“Good” (and scary!)

Finally! I had hoped to see the movie Good in theaters last year but inexplicably it never appeared. This past week, I viewed it on DVD. It was well worth the wait. As I watched, it reminded me of two other extraordinary movies: Taking Sides and Mephisto.

The main character, John Halder (Viggo Mortensen), also the point of view character (we see and hear only what he sees and hears), is a writer, a university professor of literature who has written a novel which comes to the attention of the Nazis in 1933 Berlin. They summon him to the Reich Chancellery without telling him the reason, so he arrives with trepidation. But, they loved his novel, says Minister Bouhler (Mark Strong), and what’s more, they’d like him to write a paper that explores more deeply the ideas on euthanasia that he’d touched on in his novel. And they’ll pay him! I’m tempted to say here that the offer of payment to a writer can make even the most onerous project worthwhile, but that’s not always true, and especially for a politically-engaged man like Halder. However, this is 1933 Berlin, the Nazis are a crazy bunch, and Hitler the most insane of them all, and one has to protect one’s life, family and interests to prevent the crazies from turning against one. Unfortunately for Halder, Bouhler was a talented fisherman and hooked him with ease without Halder even feeling a twinge of pain or warning. This scene is so beautifully played and lit for intense threat and suspense that it was uncomfortable to watch.

Other characters comment on Halder throughout the story, describing him as a “good man,” someone “who always does the right thing.” And indeed, he does try to do the right thing, but as was true of so many during the 1930′s, it never occurred to him that the Nazis were not “good” or people “who always do the right thing.” They were good for Germany at that time. They seduced artists and intellectuals into their ranks in much the same way Bouhler does Halder, each seduction customized to the individual. Even though Halder tells his best friend and therapist, Maurice (Jason Isaacs), that Hitler is a madman and the government’s policies are crazy, he doesn’t believe that they could attack their own population. But Maurice is Jewish, and his experience of the Third Reich is juxtaposed with Halder sinking farther and farther into an abyss he doesn’t see. It’s difficult to see all the angles of a situation when you’re in the middle of it, and we certainly have the benefit of hindsight now, but at the time, no one among the German general public dreamed of what was coming. They’d elected Hitler and he was turning the country around, lifting it out of the Weimar grave.

During the U.S. presidential election campaign of 2000, no one dreamed of what was coming — the Patriot Act, renditions, two ill-conceived wars, and the amassing of trillions of dollars of debt. At the end of President Clinton’s presidency, we enjoyed a national budget surplus, prosperity, and the respect and admiration of our allies and others. Why would that change?

And so it was in the America of my Perceval novels. The New Economic Party’s takeover occurred gradually, one election after another, until their power base extended deep into the country’s neighborhoods. Their message or party platform was all about national security and economic prosperity, to insure America’s position as a superpower in the world, and to end the threat of terrorism. They began as a movement connected to one of the major political parties and eventually split away to become a separate political entity. And no one sees it coming because each American is focused on his job, his family, his next vacation or iPhone, and what to do for fun on Saturday night.

We are as human and imperfect and lacking in omniscience as the people in Germany during the 1930′s. But they gave us a gift: we can look back at the time, the circumstances and what they did wrong to avoid making the same mistakes. This is the real gift of the movie Good. It is to C.P. Taylor’s credit for writing the original stage play, and director Vicente Amorim and screenwriter John Wrathall for their adaptation, and to all the actors for bringing the story to life on the screen. Thank you to them all. I recommend this movie highly, especially to view it before November 2….

Rejection

Over the weekend, I received another rejection for my short story The Light Chamber. I plan to send it out again before the end of this week.

AVATAR: watching as a writer

When my writing focused on screenplays, I watched three to four movies a week (not reading a lot of books during that time), analyzing each one for narrative structure, character development, story, plot, and dialogue. I’ve re-focused my writing to prose and I’m reading more books, but I continue to watch movies. Over the weekend, I finally saw James Cameron’s Avatar.

Absolutely no question in my mind about whether Cameron knows how to use the visual medium or not. This movie demonstrates his firm grasp of it. At times, the visual effects almost overwhelmed me for their beauty. The aliens, while humanoid, were different. The other indigenous creatures reminded me, however, of Jurassic Park, which underscored the ancient and primitive elements. I wondered if Cameron equated those elements with “innocence.” The Na’avi are a hunter-gatherer civilization that has not yet discovered agriculture, at least from what Cameron presents about them which is very little beyond their spiritual beliefs. But then, he presents very little about the human side of the story, painting us as militaristic and profiteers.

As much as I enjoyed the visual aspects of this movie, and its strong narrative structure, the story was standard fare with one-dimensional characters that at times acted cartoonish. The military leader became a caricature. For a 162-minute movie, I expected a LOT more.

First of all, flesh out the characters so that they won’t deteriorate into caricature. Give them more than the desire for new legs or the desire to protect her people. Psychological or emotional flaws add interest and depth and give the viewer something to relate to. I realized that the one character I could relate to in this story was Grace, the scientist. I wanted to relate to the aliens as much as to the humans. But there’s only their spiritual beliefs which turned into a pro-environmentalist message by the end. I don’t enjoy preachy movies.

When characters remain one-dimensional, the story suffers. As a plot-driven story, this movie excelled, however: human soldier/patriot signs up for adventure, meets alien race and culture, falls in love with alien princess, fights his own people in order to save his love’s culture and planet from humans. At the end, I wondered if Jake really knew what he was getting himself into, and I wondered why he made the decision he did. Was it because of his legs? By the end of a movie, there should be no question about the protagonist’s motivation. What a disappointment. Same old–same old. If you’re going to go all out visually and you believe in what you want to achieve, why not make it a character-driven story that’s original?

Last, I’m bored with the human-dominated, we’re so technologically and in every way more advanced, story of human-”alien” contact. I think the environmentalist message could have been powerful if the Na’avi had not been primitive hunter-gatherers. By not making the two sides equal in development and culture, all this movie does is underscore the same old message without offering anything new, provocative and intelligent in the way of problem-solving and approaches. What if the Na’avi had been more developed and their development, because of their spiritual beliefs, had begun environmentally friendly and green? What would their society look like? What kind of technology would they have? What would their energy source be? Maybe they’d tap into the energy of their planet or their sun. It would have been far more fun to match the wonderful visuals with an original story of an original alien civilization that was equal to ours, with strengths and weaknesses just as we have in our civilization.

So, while not a bad movie, Avatar was a visually-gorgeous disappointment. Back to reading…..

Movie vs. Novel: “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”

Last spring when The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo hit theaters here in the U.S., I was not ready to see it. The novel had captivated and disturbed me. How could they make a movie out of it? At the same time, I realized the movie may bring more readers to the novel, and that’s a good thing. I certainly hope so.

Finally last night I watched the DVD of the movie. Movies suffer from restrictions that don’t exist for novels; e.g. time restrictions (time is truly money in the movie business), nothing internal like a character’s thoughts, and only what can be heard and seen. So, immediately I missed the way Larsson had given the reader access to what a character thought in a scene in the novel. The movie’s story focuses intently on solving the mystery of Harriet Vanger’s disappearance, so Salander’s experiences feel more like an important subplot rather than being a parallel story-line. By necessity, the movie also cuts the number of characters that become involved in Salander’s and Mikael’s lives during the investigation. The relationship between Salander’s life and what she and Mikael learn during the investigation has a clarity that would make Larsson happy, I believe. The undercurrent of Nazi beliefs as well as the male abuse of power are both present, too.

But….

I missed the depth and richness of Larsson’s novel. He provided character development with Mikael and Lisbeth and their relationship as a character that is lacking in the movie. The real villain’s actions toward Mikael toward the end lose some of their horror because the movie has left out certain characters who heightened the horror of that moment for me in the novel. Lisbeth’s conflicts with her new guardian and the way she resolves them, however, remain true to the novel and equally horrific for actually seeing the action in the movie. The filmmakers still made the right decision to focus only on the Harriet Vanger mystery and do that well with clarity — it makes for a gripping story.

The actor who played Salander was the only one who came close to the way I’d imagined her. All the other characters were far away from the way I’d imagined them, especially Mikael, Erika, Bjurman and Martin. I liked, however, that Frode was a vigorous older man rather than the way I’d imagined him as rather gaunt. They also did quite a good job casting Harriet Vanger. Casts of movies almost never resemble the way I imagine the characters when reading the source novels. But, I wished the actor who played Mikael had resembled more closely the way I’d imagined him and it bugged me. I have not yet read any of the Harry Potter novels, so I’ll have the opposite problem with them because I’ve seen all the movies to date.

Watching the movie and seeing the Swedish landscape, the cityscape of Stockholm, the actual physical world in which the story occurs surprised me in scene after scene. I realized that the landscapes that I’d imagined were different, based on Larsson’s descriptions and embellished by my imagination. This was not disappointing, but added a lot of interest for me for the movie. This is not the Sweden of an Ingmar Bergman (whose movies I love) film but Lisbeth Salander’s Sweden that she shares with Mikael Blomkvist.

I recommend the movie, especially if you haven’t yet read the novel(s). Read the novel after seeing the movie. If you’ve already read the novel, wait awhile to watch the movie so that there’s some distance from the novel. I think the movie will be more enjoyable as a result. I look forward now to the movie of The Girl Who Played With Fire…..