I generally find Costa-Gavras' works kind of hard to swallow because I gag on the pedagogy. Too many of his films are like Capra's "Why We Fight" propaganda movies from World War II. Here is the enemy. (It's always a right-wing conspiracy.) See how evil he is? And see how naive you cretins in the audience are for not having realized it? My God, what a nag he is. I don't like being preached to even when the sermon matches the prejudices I already hold.
But this movie is an exception. For the first and perhaps the last time on any stage, ladies and gentleman, the director shows us some ambiguity in the characters.
Yes, it's true. No doubt the evil on display is thoroughly rotten, the home-grown variety of racists and terrorists along the lines of Timothy McVeigh, the New World Order paranoids, the fluoride-in-the-water loonies, and the survivalists who have moved off the grid into the mountains of Idaho. But they're not that extreme. They're the salt of the earth. They go to church regularly, believe in God, treat their women with respect, fall in love, form bonds with each other, have suffered in the past, and have hope for the future. They just happen to hate blacks, Jews, commies, and fags, that's all. They're perfectly normal except that they have these encapsulated brain tumors that contain attitudes instead of cancerous tissue.
Debra Winger is an FBI agent assigned to infiltrate a community of farmers in the Midwest who may be up to no good. She thinks the assignment is a washout and she falls for the simple, God-fearing son of the soil, Tom Berenger, who has a cuddly young daughter. Berenger falls for her too and proposes marriage.
But things begin to pop up that are a little disturbing. The little girl spontaneously spouts apocalyptic racist nonsense that she is too young to understand. Berenger opens up to her little by little, taking her on a very strange hunt, a picnic involving happy campers with Uzis, and what is revealed isn't entirely congruous with Winger's picture of Berenger as an uncomplicated farmer. Eventually, finally trusting her, he tells her about a plan to generate a general uprising by assassinating celebrities and committing mass murders in Harlem and San Francisco and "Sick-ago", as he calls it. Berenger and his friends are full of an unfocused bitterness that the director leaves unexplained.
So far, so Cost-Gavras. And here's where it's different. The director develops Tom Berenger as a fully fleshed-out character, and Debra Winger too. When she is finally forced to shoot him, it is because he has found out her real identity and now he WANTS her to kill him. Suicide by FBI. His belief and trust in her is sufficiently profound that when it's shattered, there is really nothing left for him to live for, not even his precious cause. And the same is true for Winger. She has no family because, "The FBI was my family." But they have manipulated her ruthlessly and are unable to see any human dimensions in what they consider just another operation that in the end is more or less successful. She plunks down her badge and gun and goes on what appears to be a cross-country binge before pulling herself together and seeking out Berenger's daughter. Cost-Gavras as HUMANIST!
Even the title is dual-faceted. Berenger's group of subversive farmers has betrayed its own country's ideals, but Winger has betrayed the man she loves.
At that, though, Costa-Gavras hasn't got quite a handle on the subtleties of the political issues. He throws every liberal bete-noir into the pot. A reactionary politician spews out the usual menu of racist nonsense but can also be heard pimping nuclear power and so forth. If he read the message boards on Yahoo, Morningstar, or anywhere else, he'd realize that no reactionaries are in favor of nuclear power. Nobody is FOR nuclear power. Some liberals are opposed to it, but paleoconservatives argue in its favor only in contexts that will irritate the liberals. Well, let's not make too much of a little background speech-making by a minor figure.
This is a pretty good movie, in fact. The familiar parts of it -- the naive investigator finally being wised up to fascist conpiracies -- is more than compensated for by the added dimensionality of the two leads.
But just to make sure you get the point, Costa-Gavras, perhaps feeling that he's been speaking over our heads, plays a song under the end credits -- "The Pistol in the Drawer is the Devil's Right Hand." Got it? Good.
But this movie is an exception. For the first and perhaps the last time on any stage, ladies and gentleman, the director shows us some ambiguity in the characters.
Yes, it's true. No doubt the evil on display is thoroughly rotten, the home-grown variety of racists and terrorists along the lines of Timothy McVeigh, the New World Order paranoids, the fluoride-in-the-water loonies, and the survivalists who have moved off the grid into the mountains of Idaho. But they're not that extreme. They're the salt of the earth. They go to church regularly, believe in God, treat their women with respect, fall in love, form bonds with each other, have suffered in the past, and have hope for the future. They just happen to hate blacks, Jews, commies, and fags, that's all. They're perfectly normal except that they have these encapsulated brain tumors that contain attitudes instead of cancerous tissue.
Debra Winger is an FBI agent assigned to infiltrate a community of farmers in the Midwest who may be up to no good. She thinks the assignment is a washout and she falls for the simple, God-fearing son of the soil, Tom Berenger, who has a cuddly young daughter. Berenger falls for her too and proposes marriage.
But things begin to pop up that are a little disturbing. The little girl spontaneously spouts apocalyptic racist nonsense that she is too young to understand. Berenger opens up to her little by little, taking her on a very strange hunt, a picnic involving happy campers with Uzis, and what is revealed isn't entirely congruous with Winger's picture of Berenger as an uncomplicated farmer. Eventually, finally trusting her, he tells her about a plan to generate a general uprising by assassinating celebrities and committing mass murders in Harlem and San Francisco and "Sick-ago", as he calls it. Berenger and his friends are full of an unfocused bitterness that the director leaves unexplained.
So far, so Cost-Gavras. And here's where it's different. The director develops Tom Berenger as a fully fleshed-out character, and Debra Winger too. When she is finally forced to shoot him, it is because he has found out her real identity and now he WANTS her to kill him. Suicide by FBI. His belief and trust in her is sufficiently profound that when it's shattered, there is really nothing left for him to live for, not even his precious cause. And the same is true for Winger. She has no family because, "The FBI was my family." But they have manipulated her ruthlessly and are unable to see any human dimensions in what they consider just another operation that in the end is more or less successful. She plunks down her badge and gun and goes on what appears to be a cross-country binge before pulling herself together and seeking out Berenger's daughter. Cost-Gavras as HUMANIST!
Even the title is dual-faceted. Berenger's group of subversive farmers has betrayed its own country's ideals, but Winger has betrayed the man she loves.
At that, though, Costa-Gavras hasn't got quite a handle on the subtleties of the political issues. He throws every liberal bete-noir into the pot. A reactionary politician spews out the usual menu of racist nonsense but can also be heard pimping nuclear power and so forth. If he read the message boards on Yahoo, Morningstar, or anywhere else, he'd realize that no reactionaries are in favor of nuclear power. Nobody is FOR nuclear power. Some liberals are opposed to it, but paleoconservatives argue in its favor only in contexts that will irritate the liberals. Well, let's not make too much of a little background speech-making by a minor figure.
This is a pretty good movie, in fact. The familiar parts of it -- the naive investigator finally being wised up to fascist conpiracies -- is more than compensated for by the added dimensionality of the two leads.
But just to make sure you get the point, Costa-Gavras, perhaps feeling that he's been speaking over our heads, plays a song under the end credits -- "The Pistol in the Drawer is the Devil's Right Hand." Got it? Good.