Steady Diet of Film

Review: Videocracy

At the center of Videocracy, Erik Gandini's snapshot of Italy's celebrity-obsessed popular culture, is Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi, a millionaire turned television mogul turned billionaire turned Prime Minister, is an untouchable figure who has become the revered and reviled focal point for Italy's perception of itself. (See Michael Moore's Roger & Me for a different version on a similar theme.)

Berlusconi made his fortune by buying up 90% of Italy's television programming and churning out cheap programming that was high on nudity, silliness and spectacle. Over time, he has become a star-maker for young beauties hoping to score a gig as a Velisa girl (a woman who stands next to talk show hosts and inevitably winds up married to a soccer player). Gandini's critique is widened to the point of indicating a national pandemic by some fuzzy statistics on Italy's gender inequality, plastic surgery rates and general ignorance about current world events. His points are beautifully illustrated by slow-motion long shots of an open casting call for Velisa girls held in a mall where mobs of young women gyrate awkwardly in front of a jeering crowd.

The film captures dozens of salacious anecdotes and insights. But one that best encapsulates the universe depicted in Videocracy is a scene at the PM's private island villa called the Billionaire Club (where Denzel Washington, Paris Hilton and even former British Prime Minister Tony Blair have been known to party), where girls are scouted to be the President's official weather girl.

This fame domain is explored in more depth through the stories of an aspiring gameshow contestant, a Mussolini-idolizing television agent and ruthless paparazzo Parlo Corona. Corona, a handsome upstart paparazzi photographer imbued with a fairly superficial self-righteousness and hatred of the beautiful people, is a particularly fascinating and pitiful example of the toxicity of fame. He eventually becomes so successful he's absorbed into the system, becoming a de facto broker between his army of hired photographers and the wealthy people happy to pay top dollar to keep their ill behavior (none of which is disclosed in the documentary) from the public. He's eventually jailed for slander and becomes an even bigger celebrity (albeit an oddly corrosive one), going on Silvio-owned talk shows to answer Boxer/Briefs-type questions. His efforts to shine a light on the sickness in the culture are eventually dwarfed, then seduced by his own need for public validation. In his final scene we see him wearing a hidden camera to tape his own divorce proceedings when his supermodel wife leaves him and going to murder scenes to ask grieving parents if they'll wear t-shirts emblazoned with his face.

Videocracy is a bubbly addition to the recent spate of documentaries (Bhutto, Fixer, After the War: Life post-Yugoslavia) that explore how political and cultural upheaval leaves people at a loss for a sense of cohesive community. And when pessimism runs too deeply for a strong national identity to be forged, people will respond to the simpler messages of religious fundamentalism or crass commercialism. In fact, Silvio's next campaign slogan could easily be: Boobs Not Bombs!  


Videocracy opens in select cities February 12th and plays at the Portland International Film Festival February 11-28th.
 

Review: The Art of the Steal

After growing up destitute and making millions selling pharmaceutical snake oil, Dr. Albert Barnes was intent on giving back by opening the world of rarefied art appreciation to the masses. Barnes assembled one of the world's most impressive modern art collections, displayed it only in his suburban mansion just outside the nefarious reaches of Philadelphia high society (against whom he had a long-standing grudge). When he passed away, the collection (valued at about $9B) became the target of the entire art world, Philadelphia politicians with tourism dollars in their eyes and Barnes's considerable enemies. Barnes is said by all to be a contentious personality, but his number one enemy was Walter Annenberg, son of newspaper publisher/gangster (oh, Philadelphia) Moses Annenberg and a Nixon loyalist whose hatred for Barnes would extend far into both of their graves.

Director Don Argott subtly displays the inanity of people who either inherited their wealth or profited from fools having little better to do than throw darts at one another. Maybe, the film hints, it's lack of imagination that is key to Philadelphia's tourism problem. (Or you know, the fact that it's only known for its political corruption, poverty and long-since-past-historical-significance.)

Since Barnes died without having any children, he attempted to leave his collection in the hands of people who would keep it small, tethered to its location and private. He believe the museum world was too sterile, bureaucratic and profit-driven to be a house of art. Barnes' believers make an impassioned point, but there's also something to be said for the democratization that occurs in the commercial sphere. After a lot of bribery, collusion, favor-trading and paperwork (so much paperwork), the Barnes collection was taken on the road to a dozen cities, where it was made available to those who didn't have the opportunity (or the interest) to travel to the Philadelphia suburbs.

Some of the most memorable moments in the film come from the Barnes believers that are still alive. A few of them are deeply cynical and interviewed in squalid, cramped apartments who we later see attending protests outside Philadelphia wine and cheese parties chanting "Philistine! Philistine!" Others are big-time collectors and curators having ingratiated themselves into the patrician, sterile world of high art collection. Like in Amir Bar-Lev's My Kid Could Paint That the film crackles with glimpses into the clashing ideas about how to appreciate art. A particularly great scene shows a big-wig art buyer walking through a Sotheby's auction, explaining (sometimes in great detail, occasionally in irritated huffs) the difference between what makes "a Barnes-worthy Matisse" and what doesn't.

The Art of the Steal is so beautifully constructed it's easy to forget you're watching a story that relies almost solely on legal documents, talking heads, court rulings and paintings to make its points. Argott gracefully raises the issues of privacy rights and the tricky business of making art into commerce -- all the while creating a tidy, suspenseful film that serves as a showpiece to the ingenuity spawned from good old-fashioned contempt for one's fellow man. Each twist and turn of the story (spanning 6+ decades) could easily have been made less egregious if any one person involved had elected to take the high road. But they don't. And their greed and sense of collective self-righteous is made all the more tantalizing by their total lack of self awareness and the fact that only other bored, rich a-holes and grant-funded art wanks are being directly impacted by this mess.


The Art of the Steal plays in select cities February 26th and screens at the Portland International Film Festival February 11-28. 

Review: Lioness

Lioness

Rating (out of 5): ***

The first half of Lioness, co-directors' Meg McLagan's and Daria Sommers' debut, focuses on the arcane circumstances that brought the first unit of female combat fighters (dubbed "Team Lioness") together. Since the Iraq invasion has never been officially declared a war, there are technically no combat missions being fought there. Ergo, female soldiers can be placed on the frontlines of any engagement despite it presently being illegal for them to serve in combat situations. The Marines' missions focus on following up on gathered intelligence routing out insurgents and terrorist cells, which are typically run out of private residences. Because male American soldiers frisking Muslim women in burkas could conceivably lead to a jihad that would consume the entire Arabian desert, female soldiers (none of whom speak Farsi) were dispatched to placate the locals.

But because the Lioness team members all came from the Army and were never trained in the Marines' weaponry, strategy or vernacular there were many occasions when the women were abandoned during shootouts or were nearly left behind in villages without an operational vehicle or map. Watching this documentary one understands why the the Bush administration's 'women in the military' meme was Jessica Lynch and not Team Lioness. Months after returning from their tours, the women still express deep resentment at the unnecessary dangers they faced due to what amounted to a poorly organized propaganda effort.

Read the rest of my review at Greencine.

Review: Bhutto

In 1988 Pakistan elected its youngest and first female prime minister in Benazhir Bhutto. Bhutto became a valuable ally to Western leaders as an example of the precarious but burgeoning democractic progress in the Middle East. Even her assassination in late 2007, was mostly covered as a BFF contest for the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates.

Bhutto, Jessica Hernández and Johnny O'Hara's Sundance documentary competition film, focuses on the tempestuous family and national entanglements that led to her rise and fall from power. The film draws many parallels between the difficulties within the Bhutto family and the state of Pakistan itself -- both inherently lack a stable foundation or sense of unity, absences which constantly undermine the chance of significant progress.

Benazir's father, former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was a self-aggrandizing but charismatic and progressive leader. He championed education and pushed for worldwide recognition of Pakistan, whose basic geography was constantly under threat of being re-written by neighboring India. But because he was so hated by the conservative religious and military elements in his country, once his popularity slipped with the people he was unseated and eventually executed on charges of conspiracy to assassinate a rival.  

Benazir, whose political conscience was born in the flames of the 1960s radicalism she witnessed on the Harvard and Oxford campuses, became galvanized by the (self-described) martyring of her father. She took over her his political party and set her sights on becoming the next Prime Minister, which she did when the previous PM fell out of favor with the people and was imprisoned. Yet she quickly learned that even top-down change doesn't turn on a dime, especially in a country where the military and scientific community (which, at this point, was developing nuclear weaponry) doesn't recognize the legitimacy of its own government's leadership. Bhutto was ultimately deposed, imprisoned, exiled, returned, lauded and re-elected after a rival prime minister (Khalid) fell out of public favor.  

The comparison is made many times throughout the film that the Bhuttos are essentially Pakistan's version of the Kennedys. Both families are  enormous, hyper-intelligent, preternaturally photogenic (okay, maybe not so Kennedy-esque on that one) and deeply invested with a sense of civic responsibility. Since that investment is so insulated in a lives of privilege, it comes with no small amount of vanity. Interestingly, since Pakistan's largest institutions are in a constant state of chaos, civic responsibilty takes far weirder forms for the Bhuttos. In 1981 Benazir's brother Murtaza hijacked a plane, ostensibly for the release of a few vaguely described political prisoners, leaving one person dead.

Not unlike the US's romantic obsession with the Kennedys, there is zero reflection on how political dynasties can both create and undermine a national identity. It's never mentioned that for as talented and caring as the Bhuttos try to be, part of the problem for Pakistan may be that 50% of their political history has been controlled by one family, let alone a family whose internal power struggles manifest in constant public squabbling, plane hijackings and assassination attempts. At least the vainglorious Kennedys understand the value of keeping a public face on internal strife. The film also glides right over mentions that the New York Times published pieces of Mullah-sponsored propaganda that landed Bhutto in prison (a second time) and that CNN published her hacked private emails after she was assassinated. Instead, Bhutto is made into a martyr, who, in the film-makers' eyes at least, was her country's last hope. It's reductive and inherently dishonest.

Bhutto functions well as a privileged people's history of Pakistan. Certainly, audiences walk away with a few more details of the ingrained grudges that prevent a more comprehensive national unity. But by reducing so much of the political history as a reason-less toggling between two parties (who imprison all members of the opposition when in power), the complex role Pakistan plays on the world stage is turned into bloody melodrama that occasionally veers into The Gods Must Be Crazy territory.

Bhutto screened at Sundance 2010 Film Festival and is currently seeking US distribution.

#032 Outrage w/ Andy Blubaugh

This week I'm joined by film-maker Andy Blubaugh (whose recent documentary The Adults in the Room* will be on the festival circuit later this year) to discuss Kirby Dick's documentary on the outing of closeted homosexual politicians, Outrage. First we discuss the eternal question all documentary film-makers face: "Why isn't this a book?" Then we get into the issue of making a film that relies on professional Beltway talkers to provide personal experiences before we have a full-on Doc Dorkout over that special devil/angel of the genre, Michael Moore. Enjoy!

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*Full disclosure: I'm a producer on The Adults in the Room.