The FlipSide
By: Kevin Filipski |
Monday July 03, 2006 |
| Welcome to the FlipSide. What is the Flipside? Well, anything Kevin Filipski wants it to be. This time out, War films on DVD. |
| Have we become desensitized to the horrors of war? Based on the lack of protest of the Iraq "conflict," it may well be true. So it's heartening that several films recently released on DVD say what can never be repeated enough: war is hell.
Let's begin chronologically, with World War II, that most brutal but necessary war. The documentary The Goebbels Experiment (First Run Features) matter-of-factly examines the Nazi Henrich Goebbels' heinous career, from Hitler's takeover until the Third Reich's ignominious end. Structured by historical footage, public and private, which is seen as Kenneth Branagh intones Goebbels' words, The Goebbels Experiment is a cattle prod to the brain, meant to shock those who've become immune to remembering the most widespread destruction of humanity in modern history. A lightning rod for four decades, Vietnam is back thanks to our ill-advised Iraqi debacle fast turning into another "no-win" situation. Whatever Iraq's relationship to Vietnam, new insights continue to be gleaned from our most unnecessary war. The best-known fictional treatment of Vietnam, Oliver Stone's Platoon (MGM/Sony), is out in a two-disc Special Edition. Platoon retains its immediacy as a gritty introduction to jungle warfare, showing Americans thrown into a hell where they misunderstood the people and were clueless how to fight them. Stone dramatizes this in all its harrowingness, but his attempt to transform his characters into mythic figures often makes Platoon a conventional Hollywood war flick. Still, the DVD set is terrific: most features are holdovers from the previous edition, but new making-of documentaries and a new high-definition transfer are reasons enough to upgrade to this edition. Two Vietnam-era documentaries should be required viewing for anyone to have informed opinions about any war. Winter Soldier (Milestone) is a straightforward record of the 1971 hearings in Detroit as various Vietnam vets recount the atrocities and war crimes they witnessed or partook in. Simply showing these men talking about their experiences makes Winter Soldier a devastating, heartwrenching look at how our brave military men were undermined by their bad-faith government. Milestone's disc includes valuable extras: additional footage of several speakers, a featurette about a soldier who went from being gung-ho to rabidly anti-war and a music video of Graham Nash's song "Winter Soldier." One Bright Shining Moment: The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern (First Run Features) postulates that George McGovern's 1972 run for president - when he was annihilated by Nixon, who won a second term - was a turning point in American liberalism by pointing to a true-anti-war movement. (McGovern wanted immediate withdrawal from Vietnam.) Was Nixon's landslide was a referendum on abandoning Vietnam immediately? Either way, McGovern comes across as a true American hero, a rare politician unafraid of campaigning on principles, not polls. It's an unsaid assertion in Stephen Vittoria's film that no politician today dares do that. Interviewed are several bastions of the American left, including Gore Vidal, Warren Beatty, Gloria Steinem, and members of McGovern's campaign team. Extras include various interviews and additional footage. The "war on terror" has spawned mostly documentaries; of the few features so far, only Syriana (Warner Home Video) bravely ties our inability to escape the clutches of terrorism to our dependence on Middle East oil. Stephen Gaghan's ambitious feature weaves together numerous story strands (including George Clooney's Oscar-winning supporting turn as a retiring CIA agent who tries engineering one last coup). There's too much going on to fully understand everyone's motives, but Gaghan's film is adult food for thought of the kind rarely associated with American movies. A film like Syriana deserves audio commentaries and extra features to help with proper context and background; instead there are featurettes that only skim the surface, somewhat like the movie, for all its artistic daring and apt concern for its main subject, does. En Route to Baghdad (First Run), directed by Brazilian journalist Simone Duarte, is not an anti-Iraq war film per se, but this short documentary of the life and death of the UN's special envoy in Iraq, charismatic Sergio Vieira de Mello, underscores the sad irony that a man dedicating his career as a statesman to peace would be killed by insurgents. Duarte's film interviews seemingly everyone touched by Vieira de Mello's unflaggingly energetic attempts to make the most dangerous areas of this planet - like Bangladesh, Lebanon, Cambodia and East Timor - livable. The DVD includes an extended interview with UN secretary-General Kofi Annan. This primer on war-related DVDs ends with a round of hearty applause for Eugene Jarecki's Why We Fight (Sony), a sober, lucid account of how America's current military pre-eminence cannot be taken for granted. In a succinct 99 minutes, Jarecki lays bare the whole military-industrial complex's domination of governmental and private interests for the past half-century. Indeed, Jarecki smartly allows President Eisenhower - who, in his farewell speech to the nation, warned of letting such an elephantine apparatus run our lives - the opening words. Interviewing officials, academics and talking heads, Jarecki zeroes in on the Iraqi conflict as the most successful example of how our government creates reasons for going to war. No amount of Fox News-type spinning will erase the powerful image of the crestfallen face of a NYC policeman (whose son died on 9/11) as he realizes his president lied about the reasons we went into Iraq. Jarceki is a subtle enough filmmaker that he never belabors his points: he doesn't have to, because the truth speaks so loudly. This is a DVD where much bonus material is welcomed: additional scenes, Jarecki's Q&As with audiences, his discussions with Jon Stewart and Charlie Rose and his audio commentary with Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson of the U.S. army serve to bolster the persuasive argument that our position as world leader is quite precarious. |
