The Anatomy of a Biographical Film

After I had rented the movie Gandhi from Netflix, I came across this quote on Wikipedia by Lawrence James:

"The film ... is pure hagiography, the late-twentieth-century equivalent of a mediaeval encomium of a remarkable saint rendered in words and illuminated pictures."

Despite the eponymous title, I don't consider Gandhi a biography of the man. I instead consider it a biography of the philosophy of a man through which the man is a conduit. A film like Patton explores the man- not just his philosophies, but his entire network of thought and being. Consider that Patton covers the issue of reincarnation far more than Gandhi does, though the latter is rife with religious subtext while the former is not. That's because Patton posits that reincarnation buffets the entire framework of the man. He is not just a student of war history - he is a part of that history.

Gandhi instead pursues other virtues. We are seldom treated to Gandhi's definitions - his boundaries, his girth. We are not told why he has dedicated himself to a life of nonviolence. All we know is that he was thrown off a train and decides to do something about it. And then we are not told how he becomes such a persuasive figure, able to convince apart from his actions. One scene he is meek and reticent. The next scene he draws a chorus of applause with his words. From the outside he seems a mystery, simple in that his simplicity is pure virtue. He shows no moments of weakness, and because of that we get no look at his soul. That is fine if there is a reverential, giant quality to him, which the film portrays without blemish. It has to work in that regard, however. Gandhi only looks so virtuous because his philosophy is so virtuous, and that is what the movie is trying to show.

This is, after all, a film first and a factual thesis second. A film is biased. It has an initiative, a theme. It has to say something extraordinary beyond the realm of what simply is. If a film is so concerned with telling something honesty and exhaustively, then I think it has license to pursue what it wants.

9/11 on Film

War makes heroes or villains out of us all. That premise seemed to be the calling card of most Vietnam films in the 70s and 80s, and this kind of post Vietnam era outlook has carried over to movies such as Saving Private Ryan where it is not so much the war but the valor in war that matters.

There was a sort of war-athon occurring on AMC recently, and back to back they showed Midway and Letters from Iwo Jima. In watching, I noticed two diverging philosophies. Midway showed men on both sides as honorable and intelligent and unfailing in their duty. Letters from Iwo Jima, despite whatever inaccuracies that some groups are likely to say the films incurs, showed the unpleasant realities of some men committing questionable acts and others engaging in acts of heroism. I really don't know if Vietnam films helped bring that out, but it seems like most of the recent war films have found a new way to play on that basic tenet. That might be a theory that needs testing.

The Deer Hunter, which arrived only a few years after Vietnam ended, was one in a string of movies that helped to make sense of the war, not just in the actions of the soldiers who were there, but in the context of what it all meant. The perspective deployed as the years went by run the gamut, from Apocalypse Now to Born on the Fourth of July, and each had something different to say. Coppola once famously said that Apocalypse Now wasn't about Vietnam. It was Vietnam.

The Movie Blog has a 9/11 feature you might be interested in about the realities of 9/11 on the silver screen, which compelled me to write this article. Like Vietnam, 9/11 movies might help us to make sense of the events, especially as these films are given different contexts based on directorial voice. It's probably impossible to take as many liberties with 9/11 as we do with war films, as tragedies come with their own set of rules. Since we were the victims, the heroism would have to come through the triumph of the human spirit. One "tragedy movie" that comes to mind is Munich, which came out decades after the tragedy and dealt primarily with the aftermath, and I'm reminded that tragedies are difficult to swallow. We all feel like the victims when we remember them. For example, I have difficulty in imagining a Katrina movie, at least one that tells it like it should be, and the only reason I advocate 9/11 films is because 9/11 was a turning point that cast our enemies in a whole new light. It didn't have anything to do with war, but it was part of a larger conflict.

People do seem to be mistrustful of films that use these kinds of events since money is going into so many different hands, and the controversy seems to be ubiquitous such as when the filmmakers tried to procure the rights to use the United 93 crew in the eponymous film. But I think that like Vietnam there is an opportunity here to talk about 9/11 in a way that nothing else can capture. Simple text can not unveil emotional potency, and video only tells us what happened. Finding a creative way to distill the themes and values of 9/11 will be the next step, and I think that it can be beneficial to the viewer if done right.