Anti-War Movies Tank in Toronto. And Maybe That’s a Good Thing.

Posted by Mister Hand (misterhand@filmschoolrejects.com) on September 18, 2007

Todd McCarthy at Variety has some words about films depicting the Iraq War and how they didn’t fare so well recently at the Toronto Film Festival. He then proceeds with a short but challenging rant describing how these films fall into two basic categories, and they are both (according to him) essentially predictable and dull:

No matter the specific qualities of the writing, filmmaking and performances; the problem for me is that all these films emanate from precisely the same mindset, the safest, least provocative attitude it is possible to have: the war sucks, Bush sucks, America is down the tubes.

My first reaction when reading the article was to think, “But the war does suck, Bush does suck, and America is most certainly down the tubes.” Maybe it’s because I live down South, and around here, this attitude can still be provocative. Whereas in other areas of the country, you may find yourself hard-pressed to find an avid Bush supporter, around here plenty of people still display their “W” bumper stickers with pride.

But Todd asserts in his article that mine is a knee-jerk reaction, and I suppose I agree. Still, it’s awfully hard to not jerk from the knee (whatever that means) when the country is in the worst shape it’s been in overall since The Great Depression, and doomed to suffer two more years under the leadership of the worst President in history.

Then again, if my attitude is passe, maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe there’s hope that with a new Administration, this country can start a healing process, so long as the overall mindset is that we’ve been on the wrong track since the Iraq invasion. I am further bolstered by the fact that it seems increasingly true that whenever I do run into an autonomous Bush fan, he or she is almost invariably an insufferable douche bag, political opinions not withstanding.

In the 1930’s, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party led Germany down a road eerily similar to the stated goals of Bush, Cheney, and Rove at the height of their popularity. At the current time, it appears we’ve pulled back from that dark path, and the douche bags are losing their struggle to subvert our Constitution and roll back our civil rights. Perhaps we’ll look back a decade from now and realize that we learned a lot of valuable lessons from this experiment in Presidential power. And if we have to suffer a few less than provocative movies dealing with Iraq in the meantime, then it’s a small price to pay.

If you’re not a douche bag, and support Bush, then I apologize for implying that you are a douche bag. And I would suggest that maybe you do a hard examination of yourself. Maybe you’re a douche bag after all.

You see? It’s not impossible to be anti-Bush and antiwar and be provocative. Perhaps the movies McCarthy is referring to simply didn’t do enough douche bag bashing.

On the Side: McCarthy gives preeminent film critic Roger Ebert a lot of credit for his success as a film reviewer, and writes an interesting article in tribute to him here.

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