Cynical Cinema

I got a little worried upon seeing the cover of the DVD of Kit Kittredge: An American Girl. Alliance Films releases the DVD on November 4th, and it has apparently won the “Heartland Truly Moving Picture Award”. I went to their website to find out what this all was about. It tells me that Heartland Truly Moving Pictures is a “non-profit organization that recognizes and honours filmmakers whose work explores the human journey by expressing hope and respect for the positive values of life”. Now, it may be just me, but something about that seems vaguely creepy. First of all, the word “Heartland”. It just conveys Sarah Palin’s “real America” to me, a fictional place where men work ten hour days and come home to play catch with their kids while their wives sweep the floors and bake apple pies and bring brownies to PTA meetings. Where the kids say things like “golly” and “hokey smokes”, and they participate in school activities like the glee club and the football team. Every house has a dog with floppy ears and they all go to church and they all vote Republican.

Secondly, the “positive values of life” seems to be a phrase that is basically meaningless. What it really means is the “values that WE deem are positive in life”. Which, judging by the titles that have received this award before, are basically the values of apple pie, summer baseball, and community yard sales. Then there are the message movies, which are certainly more deserving of the title “truly moving picture”. Movies about people with disabilities, about discrimination and race relations and learning that others are just like us and so forth. All of which is great to have in a movie, and I applaud all movies that attempt to make statements such as these, but it does not prevent a good portion of the movies on the Heartland list from being “truly moving” while “truly sucking”. Shall We Dance, I’m looking at you.

Thankfully, Kit Kittredge: An American Girl does not involve dancing. Or Julia Stiles. But it certainly does involve small-town “Real America”, a floppy-eared dog, apple pies and yard sales. You see, there is no greater place to find “heartland”-type Americana than through the eyes of a small child or a struggling family in the Great Depression. Think 12 Dogs of Christmas, Cinderella Man, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, Hard Times (the Charles Bronson one), My Man Godfrey, The Grapes of Wrath, Modern Times, and countless others. The Americana portion of this movie is rammed down our throats from the outset, what with the title making a clear point of calling Kit Kittredge An American Girl. She is so Totally American. And that, I find rather irritating.

Then again, Kit Kittredge is also Abigail Breslin. And that certainly works in the character’s favour. I like Abigail Breslin. I like her even more when she is playing Kit next to her father, played by Chris O’Donnell. I think this is mostly because my distaste for Chris O’Donnell makes everyone he acts with seem that much better. Remember Vertical Limit, when Bill Paxton looked like Daniel-Day Lewis? If you, sitting at home, spent that much time on screen with Chris O’Donnell, you could at the very least look as good as Bill Paxton. The rest of the cast is well known. Julia Ormond plays Kit’s mother, and I really like her. Joan Cusack plays a slightly loopy traveling librarian (I guess that was once a profession?) And I’m pretty sick of Joan Cusack. But like I said before, at least this movie doesn’t involve Julia Stiles.

It does involve Stanley Tucci as an out-of-work magician, Colin Mochrie as the leader of a somewhat motley crew of “hobos”, Jane Krakowski as a sexy yet vapid dance instructor, and Max Thieriot as another “hobo” named Will. Will is traveling with a tiny black boy named Countee, and the two of them go from town to town trying to work for food. Kit’s house, what with the depression, has become a place where dozens of people are staying and boarding, and Will and Countee fit in with the magician, the dance instructor and the librarian. The fact that Countee is black never once comes up in the film. It is the 1930s. In America. In the Great Depression. And there is no racism? At all? Or are we glossing over that aspect of things because the child is so young and this is taking place in the Heartland?

Really, the main reason that race is never an issue here is that there is a bigger, more important type of discrimination to be dealt with - anti-hobo sentiment. America is apparently running rife with anti-hobo feelings and hobo-hatred. When some valuables go missing in the neighbourhood, blame automatically falls on Will and Countee, because they are hobos. People talk about running hobos out of town, locking them all up, and so forth. But they don’t realize that - these hobos were once like them! They are former bankers and railway workers and poultry farmers and car dealers. They’re people too! Only Kit, (and sometimes her mom) seem to understand this.

Wallace Shawn shows up as the editor of the local Cincinnati newspaper. Kit, you see, has aspirations of being a great journalist. She is precocious in that American Girl sort of way, headstrong and yet constantly pleasant, and she is continuously bringing stories to the editor in an attempt to get published. She is too precocious to be put off by his gruff and surly demeanour, and of course by the end of the movie she has won him over completely, and he has published her stories, and the world lives happily ever after. This, in no way, affects the plot of the film, which is why I’m putting this here:

Spoiler Alert.

Frankly, I don’t think it will matter much to people if I give away the end of this movie. It’s a kids’ movie, and you know exactly what will happen at the end when you’re about nine minutes in at the beginning. But I have a real problem with the end. Not just that it’s so predictable, and so American Girl Makes Good In America The American Way. But that so much of it is unnecessary. The hobos are being blamed for crimes all over the U.S. There are hobos indicated as “prime suspects” in a series of cities. These cities are shown to Kit, and to us, in red push-pin form on a giant map of the United States. See, there’s a red push-pin in Dayton, so there were crimes committed by hobos in Dayton. There’s one in Topeka, so there were hobo-crimes in Topeka. When Kit finally solves the crime in her own house, she also discovers that the REAL criminal has just come from…Dayton! And Topeka! And all the other red push-pin sites!

So now, we are to believe that ONE guy has committed EVERY hobo-related crime in the entire continental United States over the past year, and that the pervasive public anti-hobo sentiment is solely predicated on the crimes of this one man. Who has never been caught, locked up, or identified except as “a hobo”. And after thousands of crimes through dozens of states, he is still so poor that he is looking to steal a couple of rings and thirty dollars from the lockbox of the poorest homeowners in the country. Even then, we can excuse Kit Kittredge. It’s meant to be for kids, it’s meant to be simplistic, and thinking too hard would just make me angry. And the end, where the newspaper editor shows up and tells Kit her story made it in, and her long-lost father shows up to hug people for thanksgiving dinner, and the hobo army brings offerings of milk and cabbage to the house, is all so sickly sweet and lame that it brings tears to my soul just thinking about it. Again, it’s best not to think about it.

But it’s the little things that drove me nuts at the end. The little black hobo, Countee, takes his hat off and shows up in a dress. Wait - Countee is - a girl? Hahaha, the kids all laugh, and accept her anyway, and life goes on. OK. But the question that immediately popped into MY head was - what the hell is happening here? What’s the point of this? What difference would it have made to the rest of the movie if this bit character had been a girl the whole time? The explanation that it isn’t safe for little girls to ride the trains with hobos doesn’t fly, since the whole movie has been yelling at us that hobos are the friendliest, nicest, most saintly people in the entire world. Except for the one guy who commits every crime in the U.S. So really, this is totally unnecessary. Look! She’s a girl! She’s Will Smith’s daughter Willow! Cute kid, decent little actress, but come on. Totally pointless.

End spoiler.

Overall, there is no real reason NOT to recommend Kit Kittredge. Although it’s totally kiddy, that’s who will want to watch it anyway. And do adults really care that kids can solve complicated crimes in four seconds when the script calls for it, and that th bad guys have a treasure map with an “X” marked on it and a certain number of paces to go before they dig under the big Oak Tree? Probably not. The beginning is cute, and becomes sad and depressing fairly fast. That is so the movie has somewhere to go, to lift your spirits. And the end is sickly sweet, painfully obvious, and childlike in it’s innocence, it’s simplicity, and it’s Happily Ever After. I don’t know if I would go so far as to call this a Truly Moving Picture. In fact, I know for certain that I wouldn’t. But I would call this a Truly Harmless Picture. And it might even teach the kids something. If they can suspend their cynicism.

There is an absolutely phenomenal box set being released on August 26th. Woody Allen has been one of the greatest American directors for many years, and while he is mostly remembered for his all-time classics, Manhattan and Annie Hall, every one of his films is worth watching for one reason or another. With his latest, Vicky Cristina Barcelona in theatres, Alliance Films decided to release Woody Allen: The Collection today, August 26th. Every movie in this box is good, some are great. And while six of the discs have been readily available before this on DVD, the seventh is the bonus.

Wild Man Blues, a 1997 documentary film about Woody Allen, has been a hard-to-find item for some time. Not a film about Allen the film maker, but a film about Woody Allen the jazz musician. Allen, when not making films, plays jazz clarinet at a New York club. This film, directed by Barbara Kopple, follows Allen around as he takes the jazz ensemble on the road. The documentary was made right around the time when the public image of Allen was at it’s lowest. He had just left Mia Farrow for their stepdaughter Soon Yi Previn, and people were beginning to look on him as some kind of sexual predator. This film was accused of apple-polishing by some critics upon it’s release. As though it were some kind of brown-nosing attempt by Kopple to repair Allen’s tarnished image, and the movie was quickly forgotten. But in watching it now, it is merely a window into the man’s private life, his relationship with Soon-Yi, which really does appear to be pretty normal, and his relationship with his parents, which is eye-opening.

The other films in the set are all second-rate Woody Allen films, which would be first-rate films by almost anyone else. Mighty Aphrodite, the film for which Mira Sorvino won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, is a pretty fluffy film that works best as a reminder that Mira Sorvino CAN actually act. Bullets Over Broadway is a brilliantly funny comedy about gangsterism and the roaring twenties, featuring terrific performances by Chazz Palminteri and Dianne Wiest. Everyone Says I Love You is a musical comedy that is absolutely jammed with star power, and as such is one of the only Julia Roberts movies, AND one of the only Drew Barrymore movies, that I actually enjoy. Deconstructing Harry is a very dark comedy that is equally star-studded, with Robin Williams, Demi Moore, Billy Crystal and dozens of others in perhaps Woody Allen’s most under-rated movie. Celebrity is also jammed with big names, but isn’t one of Allen’s best efforts. And Scoop is likely the low point of the box set, with Scarlett Johanssen turning in a surprisingly mediocre performance and Hugh Jackman being a little more irritating than necessary. Not a horrible movie, but weak by Woody Allen standards.

Woody Allen: The Collection is a must for fans of his work, with Wild Man Blues being the icing on the cake. Get this box set, then pick up Annie Hall, Manhattan and Crimes And Misdemeanors, and you have all the Woody Allen you’ll ever need.

Tom Hanks and Philip Seymour Hoffman take on the Russia-Afghanistan war in Charlie Wilson’s War, a movie about a real-life American congressman named Charlie Wilson (Hanks), who virtually single-handedly provided the Afghan fighters with the weapons to destroy the Russians and drive them out of the country.  It’s a comedy-drama, where Hanks and Hoffman are hilarious together.  (Hoffman plays a senior CIA official who is about the most politically incorrect guy you would ever find in a political movie.  Charlie Wilson is a womanizing, drug-using, completely corrupt politician who all of a sudden finds a cause worth fighting for.  His office is great - his staff is just a bevy of hot young women (Amy Adams among them), he calls them, collectively, “jailbait”, and he sleeps with every hot woman who crosses his path.  One of these women is Julia Roberts, whose role in the film is pretty pointless, except to steer Wilson in the right direction.  After visiting a refugee camp populated by displaced Afghanis in Pakistan, Wilson steps up his efforts to help them out.  That help involves getting the freedom fighters weapons and training to be able to shoot down Russian planes and helicopters.

 One of the best things about Charlie Wilson’s War is that at the end of the movie, his crusade to help Afghanistan has not changed him as a person.  He is still a shallow playboy who sleeps with all kinds of hot women.  That is nice to see.  In fact, at one point a scandal involving a Playboy model and some cocaine threatens to derail him, and the point is made - if the press hears “strippers and Playboy models and cocaine”, then they will be so focussed on that, that they will completely ignore anything that is being done elsewhere in the House of Representatives.  As long as that scandal is at the forefront, Wilson can do anything he wants, policy-wise, and no one will pay any attention.  Which is how he plans to get the money to help Afghanistan.  This is actually a great idea for a movie in itself - a politician creates his own sex-and-drugs scandal in order to push forward policies that are controversial!  It could be a pretty cool movie, on the level of a Bulworth or some such thing.  Think about it, Hollywood!

And that is one of the biggest criticisms I have of Charlie Wilson’s War.  It is very Hollywood.  So many details are glossed over.  Julia Roberts exists only because she is a hot chick with a marquee name.  This issue is a complex one - the Russians can’t know (for sure) that it is the Americans who are arming the mujahadeen, because this could tip off a real American-Russian war.  So Hanks has to get Russian-made weapons from Israel, ship them to Pakistan, at which point they can be handed over to the Afghanis such that they can fight.  In the meantime, tensions between Israel and both Pakistan and Afghanistan are escalating, and the CIA is training the mujahadeen.  (We don’t see Osama Bin Laden here - thank God, it would have been just too heavy-handed.)  When the movie is over, it all seems so simple.  Perhaps that’s the idea.  For the US to do the right thing, all it would really take is one congressman with an agenda and the tenacity to see it through.  So we are then to assume that there is not one congressman in Washington today who has the fortitude or the balls to do something about Rwanda, or Darfur, or what have you?  That may well be the point of this movie.  But it’s pretty devoid of substance.

The end of the movie is a celebration of American ingenuity and the capacity of one man to change the world.  However, it is also a cautionary tale of what happens when you change the world and then just up and leave.  I think we all know what happened with the freedom fighters in Afghanistan.  They became the Taliban, they became Al Quaeda, and they used their CIA training to attack the United States.  The movie assumes we know this, and I guess we do.  And this is the only moment in the movie that has the ring of relevance today.  I would have loved to delve more into the slow germination of the anti-US sentiment that was going on with these people at the same time that they were being armed and trained by the US.  The collision between high-minded, idealistic US foreign policy, and the inept implementation of that policy that results in the hatred spewed toward America throughout the world.  But Charlie Wilson’s War is more content to show Tom Hanks and Philip Seymour Hoffman bantering.  Which is funny, and entertaining, but it really isn’t enough to make this movie great.  (Although I will say this - as far as movies about Afghanistan go, this one is miles above Rambo III.)