|
Showtimes
for all movies in the area. Click
here!
‘The Good Shepherd’
By Cole Smithey
Movie Trailer
Robert De Niro’s second outing
as director (his first was “A
Bronx Tale,” 1993) pinpoints the
ruthless and dogmatic sense of
privileged ideology and unscrupulous
secrecy that enabled the creation
of the CIA. With Eric Roth’s eloquent
script as a map of detailed fictionalized
events that expand to an epic
scale, the film traces Edward
Wilson (Matt Damon) as a pokerfaced
Yale student with an inscrutable
way of choosing his words and
not answering questions. Through
a seamless combination of flashbacks,
asides, and forward moving action,
we are submersed in a concealed
world of cold distrust and global
espionage. From Edward’s ritual-filled
indoctrination into the Skull
& Bones club at Yale, where
he divulges his father’s unacknowledged
suicide, to the tragic solution
to an investigation connected
to the Bay of Pigs, “The Good
Shepherd” illustrates an origin
of American international hegemony
that has turned its own country
into a laboratory of supervision.
“The Good Shepherd” is all about
tone and the stoic atmosphere
of secrets and lies that protects
U.S. government agents. It’s about
a milieu of insidious self-important
people in positions of power who
took advantage of their autonomy
to create a covert committee of
global assassins. Within Edward’s
small loop of associates at Yale
are an exclusive group of people
who will be personally scarred
or even killed as a result of
their association with a character
not unlike the cunning shape-shifter
Matt Damon played in “The Talented
Mr. Ripley.”
Edward’s poetry professor at
Yale, Dr. Fredericks (Michael
Gambon), is a poof with bent toward
Nazi politics. A brief meeting
with FBI agent Sam Murach (Alec
Baldwin) sends Edward on a mission
to discredit his professor, resulting
in Fredericks’ dismissal from
Yale. When it’s later revealed
that Dr. Fredericks was in on
the plan with the Office of Strategic
Services (precursor to the CIA)
from the start, the disclosure
comes with a caveat to Edward
that Dr. Fredericks’ homosexuality
has become a grave problem to
the “agency.” And so it goes that
every civilian Edward comes into
contact with is eventually discovered
to be knowingly or unknowingly
part of a bigger picture of spying.
It’s telling that Edward dates
Laura, (Tammy Blanchard) a deaf
girl whose hearing aid takes on
a fetishistic quality. But Edward
is an easy mark for rich girl
Margaret “Clover” Russell (Angelina
Jolie), who seduces her sitting
duck and gets pregnant on their
initial sexual encounter. The
event forces Edward to abandon
Laura and marry Clover just when
OSS agent “Wild Bill” Sullivan
(Robert De Niro) sends Edward
to serve in London.
Flash forward to the future
when Edward and a group of CIA
agents study a blown-up grainy
black-and- white photograph, taken
in a bedroom in some cryptic foreign
city. In the photo are clues to
the identity of an informer who
gave away secrets that affected
the Bay of Pigs debacle. The photo
adds suspense to the story, but
it also plays crucially into the
climax when Edward is forced to
face the ramifications of his
actions in the guise of his now-grown
son Edward Jr. (Eddie Redmayne),
who has joined the CIA. The son’s
attempt to walk in his father’s
invisible footsteps proves disastrous
for the family and brings the
story into a personal context.
Cinematographer Robert Richardson’s
bold compositions work hand-in-glove
with the script to put the audience
in the mindset of its paranoid
characters. “The Good Shepherd”
is a movie that stays with you
because it removes any sense of
carefree liberty you might have
felt about America. It brings
you up to date with how the CIA
helped ruin foreign affairs and
make American citizens the hunted.
We spy on the enemy, and they
are us. CV
‘Letters From Iwo Jima’
By Cole Smithey
Movie Trailer
“Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters
From Iwo Jima” are opposite sides
of the same currency that form
an inseparable epic narrative
correlating to the deeply personal
experiences of soldiers on both
sides of the Japanese/American
World War II conflict and the
nationalist ideologies and traditions
at stake. By putting “Letters”
in Japanese with English subtitles,
Clint Eastwood contains the reflexive
energy and sincerity of second-generation
Japanese-American Iris Yamashita’s
convincing debut script.
Yamashita uses a literary conceit
that the story-within-the-story
is informed by the discovery of
a bag of letters buried on Iwo
Jima by Japanese soldiers. Eastwood’s
personal inspiration for the film
came from a book of letters (“Picture
Letters From Commander In Chief”)
written by General Tadamichi Kuribayashi
to his family during the ’20s
and ’30s when he lived in the
U.S. serving as an envoy. General
Kuribayashi was later sent to
take over command of battle preparations
on the volcanic island of Iwo
Jima where the Japanese government
sent their forces with the caveat
that they would not come back.
Ken Watanabe (“Memoirs of a
Geisha”) moors the story as Gen.
Kuribayashi, whose generous empathy
for his men and impromptu defense
strategy transforms a predicted
five-day battle into a 40-day
clash. Watanabe is a master of
poignancy, and the aristocratic
focus of his gaze supports the
tremendous level of loyalty he
inspires in his soldiers, who
dig more than 18 miles of tunnels,
5,000 caves and untold numbers
of “pillbox” trenches in the island’s
black sand.
Visually, the movie seems darker
even than the monochromatic blue/gray
color design used in “Flags of
Our Fathers.” The limited color
palette has a hypnotic effect
of drawing the viewer into the
gloomy mindset of the same soldiers
that we rooted against while watching
“Flags.” The moodiness of the
visuals serves to restrain the
potentially numbing effect of
the often-traumatic violence onscreen.
In one of Eastwood’s most effective
uses of staging, a battalion of
exhausted soldiers hide in a tunnel
beneath the defeated ground of
Mount Suribachi. Sworn to defend
the region to their deaths, the
soldiers begin, one by one, pulling
the pins from their grenades and
hitting the bomb against their
helmets before blowing themselves
up. It’s a surreal scene, and
one that might prove unwatchable
were it not for the desaturated
color that lends a filter of distance
from the sad reality of men joining
in shared suicides. The episode
is significant for the two soldiers
who refuse to take their own lives
and choose to return to their
commander in order to continue
fighting.
Eastwood performed the year’s
most ambitious and original cinematic
feat in making a pair of companion
films about the significance of
the battle at Iwo Jima and the
ways in which the Japanese and
American governments treated that
pivotal engagement. The films
are masterpieces of modern cinema,
filled with cinematic poetry of
bright, medium and dark images
that express Eastwood’s talent
as a director to work on a large-scale
narrative canvas and affect an
openly resonate exchange of social
necessity. They serve to bridge
a cultural divide and condemn
all acts of war as futile expressions
of political impotence if not
capitalist greed. Nearly 7,000
American soldiers died along with
more than 20,000 Japanese soldiers
on Iwo Jima.
Pauline Kael wrote that, “Great
movies are rarely perfect movies.”
That theorem holds true with “Flags”
and “Letters.” These are not perfect
movies by any means. They are
films that you are lucky to watch
once in your life on big screens,
before digesting them as artistic
representations of a battle that
has often been misrepresented.
There is truth in these movies,
but Eastwood isn’t interested
in sanctifying veracity for its
own sake. He wants us to recognize
the moral fabric that we all share
regardless of our loyalties. He
wants equality. CV
Comment
on this story | Return
to top
| 
