What did I do over my winter vacation?
As I described in my previous column, for reasons political, philosophical, and personal, I chose to spend the long, dark winter evenings around the holidays at the Sony Wayne Megaplex, seeing absolutely every big movie slated for year-end release. Armed with pretzel bites, a notebook, and one of those little reading lights, I took avid notes about what this year's crop tells us about media, culture, and the times we live in.
Here are some of my observations:
Titanic is an astonishing movie, an epic in the old Hollywood style but produced in a very modern way. The movie elevated special effects and computer animation, for the first time that I've seen, to an art form.
In a media context, it also seemed that one thing that makes the story so hypnotic is that there were no media present at the time to record the sinking of the ship, to second-guess company officials and government investigators, or to vividly record the death, body recovery, and burial of so many of the Titanic's passengers. Imagine the coverage that kind of tragedy would generate in the digital/cable age.
Because we didn't see it, or even see any pictures of it, we've been imagining the sinking of the Titanic for nearly a century. To see it brought so vividly to life is more riveting than a contemporary tragedy might be. I saw this movie twice, and both times I was struck by the rapt attention of the audience, who sat for three and a half hours mesmerized and obviously moved by the story.
Afterward, people could be overheard marveling at the techniques - how the ship was replicated - and trying to sort out precisely what was true from what wasn't.
If Titanic stretches the boundaries of our imagination, Tomorrow Never Dies is a nearly perfect symbol of how marketing can shrink it. This movie is more about tie-ins to fast food and other products than anything else. The original themes and institutions of the Bond series - communism, the Cold War, the British secret service - have changed so drastically that this has become a ghost series, dead but not pronounced. Whereas Titanic uses special effects to enhance a story, Tomorrow Never Dies uses explosions and special effects in place of a story. It's interesting to see the two back-to-back: one producer using technology to animate, another as a substitute for imagination.
Another interesting thing about Tomorrow Never Dies - in place of the old communists and other power-mad villains, the demon here is a Rupert Murdoch-style media mogul who seeks world domination not through military might but by satellite technology. The idea doesn't seem all that far-fetched. But the movie underscores, as did many others this year, how media are as likely to be the villains in a modern movie as commies once were.
Which brings us to Amistad. To me, the brilliance of Schindler's List, another Steven Spielberg film, was that the movie credited us with understanding that Nazis and the Holocaust were bad, and, instead of making that point yet again, it got us in touch with the atrocities and their time.
But Amistad is an effort in spreading cultural sensitivity, a politically correct movie, not a story trying to reach people on its own terms. Amistad insults our intelligence by presuming we don't know how awful an institution slavery really was, and thus need to be taught. To this end, poor Anthony Hopkins, made up as the senile son of John Adams, has to burble on endlessly about the natural inclination of humans to be free.
It's hard to imagine that the director who brought us Schindler's List, ET, and Jurassic Park would bring us a heavy-handed and soulless historical polemic that so simplifies the horrific origins of racism in America. It suggests how volatile a subject race really is when the world's most powerful director approaches a story like this as if it were radioactive.
I made a note watching this movie that in our schools and across our cultural spectrum - TV, Hollywood, publishing - we ought to be able to take a pledge. Those of us willing to swear that we understand that sexism, racism, and homophobia are wrong should be spared politically correct lectures in any form - from school lectures to politics to film. Yes, we understand hating other people and discriminating against them are bad. No, we will not practice it or tolerate those who do.
Those who don't get it - or who break the pledge - should be made to submit to Maoist-style reorientation, including lectures and clunky TV shows. They should be forced to go see movies like this until they cry "Uncle!" and accept that diversity and multiculturalism are good and overdue things.
Amistad reminds us that while the era of political correctness was perhaps both necessary and inevitable, it is noxious and as antithetical to creativity as it is to free speech. Anybody left in America who doesn't get it isn't going to learn it from a movie.
Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry is another in Allen's narrow, narcissistic, New York-centric, neurotic, misogynist, Jewish-obsessed filmmaking oeuvre. It is alternately hilarious, insightful, and sad.
Allen movies are always interesting because he is such an interesting filmmaker. But if you don't care about Woody Allen - an easily justifiable position given the much publicized shenanigans that characterize his personal life - this movie will get on your nerves. The most interesting thing about it is its forthrightness. Here, Allen says clearly that after six analysts and decades of navel-gazing, he is as good as he is going to get, and we can take it or leave it. The character's heartfelt declaration that he is no good at life, only at creating art, is poignant and wise. In our introspective therapy culture, it's important to know that there are some people simply beyond help.
Good Will Hunting is an appealing but simple-minded therapy movie as well. In this fairy tale, a brilliant but anti-social South Boston street rat, played by Matt Damon, is saved by Robin Williams, who seems doomed now to play one Holy Fool after another.
The plot and story line are absurd, even ludicrous, saved mostly by Damon's appealing acting persona. Therapy once used to be considered shameful in America. Now, we are constantly told, at least by Hollywood, that somewhere out there is a wise shrink ready to tearfully break through to you and save both you and your shrink in the process. All this in just a couple of sessions! Allen's message seems more honest.
Next, in Part III of the movie marathon, Wag the Dog's intelligence, Jackie Brown's benevolence, and Wings of the Dove's irrelevance.
Related links:
Part I of the Media Rant movie marathon
Mad City shows TV news people as true '90s villains
Catch freedom fever, go see Boogie Nights
Dogmatic Contact fails as a geek flick
Jon Katz loves to get email.
This article appeared originally in HotWired.
