Dune a Must-See for Sci-Fi Fans

Just back from the new movie, "Dune," based on the Frank Herbert book. My God, I was blown away at how great it was. So was my show biz daughter, who's read the book a lot more recently than I have. It's rare to see a modern movie take its time, and this did, in perfect pace with the book. Faithful to the story, brilliantly directed and acted, some of the most unusual music you'll ever hear, because it's a different universe, and so incredibly effective at sustaining the story and mood. Hans Zimmer, the composer, is a genius. 

If you like the book you'll love the film. And also if so, you really need to see it now, while it's on the big screen. Some little phone, tablet, or even desktop image won't do it justice at all. This book presents one of the most difficult screen adaptations imaginable, and this movie is one of if not the best adaptations I've ever seen. The whole audience (ok, there were nine people in the theater) just sat there after it ended watching the credits roll for a good five minutes. That's how in awe everybody was.

Hacksaw Ridge

I saw "Hacksaw Ridge" today and I'd have to rate it the best World War II movie I've ever seen. That's saying a lot because I include such films as "The Longest Day," "Saving Private Ryan," "Letters from Iwo Jima," and even "Patton." It's a marvelous story and character study, with enough background to both lay the groundwork and develop empathy for the people involved. Then of course come the combat scenes, and in this case I find them unparalleled for their realism.

The true-life story of Desmond Doss set the stage for this magnificent film. Almost drummed out of the service for his refusal to carry a gun and shunned by his comrades-in-arms for what they mistook to be his cowardice, he went on to save 75 of their lives under the utmost peril of his own life in one of the most epic stories of heroism ever told. He is the only conscientious objector ever to win America's highest military award, the Medal of Valor. 

Andrew Garfield is brilliant in the title role and director Mel Gibson turns in an incredible job of painting the picture and telling the story. Unless you can't take graphic combat wounds "Hacksaw Ridge" is a must-see.

See the Movie "McFarland USA"

Joan and I saw the Disney film "McFarland USA" today. I highly recommend it. It's a feel good film of the kind Disney has always excelled at, the story of underdogs succeeding in the face of heavy obstacles. But it's also more. It's based on the true and almost unbelievable real-life case of Davids beating Goliaths, and it also offers a marvelously authentic look into a culture we have come to know since moving to the San Jaoquin Valley sixteen years ago.

McFarland was a poverty-stricken hamlet of less than 7,000 people in 1987 when Jim White showed up to teach high school science. Over 90% Latino, most of the residents scratched out a living picking crops in the fields. White saw kids who literally had to run miles from sunrise fieldwork to school and then back again after the last bell. He got the idea of starting a cross country (long-distance running) team and became its coach with no prior experience. Due to the kids' incredible toughness and White's facility for relating to Mexican-American culture, he went on to lead tiny McFarland to nine California state cross country championships in 14 years. The effort had remarkable effects beyond athletics; none of the seven members who formed the initial team had a single relative who had gone beyond ninth grade. All seven went to college, some even to the college where I teach. The tradition persists, too: our College of the Sequoias cross country team remains one of the state's best.

Beyond that, I hope a lot of people will see it to get a better picture of the Latino culture we have come to know and love here in our area. As you might expect, the showing we viewed was packed here in Visalia, but there are many who are unaware of some of the truths of Latino culture and continue to spread pejorative stereotypes. It would help the rest of American society to see the phenomenal work ethic, strong family ties and deep love of these admirable Americans, people who share a combination of pride and humility which is difficult to describe. I saw much about my own students reflected in this film, and I hope you get a chance to see it too.  

      

How Accurate is the Movie "Zero Dark Thirty?"

I saw "Zero Dark Thirty" Wednesday night with Visalia Times-Delta Entertainment Editor James Ward.  You can see his review of the film here.  He asked me along to look into the movie's historical accuracy.  When investigating a movie like “Zero Dark Thirty,” which depicts secret operations like the hunt for Osama bin Laden and the mission that killed him, there are unavoidable problems from the historian’s point of view.  There are some sources, but not a great many, and not from many different perspectives.  The official records remain classified.  Also, personal and political controversies still swirl around some facets of the events, especially including the means by which information may have been gathered to piece together the master terrorist’s whereabouts.

The film moves like a story within a documentary.  Director Kathryn Bigelow measures time for the viewer by making references to world events, especially to some of the al-Qaeda terrorist operations that took place between the horrific attacks of September 11, 2001 and the killing of bin Laden on May 1, 2011.  These are all historically accurate in the dates and in the characterizations of what took place.  In the movie these include the al-Khobar massacre of 22 victims on May 29, 2004, the London bus and subway bombings that killed 52 on July 7, 2005, the truck bombing of the Islamabad, Pakistan Marriott Hotel that killed 54 on September 20, 2008, the suicide bombing that took eight CIA personnel at Camp Chapman in Afghanistan on December 30, 2009, and the attempted car bombing of Times Square, New York on May 1, 2010.       

The culminating raid on bin Laden’s compound in Abbotabad, Pakistan, is rendered with exacting detail and remarkable faithfulness to the accounts we have.  “Zero Dark Thirty” portrays the raid in real time, taking precisely eighteen minutes from helicopter touchdown to the shots that felled the al-Qaeda chief.  The sequence correctly shows the SEALS and their actions in bringing down first bin-Laden’s principal courier Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, Kuwaiti’s brother Abrar, Abrar’s wife Bushra, one of Bin Laden's sons, Khalid, and finally Osama bin Laden himself, in addition to wounding one of bin Laden’s wives, Amal al-Fatah. 

There are a few inaccuracies in the raid depiction.  In the real raid, after killing bin Laden the SEALS had twenty minutes to gather intelligence.  The movie gave them four.  The SEALS brought a Belgian Malamois dog named Cairo along to sniff for explosives; he was portrayed as a German shepherd in the film.  A fluent Pashto-speaking operative was part of the mission in case they needed to speak to the local Pakistanis.  The movie shows many locals approaching the compound during the raid, and the operative having to threaten to have the SEALS shoot them if they did not leave.  In reality, he wore a Pakistani Army cap, only a few neighbors came by to see what was going on, and he easily got them to leave by telling them a security operation was underway and to go home and turn off their lights.          

Certainly the most controversial part of “Zero Dark Thirty” is its depiction of the use of torture to get information from detainees at secret CIA sites, and the importance of that torture in obtaining the crucial information that enabled the movie’s agent Maya, played by Jessica Chastain, to locate bin Laden’s courier and have him tailed to his master’s hideout.  Most sources that have come out so far take issue with that view, though not all. 

Former CIA chief supervisor of interrogations Jose Rodriguez says, “No one was bloodied or beaten in the enhanced interrogation program which I supervised from 2002 to 2007,” and that “written authorization from Washington” was needed even to give a prisoner a slap across the face.  He says they did use sleep deprivation or “in rare cases, waterboarding,” which was discontinued in 2003.  Republican Senator John McCain and Democratic Senators Dianne Feinstein and Carl Levin, along with Leon Panetta, CIA Director from February 2009 to June 2011, strongly maintain that no information useful to the bin Laden operation was obtained by the enhanced techniques, including the identity of the courier. 

In opposition to that, former Bush Administration Attorney General Michael Mukasey has claimed that the waterboarding of al-Kaeda’s number three leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, (captured in 2003) provided information “that led to bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan.”  He says this even though it wasn't found until seven years later.

The historian has to take special care to reserve judgment in the case of sources who may be trying to justify controversial political positions in their recounting of events.  Though the preponderance of those who have spoken so far tends to discredit the torture depictions of the film, the definitive verdict may have to await the declassification of the relevant documents.  That, of course, might not be for several years.  

Spielberg's "Lincoln" a Masterpiece

I saw Steven Spielberg's film "Lincoln" and was tremendously impressed.  This History Professor scores it an A+.  Whether your interest is historical accuracy, a compelling story or fine cinema, you will not leave the theater disappointed.  Spielberg's dramatic portrayal of the successful passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forever ended American slavery, is a masterwork.

I was most gratified to see the care with which the film scrupulously remained faithful to the historical record and the sense of the era it portrayed.  Spielberg retained the consulting services of eminent presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, and it showed.  I've read Goodwin's book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. She knows the history and how to spin it into a good yarn.  The movie apparently consciously included scenes recreated in intricate detail from Civil War era photographs and lithographs, such as the conflagration that consumed Richmond, Virginia.  The public events and words were spot on, as were the attention to period fashion, attitudes, technology and patterns of speech.  Private conversations, as between Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln or between Secretary of State William Seward and the political operatives charged with securing votes in the House of Representatives, are not part of the historical record but were faithful to the sense of what we know and highly plausible renditions.  And yes, President Lincoln did actually meet with Confederate peace envoys scant weeks before the end of the dreadful conflict.

The story has an edge of your seat quality, both because of the great stakes involved within the setting of the nation's most terrible ordeal, but also as a result of the fine script.  I was reminded of the film Apollo 13, in that as a viewer you already know the outcome but get so wrapped up in the story that it is gripping anyway.  Lincoln is a political story of strategy and maneuvering, but it also transcends that due to the timeless nature of the human rights it's concerned with, the interpersonal electricity between the people involved, and the fierce urgency with which the president pursued the fight over the Thirteenth.  His political and historical sense told him it was a moment that might pass, given the sweeping changes about to envelop the nation with its terrible war coming to an end.  The story is an object lesson in the scope of an individual with a firm moral compass to drive events and of the individual struggles many faced in making their fateful choices pro and con.

As a piece of movie making I feel only Schindler's List can compare with this film in all of Spielberg's lengthy repertoire.  It will be nominated for Best Picture and Best Director and I'd say will be odds on to win, as may well the script by Tony Kushner.  Although portraying an issue and a time fraught with high emotion, he strongly depicts those emotions clearly without shading off into the oversentimentalism that has sometimes infected Spielberg movies.  The characters are vibrant and vivid.  Expect to see nominations for Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role, Best Actress for Sally Field as Mrs. Lincoln, and Tommy Lee Jones as Best Supporting Actor for his brilliant portrayal of fire-breathing abolitionist Congressman Thaddeus Stevens.  Some, accustomed to the stentorian and somber voice Abraham Lincoln has often been given in previous theatrical depictions, will be surprised at the high pitch and storytelling felicity Day-Lewis gives the Sixteenth President.  There were no recordings of Lincoln's voice, but make no mistake, those are precisely the qualities ascribed to Abe by the contemporary sources. 

On all levels then, I loved Spielberg's Lincoln.  It was true to the history and presented it in such a way as to bring it alive for a general audience.  The cinematic values were high, the cast superb, the script outstanding and the concept and direction magnificent.  Do yourself a favor and treat yourself to Lincoln while it's still in theaters.  You'll be glad you did.