reVIEW (22)
THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE

This one—a slightly altered version of a review previously published in 2004 entitled “The Politics of Paranoia”—is being resurrected because whatever the film may be saying is still pretty important.

It’s an election year in the United States. From left (Fahrenheit 9/11 and a host of others) and right (George W. Bush: Faith in the White House and a smaller host of others), documentaries are being released to help spark debate, and hopefully, influence votes. Along with these documentaries are a handful of feature films that tackle political themes or subject matter. There is John Sayles’ Silver City, with Chris Cooper; though quite possibly the highest profile of these batch of films is Jonathan Demme’s remake of the 1962 Frank Sinatra-starrer The Manchurian Candidate, which was, in turn, based on the novel of the same name by Richard Condon.

Updating the Cold War scenario of the original, Denzel Washington is Major Bennett Ezekiel Marco, a Desert Storm veteran who is beginning to doubt the veracity of his memory. Marco’s dreams are telling him that something is not quite right in his head, and the heads of the members of his former unit, among them, Congressman Raymond Prentiss Shaw (Liev Schreiber), poised to become the next Vice President, under the careful, guiding hand of his mother, Senator Eleanor Prentiss Shaw (Meryl Streep).
What Marco uncovers is an apparent conspiracy to position a brainwashed puppet President in the White House, dangling on the strings of Manchurian Global, a “private equity fund” which is described by one character as a “geopolitical extension of policy for every president since Nixon.” (Though I’m sure PoliSci grads out there know exactly what that means, as a mere plebeian, all I got from the context in which the line was delivered was that this was a Very Bad Thing.)

With a cast like this, one expects sterling performances, and none of the principal three disappoint. Washington’s Marco is normally a capable and confident soldier, but when faced with the possibility of being betrayed by his own brain, he is understandably on edge. Schreiber is astoundingly convincing as a charismatic political candidate, secretly chafing at the control his mother has over him. And Streep, of course, is Streep. Her Eleanor Prentiss Shaw is the proverbial power behind the throne, the matriarchal manipulator who will see her son in the White House, no matter the cost.
Sadly, Dean Stockwell and Miguel Ferrer are among the underutilized members of the cast, particularly Stockwell, who does little more than stand around and frown.

Now, as a thriller, The Manchurian Candidate is not as taut as I had hoped it would be (Demme, after all, gave us The Silence of the Lambs). In addition, the plot, in certain instances, gets either a tad predictable, or takes an all-too-convenient turn.
The film does, however, get plus points for technique.
With a script structured in fragments that usually end in a fade to black, Demme successfully emulates the nature of memory: we don’t recall every single detail. We remember things in blocks, in chunks of sight and sound. Also, to heighten the atmosphere of paranoia that runs throughout the film, Demme occasionally uses close-up shots of characters speaking directly to the camera—to us, the off-camera character they are addressing.

Now, if it isn’t quite clear, let me spell out the fact that though The Manchurian Candidate is a thriller, it is not of the characters-chasing-one-another-down-crowded-city-streets-to-a-pounding-techno-beat school, nor does it have any significant plot twists to play mindgames with the audience. Much of the tension and conflict is internal and relational: Marco struggling to maintain his sanity despite the X-Files-like conspiracy he suspects is taking place; Raymond Shaw, caught between his own best intentions, his mother’s ambition, and Marco’s increasingly agitated claims.

Regardless of the film’s pros and cons though, I do think it’s a rather sad statement that in the original 1962 film, the motivation for putting a sleeper in the White House was ideology. Today, just over four decades later, it’s economics. It’s to ensure that the man in the Oval Office will keep the perpetual war running so the people making the money off the conflict continue to do so.
At least when the Chairman played the paranoia game in `62, it was because of a belief in something far larger than a piece of paper with an arbitrarily-assigned value attached to it. Ah, well, the times do change things, don’t they?

So, if you’re going to watch The Manchurian Candidate, see it for three things: the performances, the storytelling technique, and—mind you, this could be paranoia talking—the metastory I suspect is being told: of the horrifying ease with which people can be bought and owned by third parties. That the Manchurian Globals of the real world don’t need anything as sci-fi as subdermal implants nor as James Bond as post-hypnotic commands. All they need is the right amount of money to throw at greedy, weak-willed people, and they’ll have their puppets in place, dancing to the tunes they play, ready and eager to roll over when the order is given.

Parting shot: For fans of Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians, Hitchcock pops up here in a minor role, which isn’t the first time Demme has cast a musician in his films: Chris Isaak played a SWAT team leader in The Silence of the Lambs.

(The Manchurian Candidate OS and DVD cover art courtesy of impawards.com.)

reVIEW (10)
LEMONY SNICKET’S A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS

As a companion piece to tonight’s On The Lot review, I thought I’d wheel out this oldie but goodie, which was originally published under the title, “The Wonderful(ly Dark) World of Snicket.”

Little Red Riding Hood is eaten by the wolf. Sleeping Beauty is impregnated as she sleeps and wakes to discover she is the mother of twins.
These are just some of the fairy tales (or marchen, as they were called in German) in their original forms, before the Age of Enlightenment dealt them a crippling blow, and Disney all but obliterated them. They’re still there though, these dark, rather adult tales, there for the curious and the enthralled.
Which brings us, in a roundabout fashion, to Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, which is not unlike a dark, traditional fairy tale, though without the magic. What it lacks in spells and cantrips though, Series makes up for in mystery and deaths.
Oh, yes, there are deaths here, children. In fact, the film’s plot is triggered by death.

In one fell swoop, at the hands of a mysterious fire, the Baudelaire children (Violet, Klaus, and Sunny) suddenly find they are the Baudelaire orphans, left in the care of frustrated actor—and villain of the piece—Count Olaf (Jim Carrey). What follows is, as the title may suggest, a series of close calls, near-mishaps, and fatalities (both apparent and actual).
Clearly, this is not a Disney family movie, and early on, we are invited by Jude Law—who does a tremendous voice-over job as Lemony Snicket, relating the sad and woeful tale of the Baudelaire children to us—to leave the theatre, if we are expecting light, fluffy cuteness. He actually does this twice, and if by the second time, those of the audience who have no appreciation for the dark and the macabre are still in their seats, then they’ve effectively forfeited any right to complain.
Now, having firmly established its darkling nature, it’s time to examine the film itself.

To begin with, the star of Series is clearly its production design. It has that otherworldly feel peppered with Gothic chic that is Tim Burton’s greatest gift to mainstream cinema. Small wonder, as Series production designer Rick Heinrichs collaborated with Burton on the pretty-to-look-at-but-not-much-else Sleepy Hollow. The world of the Baudelaires is Dickens on absinthe: grand and gloomy, shadowy and cobwebbed, like a skewed cartoon where the figurative animals neither sing nor dance, but stare at you furtively from the nooks and crannies.
Don’t think this is another Sleepy Hollow though. You can actually look at other things aside from the sets. As I’ve already mentioned, Law is excellent here, as is Meryl Streep, as the overwrought and overly neurotic Aunt Josephine. As far back as She-Devil and Postcards from the Edge, Streep proved that she wasn’t just adept at accents and drama; she had a killer sense of the comedic as well, which serves her well in Series, so much so that you wish she had far more screen time than she actually does.
And Emily Browning and Liam Aiken, who play Violet and Klaus Baudelaire, respectively, though not giving breakthrough performances on the level of a Haley Joel Osment, are certainly a sight better than the three Harry Potter principals were in the first film of that franchise. (The comparison arises from the fact that Series is based on the Lemony Snicket children’s novels, The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room, and The Wide Window, enjoying the current wave of popularity kid lit is experiencing in this post-Harry Potter world of ours.)

Given that Count Olaf is a central character to the tale, it’s sad then that the weak link, performance-wise, is Jim Carrey. Let me make it clear though, that I am not the biggest Jim Carrey fan; I find there is a certain tolerance level I have where he’s concerned, which, once crossed, subsequently makes me inured to his antics. In Series, I reached that level rather quickly, so much so that I found I was happiest when Count Olaf was off-screen. The script, with its occasional modern colloquialisms in its dialogue, isn’t much help either. (Of course, it’s tricky telling where the script ends and Carrey’s ad-libbing begins.)

It’s curious that Brad Silberling ended up directing Series, which is so far afield from his previous film, Moonlight Mile, where Jake Gyllenhaal, Susan Sarandon, and Dustin Hoffman play the fiancée and parents of a recently-deceased woman, coping with their grief and sense of loss. Not only is the scope of Series so much larger than Moonlight Mile (or anything else he’s done for that matter), but the tenor of the piece is vastly different as well.
I bring this up not because Silberling botches the job, but rather because there’s nothing specific and peculiar to the direction of Series that makes it stand apart. For all I know, it could have been Barry Sonnenfeld—who directed The Addamms Family and its sequel, as well as the Men in Black films—at the helm. Perhaps if Series had been allowed to linger a little more on its characters, we might have seen some of the insightful character bits evident in Moonlight Mile. But, preoccupied as the script of Series is with how Violet, the family inventor, gets to McGyver her way out of the latest precarious predicament the dastardly Count has put her and her siblings in, there’s precious little time for those pesky things called “emotions” and “character development.”

Uneven as it is though, A Series of Unfortunate Events is an agreeable piece of macabre entertainment. It’s also a good introduction to the darkly wonderful world of Lemony Snicket. And the cameo by Dustin Hoffman (reunited with his Moonlight Mile director Silberling, and his Kramer vs. Kramer co-star, Streep, though they don’t actually share a scene together) is a nice touch, to boot.
Perhaps if we’d just seen more of the children, and more of Jim Carrey being Count Olaf (as opposed to Count Olaf being Jim Carrey), then we would have discovered characters equally as strange and interesting and darkly delightful as the world they live in.

(Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events OS’s courtesy of impawards.com.)