Che - Part Two

‘Che – Part Two’ is at the same time more immediate and less satisfying that its predecessor.

More immediate because it’s free of the self-consciously arty black-and-white New York City sequences that interrupt the flow of part one; because the pursuit of Guevara and his small band of Bolivian freedom fighters by a remorseless military gives the film a constant senses of movement, as well as imbuing every frame with threat and tension.

Less satisfying for mostly the same reasons.

As with the first film, it’s not a biopic – it’s a treatise on the logistics of organising a revolution. As such, it feels very much like a variation on a theme. The main differences are geographical (Bolivia instead of Cuba) and historical (the ’60s, not the ’50s; Guevara is an older man) – but the principal different is the outcome.

The Cuban revolution was successful. Guevara’s Bolivian campaign was a failure.

Abandoning the political stage, a heavily disguised Guevara (Benicio del Toro in even more impressive form than part one) fetches up in Bolivia. With no supplies and with none of the manpower he had as Castro’s right hand man, he attempts to transform a painfully small and disorganised group into guerrilla fighters. Everything is against him: his health worsens (the asthma attacks he suffered before have become more severe, more debilitating); his men are undisciplined and infighting abounds; food is hard to come by; the peasants they are fighting to protect betray them under bribery and threats from the Bolivian army; American involvement exacerbates things.

The two films are yin and yang. Opposites but mirror images. Part one is the rise of Che Guevara. Part two is his fall. Part one is about the planning and coming together of a revolution. Part two is about disintegration. Part one ends in triumph, part two in failure.

Part one works as a stand-alone film. Part two doesn’t. It needs the events of the first instalment for context, otherwise it would be too fragmentary, too downbeat; the sucker punch of the ending wouldn’t resonate half as effectively.

When I wrote about ‘Che – Part One’, I was disappointed that I hadn’t had the opportunity to see the four and half hour roadshow version. I’m glad now that that was the case. The similarities would have been too pronounced.

So would the differences.

McLibel

‘McLibel’ documents the longest-running case in British legal history, that of McDonald’s Restaurants vs. Morris and Steel. It dragged on for seven years. McDonald’s retained the best legal team money could buy*, haemorrhaging millions in legal fees. David Morris and Helen Steel, denied legal aid because this was a defamation case**, represented themselves and spent £30,000, a defence fund contributed by supporters and well-wishers.

It’s appropriate, then, that the film itself has a chequered eight-year history and was made for little or nothing. Not only was David and Helen’s battle with McDonald’s an according-to-Hoyle David and Goliath saga; so was the production of the film that tells their story.

Director Franny Armstrong originally made ‘McLibel’ as an hour-long TV documentary in 1997. Cuts demanded by the BBC brought the running time down to 40 minutes. Ten days before its scheduled transmission, legal pressure was brought to bear and the BBC pulled the plug. Channel 4 showed some interest, but their legal department balked: “McDonald’s would almost certainly sue Channel 4 and would almost certainly win” (quoted in Franny Armstrong’s article in The Guardian, 19 June 1998 – click here to read the full text).

In 2005, Armstrong updated the documentary in light of David and Helen’s appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, who found that the case had violated their rights to freedom of speech and to a fair trial. Accordingly, Armstrong documented their visit to Strasbourg for the hearing and updated ‘McLibel’ into a feature length (85 minute) film.

The no-budget ‘McLibel’ is almost overshadowed by the very story it documents. And yet it holds up as a piece of film-making. Besides, to criticise it for its production values is to miss the point. David Morris and Helen Steel (and, boy, does that lady have an apposite surname!) took on a corporation who had happily bullied everyone from Time Out to the BBC into retracting and apologising for negative reporting about them. They refused to be intimidated and they refused to back down. It’s utterly in keeping that the film which champions them is itself an underdog. So forget the utilitarian camerawork, occasional deficiencies in the sound quality and the surprisingly dull courtroom re-enactments (surprisingly given that Ken Loach directed those scenes – kudos to him, though, for offering his services gratis).

‘McLibel’ kicks off with an inspired bit of scene-setting. A title crawl in bright yellow letters, hilariously reminiscent of a certain George Lucas film, announces:

A long time ago there was a company that made lots of money by selling bits of meat between two bits of bread.

Many people were employed to put the meat between the bread and many animals were killed to be the meat. A friendly clown persuaded children to love the company.

Some decades passed and all was well. The company became very, very rich. Richer even than many countries.

And then some people wrote in their newspapers than eating lots of the meat and bread could make people ill. Other people said on television that too many trees had been cut down and that the workers were unhappy.

This made the company very angry.

The company looked around the world and saw that in England there was a special law that could stop people saying things the company didn't like.

And make them say sorry.

Using interviews, news footage and (mercifully) keeping the re-enactments to a minimum, Armstrong tells the story efficiently and, certainly during the latter stages of the documentary, with some sense of pace. It all started in 1989 when David and Helen, members of London Greenpeace (not affiliated with its significantly more famous oil-rig-protesting namesake) distributed a pamphlet entitled ‘What’s Wrong With McDonald’s’.

Private detectives infiltrated the group. There’s an irony to be relished that McDonald’s outsourced from more than one firm without letting on to the existing operatives: “The spies spent as much time spying on each other”. Then, in 1990, McDonald’s slapped David and Helen with writs. The corporation was confident of an easy victory within a few weeks.

They didn’t get it. As the case dragged on, McDonald’s offered on the QT to resolve things out of court. Their only stipulation was that David and Helen discontinue public criticism of the chain and limit their anti-McDonald’s comments to privately expressed opinions to immediate friends. Helen’s response was priceless: that McDonald’s similarly discontinue advertising and only recommended the restaurants to friends.

Despite a dearth of representation, staff or funds (barrister Keir Starmer, seeing how one-sided the trial was, offered his assistance; a group of volunteers ran their campaign HQ), David and Helen managed to find witnesses – including Stephen Gardener of the District Attorney’s office, Texas, who flew over to give evidence. Gardener had investigated McDonald’s in the mid-80s over deceptive marketing. Interviewed for the documentary, he says, “The point was, the whole advertising campaign – not just one claim in one little ad – the whole campaign was intrinsically deceptive … and I do believe that for McDonald’s to call its food nutritious is lie to the public, whether the British or the American public.”

Even more damning is a comment, apropos of McDonald’s specific targeting of children in the advertising campaigns, from Geoff Guiliano, a former Ronald McDonald: “I was like the guy in the Third Reich who was the propaganda minister.” That’s right, kiddies, Ronnie McD is Goebbels in greasepaint.

Perhaps the most pertinent quote is from Helen Steel herself – a summation not just of what ‘McLibel’ is about but why they refused to back down to McDonald’s in the first place: “The government referred to fact that the protection of freedom of speech should require that campaigners put the balance in their leaftlets, McDonald’s responses for example, but there’s no requirement for McDonald’s to put the balance in their advertising.” To which Dave adds: “The campaigners are the balance and we’ll continue to campaign till there’s a just world.”



*Led by Richard Rampton, QC, who is alleged to have charged £2,000 a day for his services. Am I alone in finding that almost obscene?

*They were also denied their right to a jury. In essence, a single judge heard everything and decided the whole thing himself. So much for our wonderful English legal system.



(More information on this film and McLibel trial itself, including witness statement transcripts, can be found on the McSpotlight website.)

Samantha Morton: respect!

Work commitments prevented me from attending, but I wish I’d been at the Old Market Square in my home town of Nottingham yesterday afternoon to hear Samantha Morton’s speech outside the Council House.

Lending her weight to healthcare union Unison, Ms Morton spoke out against proposed budget cuts that threaten closure of one of Nottingham’s four children’s homes.

Ms Morton was born in Clifton, a few miles outside the city centre, and spent her formative years in a children’s home. In the footage shown on last night’s local news, it was clear how passionate she is about the subject; that her success as an actress has definitely not eclipsed memories of her upbringing.

“I was in care most of my life,” she said. “I wouldn’t have got where I’ve got today without the care of the social workers and residential social workers.

“I’m proud of Nottingham,” she added, “I’m proud of being from Nottingham and I’m proud of being a kid in care. Children’s homes work, they really work.”

Fingers crossed that the council listen.




Click here to read an article in The Independent about Ms Morton’s protest.

French Connection II

I’m going to say something controversial:

William Friedkin directed ‘The French Connection’ and John Frankenheimer ‘French Connection II’ – it should have been the other way round.

Frankenheimer was at his best helming films where attention to detail was the key: the raison d’être for narrative and mise-en-scene. Please, before you haul me up against a wall, give me the kind of hiding that makes ‘The Sweeney’ look like the girl scouts and accuse me of picking my feet in Poughkeepsie – all of which I probably deserve for my two sins of (a) suggesting Friedkin shouldn’t have directed ‘The French Connection’ and (b) being a pretentious twat by using raison d’être and mise-en-scene in the same sentence – allow me to explain. Just give me one paragraph. That’s all I ask.

Okay. John Frankenheimer did his best work when close observation of a milieu and precise attention to detail were the watchwords of plot, narrative and aesthetic. Consider ‘The Train’, which I have described elsewhere in these pages as “a battle of wits between the two men, a game of forward thinking and low cunning, not unlike a chess match but with the French railway system as the board and a steam loco and a couple of dozen waggons for pieces. Frankenheimer's …talent for incorporating technical minutiae into the narrative - indeed, using it as the cornerstone of scenes of suspense - is pure genius.” Or ‘The Manchurian Candidate’, an exercise in documenting the logistics of a conspiracy – its planning and execution. Or atmosphere and routine of prison life in ‘Birdman of Alcatraz’. The procedural aspects of ‘The French Connection’ – surveillance, evidence, tailing suspects, putting the case together – would have seen Frankenheimer in his element. Friedkin, on the other hand, was renowned as a director who put his actors through the mill. Imagine his take on the cold turkey sequence which forms the centrepiece of ‘French Connection II’. Imagine the cultural clash element of the film shot through with Friedkin’s trademark sense of belligerence.

As it was, though, Friedkin directed the first film and made a classic. Frankenheimer helmed the second and, to be fair, came bloody close – the problem with ‘French Connection II’ is something no director could arguably have surmounted anyway.

The problem is the ending of the first film. Not only has Doyle shot a fellow cop, not only does the last frame of the film suggest he’s crossed the line between grimly determined policework and certifiably obsessional behaviour, but a closing credits title card informs us that Doyle and Russo were transferred out of narcotics and reassigned.

And yet the opening scene of the sequel has Doyle (Gene Hackman) happily – well, no, not happily: the man’s a total fucking grouch – arrive in Marseilles, on secondment to the local cops and hellbent on taking Charnier (Fernando Rey) down. Charnier, improbably living in the same house (after narrowly escaping a sting that sees the rest of his collaborators arrested, you’d think he’d have gone to ground), is still looking to corner the American market: in an undeveloped subplot, he’s seen making a deal with a corrupt US army officer.

Without Russo to provide double-act bantering possibilities, Doyle’s conversational imperative becomes a one-note exercise in how to offend his hosts (on national differences: “I’d rather be a lamp-post in New York than the President of France”; on the local cuisine: “What did you do, cremate it? Where’s the mayo?”). Meanwhile, the Marseilles PD prove more effective in putting a tail on Doyle than actually locating Charnier.

The first film was based on an actual case, Doyle and Russo prowling their home turf, knowing when something doesn’t add up, knowing when someone’s dirty. It’s immediate, edgy, gritty. The sequel – an entirely fictional work – squanders its first half on Doyle’s fish-out-of-water integration into a different city, a different country, a different culture. It’s only when Charnier’s men shanghai him and shoot him full of H that things get interesting.

The second half is one barnstorming set-piece after another: Doyle going cold turkey, the dry dock shoot-out, Doyle indulging in a little pyromania to flush out Charnier’s men, and a full-tilt exhausting chase scene (the car chase of the original here transmuting into something just as pounding but on foot) which climaxes in one of the most abrupt endings in mainstream film.

Ultimately though, I can only damn ‘French Connection II’ with faint praise: it’s a well-made and eminently watchable film that served no purpose in being made.

PERSONAL FAVES: The French Connection

I’ve been laid up with a nasty case of the man ’flu (is there any other kind? can the man ’flu by its own definition ever be anything other than all-out life threatening?) for the last couple of days. Activity-wise, the pleasures of the cinema, the pub and my favourite Italian restaurant are out of the picture, so I’ve mainly been watching DVDs and surfing the net.

It was during the latter activity that I came across the latest in Jeremy’s Images from my all-time favourite films series on Moon in the Gutter: ‘The French Connection’. Out came the DVD and 100 minutes of classic cinema ensued. Thanks, Jeremy.

The film’s genesis was a non-fiction book by Robin Moore which detailed the efforts of New York narcotics cops Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso to seize and nail the prime movers behind a shipment of heroine from France to the USA. They began by surveilling a known crim, the spectacularly named Pasquale Fuca, on little more than gut instinct. The trail led to French drug lord Jean Jehan, who was assisted in his innovative import scheme by TV celebrity Jacques Angelvin.

Ernest Tidyman, in adapting the book, took certain dramatic liberties, hence a fair bit of name changing: the cops are now Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle (Gene Hackman) and Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider), the neighbourhood hood is Sal Boca (Tony Lo Bianco) and the Marseilles mastermind, xenophobically nicknamed “Frog One” is Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey) and the celeb in his pay is Devereaux (Frederic De Pasquale).

I’ve not read the book and I have only the most cursory knowledge of the real life case. I have, however, seen the film – the first of William Friedkin’s two bona fide masterpieces – more times than I can count and it was still as immediate and uncompromising and dynamic when I watched it yesterday as it was the first time I saw it – as it was, I imagine, when it first hit cinema screens in 1971.

I probably don’t need to rehash any of the plot. I probably don’t need to issue a spoiler warning when I talk about my favourite scene. I seriously doubt that a litany of classic moments is necessary (just check out the sequence of images on Moon in the Gutter – if they don’t make you immediately want to rewatch it, you might want to take a cardiogram just to check you’re not clinically dead). But screw it, for the record:

Doyle, dressed in a Santa suit, punching the hell out of a suspect. “Do you pick your feet in Poughkeepsie? … You son of a bitch, you sat on the edge of the bed, you put your finger between your toes and you picked your feet.” Surely the greatest non-sequitur in the history of cinema.

Russo doing a B&E on Doyle’s apartment after Doyle’s last night’s pick-up leaves him restrained to the bed with his own cuffs.

Doyle and Russo shaking down a bar, cheerfully abusing the customers and punching out an informer just to protect his cover.

Doyle and Russo freezing their extremities off during a surveillance, scarfing junk food and chugging foul coffee while Charnier and an associate spin out a three-course meal at a luxurious restaurant.

Doyle almost coming to blows with the Federal Agent, Mulderig (Bill Hickman), who’s been seconded to the case. Mulderig has a low opinion of Doyle, holding him responsible for the death of a colleague in an earlier, botched operation. And where do they go at each other like men possessed? In front of the Chief, at the site of fatal traffic accident. Subtle!

Doyle tailing Charnier to the subway where the cunning European successfully evades him. Doyle hurls his trademark pork pie hat to the ground with such vehemence that the hatband bounces off.

Doyle taking an assassination attempt by Charnier’s hired gun very personally. Commandeered car / L-train / 80mph chase in downtown traffic. ’Nuff said. The best car chase in the movies. Ever. So says I and anyone who disagrees is welcome to accompany Doyle and Russo down the station and talk about it there.

Doyle haranguing a police mechanic when a suspected car is stripped to pieces. “I’m had everything off but the rocker panels,” the old-timer protests. “Aw, come on, Irv, what’s that?” Cut to: an air chisel slicing through the rockers. Guess where the stash is?

And then there’s that brilliantly, unforgettably cynical ending. As Charnier escapes (oh sorry: this is the plot spoilers bit, btw; so was the paragraph above, actually), leaving the rest of the conspirators, French and American, to take the rap, Doyle plunders about vengefully in a deserted factory. Russo joins him and almost gets shot for his pains. Then Doyle sees a figure in a doorway and empties his gun. It’s Mulderig: dead. Russo is shocked. Doyle barely registers what’s happened. “Frog One’s here and I’m going nail him,” he declares. He goes sprinting into another part of the factory. A single shot rings out. The screen goes black.

Damn near every frame of ‘The French Connection’ gives you a memorable image, a quotable line or some banter that zings (Hackman and Scheider play off each other effortlessly and with perfect timing); but it’s the ending I remember above all. It’s so chillingly ambiguous. Leaves just enough open.

Then, of course, they made a sequel. But that’s another story.

Metallica: Some Kind of Monster

There are two Metallicas.

There’s the Metallica who recorded ‘Master of Puppets’, the black album and last year’s blistering (if ridiculously titled) return to form ‘Death Magnetic’; the Metallica who played an awesome gig at the O2 Arena on Monday night that left me pumped with adrenalin and half deaf.

Then there’s the Metallica of ‘Some Kind of Monster’, an epic (two hour twenty minute) account of a band in crisis. Directors Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky set out to put together a “making of” documentary on ‘St Anger’, Metallica’s first studio album in six years. They ended up with a portrait of egomania and vulnerability; rehab and therapy; struggles with interrelationships and the creative process; and the departure of Jason Newsted, their bassist of fifteen years since the death of original line-up member Cliff Burton in 1986.

The axis of the group – the Mick ‘n’ Keef as it were – are drummer Lars Ulrich and vocalist/rhythm guitarist James Hetfield. Their friendship/rivalry/power struggle similarly forms the axis of the film. Neither of them come out of it smelling of roses.

Hetfield’s leave of absence to enter rehab for what is diplomatically described as “drinking and other addictions” prompts Metallica’s management, concerned as to how long this will detract from the recording of the new album, to retain the services of a former therapist, Phil Towle, to act as a “performance-enhancing coach”. What follows, in essence, is that a middle-aged guy with a penchant for cardigans sits down with some middle-aged guys with a penchant for heavy metal and encourages them to share their feelings and resolve their issues.

Sounds excruciating, doesn’t it? And in a way it is. Let’s face it: we want our rock stars, our guitar heroes, our headbanging bad boys in the studio or on stage – not on the psychiatrist’s freakin’ couch. We want them acting out the lifestyle that would get the rest of us cuffed, booked and had up before the beak if we ever tried it – not analysing themselves. We want them stoned, drunk, loaded, rip-snorting and going through a bevy of nubile groupies like a dose of salts – not sitting around talking about their issues. After all, you don’t see a nebbish and neurotic Woody Allen alter ego grab an electric guitar, thrash out some power chords, scream “Raaaarrrrhhhhhrrrrrrr!” into a mike, chug a bottle of JD, hoover up some Colombian marching powder and chuck a TV out of a window, so what’s with the role-reversal on Metallica’s part?

And yet it’s this intrinsic incongruity that makes ‘Some Kind of Monster’ fascinating and compelling viewing. There’s the businesslike manner in which new bassist Robert Trujillo is signed up; you feel they ought to be wearing suits and sitting in a boardroom. Now compare that with Ulrich snapping during an argument with Hetfield and yelling “FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!” right in his face at high volume. There’s producer Bob Rock encouraging Ulrich to get this anger out of his system and into the songs; Ulrich screams the same profanity into a microphone, screams himself hoarse, screams himself into a collapsed heap, exhausted and gasping for breath. “Good,” Rock says blandly. “Now do it four more times.”

There’s Ulrich selling his paintings (an impressive gallery of grotesquerie) for millions and desperately vying for the approbation of his father.* There’s lead guitarist Kirk Hammett fretting that the perceived direction of the new album – a raw, blunt, immediate sound – doesn’t allow for guitar solos. There’s Towle trying to talk the band into continuing their, ahem, counselling after they decide he’s outlived his usefulness and try to oust him from the ’Tallica camp.

And then there’s the music itself: ‘St Anger’ is a brutal, jagged album, as raw and immediate as the band intended it to be.

And every word of it was written in therapy sessions.



*I quit bothering what mine thought about me years ago and feel a whole lot better for it.

Heads down, see you at the end

Springtime, and a young man’s thoughts turn to … headbanging. Off to see Metallica at London’s O2 Arena tomorrow, so I’m taking a few days’ break from The Agitation of the Mind.

‘Che – Part Two’ and ‘Gonzo: the Life and Work of Dr Hunter S Thompson’ are on the slate when I return, the latter giving me a hankering to watch ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ again.

I’ve got a seven-film Luis Buñuel season planned for the latter part of the month. And who knows, if I survive the gig without incurring partial deafness, I might even reapproach the ’Tallica documentary ‘Some Kind of Monster’.

Right now, though, I’m ready to rock.