In the spirit of Labor Day and seduced by the grandiose adjectives used in its advertisement, I went and saw the 3-hour long, abstract documentary about the decline of Left, entitled "A Grin Without a Cat" at the Oak Street Cinema. It was directed by someone named Chris Marker. According to reports he's French, so I assume his last name is pronounced "Mahr-Khair." (And I wish someday I'm in the position of introducing Mr. Marker to a crowd of people, whereby I will pronounce it Anglicized as "Mark-er," he'll indignantly correct me with "mahr-khair!" and I will reply "gesundheit.")
I knew going in that the radically pro-Marxist text and extreme Leftist conclusions of this movie would be contrary, and probably offensive, to my political sensibilities. In other words, it was going to be something similar to American Beauty. I certainly didn't want to be subjected to that torturous experience again (who would?), but I hoped other ancillary benefits would be present. Specifically, I hoped this documentary would contain film footage of historical events that I hadn't seen before and from which I could draw my own conclusions. I wanted to see some of the icons of the left, presented in all of their glory, doing whatever it was they did to achieve their status. For example, I'd like to see footage of Che Guevara giving a speech (or just sitting down and modeling for his line of t-shirts). I'd like to see Mao Tse Tung encouraging his gray pajama-clad minions to arrest anyone with a college degree or wearing eye glasses. Or perhaps just witness Ed Asner presiding over a meeting of the Screen Actor's Guild, circa 1977.
Given the source of the film's images was purported to be "footage that ranges from TV reports to propaganda to guerilla newsreels" and given Senor Marker's ethnicity and probable reliance on foreign media, I had confidence that I would see new images of old events. And, to some extent this was true. There was indeed footage of Che Guevara, not actually talking, but strutting around jungles in Cuba, the Congo, and Bolivia (with a voice over narration by none other than Fidel Castro). There also was footage of his dead body lying in state at some rural hospital in Bolivia, which was briefly riveting (and that image cries out to be made into a t-shirt or at least the back pocket design on a pair of acid washed jeans).
Another scene of note opened the movie. In cockpit camera footage of American pilots on a bombing run in Vietnam. They were attempting to destroy an enemy base in the jungle though the dropping of ordinance. The immediate impression I came away with was how difficult this job was. Flying at even low altitudes, the jungle seemed enormous, and trying to hit a couple of buildings, while rushing by at several hundred miles per hour seemed near impossible. (Of course, these were before the days of smart bombs.) I'm not sure of what the success rate was of such a mission, but most certainly it was low. I think this explains why the pilot featured in the movie seemed so happy, almost giddy, when he saw people running about after his bombs hit. Granted, his enthusiasm and pronouncement "boy this is fun!" seemed in poor taste. And the movie was using these images to portray the pilot, and the society which bred him, as evil and inhuman. But to me that reaction was entirely human. This was a veteran pilot, clearly desensitized to the task he was engaged in, doing a difficult job with few opportunities to confirm success. It seemed almost any soldier, in any war (even the "good" wars), would have reacted similarly. Yes, he was killing people and then celebrating, something generally frowned upon by the Christian God (as well as Chris Marker). And on a superficial level it is an incongruity. But when you consider his personal context and you consider that those he was killing were involved in a campaign that would ultimately lead to the deaths and suffering of millions of innocents, well then his actions and his enthusiasm are understandable, and can even be considered heroic.
Unfortunately, most of the movie did not provide such clear cut opportunities for identifying the logical flaws of the socialist movement. Huge tracts of time were consumed with footage of speeches from events such as the 1967 Central Committee Meeting of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party or of some obscure German Communist opining on the true causes of a rift that formed between two other obscure Communists involved in the Hungarian Postal Worker Revolt of 1954. There was also much time devoted to a series of student uprisings in the streets of Paris, which occurred sometime in the 1960s. The film assumed the viewer would know the background, so no time was spent explaining this (and I assume it's not worth investigating, I mean they're French after all). But what was striking was the site of hundreds of youths running around the streets of Paris, throwing rocks, shouting expletives, overturning and burning cars--and all of them wearing fashionably cut sport coats and slacks (really). Again, not knowing the background here, it seemed as if this was some rebellion over the new, wider lapel or a backlash against the growing acceptance of wearing a paisley tie with a pin stripe jacket.
In any regard, after 3 hours plus (including an intermission), several naps, a box of popcorn and about a gallon of diet coke, I emerged from the theater with a palpable sense of....nothingness. Usually movies affect my mood in some way, I'm inspired, thrilled, depressed, enraged. But not this time. I wasn't even inspired to ruminate upon its meaning on the car ride back, in fact it was so unremarkable I clearly remember getting caught up in overanalyzing a Thin Lizzy song on the radio (Who are those boys? Why are they back in town?).
However, the movie has not left me totally unaffected, as I've honestly had nightmares of it the past two nights. They consist of me sitting in a theater watching a black and white movie with a droning, deadly serious narration that goes on interminably. For whatever reason, this produces high anxiety, which is followed by panic when I realize that what I'm doing is totally inconsequential and that it's never, ever going to end. I suspect this is what it's like to be a member of the Wellstone campaign.
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