilled by more, smaller and different, while you seem to see the documentary boom as filled with fluff that gets away from bigger, deeper and more profound documentaries of the past. I’m excited by the documentary boom while you are filled with reservations. Is that fair?

We could easily ramble on this subject for days. So let me try and bring toward some sort of close by asking you this question: We’ve talked a lot about the documentaries you don’t admire. What are the documentaries that best fulfill your idea of what a documentary should be? As a fan of cinema, which films typify the strengths of the documentary genre?


Fox: That brings us back to my comment that documentaries are inherently flawed cinema. If we agree that film is a visual art form, then a film’s primary concern should be the image, whether the film is The House Bunny or The Conformist. But I can’t think of many documentaries that strive for that. To me, the primary focus of a documentary is the information, the statistics, the reporting, etc. Sure, documentaries can be visually breath-taking and can use imagery to enhance the meaning of the information and give it further power. But I think that imagery is a secondary concern of documentarians, whereas in the narrative film the director, production designer, cinematographer, actors, etc., all collaborate to create controlled, thought-out visuals. Also, a documentary is made by significantly whittling away at the shot footage (perhaps 400 hours for a 90-minute film), whereas a fictional film is built up from nothing, using only the pieces it needs (with some editing room exceptions, of course). Artistically, I think these approaches are miles apart, and I prefer the one that is more concerned with image – the foundation of what is truly cinema.

So when I think of documentaries I admire, the first films I think of are musical performances. (Do those count? Musical docs feel more like recorded performances than traditional docs.) There are exceptions, but the ones that mean the most to me are ones where the director achieves a loving recording of the musician by getting out of the way and letting the camera set-ups say everything. With that lead-in, Stop Making Sense and Neil Young: Heart of Gold are two of my favorite nonfiction films – both by Jonathan Demme. I love that guy. I would also like to mention two nonfiction films by Werner Herzog: Lessons of Darkness and The Wild Blue Yonder. Though, I don't consider these traditional docs either since they make fiction out of real-life footage.

Other more traditional favorite documentaries would include: The Outsider (Nick Jarecki); My Country, My Country (Laura Poitras); Hearts Of Darkness (George Hickenlooper); Gunner Palace (Michael Tucker); Inside Deep Throat (Fenton Bailey); Not Quite Hollywood (Mark Hartley); Night & Fog (Alain Resnais). How about you?

JB: I’ve admired several documentaries in recent years: No End In Sight and Taxi To The Dark Side, for exploring stories that our traditional media has been too timid to handle with such straightforwardness. I’ve enjoyed examinations of the quirky, like the aforementioned Wordplay and King Of Kong. I’m still haunted by Capturing The Friedmans. I think Murderball is one of the best films of the past five years not because of the characters most people remember (the gladiators in wheelchairs) but because of the one most forget (the recent quadriplegic coming to grips with his new reality). Stringing it back a ways: I’ve seen When We Were Kings at least a dozen times, and I never tire of it. Like you, I admire Hearts Of Darkness, which I find more fascinating than the film it chronicles (Apocalypse Now). And though it can’t be watched in one sitting, I love how the split-screen approach to Woodstock evokes the event and the era it covers. These are off the top of my head, and I’ve already thought of glaring omissions. But I’ll settle it there.

I respect the observation that documentaries have typically been fact-based and have evolved beyond that in recent years, sometimes for the worse. I cringe at the thought of documentaries resembling “reality TV,” complete with professional writers. Yet at the same time I am excited by the knowledge that documentaries are gaining access to audiences and thus are increasing in number. I’d like to think that the marketplace will force a balance, but I’m aware that the “reality TV” movement demonstrates that honesty, integrity and truth are often obstacles to commercial success. Where the documentary genre will go next, we’ll have to wait and see. But clearly it’s going there with a full head of steam. In a year in which smallish documentaries like Man On Wire, Standard Operating Procedure and Roman Polanski: Wanted & Desired have been endlessly more fascinating than bigger-budget busts like Indiana Jones & The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, The Happening and Appaloosa, I’m happy about that.

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Special thanks to Fox for taking part in this exchange. Comments for either of us are welcome below. If you haven’t yet, do yourself a favor and add Tractor Facts to your list of daily blog visits. You won’t be disappointed.

Bad Movies: To Quit, or Not to Quit?

“How long should you sit through a bad movie?” That’s the way Friend of The Cooler Mark titled his e-mail last weekend when he forwarded a link to Roger Ebert’s blog post called “Don’t read me first!” In the post, Ebert defends his review of Tru Loved, a small independent film he’d blasted in a 735-word review despite watching less than 9 minutes of the movie. That Ebert admitted as much in the original review was the basis for his defense of his 1-star review. That Ebert was literally less than upfront about his early exit (he didn’t reveal prematurely quitting the movie until the last full paragraph) is what drew criticism – first from an editor at the Chicago Sun-Times, and then from his blog readership, which has logged in with more than 500 comments on the issue.

As Mark predicted, I’d already seen Ebert’s blog piece (and thus also Ebert’s original review of Tru Loved). However, I hadn’t seen Ebert’s entry in the light in which it was now forwarded to my attention. Until then, I was caught up on the journalistic ethics of it all: Was Ebert’s review fair? (Sort of, I had decided. Ebert had been honest, if not perfectly explicit, in noting the amount of the film he viewed. And I suspect his written reactions to those 8 minutes were nothing short of sincere. But Ebert hadn’t practiced good journalism. His reaction to Tru Loved produced a story but not the story. Like all too many active journalists, Ebert had opted for sensationalism over good old-fashioned reportage.) This pondering of Ebert’s critical approach was absolutely appropriate. All the while, though, a more basic and yet equally worthy debate was right in front of me, and I was blind to it. Indeed: how long should you sit through a bad movie?

It’s a question that’s relevant on two levels: (1) as it applies to the critic (professional or unpaid), and (2) as it applies to the average moviegoer just out for a good time. For the critic, tradition and general respect would suggest sitting through the entire picture. But is it absolutely essential to see every minute of a film in order to pass judgment on it? In response to condemnation from his blog readership, Ebert reversed course and gave Tru Loved a full viewing. That inspired a longer (1,808 words), more detailed review that’s barely more praiseworthy than the first one. As a report for consumers trying to determine whether to see all or none of Tru Loved, Ebert’s second review is more valuable. But as a criticism of art, does the second review have any greater value than the first? Given that in his original review Ebert revealed the portion of the movie he was evaluating, I would say no – the same way that an appreciation or condemnation of a specific scene in a film is no less relevant than a critique of the entire body of the film.

But what about the average moviegoer? Does he or she owe a film a complete viewing? I would struggle to argue yes, because it’s the consumer’s time and money being invested. When I go to an art museum, I’m far more likely to spend time lingering in front of paintings than in front of sculptures, as I simply prefer one medium to the other. If I’m free to speed through the sculptures, or bypass them altogether, why shouldn’t a moviegoer be able to bail early on a film that’s failing to entertain or inspire? Then again, a movie is designed to be appreciated in its entirety. If you’ve only seen half of a movie, have you really seen it?

Ever since I started writing about movies (on and off) more than 10 years ago, I have made it a policy never to walk out of a theatrical screening. I’ve broken the rule twice, most recently with Friend of The Cooler Hokahey at Rules Of Attraction. In both cases the early exits had as much to do with wanting to make better use of precious time with a friend as it did with my dissatisfaction with the film itself. When I really think about it, I could probably stand to walk out early on a few films each year. But, like quitting midway through a workout, there’s a real danger that it becomes an awful habit. In what so far has been a disappointing year at the movies, I would have been more than happy to quit on as many as 10 films. But I stuck with them, and I’m glad I did. (At least, I think I’m glad.) In many cases – Appaloosa, most recently – I saw a film’s greatest moments only because I was willing to keep my butt in the seat. Such late windfalls rarely redeem an entire movie, but sometimes they do. And, in the meantime, they remind me of why I showed up at the cinema in the first place.

For all movie lovers, I think, movie-going is like an endless cycle of blind dates. Each time we show up at the theater hoping that this is The One – the movie that will sweep us off our feet like none has before. Odds are that it won’t happen. But we keep coming back, living for the possibility and enjoying those precious yet fleeting moments of magic in between. Many a love story – in real life and on screen – would never come to fruition if we stuck to first impressions. Some romances take time. Sometimes our initial instincts are all wrong.

But now I ask you, Cooler readers: When is the last time you quit on a movie? Do you regret it? If not, how would you react if a friend told you that he/she quit early on a movie near and dear to your heart? Would you feel the movie had been given an adequate chance?

Holy War: Religulous

And on the eighth day, God said: “Pull my finger.” That isn’t a joke from Bill Maher’s Religulous, but it might as well be. Helmed by Larry Charles, the director of Borat, and starring Maher, Religulous is a documentary in the Michael Moore style in which religion is in the crosshairs and condescending jokes are the ammunition. Maher, standing front and center, takes us on an offbeat tour of several major religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Mormonism, etc), a few minor ones (a marijuana-using sect in Amsterdam) and those in between (Scientology). Maher interviews people at the Vatican, near the ruins of Megiddo, at a religious theme park in Florida and at other places across the globe. No matter which religion is being discussed or who it’s being discussed with, the conversation remains the same. Though Maher’s explicit arguments change on a case by case basis, the implicit theme goes something like this: “If you believe that, I’ve got some land near Chernobyl to sell you.”

The point of Religulous, Maher says, is to create a case for doubt. Maher notes, seemingly sincerely, that he just doesn’t know whether any of the world’s religions have it right or if there is a God at all. Thus he doesn’t subscribe to any religion, but he is careful to point out that he isn’t an atheist. To absolutely not believe in God would, in Maher’s view, cause him to commit the very sin of certainty that confounds him about believers. The trouble is, for a guy turned off by a made-up mind, Maher is so devout in his doubt that it might actually take a talking snake or a few days living inside the belly of a fish for him to see the light. After all, this is a man who calls religion “detrimental to the progress of humanity.” You’d have an easier time building an ark than finding doubt in that statement.

But if you think Maher’s imperfections as a listener render Religulous unworthy of your attention, think again. Maher himself doesn’t always play fair (his ideological battles in this film often pit him, a heavyweight debater, against novice lightweights), but as a whole his documentary gives voice to a shockingly silent though significant minority. According to a statistic cited by Maher, 16 percent of Americans are admitted non-believers. But while Bill O’Reilly throws regular fits about a mounting “attack on Christianity” taking place in the U.S., the fact remains that remarks disparaging any religion other than Islamic extremism are considered taboo. That’s unfortunate. If you believe that society is improved by a free market of ideas, Maher’s anti-God bullhorning isn’t just acceptable, it’s long overdue.

Of course, Religulous won’t be embraced by everyone. Many will be offended, by Maher’s smugness if nothing else. But is Religulous truly offensive? If you find yourself leaning toward yes, you might ask yourself why. All Maher does with this film is repeatedly call attention to the curiosities, let’s call them, of many religious faiths. Shouldn’t something as significant as a belief in God be able to stand up to such cross-examination? Why is it that something so profound all too often goes unchallenged? There are a few instances in Religulous when people walk out on Maher rather than stand up to his questioning. “I didn’t know you were making that kind of film,” they say. Translation: “I’m here to agree with you, but don’t you dare raise doubts.” Seems to me that though we tell ourselves we don’t discuss religion in public because faith is a private matter, perhaps the real reason we avoid the subject is because it keeps us from being asked questions for which we don’t have answers.

In case it matters, full disclosure: From as early as I can remember until I left home for college, I went to church every Sunday. I even went to a Catholic high school, though that was more for the benefits of a private school education than any desire (parental or personal) for religious influence. Looking back over my life, I can think of numerous positive encounters with representatives of the Church and not a single negative one. But I am no longer a practicing Catholic. The sticking point, if there was just one, came down to the Church’s cowardly, just-barely-tolerant treatment of homosexuals (revealed through a number of equal-rights measures going through my home state of Oregon in the early 90s). I failed to see how the Catholic Church’s stance was remotely in line with the spirit of Jesus Christ’s teachings, and that quashed any desire for affiliation. As of today, I haven’t altogether eliminated the idea of God, but I can’t say I believe in Him. I love the idea of an afterlife, but I’ve seen no evidence of one firsthand, and so I don’t believe in that either. I hope I’m wrong on both counts.

In the meantime, yes, I find it either arrogant or naïve to think that any of us has a clue who God is or what His intentions are. Maher doesn’t need to sell doubt to me. I already have it. On that note, if Religulous is meant to be a vehicle to spark a non-belief movement, I’m not sure it succeeds. The movie is peppered with observations that should give any thinking believer a pause, but these erudite points are lost amidst others that are flimsy and sophomoric. Time and again, Maher genuflects to comedy before honest conversation, and in doing so he is likely to repulse the very people he hopes to convert. In Maher’s ideal scenario, the gag-filled antics of Religulous make it the meat surrounding the bitter pill that is Maher’s truth. But, more likely, the dog in this scenario is Maher. He spends so much of Religulous wearing a grin of self-congratulations that he might as well be licking himself.

To be fair: America probably isn’t ready for the PowerPoint lecture in favor of doubt, ala Al Gore’s global warming wake-up call An Inconvenient Truth. Perhaps this was the only approach available to Maher if he hoped to reach a mainstream audience. But by that design, Religulous isn’t as funny as it should be or even all that bold. There are a few terrific gags (a Brokeback Mountain music cue, for one), but most of them are cheap or predictable. As it turns out, Maher’s smartest joke, borrowed from an old stand-up routine, doubles as his most cogent argument for doubt: First he lists some of the beliefs of Scientology, and then, after those get a laugh, he compares them to some of the beliefs of Christianity. The point? Most religions seem so wacky to outsiders that it’s hard to believe insiders have taken an honest look at themselves. It’s a gotcha moment for the audience, and it’s hard to avoid the trap.

At my Catholic high school I came in contact with various religious figures who encouraged me to challenge my faith. I doubt that most are so fortunate. Religulous attempts to take the fight to those who think their religion is above scrutiny. Believers shouldn’t ignore Maher or dismiss him as a bigot. They should welcome the challenge. Because if you have true faith, what is there to fear? Regardless, so as long as “In God We Trust” is printed on our currency and Presidents take their oath on the Bible and school kids pledge allegiance to the flag “under God” (terminology added in the 1950s, remember), religion doesn’t get a free pass. My personal wish would be for all those who rushed to see The Passion to put forth equal effort to see Religulous. It’s only fair. Besides, in the end Maher and Believers share a fundamental view: If Christianity or Judaism or Islam or any of the world’s religions are accurately advancing The Word of The God, well, it’s nothing short of a miracle.

Simply Bloated: Tropic Thunder

[The Cooler is pleased to provide this guest review from Hokahey, who offers a notable perspective.]

by Hokahey

The much-anticipated blockbuster comedy by and with Ben Stiller, Tropic Thunder, a parody of big Hollywood productions itself, comes with controversy. First of all, Robert Downey Jr plays Kirk Lazarus, a talented white Australian actor – his belligerence patterned after Russell Crowe, his deeply-invested method acting patterned after Daniel Day-Lewis – who undergoes a pigmentation change to totally immerse himself in the role of Sergeant Osiris, an African-American soldier in Vietnam. Second, Ben Stiller plays Tugg Speedman, a down-on-his-fortune action film star who made his bid for a Best Actor Oscar nomination by taking on the risky role of a mentally retarded man who communicates with farm animals in Simple Jack, an obvious parody of Forrest Gump.

In the same way Tropic Thunder begins with wonderful parodies of movie theater commercials and previews, (the one with Downey Jr and Tobey Maguire – Satan’s Alley – is so artfully believable that it’s stunning more than hilarious), we are treated to clips from Simple Jack. In one scene his mother dies, just like in Forrest Gump, and Jack mourns in exaggeratedly Gumpish manner. Later in the film, Speedman and Lazarus discuss the role in a dialogue employing the word “retard” countless times, and Lazarus explains how Speedman didn’t win the Oscar because he was too completely retarded in his portrayal. More than being funny, this is a pointed commentary on how the Academy selects its winning performers, and Lazarus, in the character of Osiris, realistically employs the word “retard” as part of the idiom his character realistically would use.

Not being African-American, it’s irrelevant whether or not I found Downey Jr’s performance offensive, but I will tell you that I found his performance the most enjoyable part of the film. His performance was something real to hold onto – as it explores issues of racial identity (African-American Alpa Chino chides Lazarus for putting on a cornpone black dialect), lampoons method acting and reveals Lazarus’s identity crisis, which stems from the confusion of always playing someone else. When he tears off his black wig, showing his shock of blond hair in humorous contrast with his black skin (is the treatment permanent?), his shift to Aussie accent and true identity is the film’s funniest, truest, most touching moment.

Being the father of a daughter with Down syndrome, however, I can tell you from experience that Stiller’s way over-the-top portrayal of Simple Jack – and how the drug outlaws just love his performance – is so buried under the ridiculous scenarios stuffed into this film that these scenes and the use of the word “retard” had no effect on me whatsoever.

I remember being more offended by the Farrelly brothers’ portrayal of mentally retarded kids playing sports in There’s Something About Mary (1999). (Uh, interestingly, the film stars Stiller.) I found things to laugh at in the film – especially the dead dog routine – but I found its portrayal of the mentally retarded children to be cruel and it hurt me. My daughter, who has earned many medals participating in Special Olympics track and field, bowling, ice skating and, notably, swimming, displays a bravery, zeal and dogged persistence that overshadows the gimpy clumsiness and belligerent stubbornness presented by the Farrelly brothers. Admittedly, those latter traits are characteristics my daughter is apt to display – but that exaggerated approximation of reality, unmitigated by an approximation of qualities on the more positive side, hit home painfully.

Of course, There’s Something About Mary is not reality. It’s a comedy, and comedies are known for their hyperbole. Way back when, I saw The Thrill of It All with James Garner and Doris Day (yes, that’s way back), and I laughed with everyone else when Garner drives the car into the pool and angrily kicks in the displays of soap his wife has been advertising; then a rainstorm churns up the water and creates mountains of suds that sanitation workers dig into like miners. But I remember thinking, “That’s impossible. That’s ridiculous.”

Nowadays, the ridiculous elements are pushed to the limit. In keeping with the trend, Tropic Thunder is brash and bloated – too bloated for its own good – and it is all hyperbole from its lampooning of violent Vietnam War films and its allusions to Apocalypse Now and Platoon at the beginning of the film to Tom Cruise’s interesting but see-through portrayal of, sorry for the repetition, brash and bloated Hollywood producer Les Grossman.

Yes, there is cleverness here – the premise involving actors playing Hollywood actors who have been thrown into a perilous situation but still go on acting, convinced they are in the midst of a Hollywood fabrication. Anyone who loves films would love that premise. What commentary! But the cleverness, as well as anything that might be construed as offensive in isolation, is smothered under the bloat and the very Stillerian elements of the ludicrous: the dumb thing about the panda bear and all the adopted kids jokes, including the cute little kid stabbing Speedman’s neck as he runs from the outlaws. And many of the bits of parody – like running slow-mo over the bridge just ahead of multiple explosions or the gratuitous sprays of blood from head shots or the jerking body riddled with bullets – seem wasted: we’ve seen sequences like this so many times before and we already know they’re ridiculous.

And that’s the thing – the film is so outrageously overblown (yeah, okay, like the Hollywood blockbusters such as Apocalypse Now that it satirizes) – so offensive to a strained extent (Jack Black as the farting, drug-addicted actor, Jeff Portnoy, describing how he will stroke the shaft and swallow the juice or some such crudity when he offers to perform oral sex so that he can be released from forced detox), that it’s hard to be offended by any offensive reference in a film that is, ultimately, such a loud, disjointed, offensive production as to be readily forgettable.

Much of the film feels tired and strained. I laughed out loud – mostly at comments coming from Downey Jr. More often, the jokes fell flat, and I walked out of the film not remembering precisely what I had laughed at. It’s not the kind of funny movie you come out of – like Superbad – when you say, “Yeah, that was funny – remember the part when…” In addition, I didn’t come out of the film feeling offended by and depressed about people making light of something as serious as mental retardation – and I know how serious it is. I came out thinking, “What an overblown, unfunny display of Stillerian self-indulgence.”

Dubya & The Dark Knight

According to a recent poll by American Research Group, a mere 21 percent of Americans approve of George W Bush’s performance as president. Meanwhile, over at RottenTomatoes.com, 93 percent of participating readers approve of The Dark Knight. Go figure. If you think those numbers have nothing to do with one another, think again. Though the latest Batman flick, written by Christopher and Jonathan Nolan, can’t be blamed for some of the catastrophes that have soured Bush’s favorability – a capsized economy; a troop-mauling, money-sucking, never-ending war; lies, damn lies and violations of the Geneva Conventions, etc. – The Dark Knight is likely to go down as the most pro-Bush-policy blockbuster to ever come out of Hollywood. Working together, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Roger Ailes would struggle to come up with anything so slyly propagandizing.

So be it. There have been a handful of implicitly (and explicitly) anti-Bush movies in recent years – though fewer of them than O’Reilly & Co like to suggest – and there are surely more to come. Yet the case of The Dark Knight is especially interesting on a few levels: 1) because this box-office-hungry summer blockbuster is pro-Bush at a time when most of the country isn’t; 2) because you wouldn’t expect a comic book flick to be so allegorical; 3) because if my experience is any indication, an anti-Bush moviegoer can be perfectly aware of all the Bushian ideology and not feel dirty walking out of the theater.

Then again, talk to me in a month, by which time Bush will have requested that his secret service codename be changed to “Caped Crusader.” At that point I might feel differently. Thing of it is though, that nickname wouldn’t be far off in terms of an allusion to The Dark Knight, and certainly it would be more appropriate than Bush’s other favorite heroic self-comparison to Abraham Lincoln. Why?

Before we get to the ways The Dark Knight equates Batman to Bush, we must first note the film’s many parallels to the events of Bush’s presidency – though they aren’t always flattering.

(Nothing but spoilers ahead.)

The Dark Knight: The Joker strikes Gotham City with boldness previously unseen. Batman, still focused on the old enemy power structure, decides that the Joker “can wait” and goes after other criminals.

Real World: Osama bin Laden orchestrates the 9/11 attacks. The U.S. invades Afghanistan but then quickly turns attention to Iraq, where the familiar Saddam Hussein remains the itch they haven’t been able to scratch.

**

TDK: Batman succeeds in landing his lesser targets, but he underestimates the influence and reach of Public Enemy No. 1. He believes he can get to the Joker by determining his motivation. Alfred notes that the Joker might not have motivation beyond wanting to “watch the world burn.” Batman soon finds himself in a war with an enemy he doesn’t understand.

RW: The U.S. lands Hussein but underestimates what it will take to bring stability to the Middle East, which is overrun by chaos, terrorism and religious fanaticism. The intended carrot of Western-style democracy and “freedom” prove ineffective. The U.S. finds itself in a war with an enemy it doesn’t understand and can’t influence without brute force.

**

TDK: Batman is hamstrung by his ethics. Threatening a mob leader he is told that no one will cross the Joker because the Joker has no rules.

RW: Attempts to infuse the Middle East with Western-style democracy are complicated by the ruthlessness and unpredictability of Islamic terrorism in the region. Chaos reigns supreme.

**

TDK: Batman compromises his supposed ethics when the mood strikes him. He “questions” the Joker in an interrogation cell by using his fists and slamming the Joker onto a table and into a window. To get another criminal to give up the Joker, Batman drops the mobster to the concrete from several stories up.

RW: America compromises its supposed ethics by resorting to torture, calling its treatment of prisoners permissible in wartime (among other justifications).

**

TDK: Using similar anything-goes logic, Batman eavesdrops on all of Gotham’s cell phone calls in order to find his terrorist. When the terrorist is located and the surveillance device is no longer necessary, Batman allows for its destruction.

RW: The Bush administration implements warrant-free wiretapping of Americans, citing the need to protect its citizens from terrorism. The Bush administration more or less asks Americans to trust that their wiretapping will be used only for its intended purpose.

**

TDK: When the trickledown effect of terrorism claims the life of one of Gotham’s heroes in less than flattering circumstances, Batman decides that the public can’t handle the truth and fabricates a story of pure heroism.

RW: Pat Tillman, the most well-known soldier in the “War on Terror,” dies by friendly fire. The initial story released by the government claims that Tillman was killed by the enemy making a heroic charge.

**

How does that add up to a pro-Bush message?

1) Because when Batman is ready to pack it in as things turn ugly, Alfred encourages him that the heroic thing would be to stay the course. The following might as well be a conversation between Bush and Dick Cheney about Iraq.

Bruce Wayne/Batman: People are dying, Alfred. What would you have me do?

Alfred: Endure, Master Wayne. Take it. They’ll hate you for it, but that’s the point of Batman. He can be the outcast. He can make the choice that no one else can make. The righteous one.

2) Because after Batman elects to follow Alfred’s advice and be the bad guy in the court of public opinion for the good of Gotham City, Commissioner Gordon issues a Karl Rove-worthy explanation of Batman’s actions:

“He’s the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we’ll hunt him, because he can take it. Because he’s not a hero. He’s a silent guardian, a watchful protector, a dark knight.”

In other words, Gordon is saying, we’re lucky to have him around. Somewhere, Bush looks in a mirror, nods his head and smiles.