Reviews

Films

Charlie Wilson's War

Directed by Mike Nichols, starring Tom Hanks, Amy Adams, Julia Roberts

Another deeply muddled, fence-sitting, obtuse Hollywood picture about American politics, excruciatingly unsure whether to crack wise satirically, or go into a glassy-eyed patriotic celebration. It's a comedy, but with a persistent ring of phoniness and unfunniness.

Julia Roberts gives the worst performance of her career: humorless and semi-intentionally grotesque in the role of Joanne Herring, a rightwing political hostess.

This is a fictionalized sentimental-comic tribute to the real-life congressman Charlie Wilson, an exuberant figure who in the 1980s, with considerable chutzpah, masterminded and funded the covert war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

He is played by Tom Hanks, and that casting is an instruction to love him: a ladies' man and a drinker, but with a heart of gold.

The hard-nosed meanie side of the operation is handled by the tough CIA man Gust Avrakotos, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is made up to look less attractive than he really is. The good guys win; the Soviets get their asses kicked, but for those of us watching the film today, there is something important being missed out.

Every schoolchild surely knows about the terrible irony, the blowback? The fact that the mujahideen, armed by the United States, morphed into the Islamist haters of American freedom?

Well, this movie spends its time averting its eyes from that terrible fact, and fastidiously declines to spell it out, other than with some supercilious warnings from Gust, and a fatuous and redundant postscript before the credits about "having messed up the endgame".

Granted, the movie's historical span finishes with the 1980s, but it's quite uninterested in the Afghans' mental world. The point is to celebrate Charlie's cheerful, gutsy resourcefulness; he's a nice version of colonel Oliver North.

Director Mike Nichols keeps things moving and Aaron Sorkin's trademark rattling dialogue is often in evidence, particularly in one snappy scene in which Gust first calls on Charlie in his office, bearing a bottle of whisky.

No political correctness in those days, of course, but all the leching over Wilson's gorgeous female staff is tacky, and it is sad to see the talented Amy Adams reduced to playing a glorified cheerleader assistant. It all adds up to something very unsatisfying, and less than honest. We all know what the first casualty of war is; Charlie Wilson's is no exception.

4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days

Directed by Cristian Mungiu, starring Anamaria Marinca, Laura Vasiliu, Vlad Ivanov, Alexandru Potocean

The setting for this grippingly horrible movie is Romania, in 1987.

Without ever being overtly political, it makes you feel humanity itself being coarsened and degraded by the state.

Anamaria Marinca and Laura Vasilu play Otilia and Gabriela, two students in their early 20s who share a tatty dorm in a provincial Romanian town. Gabriela is pregnant, and Otilia has selflessly volunteered to hold her friend's hand through the illegal abortion she herself has procured. It will be Otilia's job to borrow the cash, to arrange the hotel room, and to liaise with the abortionist himself, called Bebe (Vlad Ivanov).

The 39-year-old Mungiu has created a masterpiece of intimate desperation with a succession of brilliantly created and controlled scenes; it fully deserved its Palme d'Or at last year's Cannes film festival.

The Guardian

(China Daily 01/15/2008 page20)