One of the worst Oscar years in recent memory was 2005, a year where the slate of so-called prestige pictures offered little other than self-important, self-congratulatory garbage. Hollywood has always been very good at patting itself on the back, but in 2005 it seemed like the town had finally managed to completely disappear up its own ass.
The selections for the Best Picture category were dire. Brokeback Mountain was beautifully directed but otherwise forgettable romance that was notable only for somewhat breaking sexual taboos in mainstream cinema. Capote was the token annual exercise in mediocrity featuring an actor doing a disturbingly dead-on impression of a dead celebrity. Munich revealed to us that Spielberg only likes his own people when they’re the helpless victims, not when they actually choose to fight back against tyranny. Good Night, and Good Luck bravely tackled McCarthyism (gee, I wonder if it was trying to say something about Bush). Crash, the worst film of the lot, was an overcooked, emotionally manipulative turd designed to help white liberals who live in gated communities and harp on about diversity feel a little less racist than everyone else.
And I’m not even bringing up the socio-political themed garbage that didn’t nab a Best Picture nomination. 2005 sucked. Hard.
The reason I bring up this bleak year of cinema is because as the Oscar ceremony approached, George Clooney declared that Hollywood filmmakers were becoming “brave.” He bragged about how Hollywood was making big, important statements with their films, as though Good Night, and Good Luck was a daring film that would put Clooney’s life in danger. If criticizing a country that happily protects your right to do so is “brave,” it begs the question as to what Clooney would constitute as “safe.”
Hollywood is a town that has always been terrified of real risks. When I say “risks,” I’m not talking about something like making a film in black & white in 2011. I’m talking about, for example, Trey Parker and Matt Stone attempting to depict Mohammed on South Park. It’s rare that Hollywood has had artists working in the mainstream willing to actually put anything on the line (and I realize that’s easier said than done). One such artist of the past was none other than Charlie Chaplin, and his risky venture, The Great Dictator, is coming out Blu-ray and DVD this week from Criterion.
The Great Dictator features Chaplin playing two roles, one as a variation on his famous Little Tramp character, who in this movie is a Jewish barber. The other character is a fascist dictator named Adenoid Hynkel, a not-so-subtle take on Adolph Hitler. Today, making a film attacking Hitler and Nazism is as safe as it gets, yet when The Great Dictator was released in 1940, this wasn’t necessarily the case. America was over a year away from the attack on Pearl Harbor, as the United States was still a neutral party at this point in World War II. It was an uncertain time, and not exactly a safe occasion for one of the biggest movie stars in the world to mock the world’s most aggressive tyrant. Once the U.S. entered World War II, everyone from Bugs Bunny to Donald Duck was taking a swipe at Hitler. But Chaplin fired the first shot from the realm of pop culture.
It’s no secret that Chaplin was a kool-aid drinking hard leftist. But his use of comedy as a weapon against something evil was a brilliant display of the power of pop-culture, a power, as Andrew Breitbart has pointed out time and again, is often ignored by the right. Hitler remains a trusty comedy meme to this day, and Chaplin’s film is ground zero.
Criterion did a fabulous job with their essential release of Chaplin’s Modern Times, and one can expect the same level of quality here. Among the bevy of goodies, there is a pristine new digital transfer, a new commentary with Chaplin scholars, and the documentary The Tramp and The Dictator that covers the parallel lives of Chaplin and Hitler. Criterion never disappoints in making essential movies into essential Blu-rays and DVDs, their edition of this movie will no doubt be worth trading up for.
Okay, so I may lose friends over this one (or maybe not), but I don’t see what the big deal is over Platoon, which comes to Blu-ray this week. Oliver Stone, crazy and obnoxious as he is as a person, has a talent as a filmmaker that can’t be denied. For example, JFK is brilliant as a conspiracy theorist’s fever dream, it never fails to entertain and fascinate me from the word “go.” Even though it’s complete fiction, I would call it a perfect film. But there are certain subjects that he tackles with a tone that is not unlike nails on a chalkboard.
Usually these subjects fall within the anti-war movement during the Vietnam war. Movies like Platoon have the stink of “I was there, man” sanctimony on them (another example includes his annoying Jim Morrison biopic). I realize that Stone himself is a Vietnam vet, and that is to his credit, but Platoon is boring and overwrought as a movie. The divide between Tom Berenger’s cartoon of a jingoist leader and Willem Dafoe’s peace-loving soldier hippie might have seemed deep at the time, but to me it seemed like a plot that has a thematically ham-sized fist. In the middle, we have none other than Charlie Sheen, the only actor crazy enough to be Stone’s avatar. Don’t get me wrong, screaming his themes from the top of the highest building with a megaphone has often worked well for Stone, but not here. The first casualty of war may be innocence, but truth is a constant casualty in Stone’s feverish films.
Available on Blu-ray/DVD combo.
Other Noteworthy Releases
Solaris: Criterion is updating and re-releasing their edition of Andrei Tarkovsky’s sci-fi classic. Available on Blu-ray and DVD.
Papillion: A Blu-ray release of the film starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman about the true-life story of a prisoner’s escape from Devil’s Island. Available on Blu-ray. Previously available on DVD.
Gnomeo and Juliet: A Shakespeare plot pun from Disney for the little ones, featuring tunes by Elton John. Call it a hunch, but something tells me the star-crossed lovers aren’t going to die in a horrible double-suicide at the end like they’re supposed to. Available on Blu-ray 3D, Blu-ray/DVD Combo, and DVD.
I Am Number Four: This title invites far too many poop jokes. Available on Blu-ray/DVD combo, Blu-ray, and DVD.
Tigerland: The Joel Schumacher/Colin Ferrell Vietnam movie is available on Blu-ray. Previously available on DVD.
Public Speaking: Martin Scorsese’s new documentary on Fran Lebowitz. Available on DVD.
Grand Prix: John Frankenheimer’s ’66 racing flick starring James Garner, Eva Marie Saint, and Toshio Mifune comes to Blu-ray. Available on Blu-ray. Previously available on DVD.