The Unknown Known

Rating: **** 

Donald Rumsfeld is a master or rhetorical flourish, as the title of this new Errol Morris documentary, The Unknown Known alludes to. Talking point sleight of hand like “Unknown Unknown,” and “The absence of evidence isn’t the evidence of absence,” was one of the reasons that Rumsfeld was, at once, both one of the most beloved and most hated senior advisers during the perilous first years of the War on Terror. Naturally, the man himself is staggeringly more complex than this simple caricature implies, and Morris has decided to put the spotlight him, albeit rather uncomfortably, in his latest film. 

Firstly, if one tunes in to The Unknown Known expecting a weepy apology for Rumsfeld’s role in marching U.S. soldiers into dual quagmires in the Afghanistan and Iraq, you’ll be profoundly disappointed. The closest Rumsfeld comes to emotional regret is near the end when he talks about visiting a soldier in Walter Reed and how the doctors told him he wouldn’t make it, only to re-visit the hospital weeks later to learn that the same soldier had, in fact, lived. Some will argue that Rumsfeld was shedding crocodile tears, but I’m not so sure. It’s probably the only moment in the film where the former Sec Def’s arrogant, almost smarmy, veneer is punctured thoroughly. 

Hot Docs - Finding North

 

Rating: ****

How can you be both hungry and obese? It’s a paradox that more and more people in the United States are beginning to understand, and a question that’s convincingly answered in Finding North, a provocative documentary about hunger within America’s own borders.

Finding North tackles a variety of desperate questions that come into conflict with each other. America is the richest country in the world, so why do nearly 50 million people not get enough to eat everyday? Food seems plentiful, so why is it so hard for people to get nutritious and healthy food options? Obesity is huge problem, but why is it a problem amongst the poor? How are you fat, if you don’t eat much? All challenging questions, and interestingly, they all come down to a couple of interconnected reasons.

Filmmakers Lori Silverbush and Kristi Jacobson interview health experts and advocates, as well as talking to people affected by food issues, like Barbie. Barbie is a single mother in Philadelphia who not only has to stretch her budget because she’s on food stamps, but she has to take a two hour round trip to the nearest grocery store that sells fresh fruits and veggies. Elsewhere, a local pastor deals with an explosion in the use of his church’s services, an accessible food bank and a free meal night, and a teacher tries to deal with a classroom of students where more than a few struggle with attention at school because they aren’t getting enough to eat at home.

Celebrities like actor Jeff Bridges and chef Tom Colicchio are also tackling the subject of “food insecurity,” the predicament that nearly 1 in 6 Americans find themselves in where they don’t know where their next meal is coming from. Colicchio tries to demonstrate that the some $2 and change that the American school system spends per student on meals, does not offer enough nutritional bang for their buck. But while the diagnosis is clear, the issue seems hopelessly tied up in the current American political climate that says there’s no room for free loaders on the system, even if they need the help, and maybe need a little more.

Finding North reminded my of Davis Guggenheim’s great education doc Waiting for Superman, trying to shine a light on a complex and important issue that so easily gets shaped and cast aside based on broad assumptions. The film’s an incitement on America’s approach to a problem it once quite nearly eliminated, only to be revived through ignorance and the seeming uncaring of the people that can do something about it. But it’s also a tribute to those working so hard on the ground to try and change things for the better.

Hot Docs - We Are Wisconsin

Rating: ****

In November 2010, the American political movement known as The Tea Party suddenly became a political force the likes of which had not been scene since an Illinois attorney and politician became the first Republican President in 1860. With a seeming political mandate, many of these politicians, many of whom elected to state governorships, began promoting an economic agenda that attacked unions and the poor. But in Wisconsin, the process came to a screeching halt when teachers, police officers, health workers and students begin protesting at, occupying if you will, the state capital in Madison.

As fortune would have it, director Aime Williams was there to capture it all on video, and combining her own footage with news clips, You Tube videos, and an eventual second camera operator, she’s created We Are Wisconsin, a kind of war movie chronicling what happens when the people wake up to the fact that their democracy’s being taken out from right underneath them.

Yes, it’s true, this film will resonate with the “Fight the Power” crowd more than any passive observer, or apolitical cynic, but there is a visceral and immediate kind of power to Williams' film; a mixture of Michael Moore’s fight for the little guy gusto with the intimacy and outrage of the work of Michael Winterbottom. Williams also mixes after the fact observations and interviews with her first person footage, both of which paint a more simple and serene picture of the protests than was portrayed by the media at the time. And as the Occupy movement seems to be gearing up for a spring campaign, there’s a fair bit of foreshadowing here too.

But what was most interesting to me was that laying aside the fact of the issues, there’s almost an apolitical feeling to We Are Wisconsin. The majority of people recognized that what Governor Scott Walker was doing, eliminating collective bargaining amongst state employees and the way he was able to work around it in the end despite the outrage, galvanized the people in a way not scene since Vietnam. The small victories of these Wisconsinites are inspiring, as they prove that the old adage about not being able to fight city hall isn’t always the case.

Hot Docs - The Invisible War

Rating: ****

The women featured in The Invisible War are everything one would expect from modern U.S. military officers: they’re driven, ambitious, skilled, accomplished, and selfless. True leaders in every sense of the word; women dedicated to serving their country and answering the call to be a part of something bigger than themselves. For all these reasons, it’s all the more unfortunate, one way or the other, that they were forced to give up their commissions after being sexually assaulted by their fellow soldiers or superiors.

The Invisible War explored by Kirby Dick (This Film is Not Yet Rated) in this film is the struggle of literally thousands of women who have served in uniform, were sexually assaulted and forced to cope in a system hopelessly stacked in favour of their attackers, a small fraction of whom ever see a court room, and an even small fraction of those receive severe consequences. Dick and his crew chronicle the daily struggles of the brave women who came forward for the film, while at the same time trying to get to the bottom of why, despite the government’s own statistics and the accusations of its female officers, the military is left to police its own in the case of rape on armed forces personnel.

The statistics are staggering, as is the seeming indifference of military leadership and representatives in the U.S. Department of Defense. Even women in the system, who you would think would be more sympathetic, show tremendous callousness and ignorance for the issue. Dr. Kaye Whitley, the former head of the military’s program to combat rape in the ranks, SAPRO (Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office), advocates for female service members to use the “buddy system” as an acceptable strategy to combat rape. In another segment, a former officer in the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division (CID) explains that cases of rape reported are always given to male agents, since the perception is that female agents are “too sympathetic” and can’t be “impartial.”

Meanwhile, former Coast Guard Seaman Kori Cioca tells a waitress she meets to reconsider a career in the navy because chances are she’ll one day be raped and her superiors will do nothing. And while politicians in Washington agree there’s a problem, with nothing ever seeming to be done about it, female veterans suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) are more likely to be suffering not because of combat trauma, but because they were raped.

It’s a startling tale, but it does not enshrine victimhood. There’s tremendous sympathy for these women, but there’s also anger for what’s been done to them, and for what’s not being done for them. Hearing Dr. Whitley hem and haw through her interview with Dick would be funny if it weren’t so shocking, but it’s part of an astonishing system of ostriches all sticking their heads in the sand together. A glass-shattering story, and a wake-up call to anyone that still wants to believe that you – male or female – can be all you can be in the U.S. armed forces.

Hot Docs - Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

 

Rating: ****

Ai Weiwei is a giant in Chinese arts scene, a giant in the international arts community, and a giant pain in the butt for the Chinese government. Despite China’s reputation as a place that clamps down hard on any and all criticism, Ai Weiwei stood boldly in contrast, poking and prodding the state, practically daring them to “black bag” him. For a minute there last year, it seemed that Ai Weiwei had finally been silenced, but international response was resounding, and after 81 days he was released from custody.

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry offers incredible access into the artist and his world, but it’s also a serendipitous chronicle of the weeks leading up to Ai Weiwei’s arrest and the events that may have been the last draw for the Chinese government. In stark contrast to his homeland, Ai Weiwei is open and engaged, willing to be questioned and challenged in conversation. He really is the perfect subject matter for a documentary, and is a thoroughly captivating character.

But beyond the hindsight build up to Ai Weiwei’s arrest, director Alison Klayman plays with a number of themes: the fine line between art and activism, working within and without strict state-run censorship, and trying to promote change from the outside while still working from the inside. It’s heady stuff, but Ai Weiwei is such a relatable figure. Quite often the arts seem impenetrable to the layman, and the discussion of it requires a language most people don’t understand. But Ai Weiwei and his work flies in the face of that.

What’s weird is that in the midst of being surveilled and continually, sometimes literally, sticking his middle finger out to the Chinese government, you’re never concerned for Ai Weiwei, even if you have some idea what’s coming. He’s a rebel with a cause, and a glass half-full disposition. The film too is an extension of the artist’s spirit, not preaching, not condemning, and not afraid. The dividing line between art and politics falls away, and for Ai Weiwei, his politics become his art. Or vice versa.

Klayman effortlessly balances a lot of balls in the air and manages to tell a story that’s biographical, political, cultural and human. It’s all of those things and none of them. At least all that once. It’s a fascinating trip inside the mind of a man that shares his uniqueness without having to deconstruct the magic out of it.

Ides of March

****

George Clooney once again proves his directorial chops with Ides of March, a film about the dissolution of political ideals and betrayal of one’s principles and tight held beliefs in the struggle to not only do what’s right, but win in the total war climate of politics. What begins as a sunny-side Dr. Jekyll in the fine tradition of The West Wing or Mr Smith Goes to Washington becomes the malformed Mr Hyde we know and loathe from CNN. No one gets literally stabbed in The Ides of March, but the knife does turn.

Based on the play Beau Willimon Farragut North and adapted to the screen by Clooney and his writing partner Grant Heslov, Ides, although not inspired by actual events, is probably more closely related to the scandal involving former Presidential candidate John Edwards than anything suffered by current President Barack Obama. Against the backdrop of the Democratic primary in Ohio, two worthy but wholly different candidates are in a close race for the nomination.

The more liberal of the two is Governor Mike Morris (Clooney), whose campaign team includes the experienced political operative Paul (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and his more idealistic deputy Stephen (Ryan Gosling). Morris has a healthy lead, but a close race in Ohio could break either way, which could either mean a huge boost for his rival, or Morris’ securing of the Democratic nomination. But this isn’t a movie about Morris, but about Stephen, whose own beliefs are tested and, yes, crushed, in the face of the corrupting influence of politics. A simple meeting with the rival campaign manager becomes a question of trust; a romance pursued with a lovely intern leads to some startling revelations.

Anchored by an excellent performance by Gosling, Ides is startling for how quickly and easily one man’s idealism can fall apart and be betrayed, and not just by those he trusted, but himself too. Gosling gets to do a little bit of everything here: the self-assured operative at the top his game, the spiteful victim watching his well-laid world coming apart while getting progressively spiteful, and eventually the embittered survivor. Somewhere in there he’s also the charming romantic lead; Gosling’s chemistry with Evan Rachel Wood as Morris intern Molly, is electric and they definitely share one of the best “meet cute” moments in recent film memory.

But it is hard to pinpoint a stand-up supporting player in a cast this good. Clooney himself it subtly sublime as Morris, and confidently lets Gosling take the lead and make it his movie. Hoffman seems appropriately frumpy after years of politicking and is well-matched by Paul Giamatti, who plays friendly conniving very well as Hoffman’s opposite on the rival campaign. Marisa Tomei has a small part as a journalist friendly with both Stephen and Paul, and manages to set a tone despite the few scenes she’s in. And Jeffrey Wright also casts a long shadow as the senator on whom all political aspirations depend.

But the true genius at work in the film is how methodically everything turns. What begins as a movie that’s almost affectionate for the romance of politics, the naïve ideal that good people can do good work and campaign on their ideals, is not so much shattered as slowly decomposed over the course of the film’s running time. We all want to think that ideas mean more than perception, and that we want our leaders to be human while still being infallible, but what happens when we think we can have both ways and then realize we can’t, and that we were never going to? The final shot of Gosling, and the look on his face as he stares into the camera, sells the audience on just how far Stephen has fallen, and how much he can’t even believe it himself.

Still, I don’t think Ides of March is a politically cynical film. Perhaps in one way it can be seen as a plebiscite about politics in Obama’s America and is a warning about putting all your hopes on a single person to fix the tremendous faults and problems of our time. Or perhaps the greatest fault to human ideals is human failings, and that if you can find a leader who inspires your best and holds many of the things you believe in to be true, you should expect there may be another penny to drop. In any event, Clooney ably shows again that in front of or behind the camera he has a unique voice and a nearly unmatched eye for interesting material.

Watch, Rent, Buy, Devour: Devour

TIFF - Sarah Palin: You Betcha!

Rating: ***

It’s a remarkable statement of fact that when the John McCain presidential campaign selected then-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008, they did only 40 hours of vetting. What’s more incredible is that in the three years since that, as it turned out, fateful decision, Palin has become one of the most analyzed (or over-analyzed) figures in American politics.

Now British filmmaker Nick Broomfield adds his analysis to the chorus in the documentary Sarah Palin: You Betcha! and comes out of it without anything terribly new to offer. Politicos and the well-informed are already versed in Palin’s weaknesses as a politician, as well as the myriad of scandals that have plagued her and her distant relationship with the press. It also feels like maybe this documentary is a year too late, because even despite her still relative constant media appeal, it seems clear that Palin will only be a periphery player in next year’s presidential election.

If there’s a saving grace to the film it’s that Broomfield, for the most part, manages to hold off on doing a complete hatchet job on Palin. Whether or not his intent in the beginning was to explore Palin’s various skeletons, or if he wanted to make a truly balanced portrayal of the woman, Broomfield does the homework and the leg work to at least show how Palin went from small town mayor to one of the most pre-emanate voices on the political right in the United States.

What’s clear is that Palin can make enemies like no one else not dressed in a superhero costume. Not helping things is that Palin allies, save for an early interview with her parents Chuck and Sally Heath, don’t talk to Broomfield, so the argument is entirely one sided. Whether intentional or not, only one point of view is clear, and it’s the point of view that comes from a litany of people interviewed in the film. From John Stein, the former Mayor of Wasilla that Palin ousted, to her deputy mayor Colleen Cottle, to Mike Wooten, Palin’s former brother-in-law who she allegedly tried to fire as an Alaskan State Trooper, the message is that Palin is vindictive and spiteful, and if you make yourself her political enemy you are persona non-grata.

The interviews seem extensive, but as someone who is neither a fan of Palin nor her politics, even I was struggling to find a point in the documentary where I could enjoy the character assassination. There are really no surprises, and Broomfield’s Michael Moore like attempts to get his subject cornered at a couple of book signings rang pretty hollow. With one of the worst approval ratings of any American politician right now, it’s like Palin’s a pretty easy target, and trying to tag her with the tragic shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Gifford and 18 others back in January, like she was the Capone pulling the puppet strings on a Valentine’s Day massacre, seemed to be stretching things in order to be topical.

What I would have liked more is if Broomfield had put the focus of his doc on Wasilla, Alaska itself, rather than it’s most famous citizen. From its picturesque surroundings to the obvious everybody knows everybody vibe, Wasilla is like Twin Peaks but further north and real. It’s got a serious issue with people and meth, it’s got 7,000 people and more than one-in-three of them are NRA members, and the entire place is a company town, and that company is Sarah Palin. Everyone’s got an opinion, and everyone’s got a story, and when Broomfield eases his focus more broadly it seems like he’s really got something.

If nothing else, seeing a middle-aged British man trudge through the artic wilderness wearing red flannel and dopey hat while carrying his own boom mic made my inner guerrilla filmmaker smile. As for the subject matter, Broomfield does what he can, and the film do well with the choir it’s performing to, but Palin is far too overexposed to get something truly new and probing. But compelling? You betcha!

Hot Docs - Better This World

Rating: ****

Better this World is a rather disingenuous title. On the one hand, it is about young people trying to make the world a better place, but on the other it’s about how those ideals can be betrayed by a paranoid government, a opportunistic informant, and two young guys from George W. Bush country in Texas who pave their own road to hell with good intentions. Against the background of the madness and protests at the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, MN, David McKay and Bradley Crowder found themselves in a world of trouble, just by following their passion and fighting for what’s right.

The story starts in Texas, where David and Brad meet up in Midland and bond over their shared convictions in social justice and opposition to the war. The meet a charismatic activist named Brandon Darby, who had just come off months of helping survivors of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans keep their homes and rebuild their lives. In the summer of 2008, Darby invited David and Brad to join him in Minneapolis as part of the Republican Welcoming Committee, helping to disrupt the GOP’s activities in the Twin Cities.

What Brad, David, or anyone that was part of their group didn’t realized was that Darby was an FBI informant, who, while helping to organize disruption activities with his group, was actually narcing on them as well. David and Brad were arrested and put on trial in Federal Court. They tried to argue entrapment, and that Darby, while acting as an agent of the government, convinced good people to plan violent acts so that he could report them and have them arrested as terrorists.

Directors Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega tell the story in a very straight-forward manner, but with incredible access to family, friends and associates of David and Brad, as well as members of law enforcement that were involved in the case. Everyone tells their story plainly, and what’s interesting is that there is a lot of agreement on the details. Where people disagree is the intent of the investigation. Both David and Brad admit that they probably would have committed to their plan to bomb a jumbotron with Molotov cocktails without being egged on by Darby. But if Darby hadn’t been leading them by the wrists, so to speak, up to that point, would they have taken their activism that far?

Better This World has a lot to say about the legal process, the definition of entrapment, the nature of government obsessed with security and stretching those definitions to near ridiculous degrees. Interestingly, while the convictions of David and Brad seem as strong as ever, Darby has forsaken community organizing for fleeting fame on right-wing radio. Trying to portray himself as a patriot to the very people he was fighting against just a few years ago? I guess the first casualty of war protests, in Darby’s case, is your convictions.

TIFF Review-Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story

Rating: ****

The original story of Scheherazade was that she was the author of what became 1001 (Arabian) Nights, a series of stories that were the origins of Aladdin, Ali Baba and Sinbad. The story goes that King Shahryār, betrayed by his first wife, married a new woman every day and had her killed the next morning. One woman, Scheherazade, was next up to be married to the King, and that night to stave off her own execution, she told him a story so enthralling that he spared her so that she could continue it the next night; a true cliffhanger ending. Of course the King wanted to hear how it turns out in the end, but Scheherazade kept it up for the next night and the night after for 1,001 nights until either the King forgot about his wife killing-athon or he simply didn’t care anymore.

This Scheherazade isn’t quite so dramatic, but it could still be argued that it’s about a woman trying to stave off death for just one more day. Hebba Younis (Mona Zakki) is an Egyptian talk show host renowned for holding the feet of governmental power players to the fire. She’s a thoroughly modern woman in a society that doesn’t always see that as an asset. But regardless, to her loyal fans, she’s a fierce advocate for the little guy (and gal). Hebba’s husband Karim Hassan (Hassan El Raddad) is a newspaper editor at a government run daily. He’s also a sycophant looking to climb the ladder to career success as his paper’s new editor-in-chief, if only his outspoken wife wasn’t so outspoken because her bad mouthing the government is really throwing salt in Karim’s game.

So Hebba is asked to tone down her rhetoric for the sake of her husband’s career, which you can only imagine goes over really well with this fiercely independent and feminist-minded woman. But Hebba’s been divorced once, which is dicey enough, another divorce could really cost her points even in the more liberally-minded circles she travels in. Hebba initially dislikes the notion of pursuing “fluff” but to her surprise she finds that chasing stories about three very unique Egyptian women offered far more interesting subtext and social commentary than she could have imagined. In a “be careful what you wish for kind of way” Karim discovers that his wife’s idea of soft journalism can be even more damaging (politically) than her hard-hitting stuff.

Yes, it’s a delicious though convenient reversal that further propels the story into even deeper examinations of a culture that might not like what it sees about itself. Zakki’s performance is a feisty Girl Friday spin that reaffirms the reporter in its classic Western film roll as the plucky advocate for the voiceless, or in this case, women who refuse to be subjugate to men as per tradition. Director Yousry Nasrallah plays hardball with a lot of traditional ideas, and although the stories within the movie sometimes strain melodrama and soap opera conventions, they are nonetheless well told and done with a lot of grace and humour (in some cases). The film on a whole is a cultural slaughter house for the typically conservative, male-centric Muslim culture in Egypt with the women seen as strong, smart and powerful while the male characters are concerned with social status and keeping up appearances.

Scheherazade is a surprising and thoughtful film that can be funny, sad, pointed and aggravating. Nasrallah’s play with the format, and the way he tells the stories within the story, keeps one on their toes. It’s a powerful film in the way it subversively seems like a romantic comedy almost, before painting more deeply a message that’s simple, perhaps overdone, but no less misunderstood: that women everywhere want the same things out of life. Perhaps trite in the modern west, but in Egypt these are audacious and forward thinking ideas. Scheherazade is a wonderfully made and engrossing movie about modern gender politics in Egypt.

State of Play

Rating: ****

I couldn’t help but grin as I watched State of Play, and not just because it was a first rate political thriller with a thoughtful story and compelling characters. The “over-the-top” factor was that this film represented one of the few times in cinema that I felt the aesthetic of the newspaper reporter was done correctly. Cal McAffrey, as played by Russell Crowe, is a dishevelled looking beat reporter that boasts about writing stories on a 16-year-old computer when he’s not travelling between crime scenes, gorging on junk food in his 20-year-old car. His desk is cluttered, he has little time for gossip as news or bloggers and he still believes in the power of the press.

State of Play may be the last, great newspaper movie. So many films have been built around the notion that a single newspaperman (or woman), with truth and a patient editor at their side can conquer the universe. But in the modern world of course, we know that there’s a different story afoot. Once mighty papers, one’s that have spoken truth to power for 100-plus years, have collapsed under a weight of debt and a disinterested generation that gets their news online. This movie touches on that slightly: Cal is the old guard, blogger Della Frye (Rachel McAdams) is the new.

As a scandal breaks involving US Congressman Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck) and the death of an intern he was having an affair with, the classic “sex sells” adage starts moving the newsroom of the fictional Washington Globe in a less-desirable direction. Cal is Collins’ old college roommate, but Della wants dirt and he shoos her away like a bothersome copy boy. It’s not until Cal’s own investigations into an apparent drug death tracks back to the death of the intern that Cal starts to see more in the story. It’s a multi-layered conspiracy involving corporate corruption, government collusion and a fallible public servant trying to do the right thing in spite of everything. But of course, that’s not all to the story.

State of Play instantly calls back to All the President’s Men, a book and film that launched a generation of journalists into the believing that the scoop is there if they just wait in a parking garage long enough. In a kind of homage I suppose, the film’s most taunt sequences takes place in a garage as Cal’s hunted by the guy cleaning up the loose threads, of which Cal now counts himself among. The film though is actually based on a British miniseries of the same name, and screenwriters Matthew Michael Carnahan, Tony Gilroy and Billy Ray seem to not waste a moment in cutting the story down by a third. There doesn’t feel like there’s a wasted moment, or a beat out of place. And it’s not like the story’s running either, it’s perfectly keeping pace.

And there’s not a bum in the cast either; everyone’s carrying their weight. Crowe ably leads with a sharp eye on details making Cal a likeable curmudgeon and a typical newspaperman. McAdams and Affleck hold their own, but I think their roles are kind of marginalized by the size of the script and the story. Affleck in particular seems kind of limited in what he can emote either due to the way the character was written or maybe just some lazy acting. Robin Wright Penn nearly suffers the same fate as Collins’ suffering wife, but she manages to mine some energy playing against Crowe in several scenes. Helen Mirren is, of course, excellent as the whip-cracking editor.

Maybe I enjoyed it too much, but I still had a good time despite maybe one or two obvious gaps. Speaking as someone with a kind of affinity for the printed, (yes, I’m aware of the irony in saying that in an e-zine so don’t bother pointing that out) it’s both a tip of the hat to the reporter/hero and a fond salute to a bygone era when newspapers meant something. Hopefully, we’ve got out fingers crossed for the former option, but hey, the film deals in realism and so do I. But all-in-all, State of Play is a pretty satisfying conspiracy film, and it’s dramatic enough to make you care. So far, it’s definitely one of the best films of the year.

An American Carol

Rating: *1/2

This is one of those cases where you know going in that you’re about to be exposed to some pronounced stupidity, but somehow you’re just caught completely unprepared about how terrible things will be. Now I can appreciate a good laugh, and I actually had a few while watching this film, but the moments of hilarity in An American Carol are few and far between. It’s all thanks to a ridiculous premise and poorly executed gags meant to offend everyone generally, but the very evil, liberal, Hollywood, elite establishment specifically.

Reportedly, filmmaker David Zucker went from once being a long-time liberal Democrat to born-again conservative Republican. This development seems pronounced in the last few years, which leads me to believe that Zucker is one of those people that “saw the light” on 9/11. Meaning that government knows best even when they’re wrong, granting civil rights to prisoners of war is an act of weakness, the only way to peace is with superior firepower, and America, as a certain group of people perceive it, must be protected at all costs. A lot of neo-cons like to talk about “September 10th thinking,” well Zucker’s screenplay, written with first time scripter Myrna Sokoloff, sadly demonstrates “2004 thinking.”

That’s the only reason I can think to explain why this film believes it’s so clever. Everything that this film exudes as standard operating procedure, and the way America should be, is everything that the country voted against in the last election. Beyond that, the film’s central character – one “Michael Malone” – a pastiche for our favourite rebel-rousing documentary filmmaker, feels like an oddly stale conceit to hitch a film on. Coming out after Fahrenheit 9/11, American Carol might have seemed timely, if not sharp. But in the midst of what should have been a great year for Michael Moore, his latest documentary, Slacker Uprising, was received rather coolly by the critical mass.

Even if the era of Michael Moore being the butt of right-wing jokes in perception of the left wasn’t over, this entire enterprise of pointedly making Hollywood the root of all of America’s problems has long since expired. I felt like the DVD cover should have had the words “PABAAH approved” stamped on it. “Patriotic Americans Boycotting Anti-American Hollywood” was, of course, the joke’s butt of a segment on The Daily Show way back when burning your Dixie Chicks CD was en vogue. The ridiculousness of PABAAH’s mandate has long since seen them shut up shop and gone back to quietly editing Hollywood films, they claim to despise, to fit a rigid moral code.

But Zucker didn’t get the memo. Other memos he didn’t get: The Iraq War was launched under false pretences; the majority of Americans now see Operation: Iraqi Freedom as a colossal mistake; considering diplomacy with America’s enemies as tantamount to appeasement is an overstatement; and seeing the application of civil rights as a form of mollycoddling is extreme. Don’t tell that to the ghost of General George S. Patton (played with surprising authority by Kelsey Grammer). He guides “Malone’s” journey through the perverse world created if the director’s vision of an America free of Independence Day comes to pass.

And since we’re there, let’s dwell on that ridiculous bit of nonsense for a minute. Abolish the Fourth of July? I realize that this is satire and you sometimes have to paint in the broad strokes and take things to their unnatural extremes, but this seems a bit much. Again, Zucker seems to be playing drastically out of date perceptions of the left, that not even people like Sean Hannity have the nerve to play with anymore. It’s an artificially inflated jab at the right-wing perception that Americans who were critical of their own government are unpatriotic and America-hating. But in its current predicament, are people like-minded with Zucker truly advocating that there’s nothing wrong with the way America’s been doing business?

Indeed, much of the substance in this film plays like a Sarah Palin speech gone wild. It’s all about the real America – the one in the middle where no ocean, or progressive thought, can touch. It’s the America where people like country music, watch NASCAR, and know the value of sacrifice. Because no one that ever grew up on the West Coast or in the Northeast ever thought about putting on a uniform and serving their country in the armed forces. They’d have to put down their French wine and copy of The New York Times in order to do that. Is this the game we’re still playing?

And I especially enjoyed Patton’s flashback to anti-war demonstrations in 1940 New York as reason why the advocacy for peace is misguided. I especially enjoyed it considering that much of the anti-war activity was lead by the America First Committee, a group that was criticized at the time for being anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi. Not to mention that fact that AFC’s most fervent speaker was Charles Lindbergh, who once said, “[The Jews] greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.” He also once inspected the Luftwaffe in 1936, and was given a medal by Hermann Göring.

Of course, Lindbergh said later about the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp after visiting, “Here was a place where men and life and death had reached the lowest form of degradation. How could any reward in national progress even faintly justify the establishment and operation of such a place?” Well, we all make mistakes, Lindy, that’s why pencils have erasers. But in An American Carol, there’s no mention of Lucky Lindy’s misplaced sympathies, but there is however a cheap shot at Leni Riefenstahl. Now despite having made Nazi propaganda films, Riefenstahl was never convicted of war crimes and regretted her role in mythologizing Nazism, but it should also be remembered that she did more for filmmaking than Zucker ever could or ever will.

The final cheap shot in Carol I didn’t think much of was a take on Good Night and Good Luck called “That McCarthy Sure was Bad.” So is Zucker advocating that McCarthy wasn’t that bad, or is this some kind of professional jealousy; the left-wing movies are acclaimed, while right-wing movies are left to eat their dust. Call me kooky, but I think that there might be a bit of an inferiority disorder happening here. From Ben Stein’s Expelled “documentary,” which borrowed the methodology of Michael Moore that the right claims to despise, to this pedestrian social satire that already feels like a farce despite having only come out in theatres just three months ago, we’ve learned that the mentality of “If you can’t beat them, join them” doesn’t work.

As for the movie, it squanders a lot of talent in order to take cheap shots in what I assume is some kind of comedic revenge fantasy attack at all those left-wing wankers that stuffed the ballot box for Barack Obama and the Democrats last year. There’s definitely a taste-of-your-own medicine kind of vibe, but it seems odd that these paragons of moral authority would exploit Ground Zero and military families as a source of melodrama and so-called comedy. The odd part is that I think this thing could have come off funnier, wittier and just overall better; the building blocks are there. Instead it focused on cheap shots, stale gags and an underwhelming Bill O’Reilly cameo. I can only assume that Chris Matthews was unavailable – now he’ll do anything for buck.