Film will make you think watch it
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By G. Michael Dobbs
Managing Editor
A great documentary and a very over-rated thriller are the subjects of this week's DVD column.
Why We Fight
Writer and director Eugene Jarecki posed a simple question in this documentary: Why does this country go to war?
If you're expecting an anti-Bush screed against Iraq, then guess again. The hero of this film was a soldier, a president and a Republican.
Jarecki builds the film on the final speech given by President Dwight Eisenhower to the American people. In 1961, Eisenhower warned of the growing power of "the military-industrial complex."
Some might find it ironic that one of the architects of the Cold War would have such a message, but Eisenhower was deeply concerned about the connections between the defense industry and government.
Cleverly, Jarecki gives his film the same title as the famed Frank Capra films of the World War II era. Capra, the director of such classics as It Happened One Night and Lost Horizon, was asked to produce a series of films that would tell troops the history behind the conflict of which they were a part.
Jarecki's premise is that armed conflicts are inevitable because the defense industry needs to justify itself. He uses the history of this nation from the last 50 years to bolster his point.
And he underscores his points by telling stories about ordinary people whose lives were touched by our latest conflict. There's a retired New York police officer who lost his son in the World Trade Towers who questions whether or not it was right to ask if his son's name could be placed on a bomb dropped in the war. There's also an Air Force veteran who ended her career because she didn't think she could uphold her promise to defend the Constitution in these times.
This is a film that will make you think and ask questions. Find it and watch it.
Caché
There have been many times when I watched a highly acclaimed film and walked away muttering, "I don't get it."
It's not that I don't understand what happened in the film. It's that I can't figure out why so much praise was heaped upon it.
Yeah, I'm the guy who never wants to sit through Gone With the Wind again (once in eighth grade was enough) and the mere idea of enduring three hours of Titanic was enough to make me break out in hives.
So you can imagine my chagrin when I watched the DVD of Caché, the "thriller" from German director Michael Haneke. The DVD cover is covered with accolades. The film has won awards at Cannes and from critics associations around the world.
There is even a quote from a Steven Rea of the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Like Hitchcock, only creepier."
Here's mine: "Like Hitchcock on his very worst day, only more so."
Maurice Benicho and Juliette Bincohe star as an upper middle class French couple. He is a public television talk show host and she works in publishing. Their lives are disrupted by the appearance of videotapes clearly showing that someone has them under surveillance.
The tapes are accompanied by crude child-like drawings. There is one of a child coughing up blood and another of a chicken being decapitated.
The couple doesn't have a clue what's going on supposedly. As the film unreels at the speed of grass growing we discover that one of the spouses has an understanding of why they are receiving the tapes.
As a director Haneke thinks he can build suspense by having excruciating long shots of a scene in which nothing is happening. I suppose we are supposed to be on the edge of our seats anticipating some action. An action that never comes, I might add.
The idea that all of us have secrets and that those secrets might embarrass us or cause us to re-consider actions we've taken in the past is nothing new and Haneke does nothing with it.
There are two moments of violence that punctuate the tedium and advance the plot. They do surprise because they constitute action in a film dominated by people talking to one another.
If you need to clear your home of guests, then pop Caché into the DVD player and don't stand in the way of the door.
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