I finally caught up this morning with Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross’s The Road to Guantanmo (Roadside, 6.23). I realize that I’m expected to jump up and down like many critics did when this half-doc, half-recreated drama had its debut last February at the Berlin Film Festival, but I don’t quite feel it…sorry.
I never felt less than absorbed by Guantanamo. I respected and believed what I was seeing…but I didn’t feel all that heavily caught up in it for reasons I’ll soon explain.
Guantanamo is an anti-American political horror film. It’s a true story of three young British Muslims who made an ill-advised visit to Afghanistan after celebrating a wedding in neighboring Pakistan in October 2001. The upshot was that they were rounded up as suspected Al Queada collaborators and later flown to the U.S military base in Guantanamo, Cuba, and then detained for over two years.
I don’t mean to say that the film has an anti-American attitude — the facts about what happened to these guys are damning in and of themselves.
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It’s a sad portrait of what undoubtedly happened to many innocent Muslims unlucky enough to get caught up in America’s Mideast assault on all suspected 9/11 collaborators and/or supporters, in the weeks that followed the World Trade Center attacks.
The stories of Shafiq Rasul, Ruhel Ahmed and Asif Iqral (who recount their saga in talking-head footage while being portrayed in the dramatic sections by Rizwan Ahmed, Farhad Harun and Afran Usman) are shocking, pathetic, appalling. Their brutal treatment at the hands of American troops and various U.S. intelligence officers smells like stupidity, ignorance and racism every step of the way.
The heart of the film is the depiction of their abusive treatment at Guantanamo’s Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta. Geneva Convention be damned — America was enraged and hell-bent on vengeance after 9/11, and these poor guys caught the brunt of it.
But I have to say I felt a certain distance from their story, despite the repellent nature of their treatment and the deplorable behavior of their captors, because their decision to travel to Afghanistan in the first weeks after 9/11 was awfully reckless.
The real guys say to the camera that no one expected American troops to come thundering into Afghanistan so they were caught unawares…to which one can only say, “Come again?” The entire world knew that US forces were going to hit Afghanistan in a search for Osama bin Laden. Anyone watching CNN knew that Afghanistan was definitely not a smart place to be back then, especially if you were a Muslim from England.
Nonetheless, with all manner of military Armageddon being predicted to slam into Afghanistan by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and every other media guy in the U.S. and Britain, these three dudes decided to visit that beleagured country because it seemed like a good idea at the time.
A little perspective, if I may: Berlin women were raped by Russian soldiers. Those conquered by Roman troops in the ancient days were humiliated and slaughtered by God-knows-how-many-thousands? Innocent people have been getting victimized, bludgeoned and chewed up by wars for thousands of years. The conquering army marches in, looking to punish and subjugate (or interrogate), and those too weak or old or dumb to get out of their way catch hell.
So Lord knows it’s a horrid world when warriors pick up the sword, but only a careless person walks into a potentially lethal situation without fully considering the consequences.
I’m not saying that the “Tipton 3” (the victims were all from the British town of Tipton) were stupid, but they sure didn’t think things through.
In fact, given the worked-up state that Americans were known to be in after 9/11 and the virtual certainty that bombs would soon be falling upon Taliban forces and suspected Al Queada sympathizers in that region, why didn’t the Pakistani woman that the British-residing groom (a guy named Monir, who later disappeared) intended to marry come to England instead, so both parties would be out of the danger zone?
The first half-hour of Guantanamo, which quickly intros the trio and begins the renactment of their story, immediately pulls you in. Their initial visit, fleeing the bombs, seeing dead victims being buried…all of it feels authentic and then some.
The pace slows, naturally, after their capture by British troops in Afghanistan, their being handed over to the U.S. military and taken first to Kandahar Air Base (where the beatings and interrogations start) and then flown to Guantanamo in January 2002.
The poor guys are kept inside chain-linked cells that are always lit and resemble dog kennels. No sleep, constant inspections, berated and brutalized…all depicted with terrible realism.
They’re interrograted by careless intelligence officers who claim to have video footage of them attending an Osama bin Laden speech, which of course the three guys deny.
And they’re beaten up and shat upon in all kinds of grotesque ways. The most Orwellian torture they’re put through involves being tied up and forced to absorb super-loud heavy metal music with incessant strobe lights flashing.
Their innocence is eventually discovered in 2004 and they’re slowly, gradually freed. Winterbottom and Whitecross remind us, however, that 500 or so prisoners are still sweating it out in Guantanamo.
But my basic problem remains: I didn’t identify with the Tipton 3 because if I were Muslim, I certainly wouldn’t have travelled to the Middle East for a wedding in the immediate wake of 9/11. I mean, who would? Think about it.
Alpha Dog director Nick Cassevettes and producer/financier Sidney Kimmel wanted their film, a controversial, taken-from-real-life, River’s Edge-like drama about a pack of teens dealing with the death of one of their own, to be released wide, or at least wide-ish (1000 screens or thereabouts). New Line, however, wanted to platform it. So the guys have jumped ship and now Universal has agreed to distribute it in a wide-ish fashion in early 2007, or a bit more than a year after Cassevetes’ film played at Sundance ’06. Something about this explanation in Variety doesn’t ring entirely true. Methinks there’s more to it.
If you take the time to read this review of Milos Forman‘s Goya’s Ghost (Warner Bros., late ’06 — wide release early ’07) and particularly the description of the alleged Natalie Portman nude scene, it tells you straight away it’s a torture scene. (Portman’s character is put through major Spanish Inquisition suffering because she’s suspected of being Jewish.) Anyone who reads this through and then goes “whoa…a Natalie Portman nude scene!” (as some guys in the talkback section do) is effin’ diseased and needs professional help. Ghost also stars Javier Bardem, Stellan Skarsgaard (as Goya) and Randy Quaid.
(a) Cafe on Boulevard de Courcelles — Thursday, 6.1.06, 12:05 pm; (b) ditto; (c) Outdoor banner for La Rupture on front facade of Pathe Wepler in Place Clichy — Thursday, 6.1.06, 12:40 pm; (d) One gallon equals 3.8 liters means that the more expensive gas on the right is selling for 6.34 Euros per gallon…right? And the slightly less expesnive “super” is going for 5.92 Euros per gallon — Thursday, 6.1.06, 12:55 pm; (e) View from just outside the Champs Elysee screening room where I saw The Road to Guantanamo this morning; (f) Graffiti on bathroom door inside facilities at Parc de Monce — Thursday, 6.1.06, 11:20 am; (g) Lunchtime snoozers at Parc de Monce — Thursday, 6.1.06, 12:25 pm; (h) I’m pretty sure you can’t buy lemon-flavored Tic Tacs in the U.S.; (i) Indian restaurant on rue Ruisseau near internet cafe that I’ve never gotten around to eating at, despite high recommends from the locals; (j) A single futon on the floor with electricity that shuts down if you run the heater, the kitchen hot plate and the bathroom fan at the same time is what you get for a weekly $500 rent in Paris these days , and with no accessible wi-fi (which sucks).
In Focus interviewer Mike Russell asks, “Is Superman Returns the unofficial Superman III?” And SR screenwriter Michael Dougherty replies, “Okay, uhm, it’s funny…I think Bryan [ Singer] and Dan and I need to sit down and discuss this answer before we talk to too many other reporters. My personal belief — and I know Bryan has been quoted as saying differently — is that this is not Superman III. I don’t feel like it’s appropriate to discount Superman III and IV, because a lot of people put a lot of hard work into them, and even if you don’t like them or don’t think they’re up to a certain quality, they’re still Superman movies.” And then SR screenwriter Dan Harris says, “It√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s complicated. If this is a sequel to I and II, then everything in I and II happened. But if we√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢re picking and choosing what we want — which is what I think is what happened, using our memories of Superman: The Movie to build our back story √ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Ǩ¬ù then I can guarantee that it’s not the specifics, but the broad strokes of those movies that are part of the Superman we√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢re making.” — from Russell’s In Focus interview with the screenwriters (June ’06 issue).
Harry Knowles is reporting that Darren Aronofsky‘s The Fountain is going to be be released by Warner Bros. on 10.13. The darkly intellectual fantasy flick was a Cannes no-show because Arnofsky would settle only for a competition status and the powers-that-be wouldn’t give him that.
“The whole point of a remake is to either improve upon a flawed film, or to bring a new and/or different perspective to a classic tale. The Omen does neither, [being] essentially a shot-for-shot remake of the [Richard Donner] original, but with weaker performances and more deliberate ‘jump scares’ to get the teen girls screaming and gripping their boyfriends in fear. In many ways it’s disturbing how much director John Moore has adhered to the original film, so much so that those familiar with it in any way will very quickly get irritated or bored with this rehash. Even those new to the tale will find its now somewhat dated material and the inherent flaws from the original still visible, despite various attempts to hide them by ‘jazzing up’ the horror quotient.” — from a review by Dark Horizon‘s Garth Franklin. (Here, also, is the view of critic Paul Byrnes of the Sydney Morning Herald.)
Brad Pitt was going to have two movies coming out in the early fall…but no longer. Alejandro Gonzales Innaritu ‘s Babel (Paramount Vantage, 10.6) is the keeper and Andrew Dominik‘s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Warner Bros., 9.15) is not. Warner Bros. publicity confirmed today that they’re delaying Jesse James‘s release until early 2007. This is being done, I’ve been told, “due to Brad Pitt’s shooting schedule for Oceans 13.” What…he’s going to be too busy making an ensemble film with 12 other guys to find time to do publicity for a couple of weekends? Sure thing. I can guess what’s actually happening, but when I get something solid I’ll pass it along. If any industry readers can fill me in (anonymously, of course), the usual confidences apply.
This one-sheet for Mel Gibson‘s Apocalypto (Disney, 12.8) really puts the zap on my head…something like that. Handsome, striking, quietly haunting…an image that sticks and stays. Reactions?
An amusing, well-written, for-some-reason very believable (as far as this stuff goes) AICN review of The Break-Up from “Masswyrm”. I believe it because the guy knows how to write, because he has a straight-arrow tone of voice, and because he says he’s married (and sounds married). The Break-Up tracking may be upticking (I’m now hearing opening weekend may hit the high 20s) but between this guy’s review and Brian Lowry‘s in Variety, this film looks effin’ doomed with the just-make-me-laugh crowd. And maybe, just maybe something that maladjusted hombres like myself might find a way to get into. I love these two portions: (a) “I just can’t get over the fact that this film is being released in the summer. It’s not a summer film. This is a fall release, something for the cinephiles to wash the taste of summer blockbusters from their palate. Closer in tone to The Good Girl, War of the Roses and the last half of Chasing Amy, this film is anything but heart-warming” and (b) “First, the good news. The Break-Up is a fantastic film of wonderful clarity, depth, insight and honest to god character driven comedy. The bad news? You’re probably gonna hate it. No, seriously. A lot of people are gonna hate the living shit out of this movie.” The more I hear stuff like this, the more I start to think I might enjoy it, or at least admire it. Maybe.
My read on Warner Bros.’s decision to release Superman Returns two days earlier — on Wednesday, 6.28 instead of Friday, 6.30 — is that the marketing cats are figuring Bryan Singer’s humungously costly film will be pretty much over and done by the time Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest comes along on July 7th, so why not go for the moolah by stretching out the 4th of July weekend as much as possible? I haven’t called my pallies with the tracking reports, but the general expectation is that Superman Returns will pull in…I don’t know what to write here. Those angry Ain’t It Cool guys have been gunning for this film for months now. Will geek sentiments matter? Do geeks ever matter when it comes to huge tenpolers? Is a figure of $140 to $145 million over the six-day weekend on-the-money, optimistic, a bit short…what? What are HE readers expecting? How interested?
