Commentary—

Movies That Reflect Life’s Grim Realities

By Donald Kaul

The Oscar-winning movies are back in the theaters for a last run at cashing in on their Academy Award glow. Which is all to the good. They are a remarkable group of films. As a matter of fact, I don’t remember the last time so many really good films appeared in a single year. Nor so many that bit the hands that fed them.

Much was made of the fact that the best of them tended to be gloomy in tone, that is to say, serious. (And make no mistake about it these were serious, beautifully made films.) But the striking thing was how many of them were arrows aimed straight at the heart of capitalism and its engine, greed.

The protagonist of There Will Be Blood, for example, is the very embodiment of rapacious early 20th Century capitalism. He is driven to terrible acts not merely by greed but by the capitalistic spirit of competitiveness that demands not merely that he succeed, but that those around him fail.

Michael Clayton takes predatory capitalism into the 21st Century with a chemical company that, having knowingly sold a toxic product, is defending itself against a massive class action suit. The film centers on the law firm representing the chemical company and the price its lawyers pay, in terms of moral sanity, for the years they’ve spent cynically serving the bad guys.

If you consider the illegal drug trade a capitalistic enterprise (and there’s no reason you shouldn’t) then No Country for Old Men is another shot at greed and capitalism. It tells the story of an ordinary man who stumbles upon the aftermath of a drug deal gone bad — bodies strewn over the desert, drugs, and money left unattended. He takes the money and drugs, thus setting in motion the machinery of his destruction.

Although it’s greed that triggers the narrative, the film — based on Cormac McCarthy’s excellent novel — is essentially a meditation on evil. The chief villain of the story, marvelously played by Javier Bardem, is a hitman hired by drug lords to recover the drugs and money, but in a larger sense he is Evil. Not evil the adjective, evil the noun — relentless, implacable, indestructible. He stalks his prey not merely because he is paid to do so, but because he is a malign spirit that must destroy everything in his path.

Each of these films were justly rewarded with Oscars: Bardem for best supporting actor, Tilda Swinton for her portrayal of a strung-out, guilt-ridden lawyer, and No Country for best film, best direction, and screen adaptation.

I have no quarrel with any of that. It was a good year for Hollywood, a bad year for capitalism. Could it be the era of Bush-driven, unfettered capitalism is coming to an end? Perhaps not. While those antigreed films were vacuuming up the awards, lighter fare like Juno and Ratatouille were scoring the great successes at the box office.

Then there’s Sweeney Todd. The over-the-credits image is of thick red blood dripping into the gears of a machine, a unsubtle hint that blood is the lubricant that keeps society running.

The film, which really is gloomy, is based on the Stephen Sondheim masterpiece, perhaps the greatest piece of musical theater in the English language.

It is a story of rape, murder, political corruption, cannibalism, and bad hygiene. Yet, on stage, it is a comedy — a savage, dark comedy perhaps, but funny nevertheless. The film version isn’t. It looks great but its principals, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, fine actors both, can’t sing a lick. That always hurts a musical. So too does a lack of energy and the film lacked it.

There’s serious and then there’s “What in God’s name am I doing here?” But you can’t win them all. There were other excellent serious films — Atonement, Into The Wild, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, Charlie Wilson’s War, Gone Baby Gone, Savages. It was a very good year.

Warm up your DVD machine.

(Don Kaul is a syndicated columnist based in Washington, D.C.)