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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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 Posted - 12/21/2007 : 23:24:17
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Charlie Wilson's War
Here's a quick etymology lesson followed by some history. Concentrate. Mujahideen means those who struggle - the struggle can refer to religion or military or both. Among the most successful Mujahideen came to the West's attention in Afghanistan, whose government had invited in the Russian army to help them outwit these determined and unorthodox fighters. It was the era of transition between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, and though glasnost was shimmering on the horizon, the Cold War still chilled relations with the Soviet Union.
War, as we're so often shown, is hell. Neither side behaves well, and atrocities are perpetrated by scared warriors who've been hyped up and drugged up and anything it takes to clothe them in what passes for bravery for one job and one job only: killing other warriors who are clones of themselves but who've been branded the enemy. Behind the scenes people who wield power make decisions that put those young warriors into the firing line and then they make money from those decisions.
When the United States realized what was happening in the unhospitable rocky crags of a land which bordered the USSR [now Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan], Pakistan, Iran, and China - it reluctantly began supporting, funding, training, and arming the Mujahideen on the basis that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. In fact it took a covert coalition of interested heads of state to provide the rough and ready Mujahideen with whatever they needed to force an eventual Soviet withdrawal. One of the coalition was Saudi Arabia, whose aid was channelled through Osama bin Laden. There were other, even stranger backstaqe bedfellows.
All the coalition states, most especially the US, claimed an ideological victory; their complicity in supplying military hardware and eventually over a billion dollars wasn't so readily acknowledged. These were the men dubbed "freedom fighters" by Reagan, and portrayed as heroes by Stallone in Rambo. Fyodor Bondarchuk's powerful film The 9th Company tells the Russian side of the story.
And now, Mike Nichols, working to a taut script by Aaron Sorkin [he of West Wing fame and The American President] reveals a witty and incisive version based on the true story of the congressman who parlayed his interest in what the Soviets were doing in Afghanistan into a full-blown masterminding of rebel strategy.
The congressman was Charlie Wilson of the title and he's played wonderfully by Tom Hanks. Along the way he canoodles and connives with powerful Texan hostess Joanne Herring [Julia Roberts in a performance of maturity and the sexual power that comes with money]. His main ally is a rogue CIA man played with such range and panache by Philip Seymour Hoffman that the screen dims when he's not in shot.
For a story that's this dense with political machinations and which examines so tellingly the world-changing decisions fomented by people barely capable of making them, Nichols and Sorkin both know how to keep it entertaining. The fact that the real Charlie Wilson was such a social screw-up doesn't hurt either, and gives a chance for scantily-clad eye-candy to provide visual contrast both to the back-room boys and the rigors of war.
But something's missing onscreen and it has to do with the sharpness of the barbs. I can see why: the tone of the film that makes it a palatable if not exactly wholly enjoyable film would have been sacrificed. And both Nichols and Sorkin are understandably concerned to swim in the mainstream. Preaching to the converted is no challenge at all. And these are issues which will probably shock middle America, if they haven't already talked themselves out of the truth.
But, as shocking or at least interesting as it may be to learn why and how countries collide, the really spikey stuff actually comes after the film's done. If the Americans, or indeed, any of the coalition thought they'd now have the strategically located Afghans as allies forevermore, they never forsaw the split between Mujahadeem factions that erupted in civil war, and which gave rise to the fundamentalist factions that led to the mess we see today.
After he received - in secret - his honorary award from the secret services, Wilson praised the operation then concluded - "we fucked up the end game." And that's a lesson that still hasn't been learned. Apparently.
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Edited by - BaftaBaby on 12/21/2007 23:27:28 |
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ChocolateLady 
"500 Chocolate Delights"
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Posted - 12/22/2007 : 09:02:13
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ooohhh... I do think I'll want to see this one.
(And it sounds like you expect Oscar nods to Hanks, Roberts and Seymour.)
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Demisemicenturian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 01/13/2008 : 19:12:04
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Hhmmm, this was an interesting experience, and also interesting that it is out at the same time as The Kite Runner.
The performances were indeed very lively and convincing. I greatly enjoyed the film in itself, but am not sure that the little apology at the end is quite enough. |
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randall
"I like to watch."
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Posted - 06/01/2008 : 23:04:14
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Saw it tonight. I love the recently fashionable trend of withholding the filmmakers' names until the end. I hadn't realized that Aaron Sorkin had written the script: it was superb.
The "arc" -- you know, in a well-made screenplay a central character has to undergo a change -- wasn't really Charlie Wilson's: it was America's. The Zen master story that the Philip Seymour Hoffman character was gamely trying to tell Wilson in Act I [foiled by the Congressman's impending coke scandal, set up cleverly in the first :20] lands like an anvil in Act III. "We'll see." And did you notice that Wilson's bimbos were actually quite effective once they received a real challenge?
The comparisons from Reagan to Bush are secondary; many more people would simply be interested to know just how it was that the US armed the Taliban.
I liked it very much. Laughed much more than I'd expected, too. |
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Charlie Wilson's War
