Something to watch

Given our increased commitment to rooting out terrorism in Afghanistan, every American man, woman and child needs to see the documentary Afghan Star (2009), a portrait of the local version of American Idol, which, according to the film, is providing a new level of social cohesion and peaceful celebration of differences and similarities among the variegated tribes.

The film does not break new ground aesthetically, but it is very well directed and edited; one of those documentaries in which the filmmakers are either exactly where you want them to be at this point in the story, or they have cleverly contrived to make you want to be exactly where they take you. Their lead characters, the four primary contestants emerge as rounded and complex characters, given their limited screen time, as do the ancillary characters, such as the host-producer, who clearly sees music, television and the Afghan Star program itself as powerful forces of social and cultural liberation for his country. (Heartbreaking indeed for a Westerner are the scenes of Kabul in the 1970s, before the Soviet invasion, scenes of the happy, progressive, exciting city so fondly recalled in Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner.)

Progress does not move in all directions, at least not at the same rate. One female contestant, performing her final song after being eliminated from competition, deliberately begins to dance and (deliberately or not) lets her hijab slip from her head. This brings a storm of controversy, anger and even death threats to her in her home community. On the other hand, the remaining contestants are all from different tribes, yet their competition is clearly seen as a friendly rivalry, and many Afghanis elect to support contestants from different groups than their own. Moreover, voting by cell phone for their favorites is the most universal and effective form of participatory democracy that many young Afghanis have ever experienced. (A Taliban attack on use of cell phones after dark poses a threat to this process at one point in the story.)

Americans should see this film not only to know what is going on in Afghanistan and to see the changes taking place, but because you will come away genuinely liking the Afghan people. No, they're not just like us, that's not the point. But you have to admire their endurance, perseverance, even humor at times, like the women who chuckle for the camera as they sit with their heads uncovered at the taping of Afghan Star. And the children who begin to see that there can be an alternative in life to doing what your great-grandfather did. And the Pashtuns who have learned to enjoy Hamsara songs.

Maybe we could replace all wars with the World Cup and Pop Idol everywhere...

The People's Choice

The old joke goes, "I saw the play under adverse circumstances. The curtain was up." I saw The Hangover (2009) in adverse circumstances, at home with just my wife and myself. It is clearly an audience film. It certainly does not boast an original or striking premise, nor does it introduce interesting new performers, at least not to anyone who follows comedy in the US today. In fact, I was disappointed at how Zack Galifiankis's creative brilliance was utterly and completely stifled in the monochromatic character he was given to play. The "bad bachelor party", "wild weekend" and "crazy time in Vegas" genre is surely close to being mined out.

What should make a film based on a tired idea like this one work is either the originality of its expression (not here) or the charm of the participants. I am told by people who know that Bradley Cooper (who functions as the lead in this film--at least he is the instigator of most of the complications of the story) is a famous person who is liked by audiences. I found him to have the warmth and charisma of a cyborg. An especially dull, anonymous cyborg. He is the Bill Paxton of comedy--that is, an actor so lacking in any unique quality, that you can't remember what he looks or sounds like--WHILE YOU ARE WATCHING HIM. He has no fuzzy or crinkly edges to stick to your brain. I kept thinking he was the stupid younger brother of the Fiennes, who had been locked in a closet in America at a young age while Raif and Joe were going to acting school.

Of the leads, only Ed Helms's character's story was of interest--again, not original, but had some recognizable human sentiment. At the end of the story, this man has shed an unsuitable life (always an enjoyable story trope) and has decided to woo and court his wife, played by Heather Graham, always so brilliant at making people with low morals and low brain capacity sweet and adorable.

People really liked this movie--even talked it up for the 10th Best Picture nomination, but I got no more than sporadic laughs from it. Not my fault, not the film's--but it will be interesting to see, as the world of home video continues to develop--how long audience films like this retain their lustre, compared to the quieter pleasures of, say, the long-underrated, now cult object Office Space.

Getting invested

I can safely say I know Buster Keaton's The General better than any film in existence. Literally. When I grew up in the pre-home-video 1960s, if you wanted to collect film, it meant silent film. Mostly classics from Blackhawk Films, plus some excerpts from Universal Pictures from Castle Films. And they weren't cheap. I saved up $50 dollars--1968 dollars--to purchase, on four 400-ft reels of standard 8mm film--to own my own copy of The General.

And I would watch it every chance I got. If I didn't want to commandeer the living room, set up the projector and screen (and probably record player) and close the curtains, I could put the film on my editing machine and hand-crank it past the magnifying screen. This had the advantage of being able to look at sequences frame-by-frame over and over and over.

So The General became a sort-of internal experience. What fun, then to share it with my Film Studies class (they actually said "yay!" when they saw Buster's face on the menu card). While I was trying to be all analytical and film-studies-ish, but the class--happily--ignored me and became an audience. "Oh!" "Watch out!" "She is SO stupid!" And there were all the laughs and gasps in the right places.

A word about the laughs. The General is not Buster's funniest film. It is his best. How can a film be a comedian's best when it is not his funniest? Because The General never fails to command audience involvement. Laughs, yes. But identification with the characters and hope for Buster/Johnny's success even more. The film is perfectly clear at all times. It needs no explanation, no apologies, no context. It no longer matters that it was one of his least successful features on initial release. I'm happy to say, given its ubiquity (it went into public domain before his other great films), that The General may serve as Keaton's epitaph and summary. You should see it again--but with an audience.