« ooooh, shiny | Main | royalties, tra la; and a question for you »
The Interpreter -- directed by Sydney Pollack (4.5 out of 5)
I get the idea that we are going to be seeing more movies that deal with the history of Africa in the last fifty years. Sometimes the only way to get people to pay attention is to wrap up the less-than-pretty truth in a story that is visually palatable. So we have beautiful Nicole Kidman as the spoonful of sugar in some very unpleasant medicine. She is Silvia Broome, the daughter of a white South African and a Brit. She grew up in the fictional nation of Motobo in southern Africa and speaks many languages of that area fluently, which helped her land a job as an interpreter at the UN. She overhears two men talking about assassinating the Prime Minister of Motobo, who is about to come to the UN to give a speech in a last ditch effort to save himself from being tried by an International Tribunal for ethnic cleansing. Sean Penn plays one of the Secret Service assigned to this threat, and his first job is to figure out the truth about Silvia: is she a victim, or a terrorist, both, or something in between?
This is a well done thriller, tight and intelligent and engrossing, but it's also an exploration of some very serious topics. How is it that victims become victimizers? We see that question from a lot of different angles, but Pollack leaves conclusions up to the audience.
There are some incredible performances here. Nicole Kidman's first and foremost, but also Sean Penn (who, I suspect, I will have to stop disliking -- Ridgemont High was a long time ago). I was also quite struck by Earl Cameron who plays Zuwanie, the dictator called (ominously) The Teacher -- once a visionary and a liberator who turned to genocide to keep himself in power.
Early in the movie, Silvia is talking to Sean Penn's character about loss, something they both have experienced at close hand, when she says what I found to be the most memorable line: Vengeance is a lazy form of grief. In fact, both the main characters are dealing with grief and anger; they are both weary, and frightened. To have had them falling in love would have been an unforgivable cliche, and I was really thankful that Pollack didn't resort to it.
A footnote: Supposedly Zuwanie's character is based quite closely on Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, and here's a prediction: (1) most people in the movie theater will be completely unaware of that, and (2) after seeing this movie, those same people will believe they know a great deal about a country called Motobo. But, here's the good news: they will have some sense, at least, of the complexities of the political situation in African nations. Whatever they might be called.
May 14, 2005 04:53 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.tiedtothetracks.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-t.cgi/440
Comments
Well, on the other hand, from what I see on film message boards about the other film SAHARA, many seem to believe that Mali is a fictitious African country.
I find that weird because 1) Mali is the largest country in West Africa, and 2) the film title should have clued them in, e.g. the Sahara Desert of Mali.
Looking on the bright side, it was great seeing Lennie James [Kazim in SAHARA]. :D A-hem.
Posted by: MÃ ili at May 14, 2005 06:44 PM
Well, now I definitely have to see it. My parents were both born in Zimbabwe, in 1952 and 1956, respectively, back when it was still called Rhodesia. And they left in 1980 right after my older brother was born and neither of them have been back since, although they both talk about it often and miss it. My Dad was drafted into the army and had to fight or else he would have been forcibly removed from the country; most of my family has since moved to South Africa, England, and Canada, but the remnants that have stayed there have incredible stories of the way this nation has become what it now is. Mugabe...ugh.
Posted by: Christy at May 15, 2005 10:52 AM