Movie: The White Rose

Last night I watched the subtitled movie "Sophie Scholl: The Last Days" about the young and courageous members of the secret resistance group in 1942-3 Germany, The White Rose. The group members, mostly students at the university of Munich, distributed thousands of leaflets denouncing the Nazi programme of war and murder. A few days after they were caught, the leaders (including Sophie Scholl, who was 21) were guillotined; many others were imprisoned. As a movie I don't recommend it, it is very depressing, one is better off to just read about The White Rose on the Internet (the Wikipedia article seems to give a decent overview). But the story depicts, negatively, the grand power of intellectual activism: besides brute force, irrationality has no defense against voices of reason. It may be a fictitious line, but in the movie Hans defiantly tells the judge that he and Hitler must be afraid of -- and thus morally inferior to -- the members of The White Rose, otherwise there wouldn't even be a trial.

From The White Rose leaflet #3:

[W]hy do you allow these men who are in power to rob you step by step, openly and in secret, of one domain of your rights after another, until one day nothing, nothing at all will be left but a mechanised state system presided over by criminals and drunks? Is your spirit already so crushed by abuse that you forget it is your right - or rather, your moral duty - to eliminate this system?

Borat

We saw Borat. Despite some laughs, we were underwhelmed and at times repulsed. There are so many rave reviews for this film, we were amazed at how juvenile and unclever it is. And that doesn't even describe what is worst about it.

Actor Cohen's schtick can be summed up in one word: disrespect. Undercover as a foreign ignoramus, he goes around making truly offensive (often racist or sexist) statements and acts before unsuspecting folks exactly in order to draw out of them either equally offensive statements or, failing that, responses of surprise, disgust, and fury. The audience of twentysomethings we were with loved it when Cohen handed his gracious dinner host a bag of what was supposed to be his own shit. Hardy har har!

Best review of the movie is here.

Is it legal to dupe people, if they sign some sort of consent form? Can a person consent to be tricked? I don't think the concepts are compatible. Cohen's targets obviously were not told the whole truth of the situation, except, one must presume, via abstract and technical legalese. So I don't know, but I doubt it should be legal.

It is definitely immoral. Cohen is professionally dishonest, and he deserves contempt. Two victims of his dishonesty are suing 20th Century Fox and other production companies involved with the film. I hope they win.

If I want to be entertained with juvenile silliness, I'll take Tommy Boy or Anchorman anyday.

UPDATE: Petzold has a good take on it.

UPDATE 2: Amy makes a good point: in Borat, Cohen is only uncivil to people who deserve civility.

Atlas Confirmed

IMDB says a movie version of Atlas Shrugged is planned for release in 2008, starring Angelina Jolie.

It just so happens I am currently half-way through the DVD of a movie starring Jolie, Alexander, having just listened to some great lectures from The Teaching Company about Alexander the Great. Oliver Stone's movie is so bad and such a waste of time I won't even watch anymore. What little story it has seriously insults your intelligence. I did like the CGI recreation of a line of Macedonian phalanxes marching towards Darius' hordes, that was neat for a moment. But I'm trying to remember if I've seen an Oliver Stone film that was worth watching. Natural Born Killers certainly wasn't; I remember regretting, at the end, that I hadn't walked out after the first 10 minutes.

Some Objectivists celebrate the fact that even a bad movie adaptation of Atlas will sell more copies of the novel. Somehow I don't imagine Ayn Rand would give a damn about any of that if the movie butchers her story, which is all but guaranteed.

Update: I'd like to clarify what I mean on this topic. I would like more people to read Atlas Shrugged, but I'd rather a movie which substantially misrepresents it not be made. Such a production would be an outrage, and the fact that Objectivists cannot stop it does not make it less unjust. Objectivists who imagine there will be some sort of "net good" if Hollywood creates a misrepresentative movie that advertises the book are slipping into pragmatism.

Seven movies

Recently I had the opportunity to do little besides watch DVD's for a couple days, so herewith my reactions, quantified using a highly subjective rating system in which 10 means I loved it and 1 means I think the director should be banished from Athens.

Underworld and Underworld 2
4 out of 10
No compelling story here, just vampires-versus-werewolves action, with a couple solid English actors included so that some lines are delivered well. I did enjoy the winged-vamp-bat trying to push Kate Beckingsale's truck off the road, it was just how I'd imagine such an event would look. Interestingly, the werewolves in the first installment were good old-fashioned costumes worn by actors, but they're CGI in the follow-up.

Dark Water
5 out of 10
I don't like the horror genre at all, but I had to rent this because Connelly's (very sad) character has my daughter's name. The casting and acting are quite good, but I fail to find anything redeeming about something that's supposed to disturb me.

Master and Commander
4 out of 10
Shockingly bad for 10 Oscar nominations. How can so much money be spent on making a movie in which not one character is believable and the story is not worth telling? The fundamental dramatic tension is between an English naval captain, who gets jolly drunk each night at dinner, commanding his ship on an important war-time mission, and ... his first mate and friend who would like to study some lizards on the Galagapos islands, but is really inconvenienced by all this war stuff. I don't accept the premise that anyone could care how this "tension" gets resolved. This film may just be worthy of licking the boots of Mutiny on the Bounty. But probably not.

The New World
6 out of 10
I have mixed feelings about this one. It is a moving love story, but it is very slow, with many long, stylized nature shots. We had to turn on the subtitles, too, because when some actual dialogue comes along, you can't afford to miss it.

V for Vendetta
4 out of 10
This one was somewhat controversial when it came out, with conservatives panning it for glorifying terrorism, which sounded trite to me, so I wasn't going to be surprised to find some worthy drama here. But there really isn't any, because ideologically this movie adds to up a big zero. It's inconceivable that the characters in this movie feel anything about "freedom," because they display no understanding of what it is.

Fever Pitch
7 out of 10
That's right, this silly romantic comedy with Jimmy Falon and Drew Barrymore is the best movie I've seen lately.

The Island

7 out of 10

Amy and I watched The Island on DVD. I think my friend got it right when he summarized: "It's bad, but it's awesome." The plot is not unique and the drama never really gets past second gear, but it's a well-done sci-fi action movie which mixes some intriguing elements of prior works to form a compelling experience.

The movie Signs is essentially a rehash of an old movie and a very old book: War of the Worlds meets The Book of Job. But whereas Signs ends up completely unsatisfying despite these proven roots, The Island re-uses good stories to good effect.

Basically, The Island is Logan's Run plus Robin Cook's Coma. Amy said it has an element of Run Lola Run, too -- that is, lots of running with appropriate music. And there are other obvious comparisons to be made. The dystopic desperation and fleeing is reminiscent of Gattaca, Minority Report, and especially THX 1138 -- which may have inspired Logan's Run, come to think of it. A highway chase scene seems borrowed from the second Matrix flick (if only the latter could have had a point). And like the Matrix franchise in general, the action here is ridiculous -- specifically, it's of the crashing, smashing, how-did-they-survive-that sort of preposterousness. Something I like on occasion, if the plot can keep up.

The worst part of the movie can be summed up in two words: Steve Buscemi. Although it's hard to blame the actor when the part he is given is such a tired rehash of his previous characters: a sardonic, pained, blue-collar barfly. The very existence of this character is probably the biggest hole in the plot, although the bigger problem for the audience is that one of Buscemi's jobs is to give us cheap laughs in the middle of the story, just as the protagonists have their lives turned upside-down. I'm all for having a break in the action, but how many cheesy romantic outfits in a girlfriend's closet are actually funny? Surely less than three.

Ewan McGregor's acting is sufficient, I thought, with Scarlet Johansson coming in a bit weaker, though admittedly there's not much to her character. Britney Spears probably could have stood in.

So long as no one ruins the plot for you, The Island can be a satisfying movie despite its basic unoriginality. It actually went on about half-an-hour longer than I was expecting, and that was enjoyable. It should be worth a second viewing in a few years.