My pals at MSN Movies had an amusing notion for a Tax Day special feature—a roundup on those whom several critics and zeitgeist observers consider “The Most Taxing People In Movies.” I gave myself a particular challenge here, choosing a figure I am instinctively sympathetic to, but have been disappointed by during the past, um, decade. My selection/justification is here. Others surround my entry. Enjoy! Agree or disagree! Get angry! Or not! And so on.
Lien on me
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Personally, I’d go with Jack Black. I like him, but the “Margot at the Wedding”-style performances are overshadowed by over-the-top googly-eyed “Gulliver’s Travels” turns. I mean, “over-the-top” is his “thing,” I realize, but it is taxing, and I know he has it in him to pull off a quieter riot a little more often.
Crystal Skull is Ford’s only watchable performance since Air Force One IMO.
Strangely, I find myself agreeing with most of Emerson’s piece on Christopher Nolan. His screenplays (particularly Dark Knight) consist of people making statements to one another, and his visual style is pretty drab when compared to people like Fincher and Mann. I love Memento, and enjoyed Insomnia, The Prestige and Inception, but have no burning desire to see any of those flicks again. The comparisons to Kubrick some commentators have made are ludicrous.
Ford might well be my pick, too. God, did I worship him when I was a kid. Now when I see him I just think “What an asshole.”
Even so, though, is it okay that, much to my dismay, I actually kinda liked HOLLYWOOD HOMICIDE? I thought Ford was pretty funny in that one.
Agree about HOLLYWOOD HOMICIDE, Bill. As an action movie, it’s standard issue, but I found it very funny as a comedy. And not just Ford; if Josh Hartnett took more roles like this where he was making fun of himself, I think he’d have more of a career. The scene where both of them are being interrogated is really funny.
Kim Morgan’s piece about Nancy Myers was spot-on.
Agreed, which ties into a rather shameful secret I’ve been harboring for some time: I have absolutely nothing whatsoever against Josh Hartnett, and don’t mind it when he’s in movies.
The sad thing was that HOLLYWOOD HOMICIDE should have been a comedy from day one. Weary cop trying to get his real estate license, boom. Ford is really good in it as is Hartnett, and the scenes with Martin Landau, Ford setting up deals with rappers, come on. But then the boring murder plot kicks in and the utterly lame action scenes.
Harrison Ford is undoubtedly my generation’s movie star. He was knocking great movies and great star turns out the park since I was but a baby, and continued to do so for two whole decades. Thus, it’s been extremely painful to see him not bother at all in some very anonymous films for the last 13 years or so.
For me, the rot well and truly set in with Random Hearts with which I did the unthinkable: I didn’t bother to go and see it in the cinema. I hope, hope, hope he turns it around. Not to knock the mighty Jeff Bridges in any way whatsoever, but if Ford’s career never cooled the role of Rooster Cogburn in True Grit should have been his.
Shame.
“The comparisons [of Nolan] to Kubrick some commentators have made are ludicrous.”
The less Kubrick you’ve seen, the easier it becomes to make that comparison. How many Nolan fanboys do you think have watched the likes of ‘Lolita’ or ‘Barry Lyndon’?
I’ve often wondered if Ford’s 21st century woes have anything to do with his oft-made assertion that he doesn’t consider movies to be art, or at least very rarely approach that designation. I’m not saying that other iconic stars have all been world class cineastes, but it seems that those who remain vital past a certain age have an awareness of their personal iconography and where it fits in the movie universe that allows them to play with it or cut against its grain in interesting ways. I’ve not seen MORNING GLORY, but I hope his performance there constitutes a move in that direction. And I really hope he keeps the fedora and bullwhip in cold storage- CRYSTAL SKULL hurt my soul.
Wow, Jim Emerson articulates perfectly everything I feel about Nolan’s films. What a terrific piece.
Is it possible that Ford’s most engaging performance of the last 10 years or so was in “I’m F*cking Ben Affleck”?
He’s been articulating it over and over again for the past three years. I kind of wonder what Nolan would say if Emerson’s name were ever brought up in an interview. Of course, it’s possible he’s never heard of him, and is perfectly content with the widespread critical and commercial acclaim he’s encountered elsewhere.
Either way, don’t doubt for a second that Emerson won’t be right there on opening weekend for The Dark Knight Rises, likely recycling the same material as before. Of course, he could just sit that one out, to avoid, you know, torturing himself any further. As most of us do when we encounter a writer/director who doesn’t cater to our sensibility.
And then the next time he bad-mouths Nolan, someone will say, “How would YOU know? You didn’t even go see ‘Dark Knight Boogie’!”
Sometimes you just can’t win…
Since when is making a mediocre film “not catering to a sensibility” as opposed to actually being a mediocre film? I’m sorry, but I think that’s soft criticism. Once you start accepting things like that, movies stop being art, and become mere “content”. Emerson will probably go back because he hopes that Nolan will a film he likes.
Harrison Ford is especially difficult (and heartbreaking). When I was a kid, he was my idol. I was 9 when he was Han Solo for the first time (and yes, I was Han in any type of game my friends and I played!) and I was 12 when Indy came on the scene, so to say I grew up with Ford is a quite apt statement.
If someone else does stupid movies – say De Niro or Pacino these days (and God knows they qualify) – it is not quite as harsh a feeling for me. I loved both De Niro and Pacino in their earlier roles, but I did not come upon those particular roles until about a decade later when I was in High School. Ford had me as a kid, so it is extra heartbreak I feel when I am forced to agree with your choice.
Perhaps I will post my own choice over at The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World (as a non-companion companion piece) but I would have to choose someone other than Ford of course. We will see.
Ford was never a great actor, and he’s the Gary Cooper of his generation, which I don’t mean as a compliment.
Two iconic roles (Solo & Jones), but that’s it. There are a good number of actors who could have done Blade Runner just as well if not better.
Anyone who still stuck with this guy after he backed out of Soderbergh’s Traffic needs their head examined.
Well, now, Laz, I’m far from a big fan of Harry but even I’d allow him his coltish turn in AMERICAN GRAFFITI, miscast but fully committed to his obsessions in THE MOSQUITO COAST and (easily my favorite) the halting, disconcerted soldier in APOCALYPSE NOW who verbalizes the order to “terminate the Colonel’s command” – it wasn’t until years after I first saw it that I realized it was Ford. Try imagining Gary Cooper in any of those roles…yeah, me neither.
That once-upon-a-time “palpable” commitment Glenn notes has indeed been replaced in the last decade or more by a palpable contempt for his material. Why should audiences feel otherwise?
Well I certainly think Ford is more versatile than Cooper (who I absolutely loathe, without a doubt the worst of the major classic stars), but I just think the guy is a stiff. You have a couple exceptions (like The Mosquito Coast), but his batting average is pretty damned low compared to his contemporaries. For every worthwhile performance one can name several where he’s going through the motions. And it’s not just the past decade. His work in the 90’s doesn’t impress either. The Jack Ryan films, Presumed Innocent, The Fugitive, Air Force One. Just bland work on his part.
“Since when is making a mediocre film “not catering to a sensibility” as opposed to actually being a mediocre film? I’m sorry, but I think that’s soft criticism.”
Not being a full-time critic anymore, Mr. Emerson has the luxury of going to see whatever he wants, and by that same token avoiding what he would consider to be the “pedestrian” fare out there. It just seems that that particular director, by and large, makes films in a style/format that doesn’t do anything for him, and thus, indulging Nolan any further would only result in Emerson repeating the same points he’s already made over and over again the past few years. Which is to say, if a particular filmmaker writes/directs movies in a style (“Too literal-minded!”/“No attention paid to spatial relations or mise-en-scene!”) that you consider to be “mediocre” (this goes beyond one film in this particular case), and they don’t seem all that inclined to deviate from said form in future films, it seems a rather fruitless pursuit to keep indulging them in the hope that they’ll suddenly switch it up drastically to suit your interests.
He’s said that he finds the films “more interesting to write about than watch”, but at this point, given his (I’d say) 75–80% negative impression of the director, I honestly don’t see why it would be of any interest to him to continue down the same well-travelled road. If he’s looking for insight as to why some folks respond so strongly to Nolan’s work, well, he’s only getting it from a few sources at this point (a young man named Andrew springs instantly to mind), as most of the director’s supporters stopped bothering to comment on Emerson’s blog long ago. So what you mostly get is an anti-Nolan pile-on, which has become beyond redundant at this point.
And I say all this as an admirer of (most of) Emerson’s writing: he’s one of them most articulate film writers online, IMO.
JC, the suggestion that a critic, any critic–full time, part time, paid, unpaid, cinecrophiliac or hip as all hell–simply stop writing about a director because that director has been a past disappointment is a complete nonstarter.
One of my favorite things ever said by a critic was said by James Wolcott, swatting away suggestions that Oliver Stone should pack up his jacks and go home: “Every movie is another chance.” Emerson is more than articulate, he’s intelligent and broadminded enough to realize that Nolan may yet surprise him.
In fact, I’m going to link to that piece; Oliver Stone could easily have made this “taxing” list. But, in common with some of those who did make the list, one blazing return to form could take him right off it. I’m an optimist.
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/wolcott/2005/07/oliver-stone-an.html
Gary Cooper was a natural screen presence and a beautiful-looking man. I suspect the near-impossibility of seeing his films projected on the big screen is a significant contributing factor to diminishing his star quality in the eyes of many contemporary viewers. The other thing, of course, is his low key, almost inexpressive acting style, but I’d say with the right director he shines. Capra, Hawks, Lubitsch, Wyler, Borzage…
A limited actor, for sure. But he has his moments.
Orson Welles watched Cooper on-set and didn’t even think he could do a single take, that he just wasn’t “there,” but saw the same take onscreen and understood completely.
That’s what a star was – that’s what’s hard for some to comprehend these days, when movies often seem to be destined to be viewed on your cell phone.
Yeah, but Oliver Stone made three brilliant films (JFK, NIXON, NBK) that for better or worse and whether you like his work or not have influenced everybody, including, arguably, Errol Morris. Other great movies like PLATOON and zeitgeist definers like WALL STREET. Along with the recently much underrated “fool triumphant” comedy biopic W. So expecting more from him in the future is not really that big a stretch.
It’s a legitimate question for JC to ask when and how “getting it” matters to criticism. Some work you just can’t or don’t connect with for a long time or ever. And the essence of that work, the very places where you don’t connect, might appear from your disconnected vantage point as grossly exaggerated faults in the work itself. Pauline Kael never wrote about Fassbinder or Tarkovsky, for instance, for similar reasons.
A perfect example vis-a-vis Nolan is how the haters complain that INCEPTION is all exposition. Yes, David Bordwell says, but it’s exposition foregrounded in a way that’s quite daring and new:
http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2010/08/12/revisiting-inception/
And for the record, I agree that Emerson’s writing about Nolan is in the end stage of diminishing returns. Part of why he might not get it: Nolan makes thrillers with good stories. Emerson seems to prefer visually adept non- or pseudo-thrillers with slim to no story: THE AMERICAN and THE LIMITS OF CONTROL.
So, if you keep not liking Christopher Nolan, then you shouldn’t write about him ever.
Seems perfectly reasonable.
Or paranoid and narrow. That’s what I meant–paranoid and narrow. Not reasonable.
Fassbinder, Tarkovsky, Nolan. We’re one short for Mount Rushmore.
Oh, and “getting” directors. Especially “getting” directors who only make “thrillers with good stories.” No flaws in this argument at all.
And “haters”! It gets better!
@John, anyone can and should feel free to write about anything. Nobody needs anyone’s permission. But isn’t the value of any piece of criticism the degree to which it engages the work and illuminates. All I’m saying is that, with respect to Emerson’s newest Nolan piece, I’m not reading anything new or different in terms of illumination or engagement. Unlike the many blog entries by Bordwell, who doesn’t necessarily seem to like Nolan all that much more, but does seem to “get” the work in a way that’s interesting.
I also think it’s legitimate to ask whether a critic has a special connection or lack thereof to any given director, genre, etc. If a writer’s personal taste is a preference for the exact opposite of what he’s writing about, it doesn’t mean he shouldn’t write about it, but it does provide a certain handicap. Someone who doesn’t like slasher films, for instance, would not be the the ideal ideal critic for a new one – whether that movie is ultimately good or bad.
I don’t think I’m misstating Emerson’s preference for formal, visual elements of a film or his lack of interest in anything like a film’s story (at least as something separate and distinct from the visuals). For him, the film is each shot and the relations between them. For some of us, sometimes, the film is also very much about the story.
warren, in fairness, Kael did give Andrei a single, back-handed non-compliment in a review of a non-AT film I can’t seem to track down online. But I was able to track down the pullquote in re: Tarkovsky, “for whom,” Andrei-hit-and-run-Pauline wrote “the entire universe was depressive.” Not enough kiss or bang for the freewheelin’ Ms. Kael, one imagines, so she returned the (dis)favor.
Whoa whoa. NIXON a brilliant film?
Cooper is no, say, John Wayne, but I think he’s just right in MOROCCO, MAN OF THE WEST, and especially THE FOUNTAINHEAD, where his comic-book woodenness and hardness reach pathological proportions. I slogged through a couple of Rand novels when I was 12, and there’s this kind of pornographically macho quality about her male heroes that only Cooper could do.
I myself am fine with Gary Cooper, and those who aren’t ought to track down Andre DeToth’s paean to the man in “Projections 4 1/2.” Their heads may explode on exposure to it.
For Cooper I’d also recommend Lubitsch’s DESIGN FOR LIVING and Hathaway’s completely bonkers PETER IBBETSON (which our host discussed on this blog some time ago).
The way I look at it, I’m always trying to get better at understanding and articulating exactly why (for example) Nolan’s movies (particularly the “Batman” ones and “Inception”) seem so flat and flaccid to me. Theoretically, this MSN feature was aimed at an audience that’s never read my blog. And no doubt most of ’em never will – especially if they’re Nolan fans! Que sera, sera…
How much money does Chris Nolan have in the bank?
WINNING.
For the record, I love Jim Emerson’s blog and find almost everything else he puts up there to be of interest – deeply engaged and illuminating.
The Nolan thing is what it is. Just like I’d rather read Jonathan Rosenbaum writing about anyone but Bergman and Woody Allen.
And, yeah, Asher, NIXON is brilliant. But especially so insofar as it builds on the cinematographic and editing innovations in JFK to tell a completely different kind of story.
What is all this hatred (or should I say disdain) for Gary Cooper!?
Sure, he may not be the greatest but, Morocco. Design For Living. Meet John Doe. Sgt. York. High Noon. Man of the West! Man of the Feakin’ West!!?
C’mon.
It’s the New Philistinism. Next topic: why black & white is for homos.
For the record, I am a big fan of both Cooper and NIXON (Oliver Stone’s last really great film, though ANY GIVEN SUNDAY had its moments).
As to whether a critic should stop reviewing movies by a director they don’t seem to respond to, for whatever reason; am I oversimplifying (always possible), or is this very similar to the argument being floated around last year about critics giving certain directors a pass?
I personally look forward to each new M. Night Shyambalambadingdong movie with a certain kind of warped glee. Every one is worse than the one before it. Perhaps it is not healthy but it is what I do.
So I suppose what I am saying is, even if you don’t like a director, that is certainly no reason to ignore them.
-1 on the brilliance of NIXON – as critics noted at the time, present company included, maybe the most remarkable thing about it, aside from Joan Allen’s Pat (not alot of interesting women’s roles/performances in the Stone oeuvre, let’s admit), is Stone’s own identification with RMN. Whereas I felt at the time and still feel U‑TURN cries out for reconsideration, a nasty little bad karma/trip genre “exercise” that really allows Stone and co. a chance to flex.
I’ll agree that the hyperbole surrounding Nolan can be wearisome, but I also think his movies represent the high point of the tentpole-franchise-movies-as-themepark model (admittedly, not a very high bar to clear, but still). Yeah, The Dark Knight was probably overrated in the long run, but I enjoyed it despite its flaws. I think Emerson’s points are all valid, but I disagree that they somehow manage to spoil the movies. Nolan is probably the only guy I’d trust right now to deliver the goods on absurdly overbudgeted mega-spectacles – I mean, at least he’s trying to make original and interesting cinematic spectacles, unlike Snyder or Bay, who seem intent on creating a culture-wide regression into pre-adolescence.
Also, I think he deserves some props for having a hand in creating Heath Ledger’s Joker, one of the most memorable and delightfully depraved movie villains in a great while.
I dunno, to me Nolan always seemed like Bryan Singer minus the heart and eye. While Singer uses the super-hero story to create images worthy of Cocteau (Magneto’s escape in X2 is one of the most purely beautiful things in the last ten years of blockbuster movies), Singer wants to work out the rules in great, great detail and then brood fetchingly. He is, in short, Bryan Singer gone way straight, which is never a good thing for an artist.
>How much money does Chris Nolan have in the bank?
That’s not an argument, dude, no matter how many times you bring it up – or if it is, then you also think Britney Spears is better than J.S. Bach.
Please don’t tell me you think that. (Yes, I already know which one you’d prefer to have sex with.) I like to think there’s still some hope for you.
I have no idea how old or young anyone here is, I like Oliver Stone just fine, but I have to say that for those of us who actually lived through the real, hair-raising presidency and the Watergate hearings and saw Dan Aykroyd’s Nixon praying with John Belushi’s Kissinger, NIXON lacks the awe-inspiring power claimed by its admirers. I guess it was better than W, but the idea of turning Richard Nixon into some kind of tragic Shakespearean hero doesn’t square with the comically paranoid genuine article. Although, Nixon at least read, wrote, knew his history and had some sense of social responsibility, which is more than one can say for the four Republicans who have occupied the oval office since his departure.
Warren Oates – Woody Allen’s new movie is beautiful.
How much money does Lex have in the bank?
@Gordon Cameron – apparently you aren’t familiar with Worthington’s Law:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke9iShKzZmM
Yeah, I thought NIXON was this incredibly dismal attempt on Stone’s part to make his own KANE, complete with Xanadu-like shots of the White House, childhood flashbacks, newsreels, etc. I think a lot of directors, and unfortunately some critics, think that if you just vaguely gesture in the direction of Shakespearean tragedy and start your film with that line from the Bible about losing one’s soul, you’ve automatically said something profound. But Great Men who are haunted by memories of being too small to make the football team aren’t any more intrinsically a profound subject than, say, going to the prom; it’s all a question of whether one has anything interesting to say about the haunted great man. And I didn’t think that Stone did. Rosenbaum wrote a great one-star review of it, which he’s reproduced on his site:
http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/?p=6785
“JC, the suggestion that a critic, any critic–full time, part time, paid, unpaid, cinecrophiliac or hip as all hell–simply stop writing about a director because that director has been a past disappointment is a complete nonstarter.”
Oh, I wasn’t necessarily suggesting he STOP writing about the director altogether. It was more the frequency (he must be up to around 25 Nolan-related blog articles by this point, just in the past three years), and the redundancy in many of his points, particularly in the past year. As Warren pointed out, if there’s nothing new to be illuminated, perhaps the subject (in this case the director and his work) should be cast aside until there’s at least a fresh, new angle with which to approach the material. But if he indulges the director’s next film, and has virtually the same reaction as before, for the same reasons, why bother revisiting the same points?
“Theoretically, this MSN feature was aimed at an audience that’s never read my blog. And no doubt most of ’em never will – especially if they’re Nolan fans!”
Well, they’d be depriving themselves of a lot of good, incisive writing about the art of filmmaking. And kudos, once again, for not using the word “fanboy”, which can so easily lower the level of discourse in any forum. Looking forward to your next non-Nolan-related blog entry. 🙂
Kent, do you mean Midnight in Paris? You’ve seen it?
Kent, I agree with you about NIXON. The idea of tragedy is easily abused in journalism. “Tragic” is what conservatives call the politicians they’ve voted for when it has become abundantly clear that they have completely failed. Neville Chamberlain is also called tragic in pro-appeasement history. The tragedy isn’t that he condemned Spain to four decades of Czechoslovakia to five decades of tyranny and as a consequence brought Britain to almost complete defeat in the one war in its history that it could not afford to lose. The tragedy is that people might therefore think badly of him. Lyndon Johnson was actually a genuine tragic figure. Making an AMC/HBO series about his political career would be an excellent idea.
Did anyone else think about phlebitis when Mubarak entered the hospital this week?
Gordon, anyone who thinks that quoting Charlie Sheen gives his argument more validity is already far gone.
Tom Block, do you mean Mubarak’s arrest? For me it’s the reverse: whenever I hear the word “phlebitis,” I think of Nixon climbing the pyramids.
partisan, you’ll have to explain to me why the guy who engineered the escalation of the Vietnam war was a “genuine tragic figure,” as opposed to a smart master politician who miscalculated (see: “Gulf of Tonkin”). He became obsessed with Southeast Asia, thought he could ignore the outcry against his actions, suddenly found himself with his back against the wall and got out right on time. Only to be succeeded by another genuine tragic figure who vowed to end the war and then took it several insane steps further. In fact, John Frankenheimer made a pretty good movie about Johnson for HBO called PATH TO WAR.
Nort (Nort?), yes, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS. Beautiful movie. Beyond that, my lips are sealed.
I would call LBJ tragic, but I think that has to do with a certain remove from the era. Without Vietnam, LBJ would be remembered as the greatest liberal president of the century, even greater than FDR—ending segregation (and sending troops to do it) would have been historic, but on top of that, he created Medicare and the welfare system, and completed the work of Reconstruction; he was the last Democrat to really know how to twist arms in Congress, and he got through progressive bills of a scale that’s unimaginable today. But as he said himself, “Vietnam consumed my presidency” (and it’s worth remembering that he seems to have been lied to on the Gulf of Tonkin incident himself). What’s really sad is that in many ways, the bull-headed LBJ was an eternal captive of the hated Kennedy. Kennedy never committed to anything in a way he couldn’t back away from, which meant he never went all-in on civil rights or Vietnam. LBJ was determined to see both through, and the result was the high and low point of post-war America.
Nixon is more cinematically interesting, though, because he’s personally, rather than politically, tragic. No president—hell, no politician—was ever such a hard worker as Nixon, but his crushing paranoia meant that he would never enjoy a moment of life, and would destroy everything he had in an attempt to hold onto it. It’s a pretty irresistible story.
Man, you guys have extremely generous definitions of the word “tragic.”
When someone makes that great epic movie about the end of segregation, I really hope that it isn’t the story of Lyndon Johnson and his visionary quest to build a truly free nation.
I’m glad you find Nixon’s story so irresistible. How about the tragic tale of Ronald Reagan, a man who stuck to his vision as his underlings were consumed by corruption, who survived an assassin’s bullet only to succumb to Alzheimer’s? Or the tragic tale of George Bush, a man who was elevated to the presidency but could never escape his father’s shadow…oh, wait a minute, Oliver Stone already made that movie. How about the tragic tale of George Bush, Sr., who played politics and ate shit for two decades, only to find himself a one-term president overshadowed by his predecessor?
>Tom Block, do you mean Mubarak’s arrest?
He’s in a military hospital right now–“tummy upset” or something.
I think Oliver Stone’s W. is intended to be a dark comedy. It’s the story of an average guy who stumbles into the crossroads of history, an anti-heroic BEING THERE where the fool figure quite accidentally finds finds himself a world leader. There’s no tragic hagiography going on. It’s a barbed character study, an honest attempt to understand (rather than justify excuse or gloss over) from the inside how a rather boring, unreflective and ultimately incompetent man managed to mess up so much of the country and the world. Part of what I like about W. is that it takes a chance by embracing the disreputable production pace, lookalike casting and first draft journalism of a topical movie of the week. And while we’re on TV movies, Stone also produced a decent one about the Reagan assassination attempt. And, weirdly, Richard Dreyfuss is in both.
Well, Mr. oates, from a personal standpoint, the question would be: did anyone actually need a “barbed character study” of George Bush? I felt like I already understood him perfectly, and I’m sure all the people who voted for him thought so as well. Who on earth was crying out for this movie? I’m glad you liked it so much, because it needs friends. But I have to say that I find your, and perhaps Oliver Stone’s, idea that he was an “average guy” who “stumbled into the crossroads of history” an unpalatable misconception. He came from an American dynasty, he was educated at Yale, he dodged the draft, he was groomed every step of the way for political office, the supreme court, no less, won the presidential election for him, and he used a national tragedy to strong-arm his way into Iraq. I seriously doubt that it all just sort of happened around him while he secretly pined for the simple life.
I thought BEING THERE was already anti-heroic enough.
Sure the film is unnecessary – aren’t most films? – but is it unworthy of existing? I guess what I’m asking is, is there such a thing as a biopic that does not inherently, to some degree, just by the process of having been made as a movie, valorize its subject matter? (Like the idea that there’s no such thing as an anti-war film, since the medium unavoidably glamorizes the violence it intends to condemn?) Or is that not at all what you’re getting at. Would it be possible to dramatize the stories of Bush and Nixon with each of them still in the roles of protagonist and portray something closer to the facts as you see them? Or does an honest and necessary story about, say, Nixon, need to be told by outsiders as in ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN? What about telling a much smaller slice of the story as in SECRET HONOR or does that film still make Nixon out to be too tragic because it needs him to be somehow relatable so we don’t shut the thing off?
I don’t see the conspiracy or the will to power. Bush lead a privileged life, to be sure, but there was nothing foreordained about his ascendency and nothing in his strangely hollow personality (aside from a remarkable stubbornness that he seems to have mistaken for integrity) that marked him for high office. The concatenation of (un)lucky events that had to happen for Bush to become president and to do what he did once he got there seems retrospectively farcical and it’s where the Stone film gets its mandate. That’s the angle from which I think it’s possible to see Bush as a sort of rich man’s Forrest Gump.
Who knew Kent was as mordantly entertaining and contemptuous of cant on the subject of politics as he is on film? I was rather sorry I brought up Stone, but I’m not anymore…
I dunno, Kent’s “don’t make movies about politicians I don’t like” doesn’t seem all that free of cant, just full of a well-spoken refusal to see the world as someone else does, which is the very definition of the word. As for LBJ and civil rights: I would *love* to see a movie about the relationship between MLK and LBJ (though it would probably do better as a talky TV movie than a big-screen entertainment). The tete-a-tetes at the White House, the mutual mistrust, LBJ’s mysterious but incredibly important willingness to use his king-of-the-hill military power against his own redneck base followed by his gleeful tweaking of said rednecks with the Marshall appointment, and finally their falling-out over Vietnam (LBJ, who believed all politics was about personal relationships, could never understand MLK’s expanding zone of principle). Hoover could even float through as a villain—it would be great to see a screenwriter take a crack at the conversations they must have had about MLK’s sex life. It would make a great and fascinating story, and a much truer look at the interaction between moral authority and political manipulation than the many more goo-goo-eyed films about the movement.
It’s true, though, that Stone, and perhaps oates, buy rather too easily into the concept of GWB as an “average guy”—what’s fascinating about Bush is that he’s a scion of incredible privilege who spent his youth trying desperately to be an average guy. His willful attempts to lower his status via lousy grades, bad behavior (if there’s one thing his father believed, it’s that you don’t desert your military duties), and alcoholism, each one followed by an assertion that no, the meaning of your privilege is that these things get taken care of, could make for something that’s less BEING THERE and more Brecht’s GALILEO from the Pope’s perspective.
Okay, that’s unfair… Jones isn’t against movies about politicians he doesn’t like, he just wants them to tell the story he holds to. Which is still cant, but it’s hardly censorious. It does point to one of the great challenges of political bios, though. In the days of Elizabethan theater, Shakespeare could produce terrific political bio-plays because the outlines of the story were officially enforced (Elizabeth’s descendants good, everybody else, very bad). So he could focus on the aesthetic elements of the story without trying to give Richard III a fair shake (and yes, that play is incredibly unfair to a king who wasn’t all *that* bad). Today, only someone like Stone, who’s blithely indifferent to what anyone thinks about his politics, can worry so little about fairness and concentrate on lenses, angles, and film stocks.
@FB, yeah, HENRY V – Too soon! Too Soon! A warmonger and tyrant unworthy of the Bard’s quill!
I’m with TFB and co. on this one. All powerful men who are brought down by an inherent flaw are worthy of tragedy, which in no way negates the actual damage that they did in their actual lives. In Nixon’s case, his flaws were resentment and paranoia. However, Nixon has had a great fictional life outside of tragedy: anyone who can end up as a character in a Coover novel (where he is occasionally the most sane character around), a Roth novel, a Stone biopic, and the greatest of all Nixon movies, Dick, has completely transcended whatever conceptions we formed of him in his actual life. I imagine that dozens of other artists will take a crack at GW Bush, as well. Some may even find a way to make him seem tragic.
Sure, Nixon had that resentment and paranoia, and the fact that he never looked comfortable in his own skin, either as a man or as a human being, to qualify him as a tragic figure. But STILL…in him these things manifested themselves not as elevating qualities but as pitiful, don’t-look-up-it’s-that-dickhead-Nixon qualities. There was never a sense that he believed in anything bigger or better than himself; he was always just about furthering his career, papering over his shortcomings, and sticking it to his enemies. If you see that as “tragic”, fine, he’d love it if you do since that was the exact card he used to play whenever he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. But when the person in question fucked around with democracy (and decency) the way Nixon (and Bush 43) did, and when their administrations are still so recent that their histories are still coming to light, I’d prefer it if Oliver Stone didn’t come in and muddy the waters with another one of his “maybe I mean this, maybe I mean that” coke-laced historical “takes” on the events. I’m not sure how big the gap is between that and the modern right-wingers who declare that the GOP was responsible for the Civil Rights Act, but I’d hate to have to live on the difference.
(eek—“ancestors”, not “descendants.” Sheesh.)
I don’t believe that Wolcott mentioned Nixon at all in the piece to which I linked–and caused so much trouble without meaning to (my seriocomic, as opposed to tragic, flaw in this thread). It isn’t a favorite of mine. I didn’t see W; I know my limits. I’m very much with Tom Block and Kent, but I’ll refrain from further elaboration.
The term “tragic,” as I understand it, is value-neutral. All those qualities that Tom describes in Nixon (the person) are pretty insufferable. Unfortunately, the fact that the man was the most powerful person in the world for several years automatically elevates those qualities. A portrayal of Nixon as, say, the manager of a car wash would probably not be quite as tragic. It’s kind of like those nineteenth-century novels where young men try to be like Napoleon, but conquering women and society instead of Europe and Russia–or maybe what Stephen King did with Bush-Cheney in the Under the Dome. This has probably moved too far away from the actual movie, Nixon, which I haven’t seen since it was released. I just wanted to stand up for the idea that tragedy does not necessarily confer grandeur and esteem upon people who don’t deserve it. The form just shows us how certain people, regardless of their position in the world, can never outrun themselves.
@Siren, are there any Stone movies you can stomach?
What’s that thing that James Ellroy says when people ask him about what a particular movie “did” to one of his novels? “It didn’t do anything, the novel’s right there on the shelf and still in print and in libraries and stores for anyone to read.” And so it is with actual history versus fictions based on historical figures and events.
And then there’s the Joan Didion title WE TELL OURSELVES STORIES IN ORDER TO LIVE which gets to the heart of why people need narratives. Fictions have a unique way of making sense of the world.
I saw W. when it came out at the Vista in Los Angeles, playing to a packed house. And I remember distinctly feeling the experience to be unexpectedly (gulp, will the scholars pounce on this term?) cathartic for all of us. All of the stuff, as Kent points out, that we already knew, but acted out and put together in a way that – without negating the actual history – made a new kind of sense. In its own tiny way, W. felt like it was fulfilling the ancient function live theater used to perform.
Even in the stupidest moments, like the re-enactment of Bush’s reported pretzel-choking, we were caught up in the story. Never have all of us rooted so hard for a pretzel, completely heedless for that moment of the implications (President Cheney!) had that pretzel succeeded. The magic of the movies had us wishing for an alternate history, like the ending of INGLORIOUS BASTERDS.
(Do I get any extra points for being a fan of Nicholson Baker’s equally problematic and yet at the far opposite end of the ideological spectrum CHECKPOINT?)
Britannica: “Tragedy: branch of drama that treats in a serious and dignified style the sorrowful or terrible events encountered or caused by a heroic individual” I think Nixon & G.W. Bush do not qualifiy as heroic individuals.
@warren: Oh, plenty. I admire Salvador, Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, and Wall Street very much. I enjoyed Any Given Sunday (I think I’m just about the only person I know who did) and Talk Radio. JFK is extremely well done but I was too put off by the premise to get much out of it. His screenplays for Midnight Express and 8 Million Ways to Die are excellent. Even when I don’t like the movie (as with Wall Street 2) I like his all-out approach to visuals.
@ Thomas: Britannica: “hero, in literature, broadly, the main character in a literary work.” Plus what Joel said above. Anyone can be a protagonist. This thread is more about whether (and the way in which) certain ex-presidents should be.
@Siren: My wife likes ANY GIVEN SUNDAY too. She might be an even bigger fan of Stone’s than I am because she works as a film editor and JFK was one of the reasons she wanted to do it. It’s largely those formal qualities that keep me coming back to Stone’s films too, even the ones with politics and premises I might be put off by in a different context.
To everybody else – Another small point on the necessity of biopics about the infamous: The world may not in the abstract have needed yet another Hitler film, but I’m still glad we have Sokurov’s MOLOCH if only because it lead to THE SUN.
Weren’t we just discussing not too long ago why one could regard wife-beater and generally petty mook Jake LaMotta as a tragic figure? It seems like if we extend that dignity to LaMotta—and I surely can, just as I can to cinema’s and theater’s many scuzzy Macbeth’s (just saw THRONE OF BLOOD at Film Forum this afternoon)—it can go to Nixon and LBJ as well.
Isn’t there a difference between a hero and a “heroic individual”? Not all protagonists are heroic, even if we call them the hero of the story.
Other than that, no dog in the fight.
I rather liked ANY GIVEN SUNDAY, too, and I don’t even follow football. In general, I appreciate Stone for his energy and, as Siren says, his “all-out approach to visuals.” Say what you want about his stories, his films are never boring (except, to me, ALEXANDER).
I think Sokurov would have the last word on Nixon, LBJ, and Bush (both of them). Don’t know if I would trust anyone else.
“Even in the stupidest moments, like the re-enactment of Bush’s reported pretzel-choking, we were caught up in the story.” Wrong. YOU were caught up in the story.
TFB, as far as I’m concerned, anybody can make a movie about anyone or anything, any way they want to, regardless of whether they tell the story I “hold” to or not. Does that mean I have to like it? I mean, of course someone COULD have made a good movie about George Bush in 2008, which just might have shed a little light on the absolute tragedy that was his presidency. In my opinion, W was not that movie.
Maybe it’s more productive to contrast W with some movies about recent history that I do like very much, Peter Morgan’s Tony Blair trilogy. I think they’re as compelling as Stone’s film is not, as sharp as W is vague. The Blair of those films is charming, starry-eyed, brilliant and ruthless, all at the same time. Whereas Stone made a movie about a puppet with the soul of a misunderstood boy (as opposed to NIXON, which was about a lost SOUL with the HEART of a misunderstood boy). I don’t think that actual material fit the dramatic template.
Someone above mentioned SECRET HONOR and DICK. Two pretty good Nixon movies. I also have to say that Morgan did a pretty good job with FROST/NIXON – I never saw the movie, but the play was sharp.
MOLOCH seemed like a pretty tough movie at the time. It led to THE SUN, but also to Raoul Peck’s MOLOCH TROPICAL, an underrated, horrifying and horrifyingly funny movie.
A better and more insightful movie on Dubya than “W” is the documentary With God on Our Side. Among it’s other qualities, it helped me understand Bush II’s appeal – something I’d previously considered unthinkable – by zeroing in on the way he could captivate an audience of like-minded Christians. As the movie tells it, Bush’s true calling was as an evangelical preacher, and the country’s tragedy was that he waded into much deeper and more consequential waters when he went down the path of politics. Of course, he was to a certain extent “groomed” to be president, and he’s part of an élite as oligarchic and deeply entrenched as any in history, but if you check out this documentary you will see that he actually had a fair amount of charisma – provided he was among an agreeable audience and giving charming little chats about faith. The minute he starts delivering speeches to audiences not primed on the basics of hardcore Christian religion, he starts appearing as the confused, distracted, addled simpleton that so many have come to see him as.
I still defend the idea that Johnson was genuinely tragic in a way that Nixon was not. Nixon was in the habit of reminding everyone that he didn’t have the advantages that Kennedy and Rockefeller did. But then Johnson didn’t have Nixon’s advantages. Nor did Humphrey or McGovern for the matter. Nor did Dukakis and Clinton have Bush 1’s advantages, nor Obama’s McCain’s. But Nixon’s relative poverty is still used to gain sympathy from witless centrists.
But more to the point Johnson’s career shows a sense of being genuinely tragic, whereas the other politicians mentioned were just unsuccessful. Bush I, for instance was just the Lord High Everything Else of the Republican party without any particular strong interests or priniciples. Johnson, by contrast, started out as an idealistic New Dealer. Then he conformed, all too successfully, to the corrupt, racist political culture of Texas, then won many of the reforms which the aforementioned political culture had been blocking for decades. But his presidency failed, partly because of the failures of his own policies on Vietnam and the war on poverty, but also because American political culture made made an honest discussion of those problems almost impossible. (Very simply, too many Northerners refused to admit how much they benefited from segregation and racial injustice, and therefore made it impossible to pass measures that would solve those problems). Johnson’s own vices are considerable, I think Frederik Logevall’s book “Choosing War” gives the best introduction on what was possible and likely in the Vietnam debate, as opposed to the speculations in JFK.