Change Your Image
guldin
Reviews
Yadon ilaheyya (2002)
excellent black comedy from occupied Palestine
Divine Intervention is a film I'd highly recommend, especially for those interested in the Palestinian situation, Israel, the Middle East, and the sadness and absurdity of international relations in general.
Who could have imagined that from the extreme distress and anger the people in the occupied West Bank face day to day, a director would emerge who could see the humor in the humiliations of daily life? Yet, Elia Suleiman has done it. Both politically and cinematically, a first-rate job! (I say this as a Jewish person who has worked for Israeli-Palestinian peace. This film might not go down so well for die-hard Israel supporters, or, for that matter, for Islamic militants.)
The film consists of several dozen short sketches, done in the blackout style of improv comedy. That is, we see a short skit, from maybe one to five minutes long, and then the screen fades to black and the next sketch emerges.
These sketches focus on many different aspects of life in Palestine--most are absurd or funny in some way, tho some are rather bleak.
For example, the opening sketch shows us a white guy in a full Santa Claus suit being pursued by a band of Palestinian boys up a hill. The presents keep dropping out of his bag. Finally he is surrounded, his back up against the wall. He looks very worried. Black out. What does this mean? Is it a comment on the relationship of Palestinians to Western culture, to materialism, to Christianity, to the unfulfilled promises of modern prosperity? After all, Santa Claus is not indigenous to Palestine. And why is there no resolution? What happens afterward? Is he attacked? Is he questioned?
That's just one example of the thought provoking sketches this film consists of.
There is a series of sketches that take place at an Israeli checkpoint. We see Israeli soldiers being mean and arbitrary to the Palestinians trying to get through. We see the Palestinians using various clever ploys to get through. In one, a sexy Palestinian woman just walks right through the checkpoint, the Israeli soldiers too absorbed by her sexiness to stop her. In another sketch, a helium-filled balloon adorned with a picture of a smiling Yasser Arafat drifts over the checkpoint, and the Israeli soldiers are so puzzled by it that they forget their duties, letting the director/narrator go thru. By the way, the appearance of sexy Palestinian females in the film makes it a sure bet this movie was not made by Islamists.
I could go on, but you get the point. The film is sharp, funny, political, and non-dogmatic. Highly recommended.
Tanner '88 (1988)
A wise and funny commentary on American politics.
A long-time Altman fan, I rented the video of Tanner 88 just in time for the final days of the 2000 election. In fact, on election night, I was flipping back and forth between Altman's clever take on presidential politics and the "real" thing, and I can tell you, Tanner 88 was much better television.
The mini-series of 10 half-hour episodes is available on three VHS tapes.
It was excellent, overall. Especially good was the way it punctured so many of the hot-air balloons and pretensions of American politics, but clearly sympathized with the people who want to believe in it. We see a liberal Democratic candidate, Jack Tanner, played skillfully by Michael Murphy, go through a campaign from the New Hampshire primary to the end of the convention. Typical of the series, Tanner is on the one hand shallow and full of empty rhetoric, while also sincere, idealistic and sometimes inspiring. Tanner's campaign manager, a woman, is also extremely smart, more than a little cynical, but capable of being inspired by her candidate whose weaknesses she knows very well. The first half of the series, which takes place in New Hampshire, is extremely funny, especially in showing how the citizens there have become inured to the hoopla of the candidates and the media. Also outstanding in this series is the way the working press is portrayed as part of the life of the campaign--these are real people, not just role players. The last two episodes, at the convention, lack the bite of the first five or or six, and could be skipped without losing much.
Deterrence (1999)
So many details wrong it hurts; an achingly bad film.
This movie is not intrinsically terrible, tho it is pretty hokey. But for me, Deterrence was ruined by all of the details it got wrong about the president, the U.S. government, American foreign policy and nuclear issues. (I will confess that I work as an editor in Washington, D.C., on foreign policy stuff, so the wrong things really grated on me. Some were details, some were the "feel" of the subject.) It is basically a pretty low-budget, unimaginative movie. The premise of it--that a presidential party gets trapped in a snowbound diner in Colorado during a world crisis--feels very staged and a throwback to an earlier Hollywood era, like 15 souls trapped on a lifeboat together. That does save a lot of money on fancy sets, though--all the action takes place in that one little diner set, no fancy special effects. Just one example of both the phoniness and corniness: at the end of the film, the president of the U.S. has just ordered the nuclear bombing of Baghdad, killing millions of people. So he smiles at his national security adviser--a black woman who had strongly opposed the bombing-- and says something like, "Well, I guess the future is in your hands now." Nobody is shocked, nobody is pointing out that the president is by most standards on the s**t-list of history and humanity forever--and totally outside U.S. military doctrine and strategy. It's just like, "Well that was a tough day, but it's over now." I had the misfortune of seeing Deterrence on video with a friend who actually enjoyed it, so I couldn't just turn it off as I would have liked to. But he isn't a foreign policy type, so maybe that shows that if you don't know enough to recognize the errors and false notes, the movie can work as a story. It sure didn't for me.
The Heidi Chronicles (1995)
As phony as a three-dollar bill.
This movie was incredibly bad. It had a terrible ear for dialogue, and for the kinds of choices middle-class, feminist women have had to deal with over the decades. Why is it that so many writers get that period so wrong? I could not watch it through to the end.
Psych-Out (1968)
An abysmal, badly acted joke of a movie
Psych-Out is a truly bad movie. I have to admit, I could not tolderate it enough to watch it to the end --which is extraordinary for me. A remarkably "straight" perspective on the Haight-Ashbury hippie scene, with the expected moral condemnations. The only redeeming values that I can see are a) a slight campiness, and b) seeing the young Jack Nicholson with a ponytail.
If you want a taste of the '60s, try Easy Rider, King of Hearts, Between the Lines, or Antonioni's Blowup--not this miserable junk.