this just in: corporations are evil

as we continue with our goal of a movie a night…

syriana - while you are impressed by the intricate interweaving of several plotlines into a coherent whole(and not ridiculously trite: i’m talking about you, crash), you still can’t help but feeling that this is son of traffic or traffic 2: petroleum boogaloo. it’s deftly done, but there seems to be a distinct emphasis on making sure we don’t connect emotionally with any of the characters, but that we keep them at a distance. thus, you’re intellectually fascinated, and it’s enthralling, but at the end you don’t really care if anyone wins or loses any more than you wonder why george clooney has that really huge beard in the first place.

the constant gardener - i think i actually liked this a bit more, as a companion in the “evil corporations exploit people and fuck the world for their own gain” ouvre. the difference here is instead of having a dozen plotlines intertwine and untwine that we don’t connect with, they instead use the love story to set a strong emotional component that you can identify and empathize with, which then hooks you in and makes you care about the larger wrong on a more personal basis. hmc noted that while stephen gagan (the writer/director of syriana) should be commended for trying to avoid all of those hollywood emotional manipulative tricks, you still can’t forget what those tricks are there to do in the first place: to draw you in and make you care about the story. which is exactly what works in gardener.

(side note: is the tessa character preggers in the book, too? or did they just do that because rachel weisz was preggers? if not, how do you cast for that? “quick, get me all the young actresses who are pregnant and will be visibly showing when we start shooting in six months! and who will do tasteful pregnant nudity! or maybe we can get someone knocked up?”)

Posted at December 27, 2005 9:50 PM