All four of the films reviewed in this
post premiered at the 2019 Sundance film festival. That includes After the Wedding which opened the festival. But I’ll start with two documentaries
currently streaming on Netflix.
American Factory (U.S.
2019 https://www.thewrap.com/american-factory-film-review-netflix-obama/)
Co-directors/producers Steven Bognar and
Julia Reichert won a Sundance festival directing award for this remarkable
documentary released on Netflix August 21. The opening scene in December 2008
shows a GM factory closing in Dayton, Ohio, throwing 10,000 out of work. Let me note that the film also won the D.A.
Pennebaker award at the 15th Traverse City Film Festival, founded by
Michael Moore who 30 years ago made the groundbreaking Roger & Me, centred on a former GM CEO. However American
Factory eschews Moore’s trademark agitprop self-narration; it’s more in the
direct cinema mode pioneered by Pennebaker (who died on August 1), trusting the
subjects to tell their own stories.
The
Dayton plant was subsequently acquired by Fuyao, a Chinese conglomerate owned
by unilingual Chinese billionaire Cao Dewang, with the subsidiary Fuyao Glass
America opening in 2016. There’s an
indication of its operating philosophy when, at the opening ceremony, a
pro-union reference by Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown is very badly
received by management. This is to be a
non-union shop with much lower wages than GM paid. A number of docile Chinese
workers are also imported and given cultural orientation. What becomes abundantly clear is that the
Chinese are in charge. Part of the drive to improve profitable efficiency sees
a group of American supervisors brought over to the model factory in China in
which regimentation and loyalty are the rule.
There the “workers union”, headed by the boss’s brother-in-law, also
works hand in glove with the local Communist Party establishment. The consciously
upbeat atmosphere portrayed has a whiff of totalitarian propaganda about it. Indoctrination of the Americans isn’t enough. A push to get better bottom-line results sees
the American subsidiary’s top management also replaced by a Chinese CEO. When problems at the plant encourage an
effort to unionize, the UAW-backed campaign is defeated as the company spends
heavily on anti-union tactics which include mandatory sessions and the firing
of pro-union workers. Late in the film managers discuss automation as a way to
reduce the workforce—a trend that will be a huge issue globally in the years
ahead.
The
filmmakers are admirably fair in presenting all points of view. Indeed Chairman Cao is shown in a reflective
moment wondering about his legacy. He’s not made out to be a villain although
the Chinese obviously feel their tightly-controlled top-down way is superior.
(The irony of “Communist” China having more billionaires than the U.S. is left
unstated.) I did have to wince when the
Chinese CEO of this “American” factory spouts a modified Trumpism about “making
America good again”. (And wince again hearing Trump’s Aug. 21 boasting about
being “the chosen one” to “take on China”.)
This is the best
doc I’ve seen this year, and, as it’s the first under the umbrella of Barack
and Michelle Obama’s “Higher Ground” initiative with Netflix, do watch the
10-minute postscript conversation between the filmmakers and the former
president and first lady, even if it doesn’t go beyond the rather anodyne promotion
of the power of good storytelling. A
The
Great Hack (U.S. 2019 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Hack)
This documentary helmed by Karim Amer
and Jehan Noujaim also premiered at Sundance (where Noujaim’s The Square about the Egyptian “Arab
spring” won an audience award in 2013), and began streaming on Netflix in late
July. It delves into the weaponization
of social media, especially via Facebook, that came to light in the Cambridge
Analytica (CA) scandal exposing the UK-based firm’s non-consensual use of huge
amounts of personal data, most notoriously to support the “Leave” side in the
2016 Brexit referendum and the 2016 Trump campaign. Treating such data as a valuable asset to be
mined, CA bragged about being “a behavior change agency” through targeting identified
“persuadables” with contrived messaging.
The exposure of
CA’s methods, including by a UK parliamentary inquiry, led to its demise. Under
the mantra that “data rights are human rights”, the film’s heroes are an
American academic David Carroll who sued to obtain CA’s “data report” on him,
and British journalist Carole Cadwalladr of The
Independent who has pursued the story in the face of legal threats. A more
conflicted profile emerges of a key whistleblower, Brittany Kaiser, who became
CA’s head of “business development”, ironically after having been an intern on
the Obama campaign and a human rights campaigner. The film probably spends too
much time following her—could this seemingly regretful young woman really have
played such an outsized role in political results on two continents? That said,
along with digitally-delivered disinformation, the harvesting, manipulation and
misuse of personal data from online sources is an important issue with which
Western democracies must contend in the interests of accuracy and fairness. B+
Blinded By the Light (UK/US
2019 https://www.warnerbros.com/movies/blinded-light)
This spirited film from director and co-writer
Gurinder Chada is loosely adapted from a real-life memoir Greetings from Bury Park by her friend Sarfraz Mansoor, a huge
Bruce Springsteen fan who has seen “the Boss” perform over 150 times. Read an interview with Chada here: https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/gurinder-chadha-on-blinded-by-the-light-being-inspired-by-bruce-springsteen-and-recreating-80s-britain-7186311.html.
The
dramatized version stars Viviek Kalra as Javed Khan, a teenager of Pakistani
descent growing up in Luton in southeast England during the Thatcherite
1980s. Javed confronts both a strict
traditionalist Pakistani father at home, who struggles after losing his factory
job, and racist discrimination on the street (several scenes involve the white
supremacist “National Front”). But when
introduced to Springsteen’s music by Roops (Aaron Fagura) a turban-wearing Sikh
friend, the lyrics of the working-class anthems speak to him in a way that
quite literally lights up the screen. Javed’s inspiration also gets
encouragement from a girl Eliza (Nell William) he is sweet on, and from his English
teacher. Indeed his writing efforts are
rewarded with winning a contest that allows him and Roops to make a pilgrimage
to the Springsteen heartland of Ashbury Park, New Jersey. Even Javed’s dad will
get won over in this uplifting story that rocks to some classic Springsteen
songs, including the one from which the title is taken. If a young English man
of Indian descent can channel The Beatles in Dany Boyle’s fantasy Yesterday, why not Bruce’s turn? And
here’s a tribute that actually happened. A-
After the Wedding (U.S.
2019 https://www.sonyclassics.com/afterthewedding/)
I’m generally skeptical of American
remakes of European art films, and Susanne Bier’s eponymous Oscar-nominated 2006
Danish original much impressed, so would be hard to equal. That said, Bier collaborated with
director/co-writer Bart Freundlich on adapting the original screenplay by
Anders Thomas Jensen. I’ve also actually met Freundlich, in New York in April 2016
after the Tribeca festival premiere of his previous feature Wolves, which I liked a lot. He has
cast his wife Julianne Moore in a central role—that of Theresa, a successful
New York-based entrepreneur and philanthropist with young twin boys and an
adopted daughter Grace (Abby Quinn) about to be married to Frank (Will Chase)
who’s one of her employees.
The
other key role is that of Isabel (Michelle Williams), devoted to an orphanage
in India (and one little boy in particular), scenes from which bookend the
narrative. (In a gender change, the 2006
movie had this character played by Mad Mikkelsen.) Theresa brings Isabel to New
York to discuss a large donation on the eve of Grace’s wedding, which is an
opulent outdoor affair complete with fireworks, and to which Isabel’s been
invited by Theresa. Isabel, arriving
late, is stunned to see Theresa’s artist husband Oscar (Billy Crudup). They
have a history that’s just the first in a series of shocks and revelations which
will test everyone involved. After selling her company for a ton of money,
Theresa proposes a greatly increased contribution to the orphanage, but with
specific conditions that are understandable in the circumstances. Serial
emotional catharses could easily fall into melodrama. Fortunately, Moore and Williams show why they
are among the best actors of their generation, handling the highly charged
situations not with histrionics but with a raw poignancy that rings true. B+
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