Author: Joe Bendel

LFM Review: With the Second Platoon in Restrepo

By Joe Bendel. It was the most dangerous duty station on Earth, but for the men of the Second Platoon, B Company, 2nd Battallion, 503rd Infantry Regiment of the 173rd Army Airborne Brigade, Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley was home.  For just over a year, the Second Platoon served in harm’s way every day at the isolated Korengal Outpost (KOP) that was unofficially renamed in honor of the Platoon’s fallen medic, PFC. Juan Restrepo.  For much of that time journalists (a term used without irony in this case) Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger were embedded with Second Platoon, recording the realities of war without editorial comment for the documentary, Restrepo (trailer above), which opened this past week.

Over the course of ten trips to the Korengal Valley, sometimes together, sometime separately, Hetherington and Junger saw the fifteen men of Restrepo up close and under fire.  The mountainous terrain surrounding the outpost could have been tailor-made for guerilla insurgencies.  The Platoon built it during the dead of night while simultaneously holding off Taliban attacks.  Many soldiers described its mere completion as a turning point in their effort to stem the violence flowing from the Korengal region.  However, in early 2009 a decision was made to close Restrepo because its presence was considered provocative.

The audience only meets PFC. Restrepo in crude video shot on a hand-held device just before their deployment to Korengal.  In truth, the quality of the footage is hardly distinguishable from that shot by Hetherington and Junger, due to the chaotic combat situations they faced.  Certainly it gives viewers a strong impression of Restrepo’s personality and why he was so popular with his comrades.  Indeed, despite his brief posthumous appearance, Restrepo emerges as the true protagonist of the film that bears his name.

Despite the greater screen time allotted them, the audience does not come to know the other soldiers particularly well as individuals during the course of Restrepo.  However, they do get a keen sense of what day-to-day life was like for the Platoon.  Soldiers are indeed wounded and even die in the film, but Hetherington and Junger were sensitive to the men and their families in what they chose to show from these fatal encounters, never letting the proceedings degenerate to the level of “anti-war” snuff films.

More context would probably help some viewers understand how the events documented in Restrepo fit into the overall scheme of the Afghanistan conflict.  Yet this was obviously a slippery slope the director-reporters scrupulously sought to avoid, at least for their film.  (Based on the first few chapters, Junger’s companion book War seems similarly averse to editorializing, except perhaps with some criticism of the inflexible absurdity of military bureaucracy.) Continue reading LFM Review: With the Second Platoon in Restrepo

Catastrophe in China under Communist Rule: LFM Reviews LA FilmFest’s 1428


[Editor’s Note: LFM is currently covering a series of provocative films debuting this week and next at The Los Angeles Film Festival.]

By Joe Bendel. For China, the earthquake that devastated Sichuan province on May 12, 2008 has been like Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf oil spill combined.  It has laid bare public corruption and put the local and national authorities on the defensive.  Like Katrina, it has also been widely documented in films like the Oscar nominated short China’s Unnatural Disaster and Du Haibin’s feature 1428 (the winner of the 66th Venice Film Festival’s Best Documentary Award), which screens tonight at 8:00pm at the 2010 Los Angeles Film Festival.  See the trailer below.

At 14:28 hours (2:28 pm) China was hit with what is considered the nineteenth worst earthquake in history, just three months before the Beijing Olympics were scheduled to open.  The Communist government’s official response has been controversial to say the least.  Despite the quake’s severity, many suspect it would not have been as deadly had government construction been less shoddy, particularly at schools.  Promises have been made to Sichuan survivors, usually by politicians orchestrating media ops, but the delivery of relief has been slow and problematic.

Du focuses his lens on the haunted faces of Sichuan’s dispossessed.  They live in shanty towns and temporary housing, enduring shortages of food and power.  Many would like to return home, but following a truly perverse plan of action, the government has begun demolishing houses that withstood the quake.  Such is the efficiency of China’s emergency management.  For many survivors, it appears all the authorities have to offer is an opportunity to wave at the Premier’s tour bus as his motorcade blows through town.

Stylistically compatible with China’s so-called D-Generation (D for Digital) filmmaking, Du eschews conventional documentary techniques, like formal interviews and voiceover narration.  Instead, he lets the camera roll, capturing the unfiltered reality of the quake’s aftermath at intervals of ten and two hundred ten days after the disaster.  It is not pretty.

There is clearly a lot of anger in Sichuan that survivors do not seem to know how to express.  One frustrated old man offers perhaps the most direct censure of the government, complaining: “The policies of the Communist Party are good in essence but they have been carried out wrongly.”  In fact, the survivors seen in 1428 are much more guarded in their grievances than the grieving parents featured in Unnatural. Of course, it is worth bearing in mind Du’s footage was shot a mere nine years after the Tiananmen Square massacre, so he might well have been more circumspect in what he choose to include, for his subjects’ sake.

Like many of the D-Generation films, 1428 obliquely criticizes the Chinese Communist government from a perspective that would be considered left of center in the west.  One elderly Taoist mystic (with much prompting) links the earthquake to the lack of observance of the Earth-God (perhaps implying a corresponding paucity of respect for the Earth by extension).  However, the most heartbreaking footage of 1428 involves bereaved parents searching for the remains of their missing children amid the wreckage of their schools.

1428 is an eye-opening dose of reality, straight-up without any external editorializing.  It is not the popular image of contemporary China the government has worked to cultivate. In truth, it does require some patience (though not as much as Du’s previous film Umbrella) because it so scrupulously represents life as it is for the Sichuan survivors.  Consistently illuminating, it is definitely recommended to anyone in the City of Angels when it screens tonight at 8:00pm at the LA Film Fest (6/21).

Posted on June 21st, 2010 at 10:07am.

Putin’s New Russia: LFM Review’s LA FilmFest’s Vlast (Power)


[Editor’s Note: LFM is currently covering a series of provocative films debuting this week and next at The Los Angeles Film Festival.]

By Joe Bendel. Over 200 former employees and directors of Yukos, the Russian oil company, have been in some way persecuted by the Putin regime.  If that sounds like a coincidence, Prime Minister Putin would like to thank you for your gullibility.  Unquestionably, the biggest fish amongst his quarry was Yukos’ former CEO, the visionary Russian entrepreneur Mikhail Khodorkovsky.  At one time the sixteenth richest man in the world, Khodorkovsky now resides in a tiny prison cell.  How he got there is a chilling story of the not-so-new Russia, compellingly recounted in Cathryn Collins’ Vlast (Power), which screens during the 2010 Los Angeles Film Festival (trailer above).

Collins never confuses Khodorkovsky with a choirboy.  She makes it very clear Khodorkovsky’s early years are still shrouded in mystery and unsettling rumors.  However, she gives him credit for taking on the decrepit Yukos state enterprise at a time when the price of oil was at an all time low, eventually turning around the company – and yes, making billions in the process.

Khodorkovsky was one of the original so-called ‘oligarchs’ who largely reaped the benefits of Yeltsin’s privatization plan.  Yet he was a crony capitalist of a different color, becoming a prominent philanthropist and advocate of democracy in Russia.  He also started championing corporate transparency, only to suddenly find himself behind bars shortly thereafter.

Putin's New Russia: same as the old Russia?

First-time documentarian Collins is admirably even-handed in her profile of Khodorkovsky, never overstating her case or simply appealing to emotion.  While giving the incarcerated mogul credit for his business acumen, she is most impressed by his ability to identify and recruit smart, talented young people for his team.  Of course, the implications of his story are clear.  If a man with an estimated net worth over fifteen billion dollars is not safe in Putin’s Russia, nobody is.

Many of Vlast’s on-camera interview subjects participated at not inconsiderable risk to their well being.  In doing so, they definitely convey an unvarnished sense of life in Russia today.  Providing clear and concise historical background, Vlast provides the proper context for non-Russophiles and non-Russophobes to appreciate Khodorkovsky’s story.  Still, given the long history of Russian and Soviet anti-Semitism, the question of whether Khodorkovsky’s Jewish heritage has contributed to his persecution is strangely never really explored.

Vlast joins the growing ranks of valuable documentaries doggedly raising alarms about the lawlessness of the Putin regime.  Unfortunately, previous related films like Eric Bergkraut’s Letter to Anna and Andrei Nekrasov’s Poisoned by Polonium have largely fallen on deaf ears in the West.  Given its reasoned tone and access to Khodorkovsky’s inner circle, Vlast should impress viewers concerned about the current state of the world.  Well worth seeking out, it screens next Tuesday (6/22) and Wednesday (6/23) at the LAFF.

Posted on June 18th, 2010 at 9:47am.

‘Punk’ing North Korea: LFM Reviews LA Film Fest’s The Red Chapel

[Editor’s Note: LFM will be covering a series of provocative films debuting this week and next at The Los Angeles Film Festival.]

By Joe Bendel. What a disclaimer.  Danish director Mads Brügger explains all the footage the audience is about to watch had been thoroughly vetted by North Korean state censors.  Yet his suspicion that the post-modern irony he would unleash on the world’s most isolated country would be lost on the Communist authorities proved largely correct.  The gutsiest act of cinematic provocation perhaps ever, Mads Brügger’s The Red Chapel (trailer below) is a genuine highlight of this year’s Los Angeles Film Festival.

Ostensively, Brügger came to North Korea with two Danish Korean comedians, Simon Jul Jørgensen and Jacob Nossell, to stage a good will show.  However, his real intent was to expose the unrelentingly oppressive nature of the DPRK system.  Though submission to state censorship was a given right from the start, Brügger thought he had an ace in the hole: Nossell.

A self-described “spastic” (Nossell’s words, not mine), the subversive director knew Nossell would make the North Koreans uneasy, since those born with disabilities simply do not survive in their socialist paradise.  Brügger also hoped Nossell would be able to speak freely on film, because none of the censors would understand his “spastic Danish” (Brügger’s words, not mine).

Mads Brügger and Jacob Nossell 'punk' their North Korean minders.

As soon as the Danes arrived in the North, their minder, Mrs. Pak, fastened herself to them like glue.  Her response to Nossell was particularly bizarre, almost smothering him with attention.  However, even Mrs. Pak could not fake an enthusiastic response to the program the comedians had prepared.  Featuring skits in drag and an unclassifiable rendition of Oasis’s “Wonderwall,” it was not just bad, it was awe-inspiringly awful.  It is hard to say which is funnier, their variety show on crack, or the stone-face reactions of their hosts.  However, seeing the propaganda potential of the show, the North Korean authorities set about adapting it to their ideological purposes, making it “more Korean.”  So much for cultural exchange.

While Chapel is at times a riotous exercise in comedic performance art, the overall film is as serious as a heart attack.  The pathological nature of DPRK society weighed particularly heavily on Nossell, causing frequent rifts between him and the director.  It all comes to a head when Nossell very publicly refuses to participate in one of the regime’s big, scary anti-American mass demonstrations.  It is a scene fraught with its own irony, as Brügger – the rebellious gadfly – tries to cajole his countrymen into professing support for what he calls the regime’s “mother lie,” the Communist myth that American aggression precipitated the Korean War.

Though he makes a noble effort, Brügger fails to capture the smoking gun scene that would utterly lay bare the nature of North Korean tyranny. Of course, he was doomed from the start, because the Communists set all the rules and could change them at their convenience.  Still, there are plenty of telling moments (particularly the climactic demonstration), as well as some outrageous humor.

Chapel has been compared to The Yes Men, but that does not do Brügger justice.  Unlike the play-it-safe leftist pranksters, Brügger was punking a target that exercises absolute, unchecked power – on its own turf.  Based on the DPRK’s apoplectic response to the film, it is doubtful Brügger will ever return to make a sequel.  He probably will not miss the place.  Beyond surreal, Chapel simply has to be seen to be believed.  Enthusiastically recommended, it screens Saturday (6/19) and Thursday (6/24) during the 2010 LAFF.

Posted on June 17th, 2010 at 10:31am.

Teacher Unions vs. Kids: The Lottery

By Joe Bendel. In New York City, parents who want their children to receive a decent education have to rely on chance.  For this sad state of affairs, they can thank the local teachers’ union, the UFT, which consistently places its own special interests above those of New York’s children at every opportunity.  Indeed, one can draw no other conclusion after screening Madeleine Sackler’s documentary The Lottery (trailer above), opening today in the city perhaps most in need of its reformist message: New York.

Eva Moskowitz was one of the few relatively moderate Democrats in the New York City Council (and my local council person).  After earning union enmity for holding hearings on the teachers’ contract, she was defeated by a vastly less talented candidate for the Manhattan Borough Presidency.  Supporting her opponent might have been the union’s biggest mistake.  After the election, she moved back up-town, where she opened the Harlem Success Academies, a series of public charter schools that dramatically out-perform the local zip-code schools.  Much to the embarrassment of the union and local administrators, over five thousand parents attended the legally mandated lottery to enroll their children in Harlem Success.  The Lottery tells their story.

There are many differences between the parents featured in Lottery.  Some are single parents, some are immigrants, and some are union members themselves.  However, they have two things in common: they all want their children to have greater opportunities in life than they did, but they do not think that is possible if their children attend their failing zip code-zoned public school.  In order for their children to be successful, they will have to be lucky in the Harlem Success lottery.

As a charter school, Harlem Success cannot choose its students.  There is no skimming cream off the top.  By law, if total demand exceeds their total registration, they must hold a lottery for all new incoming students.  Of course, that demand is enormous, overflowing the cavernous Harlem Armory Center.

None of this pleases the union, though they declined to explain why on-camera.  The only interview participant willing to shill for the UFT is former New York City Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, but she does not make a good spokesman for their interests.  Appropriately, we also see the “community organizers” formerly known as ACORN show up to intimidate Harlem Success parents and staff at public hearings.  (Karma seems to have caught up with them.) Continue reading Teacher Unions vs. Kids: The Lottery

Review: Neil Jordan’s Ondine

By Joe Bendel. Life as the only admitted alcoholic in a small coastal Irish village is difficult for Syracuse (Colin Farrell), especially with his mean-spirited ex-wife constantly belittling him in front of his wheelchair-bound daughter, Annie. It is easy to see how both father and daughter would welcome a bit of fantasy into their lives in Neil Jordan’s Ondine (see the trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York, following its high-profile run at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Syracuse made a hash of his life through binge drinking. Now on the wagon, he uses the church confessional as his surrogate AA meeting. Barely eking out a subsistence living, one day he pulls up his fishing nets and finds a beautiful woman tangled up inside. Adamant that she not be seen by anyone, Syracuse lets her recover at his recently deceased mother’s ramshackle cottage.

Though Syracuse tells Annie about the mystery woman calling herself Ondine as if it were a fairy tale, the bright young girl automatically assumes it to be the truth. Inevitably, Annie soon meets the woman she believes to be a ‘selkie,’ a mermaid like creature from Celtic mythology, half convincing her father and perhaps even Ondine herself with her ardent conviction. Yet, Jordan periodically drops hints that Ondine’s origins might be darker and worldlier than Annie’s romanticized version of reality.

The human need to believe in something good and edifying lies at the heart of Ondine, but Jordan also deftly incorporates themes of family and personal responsibility. Completely shedding his movie star persona, Colin Farrell is thoroughly convincing and undeniably likable as Syracuse, despite the character’s myriad faults. Indeed, he is the lynchpin of the movie, serving as the tragically flawed moral center of this emotionally deep film. Continue reading Review: Neil Jordan’s Ondine