Reel World - George Peterson

We wish to inform you that tomorrow...

2006-07-28T09:23:00.000-07:00

...we will be killed with our families.

This is the title of a book by Philip Gourevitch that is both depressing, horrifying, and enlightenging. The distressing name comes from a letter from an Adventist pastor to the president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Rwanda. He was, indeed, killed soon after he wrote it. The president, Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, responded that “You must be eliminated. God no longer wants you.” This haunts him as Gourevitch tracks him down in the United States.

The book covers the Rwandan Genocide of 1994 and its survivors... and those who didn't survive. The frank discussions and extremely detailed visual descriptions of the dead and the murders are absolutely stunning, both in good and bad ways. It must have taken Gourevitch much courage and resolve to look at the things he did, such as the long-dead bodies at the Nyarubuye memorial.

A particularly striking passage involves talks with Laurent Nkongoli, who survived the genocide. He became vice president of the National Assembly after the genocide. He says he had accepted death, and that "one hopes not to die cruelly, but one expects to die anyway. Not by death by machete, one hopes, but with a bullet. If you were willing to pay for it, you could often ask for a bullet." How awful an end - the choice to be hacked to death or pay your killer to murder you quickly.

Gourevitch discusses a philosophy of power and government that I agree with completely and have often espoused. He says that "in principle, narrowly based power is easier to abuse, while more broadly based power requires a truer story at its core and s more likely to protect more of its subjects from abuse." I've long been an advocate for decentralized power, and it would go a long way to preventing both government and citizen-based extremism.

The end of the book, where we hear the apologies of western leaders such as Madeline Albright and Bill Clinton, is interesting. It's obvious that they feel some responsibility, or at least that they want to seem that they feel some responsibility.

I don't know if this is something that would necessarily need to change, because there does seem to be some disagreement, but Hotel Rwanda mentions the supposed differences between the Hutu and Tutsi that the Belgians used to separate them into these false categories. However, Gourevitch discusses that many researchers can't tell a difference at all. Some believe that The Tutsi moved in and set up a feudal system over the Hutu, and others say that the only difference was lifestyle and the physical characteristics that the Belgians used to separate them.

"The Motorcycle Diaries" and Che Guevara

2006-07-25T21:53:00.000-07:00

The Motorcycle Diaries follows Ernesto “Che” Guevara and Alberto Granado across South America on, at least at first, a motorcycle named “The Mighty One.” The film is heartfelt and funny, but it captures so well how young Ernesto became “Che.” He is portrayed as an honest, helpful, intelligent young medical student who wants to do what is right, even if it’s not socially acceptable.

This is captured most clearly by his actions at the Leper colony in the Amazon. Ernesto is told that although the patients are not really contagious, the nuns who run the colony insist gloves are worn. The first thing that Ernesto does is shake hands with several patients without gloves. He makes instant enemies with the nuns for this, and not going to mass doesn’t help, either. The nuns are a good example of the kind of authority that he begins to detest; they only feed the patients if they attend Sunday Mass.

The feeling of one particular nation isn’t really captured by the film, but that isn’t the point. Che believes in a unified South America – that they are all of one race, and that any social or national lines are merely an illusion.

Gael García Bernal plays an excellent Ernesto, and we really get a feeling for his development as a person. The viewer really begins to love and identify with the two central characters as they learn about their continent and its people. Alberto provides needed comedic relief to Che’s seriousness, but his seriousness is so endearing that you can’t help but want to fight with him.

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Ernesto Guevara de la Serna was born on June 14, 1928 in Rosario, Argentina. Even though he was burdened with Asthma, that didn't stop him from having a raging presence. His personality earned him the nickname "Fuser," a contraction of "El Furibundo" (English: raging) and "Serna," his mother's last name. He grew up in a leftist family, and his medical training allowed him to realize his passion for helping others.

The trip around the continent portrayed in The Motorcycle Diaries was the defining time of Che's life. Seeing the displaced native peoples, the lepers in San Pablo who were denied real human contact, and his later studies of Marxism turned him into a revolutionary. He felt that simply standing by while knowing there was something that could be done would be a crime in itself. The only way, he knew, was revolution.

Che befriended Cuban exiles in Guatemala and Mexico, and after meeting Fidel Castro, he joined the "26th of July movement" in 1955. He was instrumental in helping Castro take over the Cuban government, and he went on to help run the new government. He travelled overseas as a Cuban envoy and spoke on behalf of Socialist and Communist countries.

He was captured in Bolivia, with the help of the CIA, and executed on October 9, 1967.

The Maryland Institute of Art called the above photo of Che Guevara "the most famous photograph in the world and a symbol of the 20th century".

Lumumba

2006-07-23T19:39:00.000-07:00

Prompt: Let’s play “What if” history: imagine that Lumumba had managed to overcome the challenges to his rule and stay in power. How do you think his presidency would have unfolded? Would he have succeeded in keeping Zaire from falling apart? Would he have established the country as a democracy or would he most likely have become a dictator ruling for many years?

I don't believe anything could have really kept Zaire from falling apart. There were so many forces sticking their hands in the pot, so to speak, that there was no way to keep the place stable. The citizens, the Belgians, the Americans, and other western powers were secretly and non-secretly fighting to make things happen the way they wanted in the country. It was simply too unstable.

Considering what the CIA and everyone else wanted, I don't doubt that some dictator or another would have emerged. This is exactly the place where dictators come to power - unstable, violent, and with foreign powers trying to install their own favorite leaders. The leaders become too powerful with their foreign backing, and they become corrupt. They steal from their own people, kill them and their neighbors, and then they are deposed. Often, of course, the cycle continues anew.

A democracy is not, in my opinion, something that can be established by outside forces. It is something that must be formed by those involved, with the permission and blessings of those involved. Otherwise, it's a joke, and it may lead to something worse than that which it is replacing.

Marzieh Meshkini's "The Day I Became a Woman"

2006-07-15T14:08:00.000-07:00

Analyze at least three different specific scenes that you found particularly important or revealing. Why are they significant and what do they reveal? Were there any aspects of those scenes or the film as a whole that you found confusing or unclear?

Scene 1: Hava's mother and grandmother tell Hava that today she is a woman. This means, unbeknownst to Hava, that she will soon be covering her face and will not be able to play much, especially with boys. She will likely be betrothed and/or married soon as well and follow in the footsteps of so many Iranian women before her. However, all she can think about is how badly she wants to go buy ice cream. This reveals both the harshness of a woman's life in Iran and the complete obliviousness of many little girls to it. Hava had no idea how much her life was about to change.

Scene 2: Ahoo is surrounded by men after she shirks her obligations as an Iranian wife and woman. This is a frightening scene, partially because the men seem so angry, and even more because we don't find out what happened to Ahoo. This reveals clearly how little choice a woman in Iran has for her own future.

Scene 3: Hoora is followed by many young boys who are carrying the things she has purchased. She feels that she's had so little in her long life that now she must go and buy all of them. She has so much that she can't even transport it all home, and though she has ribbons tied to her fingers to represent each item, there's one whose importance she can't seem to remember. Perhaps it represents happiness or a fulfilled life. She knows there's something she was supposed to have, but she just can't figure out what that something might have been. She's been brainwashed for so long that she doesn't even realize she was SUPPOSED to be free to make her own decisions, but somewhere, deep down, she knows anyway.

I don't think anything was very confusing or unclear. Everything seemed quite well laid-out.

Wargnier’s Indochine

2006-07-13T14:49:00.000-07:00

Respond to the following assessment of Indochine by Panivong Norindr:
"Critical and popular acclaim notwithstanding, Wargnier’s representation of Indochina exerts a dangerous fascination precisely because it brings visual pleasure without questioning or subverting any preconceived ideas about French colonial rule in Southeast Asia. Indochine merely displays beautiful images and should only be remembered as a symptom of the current French fad for things exotic." Do you agree? Why or why not?

I absolutely agree that the film "brings visual pleasure without questioning or subverting any preconceived ideas about French colonial rule in Southeast Asia." really enjoyed the film as a film, but from a historical viewpoint, reviews such as Marouf Hasian and Helene Shugart’s are right on when they call it “Melancholic Nostalgia.” There were some gorgeous scenes, great acting, and an exciting story, but as a look at the French colonization of Indochina, the film is anything but fair.

However, I don't know that that the fascination is dangerous. It isn't helpful either, however. Rather than questioning French colonialism and the damage it did, it almost makes it seem enchanting.

Based on your viewing of the film and the Unit 5 online lecture material, how would you compare or contrast the French and American experiences in Vientam?

While the French were building cafes and colonizing, they were being unfair to the Vietnamese, but at least they were successful. The Americans, on the other hand, didn't do so well. The My Lai massacre was one of several huge problems involving American presence in the country. U.S. support became so bad that the military eventually had to "declare victory and leave."

Farewell My Concubine

2006-07-13T14:35:00.000-07:00

The blog prompt for this viewing was actually for the primary film, "Xiu Xiu, The Sent Down Girl." However, I viewed "Farewell My Concubine," which was the first alternative to "Xiu Xiu."

This film primarily follows the lives of two Chinese men from their childhoods in a slave-like existence training to be actors, through adulthoods of stardom, and on to a traumatic late adulthood fraught with typical life problems combined with the effects of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Their given names during childhood are Douzi and Shitou, but when they become famous, they go by the names Dieyi and Xialolou. The film begins with Douzi’s mother, a whore, cutting off his extra finger so that he will be admitted into acting school. This is certainly the reason for his homosexual tendencies and possible misogynistic tendencies.

Since the blog prompt dealt with Tianamen Square, which wasn't dealt with in "Farewell," I'll discuss my reaction to the cultural revolution as seen through the eyes of Dieyi and Xiaolou.

Xiaolou cared more about the theater than about what was going on in his country. He was in love with Dieyi and the opera, and nothing else mattered to him at all. The only time we see any emotion towards the revolution, in fact, is when he informs on Dieyi and Juxian in order to save himself. Other than that, we rarely see any indication that he even notices the changes going on.

Dieyi does react more than Xiaolou, but not much. He mouths off to the officers, and he and Juxian exchange remarks about the situation. They don't show their unhappiness much until the scene where they are in their home and realize they can no longer drink from jade cups. They can't, in fact, do many things they used to be able to do or many things their ancestors had done for many years.

If I had could walk into that period in China right now, I probably would be quickly killed. I don't deal well with that sort of authority. However, if I had been raised through that, I suppose I might not question it as much. I doubt I would be able to sit back and handle it; if nothing else, I suppose I would try to leave the country.

Hany Abu-Assad's "Paradise Now"

2006-07-10T19:04:00.000-07:00

When the movie began, and we were introduced to Said and Khaled, I didn’t even realize that they were the two young men who were to become suicide bombers. As far as I could tell at that point, they were just two young, semi-westernized Palestinian men working in an auto repair shop. It soon settled on me that these two had signed up to kill others and themselves, and I was shocked.

"Paradise Now" is controversial to say the least, and it has caused controversy on every side of the debate. Palestinian militants are decrying it because, they say, “This movie doesn’t help the Palestinian cause... People who go to carry out bombings do not hesitate so much.”

Arab-American peace activist Nonie Darwish, said “Paradise Now” “did not show the evils of terrorism enough.”
“Any one of us could be a victim of terror at any time,” she said. “Islamic terror has become an epidemic. We don’t need to understand it. We don’t need to excuse it ... No more. We need to end it.”

Obviously, telling such a story will make you more enemies than friends.

The film won an Academy Award, and there was controversy as to whether it should have even been nominated, much less whether it should have won. I fail to see why such an amazing film doesn't deserve an award. As a film it excels, and as a study of the conflict, we get to see the human side of a situation that is often dealt with on a very emotionally-driven and illogical manner. Whether the film really condones terrorism or talks down to Palestinians or what have you is up for grabs, but one thing that is for sure is that this film is well-made, gloriously-acted, and deserved the award it got.

Nikita Mikhalkov's Burnt by the Sun

2006-07-01T11:53:00.000-07:00

Prompt: Analyze at least three different specific scenes that you found particularly important or revealing. Why are they significant and what do they reveal? Were there any aspects of those scenes or the film as a whole that you found confusing or unclear? If you had to rewrite the ending, how would you change it?

Burnt by the Sun takes place in Stalinist Russia in 1936. Colonel Kotov, his wife Maroussia, and his daughter Nadya live together relatively peacefully in the Russian countryside. Suddenly Mitya, Maroussia’s lover from her youth, appears, and everything changes.

Scene 1: Russian tanks roll into the wheat fields near Colonel Sergei Kotov’s dacha. They are to destroy the fields, and Kotov is disturbed during his morning steam bath to stop them, which he does. This is our first glimpse into the power he wields over his countrymen as a hero of the revolution, since everyone who sees him is awestruck and does everything he asks. This scene also gives us an idea of the crimes Stalin was willing to commit against the Russian people.

Scene 2: Mitya arrives dressed as a blind wizard. He fools everyone in the household by pretending to know things about them that no stranger should know, and he pokes fun at several of them. They are all shocked until he removes his disguise and they realize who he is. This is a foreshadowing of what will happen later, when Mitya reveals that he is not simply home to visit. He’s there to take Kotov away with the secret police to punish him for supposedly spying and being an enemy of the people.

Scene 3: Mitya tells Nadya a story about a young man that turns out to be him. This is where we first hear about how Mitya is connected to the family and how he and Kotov met. Kotov, it turns out, sent Mitya away with the military and then married Maroussia. Mitya and Kotov already acted strangely around each other, but this gives us an idea as to why Mitya may be back.

Scene 4: Mitya and Kotov are alone during a game of soccer. They have already discussed, before the game, that a car would soon be there to pick Kotov and Mitya up, but we still aren’t sure exactly why. Kotov doesn’t seem too upset, almost as if he’s expected this, but we don’t know why he is to be picked up. During the soccer scene, we finally learn that Mitya has worked for the government police and fingered several generals and others as traitors and spies. This is what he’s now done with Kotov, possibly because he wants Maroussia.

I was confused every time the fireballs showed up. Perhaps they represented the seemingly random killings and crimes perpetrated by Stalin’s police, but I was never clear on what they represented. Of course, there was the song “Burnt by the sun” that we heard several times, and the fireballs looked like suns, but the film did not make it clear what purpose the fireballs served. I’m sure they represented being “burned by the revolution,” but since the fireballs themselves didn’t burn much, that doesn’t seem to fit well.

If I had to rewrite the ending, I would have kept the events the same but showed a bit further into the future. After Mitya commits suicide, we are given written details as to what happened to the rest of the Kotov family, but I would have liked to see some of these events take place.

Gianni Amelio's Lamerica

2006-06-29T20:44:00.000-07:00

Lamerica is a film that seems to alternate between sad and darkly silly. Two men, Fiore and Gino, are attempting to get funding from the Italian government to supposedly run an Albanian shoe manufacturer. The real plan, however, is to run with the money. This is not the first time for either of the men, but it seems that Fiore is more experienced than Gino, since Fiore mentions working with Gino's father.

The film takes place in 1991 in Albania, as the government is overthrown and an exodus takes place from Albania to Italy. After Fiore and Gino pick a "straw man," as chairman, who they believe to be an Albanian named Spiro Tozai, Gino is left to take care of him and instruct him on his "job." Spiro turns out to be an Italian, however, named Michele Talarico. He was imprisoned in Albania during the war and is now delusional, since he believes himself to still be twenty years old and sometimes actually believes he is Spiro the Albanian.

There is a parallel between Michele/Spiro's dual identities as Italian and Albanian and Gino's ever-blurring identity as a well-off Italian. As the film progresses, Gino lives and travels with poor Albanians, many of whom are trying to get to Italy. Gino himself becomes more poor as time passes, and he loses his job, his car, some belongings, and his arrogance on the way.

Lamerica covers a broad swath of ideas, history, politics, and universal life lessons, but it does so very cleanly. The characters are well-developed even as the plight of the Albanians is made all too clear.

Reviews of Deepa Mehta's "Earth"

2006-06-20T15:58:00.000-07:00

Readings and Links: 'Earth': Unforgettable by Zarminae Ansari and 'Earth': Reviewed by C. J. S. Wallia

Prompt: Who among the reviewers did you agree with more and why?

Although both C. J. S. Wallia made some good points, I tend to agree more with Zarminae Ansari's review.

I thoroughly enjoyed Earth, Deepa Mehta's romantic and violent look at the beginning of the Indian subcontinent's independence from the British and separation into two nations. I agree more with Ansari's outlook on the film itself:

An excellent cast, together with Sidhwa's character development, plot, and narrative, deserve a great deal of the credit for the impact of the movie. Deepa Mehta deserves credit for bringing it to the screen and putting it all together.

Shanta (Nandita Das), Ice Candy Man (Amir Khan) and the Masseur (Rahul Khanna) especially shine, and the two men do a wonderful job of showing their characters' respective love for Shanta. However, one can't imagine that it is too difficult to feign attraction to a charming beauty such as Das.

I know little about the historical events that take place during the film other than what I have read in Unit 3. However, given the time and logistical restrictions inherent in the medium of film, and considering that the film seemed to be more about the characters than the history, Mehta did a wonderful job drawing me in and making me empathize with the characters.

Wallia's review seems to be more politically biased. Again, I cannot say whether all of her historical perspectives hold true, but she seemed to come into the film knowing that she wouldn't enjoy it. Her description here:

Mehta's rendering of the horrendous tragedy of the partition of India in "Earth" is simplistic. In this film Mehta manages to distort the complex history of the partition and in the process depicts the role of the Hindus and Sikhs falsely and negatively. The film's weak storyline, its limiting viewpoint, its poorly developed characters, and the distorted roles of the different Indian religious communities and the British- produce a dismal picture of the complex background-events of the partition

reeks of bias and doesn't sound like the reviews of an impartial viewer. As I said, it's difficult to render something as deep and complex as the Indian independence and partition in any other than "simply" within one film. Also, to call the storyline weak and the characters poorly developed is just posturing. Wallia does, however, make a good point when she says that "the transformation of the ice-candy man from a poetry-reciting admirer of Shanta to her betrayer is poorly dramatized. The several subaltern characters- the zoo-man, the gardener, the barber- are types and lack individualized motivations." Ice-Candy Man does seem to turn quickly from a humorous, friendly, peaceful man to a vengeful thug within mere hours. It's not difficult to understand why he would go mad after his sisters were murdered, but we aren't given any insight into his transformation.

Wallia points out that

Mehta's script fails to create dramatic situations that could bring out Lenny Baby's anguished bewilderment of the tragic events of the partition. Very early in the film, we see Lenny-baby (Maia Sethna) dropping a plate and asking her mother (Kitu Gidwani) whether a country can be cracked up like a plate and worrying how she and Shanta would get to the park if Lahore also gets cracked up. Another scene shows Lenny-baby tearing off the limbs of her doll. Simplistic treatment of a complex history.

If the point of the story was meant to be seen through a child's eyes, however, then isn't that exactly what Mehta has done here?

Overall, Ansari is more open minded and seems less biased, and besides that, I enjoyed the film as much as she did.