Film Catch-Up

It's been an interesting week, film-wise.  My last writings were almost a week ago about Shame and War Horse.

On Wednesday night I saw Haywire.  Don't bother.  It's awful in practically EVERY way possible.  'Nuff said.

Last night I saw J Edgar and Corionlanus back to back.

J Edgar is less a biopic of the man, to my mind, than it is a searing endictment of US intelligence services.
On the one hand, the film is naturally a biopic, and there can be no doubt that Hoover's reforms of the Justice Department - up to and including the creation of the Bureau of Investigation and then the Federal Bureau of Investigation - created a new kind of crime investigation, and much of what he did was definitely laudable.  And within the biopic, there are hints (only hints - and this is where the film has been heavily criticised I think) of his morbid obedience to his mother, his viciously repressed sexuality (as a result of the former) and his driver of mistrust - of almost everyone, ultimately including his own staff if their 'loyalty' ever came into question.
It is obvious, for one, that Hoover's own attitude helped push the massive mistrust of Bolsheviks and Communists throughout the history of America, to such an extent that it still persists today, despite the fact that it is a huge anachronism.  I'm sure that this must have contributedto , if not been the bedrock of, the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950s.
The second, less obvious idea, is that Hoover's attitude to his own bureau is also the bedrock of mistrust in and between various government agencies/departments - something that may explain the cycle of information release that we see: something happens (like 9/11) and later, it apparently comes to light that some government agency/department or other, had some kind of knowledge of this ahead of time.
The point that came across to me, especially, was the cycle of attack.  It was during Hoover's life (assuming that the film is accurate on this subject) that the US government first concerned itself with pre-emptive action - that is, finding and arresting people for what they are planning to do.  It was Hoover who also began the process of using evidence based on science and technology, as well as the testimony of expert witnesses.
While this was undoubtedly groundbreaking work, it also began the era of the super criminal, if you will.  As fast as the FBI evolves methods of fighting and preventing crime, so the criminal world invents new ways of outsmarting them.
Hoover's name is synonimous with the FBI of course.  But the FBI is the invention of a paranoid, deluded man attempting to protect his country, and more importantly himself, from invisible enemies.  In speaking of the man, or the bureau and remembering the human rights abuses and REMOVALS that both have been responsible for, one might well cry SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS.
Likewise, Hoover used his secret files to (try to) intimidate and control every President he worked for, and also Martin Luther King Jr, among others.  And that attitude I believe has also prevailed: Hoover believed that in times of peace, the people grew lazy and inattentive to the evils that beset them, and he was right.  His error was attributing such evil to outside forces, rather than the inherent struggle of the human spirit for what is right over what is easy.  And as such, he used such power as he had to try to invent the dangers and the evils he would have everyone cower from, in order to maintain his own personal power.
In light of that idea, the mistrustful attitudes of people everywhere, one might make the leap of thought - unaided - as to how the Twin Towers were really torn down.  Were they destroyed by minions of some foreign power?  Or as an exercise in distraction, grieving the American people so their government could go to war on the most invisible adversary in history, all the while securing the oil its country demands?



Corionlanus is a fascinating film.  Being a Shakespeare play it needs no explanation or recapitulation.  What makes it so fascinating is the manner in which Fiennes makes Shakespeare relevant to the 21st century by putting it in a fiercely modern setting.  The scenes of street-level fire-fighting between the Romans and Volscians could be scenes from any piece of modern warfare for the last 20 years.
What I see in Coriolanus is the seed of a problem that looks set to beset our own society.  I have made no secret of my reading of events around the current Falklands scuffle.  But in speaking to others it seems that many would, out of loyalty to friends and relatives who fought, suffered and died in the last Falklands War, would support another such war, so that the losses incurred by the first may not have been in vain.
It is a similar attitude to those that have remarked on War Horse as a good introduction for young children to the horrors of the First World War.  Yes, the First World War was a global attrocity, but yes it was dwarfed by the Second.  And if truth be told, both conflicts belong to a world that does not exist anymore.  The war we fight today is not against armies massed against us that must be slaughtered until both sides feel sufficiently wounded and reported of to make terms for peace.  We fight against the insidious apathy of human nature whereby tyrrants take the rights of the people and make of them a mockery on the international stage, in the faces of the very leaders sworn to uphold them.
If children must be schooled, it should be in peace, not war.  Without the learning of war, there might be less of it.  And with the learning of peace there might be more of it.
Coriolanus is cast out by his people for his warlike nature, and he throws in their faces their taunts of disrepect towards the very people he protects.  There is nothing spoken of the politics of the situation - even in ancient Rome, armies did not go to war for sport.
Much like the repercussions against 9/11, no-one ever questioned the motives of the agitators - if indeed Al-Qaeda was the root cause of that hideous day.  And that is because governments the world over see more profit in securing what they want through war, not peace.


The road of peace is slow because the gentleness of its approach invites indifference, whereas the violence of war is much harder to ignore.

Consider the following quote from Hernan Reyes in "Fast 5":
'If you dominate the people by force, they will eventually fight back, because they have nothing to lose.
[This is the trademark of political tyranny]
And that's the key: I go into the favelas and give them something to lose - electricity, running water, schoolrooms for their kids.  And for that taste of a better life...I own them.'
[This is the trademark of economic tyranny]

We think ourselves so free, and that is because we have everything we are told we need, while we cower behind shields of political and economic agreements, drawn up on the back of war, written in the blood of people we don't care about because we never, ever hear about it.

In the end, Coriolanus becomes a scapegoat for both sides, having made war on Rome and peace with the Volscians.

Those that live by the sword will die by it.