C had me scrubbing the shower (we had someone staying that night), so we ended up having to catchi a taxi to Taxi to the Dark Side - tres extravagant! And also tres creepy, now that I think about it. We managed to get to the Paramount in plenty of time, though C graciously gave up her seat in the middle-front to Stacey, since she's a firm believer in tradition.
This film was an interesting contrast to No Way Out, basically documenting how the soldiers at Abu Garab, Guantanamo and other prisons were made to feel that they needed to push things further, get results, and generally escalate things, all without being specifically told to do so by the top brass. The pernicious effect of 24 was mentioned, where torture produces accurate information quickly, and a sense of urgency that is generally the argument justifying torture is set up. (One of the experts explains how advocates will say, "Okay, there's a bomb somewhere, and this guy knows and isn't talking, isn't it okay to torture him to save the lives of the people the bomb is going to kill?" Except there's no bomb, the urgency is fake; and what if the guy just doesn't know?)
I think that the most interesting thing in the film for me was the interviews with the people within the military who opposed the situation, as well as the segments with one of the FBI guys whose law-enforcement approach got muscled out in favour of the CIA's "beat the crap out of them until they talk" strategy. There also seems to be something happening around Colin Powell - his chief of staff appeared in both docos, and this one talked about how he was fooled into telling the UN that they had verified links between Iraq and Al-qaeda (which turned out to have been made up by a "high-value suspect" who knew nothing, and just wanted to stop the CIA from continuing to torture him). I remember the feeling of disappointment when he became a mouthpiece for the Bush Administration for the Iraq War; though it seems kind of crazy to have any feelings one way or another to the guy, I'm kinda glad that his reputation is getting somewhat rehabilitated.
Anyway, it wasn't quite as depressing as No Way Out (mainly because the Bush clique didn't get everything their own way), and I'm glad I saw it.
* * *
I then cajoled C into coming along with me to Paradise at the Film Archive. I'm very pleased I did, because it was awesome, though my judgement might be coloured by the fact that I've got a Danish grandfather. It was a documentary about a Swedish couple in their eighties, and the plot was basically a battle of wills between the fiery husband and the calmer wife over whether they should change one of the walls in their dining room into a feature wall - the husband was dead-set on it, and the wife thought it was a bad idea, but was reluctantly willing to go along with it.
There were many touches that made this film awesome for me - the dark red cottage with white trim that reminded me of my grandfather's house in Hatepe, the husband's playing jazz trumpet on the toilet, and the way they affectionately bickered. And the friend that came over to their house reminded me of my grandmother's friend Sylvia.
I don't want to spoil the ending, but it was good enough that I'll probably try to find it on DVD, if only to show to my family. I'd recommend it, and I'm looking forward to Swedish Tango, which features the same couple deciding, after sixty-five years of marriage, that they need to learn to tango. It should be great! :)
* * *
I then grabbed something to eat (and C grabbed some of what I grabbed), and then I said goodbye to C and headed to Te Papa for California Dreaming (Endless). I was a bit intimidated at first, since it was nearly three hours long, and Te Papa films are often worthy (which means, often dreary), but I was pleasantly surprised by this Romanian film; unfortunately, I believe that the director has died, and I think it was before completely finishing with the film's editing. The basic story was set during the Balkan war, where a train with a squad of US marines and a few Romanian soldiers is transporting radar equipment to Kosovo when it's stopped by a corrupt station-master, who refuses to let the train go without the proper customs papers. The mayor sees this as a great opportunity to perhaps get some publicity and/or investors, the local factory workers see it as a chance to get their grievances heard, and the American captain sees it as a chance to get more and more frustrated. There are flashbacks to WWII, with people reassuring each other that the Americans will be here soon, which ends up tying into the station-master's motivation; and there are the tensions that arise when the local girls start taking a shine to the exotic Americans, including the daughter of the station-master.
The film could definitely be a lot tighter, and there are some predictable bits, but it's basically pretty good.
* * *
When I got out of that and headed to the Embassy, the weather was rotten - freezing cold and driving rain. I got there as quickly as I could, and then Jenni & Lee turned up and we watched Empties, a Czech film about an older chap who gives up teaching after wringing out a smelly sponge over the head of cheeky student, but then finds that he can't stay inside cooped up with his wife, and so takes a sequence of odd jobs until he finds a niche that allows him to exercise his social nature. He has a bit of a roving eye, though he's never been caught, but which makes it awkward when it turns out that his daughter has just been left with a young son for a younger woman.
I thought it was funny, and the way they portrayed his dreams (with various women dressed as railway employees coming into his carriage and drawing the curtains) was really nifty. And you should make sure that you stick around to see the bit after the first lot of credits.
It's a bit slow, and not hilarious, but I'd happily watch it again at some point.
* * *
And then finally, I went to Elite Squad, about BOPE, the elite police division in Rio de Janeiro. Written by the same guy who did City of God, there were definite similarities in style - for example, the film started more than partway through the story, and then went back and explained how they got there. It also had a lot of jerky, hand-held camera shots to give you a sense of the confusion and intensity of action, and some pretty damn good music.
The basic plot followed a couple of idealistic new recruits, and a hard-bitten captain who's about to have a baby and starting to suffer from the stress of his job. There's something weird going on about the attitude towards the police - something like, the gangs that run the slums are violent, homicidal scum who will kill the kid hired to be a look-out if they fail their job, so BOPE are justified in extreme measures in order to deal with the extreme problem. And there's definitely a weird, cult-like fascism going on; but on the other hand, it's contrasted by the film's depiction of the "normal" police.
It's weird to try and understand a society where the police are corrupt by default, not just in terms of shaking down shop-owners for protection, but having sergeants demand bribes to pass on leave requests, and Captains giving standing orders for bodies to be shifted into other precincts to make the statistics look better. In contrast, the film makes it clear that BOPE is, by and large, not corrupt; on the other hand, they're not really police, either. Their structure seems are more paramilitary, designed to go into the slums and shoot the drug-lords, than any sort of community policing. And the problem with using soldiers as a police force is that you're training a bunch of hammers, and if something that isn't a nail turns up, there's the likelihood that it'll be hammered down anyway.
Seeing their interrogation techniques so soon after Taxi to the Dark Side was weird, since they would basically grab people and then torture them until they got information. But they show the gangs to be even worse, and the members of BOPE clearly think of themselves as the good guys, even though the main characters become more horrid the further in they get. I get the impression that maybe there's something like Starship Troopers going on here, but any message like that has gotten a little muddied by the horribleness of the situation.
I liked the film, but I'm not sure I should have.
Posted by svend at July 26, 2008 12:45 AM