I’m not so sure how political it is but I recently watched The Band’s Visit (Bikur Ha-Tizmoret, 2007) by Eran Kolirin and felt that the interaction between the Israeli and Egyptian characters said a lot about the two countries with a long history of cultural affinities as well as political strife.
You thought Crash was subtle? Unless you’re referring to Cronenberg’s Crash, Haggis created one of the most terrible films ever to come out of Hollywood that continues to plague me with its memory each time I mention Crash 1996 as one of my favorite films. Matt Dillon saving Thandie Newton, ugh, what a joke, it’s the Hitler of movies.
A nice german film “The Edukators” will be somthing that you should like(subtitle reading, if that bothers you then i suppose not). It doesn’t push views on anyone but it is a very nice movie that is incased in general clash between polotics of youth and aged. I enjoyed it but some people i have talked to are skeptical about it. In any case check it out! :]
I agree with JP – Crash is a crashing bore, a work on racism in the U.S. by a man who seemingly “knows” it only via bad movies & tee-vee.
But re the sort of objectivity you’re praising, Halim, I wonder just how effective wishy-washy bet-hedging and journalistic-type “balance” really is, in fictional feature films. I can’t say that I’ve seen too many films of a political bent in which the writer/director didn’t tip their hand as to where they stood on the issue. Most often than not, actually, the mere choice to pursue the project, to nurture a project over years of development and the search for financing, and then distribution, will leave you sure how significant this film is for its makers.
Babel I thought substituted plot devices and fantasy for politics. I was shocked to think that the same Guillermo Arriaga who’d written so many great scripts had written that film (compare it e.g. to The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada). Note that in Arriaga’s movie-world, a shooting in the Middle East happens by wild chance, passively and without intention. This is a way to make a film in and about the Middle East, to depict violence, and yet to say nothing in the end about the reality on the ground. Sad to say, but Babel seemed to have been made solely with the Oscars in mind…
I much prefer Costa-Gavras’ Z, or Missing; or Michael Winterbottom’s work, which gets down to the people-level, the phenomena at the heart of the politics.
Haggis’ CRASH has all the subtlety of THE TOWERING INFERNO, without the penetrating social insight.
Crash is especially painful to anyone familiar with the old homily-mongering “ABC Afterschool Special”
Steve McQueen’s Hunger even-handedly p*d off republicans and loyalists, and was one of the best films of last year to boot.
“Haggis’ CRASH has all the subtlety of THE TOWERING INFERNO, without the penetrating social insight.” – Roscoe
Roscoe, you have officially qualified as the first nominee for best quote of the year!
I’ve chuckled for five minutes now
I thought it interesting that Milk arrived during the whole Prop. 8 fanfare. Could this be . . . Dismissed as coincidence? Maybe, maybe not. ONe thing is a certainty: You can’t shake the liberal bleeding heart of Hollywood. It will always be there, and will always be manifesting itself in numerous films. Crash is the most obvious, of course, and it gets picked on a lot, I think, because it’s so obvious. The whole “everyone is fighting their own battle” message that Crash was obviously trying to convey was rather trite.
Oh, and Dead Man Walking. Gawwwwd! Tim Robbins tried hard to give the appearance of objectivity in that one, to no avail.
John Sayles has made a number of good political films (along with some not-so-good ones)—Lone Star, Sunshine State, City of Hope, Men with Guns.
Lester, possibly. But I dont think it would have helped even if it had come out before the elections. The damn prop still passed…..
As for the question of politics. I think if its a question of how we judge the films merit, it shouldn’t be relevant. Some of the great Chinese silent era films were completely explicit in their political messages, going so far as to have actresses break the 4th wall and directly speak to the viewers. Early features such as Birth of a Nation were rather….unsubtle as well, though I dont think anyone would negate its cinematic importance.
of course if we are simply talking about a personal like for a specific film, thats a completely different matter….
I recently watched Neka cudna zemlja (a.k.a. The Bizarre Country) (Dragan Marinkovic, 1988). It’s a wonderful satire on government and politicians, and it hit home on so many levels. The film is Yugoslavian, but it felt like they were talking about the US on so many occasions (and I feel someone somewhere else would feel the same way.)
If you’re able to find this film, I suggest you watch it immediately.
i dont know that film, but it sounds interesting.
Halim Cillov
I really like ‘Litte Terrorist’ because it was one of the few films that manage to be political without pushing the director’s or screenwriter’s political agenda into the minds of the viewers and deliberately leave some questions for them to think for the answers themselves. Other recent movies that I thought managed to this subtly and effectively were ‘Babel,’ ‘Crash’ and ‘Half-Nelson.’ These were all incredibly political movies due to their philosophy and subject matter, though yet they all left many open ends to the viewers to figure out. I was wondering if anyone else can come up with recent movies like these?