The Good Shepherd

Filmmaker Joe McDonald sent me his thoughts on the THE GOOD SHEPHERD. I enjoyed his writing so much that I thought I'd pass it along to you.

Believe the peanut gallery, "TGS" was booorrring: **. I am so glad, in hindsight, that you were so compelled to suggest "Rocky Balboa" when it was "TGS" that I really had my eye on last Christmas.

Matt Damon plays Edward Wilson, a Yale graduate who, I believe, belonged to that same stupid secret society that Bush belongs to that signifies the beginning of a career of puppet-mastering in offices of power and prestige. At the cusp of graduation, Damon is approached by an army general (Robert DeNiro) to help form an organization that creates information and misinformation to assist the war effort during WWII, an organization we have come to know now as the CIA. And so begins a life of seven-day work weeks, talking in crypto-speak, a friendless environment, and alienating oneself from the family Damon loves. When he is approached by the same army general to head a similar peacetime organization to fight the Cold War, gee, how can he resist?

Why did this movie not work? There were no goals in this movie. I needed to see the value of having a CIA during World War II and thereafter. I needed to see Damon achieve a victory during the war that demonstrates his value to such an organization and seeing him get hooked. I needed to see some history and background of the CIA. This could have been soooo interesting. What I saw was the stoic faces, the subtextual conversations, shady characters, and close acquaintances getting killed during the war. I kept yelling at the TV for Damon to ditch the job, dump Angelina Jolie, and find that hot, deaf girl he was dating in college so that he can teach poetry at some northeast prep school like he wants to.

"TGS" looked fabulous visually, the cast is an all-star team of Oscar nominees and winners, the set dec and costumes are second to none. Hell, the screenwriter is Eric Roth ("Munich", "Forrest Gump", "The Insider"). What happened here?! Were all the good parts edited out? Is DeNiro a bad director?

What I do know is that I began to balance my checkbook at the halfway point of this movie. Pass on it.

Mostly Martha

I loved MOSTLY MARTHA.

Martina Gedeck, from THE LIVES OF OTHERS, is Martha. She’s obsessed with food, is incredibly Teutonic in her entire approach to life, and could really use a good holiday in Italy. Her kitchen is her inviolable domain, and the restaurant in which she works is an elite destination in her gray North German industrial city. She has issues, however: her boss is just as German as she is, she can’t relate to anyone except through the medium of food, and, well, she’s lonely.

Then, the changes start rolling in. First, circumstances force her to take custody of her niece, a role for which she’s entirely unprepared. Then, an Italian enters her kitchen as an assistant chef. Oh, the horror! An Italian! And he’s good! From there, the movie takes us on the journey of Martha’s development into a functioning woman who, while still obsessed with food, is healthily obsessed with food. That in itself is a rewarding tale, particularly if you enjoy gently romantic comedies. But what really makes this movie special is the way it gently pokes fun at Germans and German-ness, particularly in contrast to Italian culture.

MOSTLY MARTHA is sad, it's funny, and it's a joy to watch. DB and I will trade quips about tasting the sugar the other didn't use for some time to come.

The Lives of Others

THE LIVES OF OTHERS is a drab, claustrophobic, paranoiac movie. It's the kind of movie in which hope seems like a luxury and humanity is something to be hidden. In other words, THE LIVES OF OTHERS is East German to the core.

Here's the setup: a coldhearted Stasi officer volunteers to conduct surveillance on an East Berlin playwright whom he loathes at first sight. The playwright seems too smug, too politically connected, too comfortable in the arms of his beautiful paramour - there must be something wrong with the man, and the officer is certain he will find it. In fact, the officer finds much more than he bargained for, and the result is both heartening and devastating.

THE LIVES OF OTHERS is not a beautiful film. It looks cold, as if the whole thing were shot under bad flourescent lights. Its people do not have the benefit of postproduction digital airbrushing - they appear before us, stretchmarks and all, pale and sometimes very scared. Its food looks horrid; its homes, hotels, and bars dreary; and its parties tinged with desperation. In fact, it looks like the East Germany I imagined from childhood stories of relatives who smuggled foodstuffs and coffee through to unfortunate friends who found themselves on the wrong side of a line drawn at Potsdam. Not only does the movie recall the physical expressions of the East German experience, it recalls the psychological ones, as well. No matter how large one's country is, it's too small if one may not leave. And how does one live if even the unthinking remarks of one's own child can result in a knock on the door? In these aspects, THE LIVES OF OTHERS is unrelenting and more than a bit depressing.

But that unrelenting gaze and that depression earns the payoff of the film, when the smallest twitch of a facial muscle means the difference between despair and redemption. Like weeds pushing through pavement, humanity kept finding ways in East Germany, and it finds ways here, too. Those ways sometimes backfire, and they often end in tears: this, too, is East German. But they're there, and they make 137 minutes spent watching the lives of others well worthwhile.