History now
Matthew d'Ancona 1:21pm
Two films on release show how brilliantly and how badly film can capture recent history. In Obama week, Oliver Stone's W ought to have been the ideal Friday night flick, and, being a fan of his magnificently paranoid series of US political movies, from Salvador via JFK to Nixon, I had high hopes. But his account of George W Bush's rise to the presidency and decision to go to war in Iraq is thin fare - not least because David Hare's play Stuff Happens has already covered this ground with much more authority.
Stone takes a clunkingly Oedipal approach to the whole business: Bush Sr or 'Poppy' is the domineering father whom Junior can never truly please. Even Dubya's embrace of born-again Christianity is presented as a transference of affection from one father to another. All this cod psychology is fine in as far as it goes, but it does nothing to capture the geopolitical tension of 2002-03 or the sense of history spinning out of control that characterised the months that followed the fall of Saddam. Richard Dreyfuss's wonderfully sinister turn as Cheney is some consolation.
In contrast, Steve McQueen's Hunger is one of the must-see movies of 2008: spartan, unremittingly rigorous, occasionally unwatchable in its no-holds-barred depiction of the IRA dirty protests and hunger strikes of 1981. Eschewing linear narrative and opting instead for a series of interwoven character vignettes, concluding with a lengthy account of Bobby Sands's decision to starve himself to death, this is supreme film-making. I do not agree with those who say that it romanticises the Hunger Strikers and frankly I am confident enough of my own views of that horrific propaganda stunt not to be troubled by the director's views one way or the other. The long scene in which Sands argues about his impending suicide with priest who is also a Republican sympathiser is a dazzling two-hander and worth the price of admission alone.
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TrevorsDen
November 8th, 2008 3:18pm Report this commentGawd almighty help us.
You are as I understand it billed as a right wing commentator MR A. And you say you are a fan of a left wing bigot film-maker like Stone.
And then say how good it is to have a film about IRA hunger strikers?
Well maybe just maybe I would prefer a film about the struggles of a wife and family whose prison officer husband had been murdered in cold blood by the anti religion anti democracy IRA assassins.
Just call me old fashioned.
Maybe Stone will make a film about how a President usurped his authority and his duty of care as an employer and sexually molested one of his employees.
Somehow I doubt it.
Maybe one day someone will make a film about how at a key moment in the attempts to bring democracy to the middle east an American President went against the appeasing advice of the Senate and the defeatist attitude of a left wing press and ordered a surge in troops which up till now at any rate has given a brave nation a chance to preserve its fledgling democracy.
Nah, fat chance - just look at the rubbish being spouted by you for a start.
Ray
November 8th, 2008 5:29pm Report this commentApropos TrevorsDen, I always thought 'Primary Colours' was as good a study of the Bill Clinton as we are ever likely to get.
In particular, Jack Stanton's closing question to Henry Burton about whether he seriously imagined that Abraham Lincoln would have ever been able to lecture America about 'the better angels of our nature' without telling a few whoppers along the way perfectly encapsulates the lovable rogue that was William Jefferson Clinton: the easy-going, inspirational idealist who was always a tad too eager to propitiate his libidinous and Macchievellian alter ego.
Chris
November 8th, 2008 8:59pm Report this commentWell, I've always said that everyone has one utterly foolish and indefensible idea in their heads, and now I know what yours is, Matthew. (I don't know what mine is, but I'm sure it's there.) You complain that 'W' is thin, but you're a fan of 'JFK'? QED. (Sorta related, today I read in David Kynaston's brilliant 'Austerity Britain' that 'America's greatest president' suffered from polio. My immediate thought was 'Lincoln had polio? Who knew?')
TrevorsDen
November 8th, 2008 9:25pm Report this comment'easy going'? Tell that to Monica's dry cleaner, or Clinton's tobacconist.
My point anyway is not that a womanising Clinton was terrible - Where would Britain have been without Nelson and Wellington.?
It is not even that he took advantage of his position both as President and Governor to seduce and secure women. This was indeed unforgivable.
It is that Oliver Stone will not make a film about it. Yet Mr A is a fan ... My supreme point is that this man is allegedly a cheerleader for the Right.
Fergus Pickering
November 10th, 2008 10:46am Report this commentI shan't go and watch another piece of IRA apologetics or another piece of Bush-bashing. Will anybody except the usual suspects, which, alas, include the editor of the Spectator? Both films are obvious clunkers and will clunk.
Big Alec
November 12th, 2008 10:31am Report this commentTrevorsDen: it's clear that you haven't seen 'Hunger', yet that doesn't stop you denouncing it. I say 'obvious', because one of the most shocking scenes in the film occurs when a decent, likeable prison officer is murdered in front of his elderly mother by an IRA assassin. Please tell me, how can that possibly be perceived as pro-IRA?
As Matthew points out, it is one of the most intelligent and thought-provoking films of the year, and the 20-minute scene between Sands and the prison chaplain is a tour de force of acting and writing.
Here's a radical idea for you: why not watch the film first and then form an opinion on it?
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