Those who are interested in the Iranian election and protests should see this superb Iranian film that is one of the finest explorations of freedom, elections, democracy, and the rule of law I have ever watched on screen.
It begins with a surreal image as a solitary soldier patrolling an Iranian island coast sees a box dropped by parachute from a plane. Soon after, a boat arrives and a woman disembarks. She informs the soldier that she is there to collect as many votes as possible before 5 pm and he is to accompany her. They travel the island debating the legitimacy of the voting process and the ability of the law to ensure fair treatment. The woman is a stickler for the letter of the law, even when the result is difficult to justify. That is, until they get stopped by a broken red light and she must decide whether to stop at the deserted intersection, missing her boat and invalidating the votes she has collected, or break the law by running the light. The film, made by Canadian-Iranian Babak Payami works brilliantly as allegory and as quasi-documentary. We never learn the names of the characters; they are just “the soldier” and “the girl.” But they and their predicament are immediately involving and distinctive. Highly recommended for high school and college civics classes and for anyone who appreciates superb film-making.
Rated PG-13 for mature thematic content, some disturbing images, sensuality, language and brief teen drinking
Profanity:
Brief strong language (one f-word, a few other curse words)
Alcohol/ Drugs:
Teen gets drunk
Violence/ Scariness:
A theme of the movie is cancer and there are characters who are very ill with explicit and graphic images of treatment and symptoms, sad deaths
Diversity Issues:
None
Date Released to Theaters:
June 26, 2009
How far would you go to save your child’s life? How far should you go? Those are the questions posed — and largely ducked — in this film based on the best-selling book, My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult. The New York Times recently said that in Picoult’s books, which often focus on “terrible things” happening to children, “he assault on any individual family is typically mounted from angles multiple and unforeseen.”
The “terrible things” here are inspired by a real-life story. Sara (Cameron Diaz) and Brian (Jason Patric), learn that no one in their family matched their daughter well enough to be able to donate bone marrow or blood cells she needs for cancer treatment. So, they decided to have another baby, one specifically genetically tweaked to be able to provide her sister with healthy cells, starting with the blood from her umbilical cord. As she says, most children arrive by accident, but she was designed to be born for spare parts. At age 11, having spent her entire life being pricked and prodded and now being asked to give up a kidney, Anna (Abigail Breslin) hires a lawyer (Alec Baldwin) to sue for “medical emancipation,” to get permission to stop.
Solomon had to choose between two mothers who both claimed the same baby and he was not related to any of them. But Sara and Brian must choose between their daughters, and they are so desperate to save the one who is sick that they cannot admit to themselves the damage they are doing to the one who is well. The ones who are well — there is also a son who is so overlooked that he sneaks back into the house after being out all night only to find that no one noticed.
Director Nick Cassavetes (“The Notebook”) wisely changed the jarring ending in the novel and is very effective in conveying the matter-of-fact mastery of the details of the symptoms and treatments, a touch of authenticity that is in sharp contrast to the one-dimensionality of the characters. He overdoes the pop songs on the soundtrack, though, with so many montages it feels like a music video punctuated with brief scenes of family anguish. But Picolt insists on allotting tragedy to every character as though she is dealing cards. And she undermines the power of the story and its themes with a syrupy overlay that distorts the issues so that the result is more gooey than dramatic. Cinematographer Caleb Deschanel composes exquisite images. But they add to the sense the film does exactly what it says it does not do and ties everything up in a mode that is just too neat and convenient instead of engaging in a forthright and honest way with the issues and the characters. That just rings hollow and ultimately disrespectful to the conflicts it purports to portray.
Patric, who should be in more movies, is outstanding as Brian. The look in his eyes as he watches his daughter go on a special date is heart-wrenching. Diaz, in her first role as a mother, is fine in the quieter moments but never reaches the ferocity that is at the heart of the story. As the sick girl, Sofia Vassilieva is luminious and wise. But the best moments on screen come from Joan Cusack as the judge. Every tiny gesture and look is searingly authentic, a bracing dose of reality in the midst of the gooey saints all around her.
A well-intentioned but ham-handed exploration of U.S. immigration policies, this movie’s message is undermined by its cardboard characters and clunky script. Like “Babel” and “Crash” it is a multi-story exploration of one theme, but it is formulaic and uninvolving.
It starts off badly as one character says to Max Brogan, the immigration cop played by Harrison Ford, “must you always be the humanitarian?” And just in case we don’t get it immediately that the immigration defense lawyer played by Ashley Judd is close to sainthood when she is introduced on screen hugging a little African girl and worrying that if she is not placed soon she will lose her native language, Judd wears a necklace with a charm in the shape of Africa to make it clear where her loyalties are.
The movie unspools as though it had been laid out on a grid. On one side, we have the worthy immigrants who want to stay in the United States. On the other we have the evil or unfeeling bureaucrats who want to send them home. Brogan’s partner is a naturalized citizen from Iran (New Zealand’s Cliff Curtis, in one of the film’s best performances) whose father is about to become the last member of the family to be naturalized. The two Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers (with huge ICE letters on their jackets) conduct raids on sweatshops to round up illegal immigrants. But the soft-hearted “humanitarian” Brogan cannot help getting involved. When one beautiful young woman pleads with him to make sure her son is all right, he literally cannot sleep until he tracks down the boy and delivers him to his grandparents in Tijuana.
The movie’s points are hit with a sledgehammer and the dialogue is almost as overweighted. Each character is a symbol with only one presenting characteristic. Slimy: predatory judge who insists on sexual favors in exchange for a green card. Misguided: Korean kid about to be naturalized who thinks that he has to be in a gang to get along in America. Even more tragically misguided: long, awkward conversations and confrontations in impossible circumstances, like a murder accusation in the middle of a naturalization ceremony. This is a serious and often tragic issue but the sincerity of the film’s good intentions cannot make it successful as a movie or as advocacy.
This thriller about a multi-national bank with innumerable tentacles and immeasurable power has two problems and the worst is bad timing. It’s just a little bit more difficult these days to feel pleasurably shaken up while watching a story about a couple of brave souls from law enforcement fighting a big, bad, bank when recent developments have made it clear that not only are the banks less powerful than we thought, they are not even competent enough to stay in business much less plot total world domination.
If we can put reality aside for a moment, it begins as a fairly serviceable if standard thriller, some tough talk, a murder, a determined if overmatched international investigator (Clive Owen as Louis Salinger), and that all-powerful corporation that thwarts him through a combination of muscle and corruption. There are hints and echoes of a story worth exploring about the ability of large corporations to transcend and evade the rules of any jurisdiction. But it all descends into the same old bang-bang and director, in a couple of awkwardly inserted scenes reportedly added due to lukewarm responses to an earlier version. Director Tom Twyker seems much more interested in the architecture of the various world capitols the characters chase through than he is in having anything of much interest happen there.
There is a lot of urgent rushing around from city to city, always helpfully identified with official-looking titles in the corner of the screen. And there are a lot of meaningful glances with narrowed eyes as people try to convey urgency and threats and counter-threats. And then there is a big out of nowhere shoot-out in the Guggenheim Museum that goes on forever but apparently not long enough for law enforcement to stop the survivors from walking away from it before any police cars arrive.
It may be, as Thoreau said, that “most men lead lives of quiet desperation,” but in the movies, desperation is much more likely to be loud. “Revolutionary Road” is another movie about unhappiness, phoniness, and corrosive dysfunction behind the manicured lawns of suburbia story from Sam Mendes of American Beauty. This time, it is set just after WWII, based on the novel by Richard Yates. It is the story of Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) and April Wheeler (Kate Winslet), a couple who are devastated to find themselves unable to escape the stultification of conventional middle class lives and who respond by devastating each other.
There is a moment for each of us, when we begin to see outside everything we have known and start to think of something different for ourselves, confident that we can avoid the mistakes of our parents and their generation. And then there is another moment when we learn that it is not that easy. This notion of exceptionalism, whether at the personal or national level, is the question these characters must face.
And it is that issue that gives this film its power. Yes, it is beautifully observed detail, rich images, and brilliant, fearless performances and yes, it has a scathing portrayal of the foul rot beneath the superficial suburban prettiness, with only a madman who can tell the truth. But all of that has been done before and these stories themselves tend to risk an aura of smug, we’re-in-on-the-real-story superiority that is as artificial as the lives it is dissecting. What makes this story transcend its setting is the resonance it has with the notion of America’s own sense of its exceptionalism in the world and in history.
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