Almost Famous

Anybody that bought Zeppelin I knows that the standout song is “Dazed and Confused,” and that’s great. It’s a masterpiece albeit a little too stifled because it is the studio version. If Almost Famous (2000) is the studio version than “The Bootleg Cut” is the live version of “Dazed and Confused” found on The Song Remains the Same in all of its epic grandeur, taking an already great song and making it live and breathe. Likewise, “The Bootleg Cut” of Almost Famous takes Cameron Crowe’s tribute to classic rock of the 1970s and improves on it by adding over 35 minutes of footage, which allows the world he created and the colorful characters that inhabit it to also live and breathe.

Almost Famous was clearly a labor of love for the filmmaker and his most personal effort to date. It is a fictionalized account of Crowe’s start as a rock music journalist at the age of 15 writing from Creem magazine and then a year later joining the staff of Rolling Stone where he would go on to interview the likes of Led Zeppelin, Van Morrison, Neil Young, and many others. Unfortunately, his very personal journey failed to connect with a mainstream audience and despite being lavished with critical praise and awards (including an Oscar for screenwriting), the film flopped at the box office but has gone on to develop a cult following. However, one wonders if Crowe never fully recovered from its commercial failure. Perhaps he ran out of things to say, making two films adapted from pre-existing works (Vanilla Sky and We Bought a Zoo) and an original film, Elizabethtown (2005) that tanked both with critics and audiences. Regardless, Almost Famous will no doubt be regarded as his magnum opus and rightly so.

“We’re like nobody else I know,” says Anita Miller (Zooey Deschanel) early on in the film. She’s the exasperated sister of William Miller (Michael Angarano) and has directed this comment towards their mother Elaine (Frances McDormand), a very smart teacher who raises her children in a very unorthodox fashion, like celebrating Christmas in summer because it’s gotten too commercial. Yet, for someone so intelligent, she is completely clueless about popular culture, specifically rock music, banning Simon and Garfunkel because they look stoned on the cover of their Bookends album. When she turns 18, Anita leaves home but gives her younger brother a treasure trove of classic rock ‘n’ roll albums – Zeppelin II, The Who’s Tommy, Joni Mitchell’s Blue, the Rolling Stone’s Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! and so on, which he uses to educate himself, developing a deep love of music, both listening to it and writing about it.

By the time William (Patrick Fugit) turns 15, it’s 1973 and he experiences a life-changing event. He meets his idol Lester Bangs (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the legendary rock journalist at a radio station where he calls Jim Morrison “a drunken buffoon,” and praises the Guess Who for having the courage to be drunken buffoons. Philip Seymour Hoffman kills it as Lester, creating one of the most memorable character introductions in recent memory. We meet the infamous writer trashing the sacred cows of rock before getting the bemused disc jockey to play Iggy Pop and the Stooges while he jumps around like a maniac to the Detroit madman’s blistering rendition of “Search and Destroy.” William and Lester hit it off with the latter recognizing a younger, less jaded version of himself in the former. He also recognizes the same passion for music that he sees in the young teen and tells him, “Music, you know, true music – not just rock n roll – it chooses you. It lives in your car, or alone listening to your headphones, you know, with the cast of scenic bridges and angelic choirs in your brain.” He tries to warn William away from rock journalism by claiming that “The war is over. They won. 99% of what passes for rock ‘n’ roll these days, silence is more compelling.” Ah, how prophetic words these are as they could easily be speaking about the current state of rock music. The best part of this scene is when Lester talks about the love of writing, of staying up all night, “just writin’ and writin’. I mean, like 25 pages, a dribble, y’know, about the Faces or Coltrane. Y’know, just to fuckin’ write.” That bit gets me every time and inspires me whenever I get depressed about my own writing and to keep at it.

So, Lester assigns William to write a 1,000 word concert review of Black Sabbath but once at the venue, the inexperienced writer is unable to get access backstage. Rather fortuitously he meets a group of self-proclaimed band-aids, a strain or rock groupie, led by the charismatic Penny Lane (Kate Hudson) who unsuccessfully tries to get him into the venue. It isn’t until he meets the opening band Stillwater, impressing them with his succinct insights into their music, that he is able to gain access. Little does William know that Penny and Stillwater will change his life. The latter takes him on tour with them across America, while the former shows him the ropes along the way. William’s writing gets noticed by Rolling Stone magazine and they assign him to do a cover story on Stillwater. The more William’s horizons are broadened by the tour the more questions he has, not just for the band but about life and he only finds the answers through experience. By the end of the film you feel as if you’ve really gone on a journey with these characters. By the end of it we have gained some insight into them through their various misadventures.

Almost Famous is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the talented cast, which consists mostly of young, untested talent (Patrick Fugit, Kate Hudson, Zooey Deschanel) and up-and-coming character actors (Jason Lee and Billy Crudup). In a perfect world, this film would have shot them all through the stratosphere. Most of them went on to future success (Crudup, Deschanel, Lee) and some squandered the buzz acquired from it (Hudson). Speaking of which, Almost Famous marked a breakout performance by Kate Hudson who brings a refreshing vitality and charisma to every scene as the veteran groupie Penny Lane. At first, she is a rather enigmatic figure, refusing to tell William her real name, but over the course of the film she gives him insight into the sometimes sad and lonely girl lurking under her bubbly façade. Hudson captures the layers of Penny with her eyes, specifically the sadness in them during a few moments. This happens in an incredibly touching scene when she finds out that the love her life sold her out for a case of beer. We see all kinds of emotions play out on her face as she tries to maintain a brave front but we catch a glimpse of the hurt and then it’s gone. Penny Lane was a star-making role and unfortunately the actress failed to capitalize on it with the exception of supporting roles in a Merchant/Ivory film (Le Divorce) and a Robert Altman film (Dr. T and the Women), and instead appeared in a string of forgettable romantic comedies.

Patrick Fugit, a young unknown actor, was cast as Crowe’s cinematic alter ego and has to anchor the film, acting as our window to this exotic world from another time. It helps that his coming of age as an actor parallels his character’s coming of age. Fugit does an excellent job of conveying William’s idealistic naïveté, his secret crush on Penny and his desire to become a successful rock journalist. William represents the hardcore music fan living the dream: hanging out with the bands he writes about and enjoys listening to. Philip Seymour Hoffman nails the jaded cynicism that made Lester Bangs such a polarizing figure in rock journalism. When William meets him, the veteran writer informs the kid that he’s arrived just in time for the death rattle of rock. Hoffman has little screen-time but he knows how to make the most of it by playing a larger than life figure. You can see why William admired Lester – he’s brash, funny and opinionated. And yet, Crowe also shows the more thoughtful, supportive side of Lester when he gives William much-needed advice and guidance when he’s at a low point, telling him, “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we're uncool.” Billy Crudup is memorable as Russell Hammond, the cocky guitarist who feels that he’s already gone past his bandmates in terms of skill and ability. Against his better judgment he befriends William while repeatedly putting off his request for an interview. One gets the feeling that he doesn’t really care about William, or anyone else for that matter as he just uses people but by the end of the film there is a sense that he realizes and comes to terms with the damage he’s done to others. He finally grants William an interview, which begins with the young man asking him, “So Russell... what do you love about music?” to which the musician replies with a smile, “To begin with, everything.”

It has been said that the devil is in the details and that’s what Crowe captures so well in Almost Famous, like the excitement one feels just before a concert starts, when the lights go out and the crowd roars in anticipation – it’s a goosebump-inducing moment that is authentically recreated in the film. There’s also the faithful recreation of chaotic life on the tour bus with people reading, sleeping and noodling away on their musical instrument to kill time. Best of all, there’s the authenticity of the band playing live – the chemistry between its members when they’re firing on all cylinders. All of the actors learned how to play their respective instruments and it shows. Even though Jason Lee lip-synchs the voice sounds like it could be him singing. With films that involve bands you can usually tell that they’re not playing and the lip-synching is off but this is not the case with Almost Famous. Stillwater looks, sounds and feels like a band from that era and this is due in large part to the behind-the-scenes talent responsible for it, namely Nancy Wilson of Heart and Peter Frampton, both of whom recorded and toured during this time period and drew upon their considerable experience and skills to create songs (along with Crowe) that could have easily come from the ‘70s. The band dynamic is beautifully realized in simple things like how a screw-up on a band t-shirt dredges up all kinds of old grievances between lead singer Jeff Bebe (Jason Lee) and lead guitarist Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup). The singer feels threatened by his guitarist’s mystique. We see the band begin to split apart the more famous they get as they fight to keep it real while becoming successful. Crowe and co. nail it because he’s lived it countless times and it’s burned in his brain, it’s part of his DNA.

And then there are the pre-existing songs from the era that Crowe included that also brilliantly evoke the time period and capture the emotion of a specific scene, like “That’s the Way” off of Zeppelin III that plays over the scene on the tour bus during a beautiful sunset. The most famous musical moment is, of course, the scene on the bus when after a big fight between Jeff and Russell an uncomfortable silence hangs over everyone until “Tiny Dancer” by Elton John comes on. Eventually everyone is singing along and all the disagreements are put aside in favor of the music. This scene shows how the power of the right song at the right moment can transcend almost anything and bring people together. It is one of those rare, magical moments captured on film that perfectly marries music with the visuals.

Crowe has described Almost Famous as “agonizingly true.” He grew up in San Diego and was introduced to rock music by his rebellious older sister. He skipped three grades and graduated from high school at the age of 15. He became a rock journalist by sending writing samples to Lester Bangs at Creem magazine. This led to a job at Rolling Stone. William’s experiences with Stillwater are a pastiche of experiences Crowe had with real bands, like pursuing the lead singer and guitarist for a cover story (Led Zeppelin), hanging out with a dysfunctional band (the Allman Brothers), and taking a turbulent plane ride with another band (Lynyrd Skynyrd). In addition, Stillwater claiming they were misquoted and then sabotaging William’s article really happened to Crowe when he did a cover story on Neil Young and like in the film the musician changed his mind at the last minute and allowed it to be published. The real Penny Lane came from Portland, Oregon and moved to Los Angeles to be with the keyboard player for Steppenwolf. She developed a love for musicians and their scene. When she moved back to Portland, she hung out with bands that rolled into town adopting a vintage 1940s wardrobe and led a gang of groupies known as “the Flying Garter Girls.” Crowe met her 1973 and they became friends. He ended up showing her the film in order to assure the woman that he wasn’t going to sensationalize her life: “a lot of those girls really did believe in the music and she was one of them.”

One could say that Crowe had been preparing for this film for much of his life. He actually started writing the screenplay in the late 1980s and continued to work on it between other projects, biding his time until he had enough clout to get it bankrolled. He got that opportunity thanks to the massive commercial success of Jerry Maguire (1996) and cut a deal with DreamWorks. When it came to casting, Canadian actress Sarah Polley was originally set to play Penny Lane with Kate Hudson taking on the role of Anita, William’s older sister, but as Crowe and the actress worked on the part he realized that she wasn’t right for the role as he envisioned it. Polley dropped out during pre-production and Hudson begged Crowe to replace her. Interestingly, Crowe almost cast Natalie Portman as Penny but felt it would have made it “a totally different movie – one where Penny Lane was a child, and her innocence was so important to all of them that they all protected her,” but with Hudson, “you believe she had a past.”

Other casting choices included a desire to cast Meryl Streep as Elaine, William’s mother but she turned Crowe down and he almost went with Rita Wilson but opted for Frances McDormand instead. The filmmaker told his real mother not to approach the actress during the production but she defied her son. McDormand remembers, “She said, ‘I find the character to be written a little shrill and I hope that you don’t intend to play it that way.’ And I said right back that I’m an actor, so it’s not going to be me or you, it’s going to be [the character].” Likewise, Brad Pitt was originally cast as Russell Hammond but he dropped out shortly before filming began and Crowe went with Billy Crudup in his place. Crowe said, “His role was the most underwritten part in the movie, and Brad had taken a flier on other scripts that weren’t fully on the page and he couldn’t bring himself to do it again.” To prepare for the pivotal role of Lester Bands, Philip Seymour Hoffman listened to audio tapes of interviews with the rock journalist.

A lot of time and money was spent on getting the period details right, from dressing all the extras in the concert scenes in vintage clothing from thrift shops and warehouses all over the country to minutia like period cigarette packs, gum packs and ashtrays full of cigarette butts in the background of scenes. The inventor of the original pull tab beer can was tracked down and hired to make dozens of cases for the film. Crowe went to even greater lengths for authenticity. The production spent $100,000 on getting a 727 plane bearing the original Eastern logo with a decent-sized airline terminal set for the scene where Penny leaves for Morocco.

When it came to the music for Stillwater, Crowe and his wife Nancy Wilson decided that they would feel like a blend of Bad Company with a little Led Zeppelin, Cream and the Allman Brothers mixed in for good measure. Once Crowe and Wilson wrote the songs they had to find a singer that could do “a certain rock accent in 1972 that no longer exists … a certain bluesy way of singing.” They found L.A.-based musician and producer Marti Frederiksen who co-wrote songs with Aerosmith, Def Leppard and Sheryl Crow. During pre-production, Wilson teamed up with another ‘70s rock mainstay Peter Frampton to teach the actors how to be rock stars, like not wearing the guitar too high and to have a “slouchy, sloppy body language.” Crowe also had the actors study live concert footage of bands like the Who and Led Zeppelin.

With a budget of $60 million, Almost Famous was expected to do as well as Crowe’s past box office successes but it struggled to break even, baffling and disappointing the filmmaker and DreamWorks. Hollywood insiders criticized the film’s large budget, lack of marquee name movie stars and an R rating, which limited its audience. The studio felt that it was simply “the right movie at the wrong time” and this resulted in poor attendance. Another DreamWorks executive felt that Almost Famous was hard to describe in 30 seconds and that made it difficult to market.

Almost Famous received mostly positive praise from critics. Roger Ebert gave it four out of four stars and found it “funny and touching in so many different ways.” In his review for The New York Times, A.O. Scott wrote, “The movie's real pleasures are to be found not in its story but in its profusion of funny, offbeat scenes. It's the kind of picture that invites you to go back and savor your favorite moments like choice album cuts.” Time magazine’s Richard Corliss praised Patrick Fugit’s performance: “The movie's real pleasures are to be found not in its story but in its profusion of funny, offbeat scenes. It's the kind of picture that invites you to go back and savor your favorite moments like choice album cuts.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film an “A-“ rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “the performances by Crudup, Hudson, Lee, McDormand, Hoffman, and newcomer Fugit have a beautiful, unforced naturalism, and the movie is laced with memorable moments.” In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan praised Kate Hudson’s performance for being “so delicate, authentic and accomplished that this is probably the last film for which anyone will feel the impulse to identify her as Goldie Hawn's daughter.” Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers wrote, “Crowe triumphs not by copping an attitude about the industry of cool but by capturing the ravishing thrill of losing your cherry to rock & roll. Almost Famous is a winner because Crowe dares to wear his heart on his sleeve.”

In her review for the L.A. Weekly, Manohla Dargis wrote, “Like much great art, Almost Famous is about the search for some glimmer of authentic meaning. Everyone searches differently. Lester Bangs took a swan dive into the gutter and died at the age of 33. Cameron Crowe wrote for slick magazines and studios. He kept living, no doubt very comfortably, but as it so happens, he never did stop listening to Bangs‘ voice, which is why, on his fourth try as a director, he’s gotten it right.” However, The New York Observer’s Andrew Sarris was a rare gate-crasher to the party. He felt that, “For whatever reason, too much of the dark side has been left out. Mr. Crowe was not obliged to revisit Altamont, but there was something faux in the depravity of the young extras Mr. Crowe and his associates have recruited to provide atmosphere. They reminded me too much of the kids in the audience, who were too young to remember the 60′s and 70′s but are persuaded by Mr. Crowe that they ‘get’ the period just the same.” Likewise, the Washington Post’s Desson Howe wrote, “There's a scene in which Stillwater and friends, riding in a tour bus, suddenly sing along to Elton John's 'Tiny Dancer,' which is playing over the radio. This is meant to be a scene of unabashed innocence, as everyone forgets their petty differences and simply enjoys the sensation of being a sing-along fan. But it's very hard to see these long-haired kids as products of the 1970s instead of dressed up actors from the Seattle-Starbucks era.”

Almost Famous is a film for music fans made by one and this is evident in the loving attention paid to every frame as seen through the filter of nostalgia. Or, as Crowe said in an interview, “a movie that was a tribute to the way that music makes you feel, if you can get the movie to make you feel like a song you just sort of discovered that you want to hear life eight times in a row.” A truly great film magically transports one into its cinematic world and in the case of Almost Famous it transports one back to the time period it depicts, achieving this through authentic period details like costumes, production design and music. Almost Famous is as much of a love letter to the joy of listening to and experiencing music as it is to writing about it. A good writer wears their heart on their sleeve and one can feel the passion for their subject in every sentence and this is evident in Crowe’s rock journalism and his best films. His film believes in the power of music to change how we feel about things and people and its importance in the fabric of our lives. It has the ability to move us, to make us laugh and cry – the entire emotional spectrum. You have to give Crowe credit for putting it all out there and creating a deeply personal film.

SOURCES

“Almost Autobiographical.” Newsweek. September 8, 2000.

Cagle, Jess. “As the Crowe Flies.” Time. September 18, 2000.

Carrillo, Jenny Cooney. “Stone the Rolling Crowes!” Urban Cinefile.

Fretts, Bruce. “Kate Hudson – Almost Famous.” Entertainment Weekly. February 23, 2001.

Green, Jesse. “Billy Crudup: Almost Infamous.” The New York Times. October 10, 2004.

Kelly, Maura. “Nancy Wilson. The Believer. August 2007.

Lyman, Rick. “Slump Vexes Creators of Almost Famous.” The New York Times. October 19, 2000.

“The Decade is in the Details.” Newsweek. October 18, 2000.

Thernstrom, Melanie. “The Enchanting Little Princess.” The New York Times. November 7, 2004.

Watchmen: Ultimate Cut

To say the Watchmen film (2009) had a long and checkered production history is a massive understatement. Originally a 12-issue mini-series written by Alan Moore and drawn by Dave Gibbons that was released in 1986, it was a revisionist superhero story about a mysterious assassin killing off costumed superheroes but this is merely a springboard for a brilliant dissection of the genre and comics in general by manipulating symbols and icons. It also addressed the fear of nuclear annihilation that was so prevalent in the 1980’s. The series was a critical and commercial success despite Moore and Gibbons’ intentions for it to act as an epitaph to the superhero genre and ended up revitalizing superhero comics and spawned numerous rip-offs. It wouldn’t take long for Hollywood to come calling.

In 1989, just after he finished making The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Terry Gilliam was approached to direct a film version of Watchmen by producer Joel Silver. Sam Hamm (Batman) wrote the screenplay, which by all accounts was awful. So, Gilliam discarded this draft and wrote his own with Charles McKeown (his screenwriting partner on Munchausen). Gilliam felt that the mini-series was unfilmable as a traditional two-hour film. The biggest problem lay in the financing. According to Gilliam, Silver said that he had secured a $40 million budget but in actuality he only had about $24-25 million. In 1996, after the success of 12 Monkeys, Gilliam was asked again and turned it down.

Nothing happened with the project for many years until it was announced that screenwriter David Hayter (X-Men) had signed a seven figure deal to adapt Watchmen for the big screen and possibly even direct it for Universal. Larry Gordon, who had long held the rights to Watchmen was going to produce the film. Originally, Hayter pitched Watchmen as a mini-series for HBO but the cost would have been an estimated $100 million. His way to condense the mini-series into a two-hour film was to break down the story points into their main components.

Filming was to being in Prague sometime in 2004; however, the option was picked up in April 2004 with Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan) being named as the director for Revolution Studios. By July, the project had moved over to Paramount when the deal fell through with Revolution. However, by early November 2004, Aronofsky was off the project due to scheduling conflicts with pre-production on The Fountain (2006). Paramount’s insistence on getting Watchmen out in theaters by summer of 2006 forced them to find another director fast. In late November of 2004, they picked Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy) to direct using Hayter’s script. It did not take long for problems to arise when in April 2005 Paramount was looking to cut the film’s budget by 20% while Greengrass was immersed in pre-production at Pinewood Studios in London, England. One of the reasons cited was the exchange rate of the U.S. dollar to the British pound. However, the studio put the project in the dreaded turnaround (i.e. development hell) in June of the same year because of change of studio heads and the new one felt that the budget for such a risky project was too high.

Finally, in 2005, the film’s producers took the project to Warner Bros. and approached Zack Snyder to direct as they were impressed with his work on 300 (2007), a stylish adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel of the same name. Screenwriter Alex Tse was hired and he took elements from Hayter’s drafts while maintaining the Cold War setting of the comic book. The resulting film polarized critics and was a modest commercial success. Taking his cue from Robert Rodriguez’s adaptation of Sin City (2005), Snyder set out to make a visually faithful adaptation, often recreating certain panels exactly as they were presented in the comic book but ran into trouble when he deviated with his own preoccupations and stylistic flourishes. The end result is a film that is at times brilliantly faithful and also deeply flawed – a mixed bag but also an admirable attempt at an impossible task. The Ultimate Edition version, which fused the director’s cut with the animated short film, Tales of the Black Freighter (a comic book that runs throughout Watchmen, often commenting on the action), is the most complete version of Snyder’s take on the material.

Set during the mid-‘80s amid the nuclear arms race between Russia and the United States, Watchmen begins with two police detectives investigating the mysterious murder of Edward Blake (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) whose alter ego is the costumed superhero known as the Comedian, an amoral mixture of Nick Fury and G. Gordon Liddy. Another costumed vigilante by the name of Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) – imagine Travis Bickle mixed with Sam Spade – decides to conduct his own investigation and realizes that the Comedian's death is only a small fragment of a much larger puzzle. He proceeds to notify the surviving members of the superhero team he belonged to: Dan Dreiberg (Patrick Wlison) a.k.a. Nite Owl, a Batman-esque crusader now retired; Laurie Jupiter (Malin Akerman) a.k.a. Silk Spectre, a beautiful woman pushed into the business by her famous mother, Sally (Carla Gugino), the original Silk Spectre; Adrian Veidt (Matthew Goode) a.k.a. Ozymandias, a billionaire businessman and considered by many to be the smartest man on the planet; and Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), an omnipotent being capable of manipulating matter on a cellular level. As Rorschach’s investigation progresses it appears that someone is trying to eliminate all of his former team members but to what end?

The first indication that director Zach Snyder imposes his trademark style occurs in the prologue when the Comedian is killed by a mysterious assailant. Not only does he drag out the fight, but he also unnecessarily employs his slow motion/speed up technique. However, Snyder makes up for it with a superbly executed opening credits sequence that introduces this world and its alternate history timeline (i.e. the Comedian assassinates President Kennedy on the grassy knoll) while also including all kinds of visual Easter eggs for fans of the comic book (like showing how minor character Dollar Bill died). As a result, there is something for newbies and fans alike.

For everything Snyder gets right – the look and feel of the film, which features some truly astounding production design that completely immerses you in this world – he maddeningly gets other things wrong when he adds bits to scenes that have no purpose except to add a little more action for our ADD culture, like in the scene where Rorschach is discovered by two police officers as he’s searching the Comedian’s apartment. The masked vigilante subdues one of them and disappears before the other can collar him. Why? To show what a badass he is? This is unnecessary as actor Jackie Earle Haley’s excellent performance does that for him.

Another nice addition is the integration of an animated rendition of The Tales of the Black Freighter, a comic book within the graphic novel about the sole survivor (voiced by Gerard Butler) of a shipwreck who desperately tries to make it back home to his family before the pirate ship of book’s title does. Snyder nails the nightmarish Tales from the Crypt vibe of the comic while also restoring the newsstand scenes between the vendor and the kid reading the book, which fleshes out this alternate world.

Snyder makes some blunders with a few of the musical cues, like using “Ride of the Valkyries” in the sequence where Dr. Manhattan slaughters Viet Cong soldiers during the Vietnam War. The director is obviously paying homage to the famous use of the song in Apocalypse Now (1979) but it is unnecessary and too on the nose. However, the most glaring miscue is using “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen instead of “You’re My Thrill” as it was in the graphic novel. Do we really need this song played yet again in a film? This song and all versions of it need to be retired from cinema indefinitely.

For the most part the casting is spot on. Patrick Wilson put on weight to portray the slightly out of shape Dan Dreiberg and with his retro haircut and defeated posture certainly looks the part. Wilson gives Dreiberg a slightly sad, pathetic vibe, which suits the character. Billy Crudup nails the eerie detachment of Dr. Manhattan, a god-like being bored with humanity. The actor adopts a neutral tone akin to that of HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Perhaps the best realized and most faithfully recreated portion of the graphic novel is Dr. Manhattan’s tragic backstory, which also attempts to present his worldview: he perceives the past, present and future simultaneously. Crudup does a nice job of showing the transition of Manhattan from a mild-mannered scientist to omnipotent super being with some eerily uncanny recreations of panels from the graphic novel. We see how Manhattan’s ability to manipulate matter on a cellular level radically changes the course of world history (for example, the U.S. wins the Vietnam War with his help). According to Moore, his aim with Manhattan was to show that he “does not perceive time the same way we do. We have a character who’s post-Einsteinian, who seems to accept that all time is happening at once. Past, present and future. And to him, the past is still there, and the future is there, right now.”

Thankfully, the flashbacks depicting the Comedian’s backstory don’t shy away from his amoral behavior: trying to rape the original Silk Spectre and killing a Vietnamese woman pregnant with his child. Jeffrey Dean Morgan does a fantastic job conveying his character’s skewed worldview: how everything is part of a big, dark joke that only the Comedian gets. In his own way, he realizes that what costumed superheroes do – fighting crime – is ultimately meaningless in the face of nuclear annihilation. The darker and more chaotic things get the more he likes it. Morgan is also able to dig deeper during his tearful late night visitation with an old foe, giving us tantalizing hints at a much, darker and larger scheme at work – the knowledge of which got him killed in the first place.

Easily the strongest performance comes courtesy of Jackie Earle Haley as the sociopathic Rorschach. The most important thing he does is get the voice right. Everyone has their own idea of what he should sound like and Haley got it. Not only does he look great in the costume but also out of it during the portion of the film where he’s unmasked and in prison. The actor is even more chilling as he recounts to a psychiatrist how he became Rorschach and the incident that transformed him permanently into his costumed alter ego. This section of Watchmen offers a glimpse into his disturbing worldview in what is easily the darkest, most bleak part of the film, much like the graphic novel. But again, Snyder imposes his style unnecessarily, adding his own gory flourishes to Rorschach’s showdown with a kidnapper. It is excessive and clumsily executed like something out of a cheap B-horror film whereas the graphic novel was much more horrifying because it left the criminal’s fate to your imagination. Snyder is too busy making Rorschach look cool and failing to realize that in the graphic novel Moore and Gibbons were deconstructing the romantic costumed superhero myth and exploring what motivates someone to dress up and fight crime and how this might warp them. Rorschach wasn’t meant to be a cool character but a depressing, frightening one. His backstory was where, according to Moore, “we actually go for the heart of darkness, we go to the very center of this black, depressing sort of pre-nuclear worldview.”

The most significant miscasting of the film is actress Malin Akerman as Laurie Jupiter. While the attractive actress looks the part, she lacks the acting chops required for the role. Known mostly for romantic comedies, Akerman looks lost in the role, which is unfortunate as it’s the most pivotal part and arguably the most complicated character in the book. Laurie’s relationship with Dan is the emotional center of the story and this is diluted in the film by the casting of Akerman. Carla Gugino, who ironically plays her mother in the film, would’ve actually been better in the role – or, maybe Jennifer Garner who demonstrated a capacity for action and drama in the J.J. Abrams television show Alias.

Another glaring miscast role is that of Matthew Goode as Adrian Veidt. The actor doesn’t look like the character or really act like him either. He’s a little too smug and too over-confident in his portrayal whereas in the graphic novel Veidt was subtly condescending to those around him, coming across as almost distracted, the reasons for which become apparent later on. Snyder has said that he didn’t want to cast recognizable movie stars in the major roles but for Veidt, a celebrity in his own right and by his own making, this would’ve been a wise move. I always thought that Jude Law would’ve been a good choice as he looks the part and showed the capacity to play unlikable characters in films like The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999). Plus, while doing press for Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004), Law admitted to being a huge fan of the graphic novel and probably would’ve been willing to take a pay cut.

Watchmen perfectly summarizes Snyder’s limitations as a filmmaker. He slavishly recreates panels and sequences from the graphic novel without demonstrating any understanding of what they mean. For example, the climactic scene where Laurie convinces Dr. Manhattan to come back to Earth, that there is more to the universe than random molecules colliding with one another is handled all wrong. In the graphic novel, we find out that Sally loved the Comedian, even after he tried to rape her. The fact that she could feel for a person who committed such a horrible act goes against all logic and that Laurie was the product of their act of love is what convinces the Manhattan to renew his interest in humanity. The film waters this down completely and Sally says that she made a mistake being with the Comedian that one time but that she loves Laurie anyway. Whereas, the graphic novel is a thought-provoking look at human nature and our fascination with costumed superheroes, the film dilutes and tries to make it palatable for a mainstream audience while still trying to appeal to fans of the source material. This schizophrenic attitude is arguably one of the biggest flaws of the film.

Watchmen is a flawed mess of a film – one that gets many things right but also gets a lot of things wrong – but a fascinating one nonetheless. If I’m being overly critical on Snyder it’s only because I love the source material so much that seeing it brought to life in a film was at once exhilarating and depressing. One has to give Snyder credit for making it at all, for using his clout to make sure it was R rated and keeping it set during the ‘80s – two things he went to the mat for with the studio. He made the best possible film one could with the limitations of a feature film format. Ideally, the graphic novel could only truly be done justice in a mini-series format aired on a cable channel like HBO, which would free the filmmakers of the constraints of network television. Watchmen asks many questions but perhaps as Dave Gibbons points out, it really asks the big question: "Who makes the world? Who is responsible for the way the world is? And a lot of it is planned, but a lot of it is just sheer chance. There are patterns, the pattern that we perceive, but there are patterns going on underneath it. And that’s what we tried to show. With these sub, almost subliminal patterns that go through things, echoes, repeating shapes, motifs turning up in unexpected places." Is the world made of patterns or is it sheer coincidence? The graphic novel expertly examines these questions and offers an entertaining story as well. The film? Not so much.

Waking the Dead

Keith Gordon began acting at a young age, appearing in films by legendary directors like Brian De Palma and John Carpenter but when he found acting in films, like the Rodney Dangerfield comedy Back to School (1986), unfulfilling, he decided to try his hand behind the camera, tackling a series of literary adaptations on modest budgets but managing to entice actors like Nick Nolte and Gary Sinise to appear in his films. In his Senses of Cinema interview with Gordon, Peter Tonguette best sums up the director’s body of work as having: “moral gravity and their aesthetic richness.” Arguably his most successful and sincere film to date is Waking the Dead (2000), a heart-wrenching story about love and loss spanning two decades.

In 1974, two Chilean nationalists and an American activist are killed in a car bomb. The two nationalists had been touring the United States and speaking out against Chile’s dictatorship government. Sarah Williams (Jennifer Connelly) was the American activist also killed in the explosion and the film begins with her boyfriend, Fielding Pierce (Billy Crudup), finding out about her death via a television broadcast. We flash back to 1972 when Fielding and Sarah meet for the first time in New York City. She’s working for a publishing company that Fielding’s hippie brother, Danny (Paul Hipp), runs while Fielding is serving in the Coast Guard.

For Fielding it is love at first sight and over lunch he shares with her his idealistic beliefs – that politics can still make a difference and that you have to be part of the system to do it. He sees serving in the Coast Guard as part of his duty for his country and a stepping stone on the way to becoming President of the United States. He lectures for a bit but you can tell that Sarah sees right through him. Over dinner it is her turn to share her idealistic beliefs. She can tell that he’s ambitious, but doesn’t share his career path. Despite their ideological differences they fall in love.

We flash forward to Chicago, 1982 and Fielding is a lawyer in the District Attorney’s office and working his way up the social and political ladder. His girlfriend Juliet (Molly Parker) is a socialite and her uncle Isaac Green (Hal Holbrook) pulls strings so that the governor personally picks Fielding to run for a congressional seat. His life seems set until one snowy night he hears Sarah’s voice in the wind. Is it her ghost or his conscience? Or did she somehow manage to survive the car bombing back in ’74? Fielding still misses her and confesses to his sister (Janet McTeer), “it gets better and then it’s like it never got better at all.” Is he cracking up, sabotaging himself just when he’s poised to achieve a crucial step towards his ultimate goal?

Keith Gordon takes us back and forth in time to explore Fielding and Sarah’s relationship and how it continues to haunt him in the present. For example, he sees a little girl standing on a sidewalk who reminds him of Sarah. He walks through an airport terminal and everyone begins to look like her. These visions really get under Fielding’s skin (and ours too). With the nature of Sarah’s work it is possible that she faked her own death to continue her activism. Whenever Fielding sees her she is tantalizingly just out of reach like a ghost. He regrets not dwelling more on her death and trying to figure out what happened. There’s a nice scene between him and his father where he tries to articulate how much he still misses Sarah. Billy Crudup does a fantastic job of conveying how Fielding tries to make sense of his feelings and convey them to his father. He’s wracked with self-doubts at the worst possible moment in his life but he’s got to sort through them if he hopes to continue on his current career trajectory.

Gordon does a fantastic job charting the trajectory of Fielding and Sarah’s relationship. There’s a particularly telling exchange between them when they start living together in Chicago. She tells him about her fear of disappearing. He reassures her that he won’t let that happen to which she replies, “it’s not up to you,” and this eerily foreshadows what happens to her. Through editing, Gordon shows the sharp contrast between the ambitious, glad-handing Fielding getting the vote out in the 1980s with the idealistic version in the 1970s who is kept grounded by the earthy Sarah, his social conscience. A year into their relationship and we can see them already moving in different directions – she is getting into activism and he’s heading for the D.A.’s office.

There’s a scene where Fielding and Sarah go to a black tie event and while he schmoozes, she can barely hide her contempt and then tears into a guest, confronting him about his politics. If they continued on these paths would they have stayed together had she lived? She even calls him on his trajectory: “It’s all mapped out. It’s been mapped out long before we ever met. I’m not going to change it.” One of the things that strikes me about their relationship is the real and honest discussions they have about their beliefs. They are depicted in a way that is smart and fascinating to watch play out. At one point she says to him, “it’s so infuriating loving you sometimes,” and what couple that has been together for some period of time has felt this way and maybe even verbalized it? It’s a realistic portrayal of a relationship: they love each other passionately and have ugly arguments, too, just like anybody else. It is this commonality that we can all identify with. One can’t help but see some of themselves in their relationship.

Jennifer Connelly is a revelation in this film. Not only does she play Sarah as a vision that haunts Fielding’s conscience but also a real, tangible person who is smart, beautiful and with fierce political convictions and unafraid to voice them. Sadly, this is in short supply in American cinema and her character evokes Sigourney Weaver’s Jill Bryant in Peter Weir’s The Year of Living Dangerously (1982). Early on, Connelly delivers a passionate monologue where Sarah tells Fielding what she wants out of life. It is the moment where he falls in love with her and so do we. In this scene, the actress conveys the intelligence and passion of her character. It’s where we become emotionally invested in Sarah. She is beautiful and smart and like Fielding we want to know more about her.

Paul Hipp plays Fielding’s ne’er-do-well brother Danny, the black sheep of the family who goes from goofy publisher of a counterculture press in the ‘70s, to the drug-addicted mess who wants to marry an Asian prostitute (Sandra Oh) in the ‘80s. The actor had a scene-stealing turn in Clint Eastwood’s adaptation of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997) and has worked with filmmaker Abel Ferrara on numerous occasions. He gives a memorable performance in Gordon’s film, making the most of his limited screen-time, refusing to play a stereotypical hippie or a clichéd junkie.

Producers Griffin Dunne and Amy Robinson first approached Keith Gordon about directing Waking the Dead because they liked his adaptation of The Chocolate War (1988) and asked him to read Scott Spencer’s 1986 novel Waking the Dead in 1991. At the time, he was in the midst of falling in love with the woman that would eventually become his wife. While reading the book it made him think about “what would happen if I ever lost her, and how devastated I would be, and whether I could go on, and whether what I had gotten with her would be enough to go on or whether there would be no point.” He wrote the first draft in late 1991 to early 1992 when Warner Brothers was interested in backing it. The studio asked him to tell the story in chronological order, give it a happy ending, take the politics out and make Sarah more likable because “people don’t like a woman with strong politics.” Gordon refused and the project stalled so he went off and made A Midnight Clear (1992) and Mother Night (1996). After making the latter film, he read the script for Waking the Dead again and still wanted to make it into a film.

Gordon contacted Spencer who told him that the rights to the novel had reverted back to him. He gave the filmmaker permission to adapt it free of charge because he liked the script. The project finally picked up steam when Jodie Foster agreed to make it with her production company. Gordon had tried to get her interested in financing Mother Night but she passed on it. After attending one of its screenings, Foster told Gordon that she made a mistake not backing it. She asked him if he was working on anything new and he gave the script for Waking the Dead. She read it and wanted to do it. Foster had a deal with Polygram and took the project from Warner Bros. and set up Gordon’s film there.

Foster suggested Tom Cruise play Fielding and they sent him the script but he did not agree to do it despite liking the material. It was at this time that Gordon got a call from Billy Crudup’s agent telling him that the actor really wanted to do the film. He knew of the actor’s reputation but had not seen much of his work. Gordon thought that Crudup might be too young and that Polygram would not approve. At the time, the actor was making The Hi-Lo Country (1998) and executives at Polygram thought he was going to be a big movie star and were willing to take a chance on him.

For the role of Sarah, Gordon auditioned all kinds of actresses but found that they would “get the intelligence, but not have the sensuality. Or they would get the sensuality, but wouldn’t have the anger.” He did not even want Jennifer Connelly to read for the part because he was under the impression that she was beautiful but not a great actress. Her agent was persistent, however, and got Gordon to watch two independent films that had not been widely seen. In particular, he was impressed with her work in Far Harbor (1996) where she delivered a “long monologue about the death of her baby and she played this manic-depressive woman and she was fabulous.” Once he cast Connelly, he not only realized that she had the qualities necessary for the character but that she and Crudup had chemistry right away. Gordon rehearsed with the two actors for three weeks, discussing what happened between scenes and what their characters were like together so that they knew everything about them by the time principal photography began.

In a fantastic example of lousy timing, Polygram went out of business right around the time Waking the Dead was going to be distributed in theaters. They were being sold to Universal Studios and so Gordon did not know who to ask about things like putting a soundtrack album out (he later snuck many of the musical cues on the menus for the DVD).

Waking the Dead received mostly mixed to negative reviews from critics who didn’t seem to connect with what Gordon was trying to do with this film… or simply felt that he wasn’t successful. In his review for The New York Times, Stephen Holden wrote, "In falling short of its goal, the movie raises the question of whether it's possible to film an intelligent tear-jerker that prompts us to think and cry at the same time … At its best, Waking the Dead suggests an intellectually upscale answer to Love Story. At its weakest, it comes off as a stiff, muted exercise in countercultural nostalgia.” Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half stars and said it "has a good heart and some fine performances, but is too muddled at the story level to involve us emotionally. It's a sweet film. The relationship between Sarah and Fielding is a little deeper and more affectionate than we expect in plot-driven melodrama.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "C" rating and Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote, "the arbitrariness of the lovers' passion and the somber hysteria with which the novelist and filmmaker treat every issue, whether its South American dictatorship or female armpit hair, is enough to anesthetize the living.”

The Chicago Reader’s Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote, "I can cite only one unequivocal reason for seeing Waking the Dead, and that's Jennifer Connelly ... What makes Connelly so remarkable isn't her character's radicalism but her capacity to keep the character fresh every time she appears and to leave a lingering impression that makes the hero's (and the movie's) sense of loss acute.” On a more positive note, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Mick LaSalle called it "a film teeming with riches. One of the most powerful romances of recent years, it is as generous as they come ... an intelligent tale told with go-for-broke passion ... Crudup and Connelly are splendid together ... Waking the Dead gives us acting at its biggest and most beautiful." In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kevin Thomas wrote, "The seeming presence of Sarah creates a special challenge for Gordon and his stars, and that Waking the Dead deals with it so imaginatively, makes the film all the richer and provocative an experience.”

I love that Waking the Dead opens with the beautiful Joni Mitchell song, “A Case of You” from her Blue album. It has been said that the song is told from the point of view of a sarcastic, cynical lover and one can’t help but see this as a commentary on Sarah. This film is many things – a love story and a supernatural thriller with politics woven throughout. At its heart it is a love story about two people with contrasting beliefs but who fall in love anyway. How does someone carry on after the love of their life is gone? How does it affect your life? Waking the Dead offers no easy answers (because there are none) and explores, in fascinating detail, how one man deals with the death of a love one. Gordon never really tells us definitively if Sarah is dead or not, leaving it up to us to make up our own mind. One could argue that a huge chunk of Fielding’s idealism died the day Sarah did and his visions of her are bits of it fighting to re-emerge. Ultimately, his struggle is an inner one with his soul as the prize.

SOURCES

Bernstein, Abbie. “Awake at the Wheel.”

Fuchs, Cynthia. “Interview with Keith Gordon: Director of Waking the Dead.” PopMatters.

Stark, Jeff. “Love and Death in Chicago.” Salon. March 28, 2000.

Tonguette, Peter. “Keith Gordon on Keith Gordon, Part Two: Less Afraid of Happy Endings.” Senses of Cinema.

The Good Shepherd

The Good Shepherd (2006) had been a long-gestating project for screenwriter Eric Roth. But then again pitching an epic biopic about the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency with a large cast of characters and a complex plot must have been a tough sell for studios interested in making crowd-pleasing blockbusters and not overly long films about people talking. Originally, Francis Ford Coppola and a score of other filmmakers were going to direct this film at various points with Leonardo DiCaprio starring. Both men dropped out for various reasons with Robert De Niro stepping up to take over directorial duties and Matt Damon as his leading man. The result is an ambitious film that spans three continents and covers the years 1939 to 1961. Critics and audiences were put off by the film’s slow, deliberate pacing and distant approach to the characters but missed the boat on a brilliant film that examines the formative years of the CIA.

The film begins in 1961 with the bungled CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba with one of the organization’s founding members Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) learning that there is a traitor in its midst, someone close to him. The film proceeds to flash back to 1939 when he was a student at Yale University. He is initiated into a secret society known as the Skull and Bones, populated by fellow privileged young men, all from families of money and influence. Wilson is approached by a representative from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (Alec Baldwin) and asked to spy on his poetry professor (Michael Gambon) whom they suspect heads up an organization sympathetic to the Nazis.

Wilson is successful and the teacher is forced to resign. This gains him access to many powerful people and opens doors to a whole other world – the ground floor to the creation of a foreign intelligence organization. It is made perfectly clear to him that it will be made up predominantly of WASPs like himself. He is also aggressively pursued by Margaret Ann Russell (Angelina Jolie), the sister of one of his classmates. She becomes pregnant and he marries her because it is expected of him and “the right thing to do.”

Wilson’s lack of personality and emotional detachment make him an ideal spy because he gives nothing away to the point where he almost doesn’t exist. Wilson internalizes everything because it is his job to keep secrets. Matt Damon gives a finely nuanced, tightly-controlled performance that is a marvel of economy. There is a stillness to the way he carries himself in this film that is in sharp contrast to the Bourne films where he plays a character that is constantly in motion. Amidst his emotionless facade exists glimmers of humanity, most notably in the form of a deaf girl named Laura (Tammy Blanchard) whom he loves but must give up once he learns that Margaret is pregnant. His time spent with Laura is one of rare moments where he shows any kind of humanity. It’s the one time in his life when he’s truly happy.

This brief relationship is the key, I think, to unlocking the character of Wilson. The end of his relationship with Laura and his marriage of convenience to Margaret symbolizes Wilson’s willingness to put his personal happiness aside for what he perceives as for the good of the country by consuming himself in service. There is a crucial moment of decision for his character: stay in the safe confines of academia with the woman he loves or marry into privilege and serve his country in the capacity of an emerging foreign intelligence service. At one point, Damon gives a look back Laura that suggests a tragic end to a life with someone who would have made him truly happy for a loveless marriage that sends him up the social and economic ladder.

The Good Shepherd originally started with screenwriter Eric Roth in 1994 when he was looking for a project after finishing his adaptation of Forrest Gump (1994). He read Norman Mailer’s Harlot’s Ghost and became intrigued with the people who built the CIA. Roth talked to Francis Ford Coppola about adapting Mailer’s book because the filmmaker had optioned the rights to it with Columbia Pictures agreeing to finance the project. Roth liked the book but found the story too elaborate and he decided to do his own research (reading all about the CIA and meeting with 40 agents) including writing his own version that chronicled the organization’s creation and ended with the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Coppola decided not to do the film, claiming that he did not understand the characters due to their lack of emotion. What intrigued Roth about the early days of the CIA were the morals of the people who started the organization and what they were willing to sacrifice.

Roth asked Michael Mann to direct and, while they ended up working together on The Insider (1999) and Ali (2001), the filmmaker did get involved in The Good Shepherd. Roth eventually got Wayne Wang involved but when the studio changed hands, he was out. Philip Kaufman was also attached at one point but he too didn’t last long either. Robert De Niro first became involved with the project in 1999. Retired CIA agent Milton Bearden, who ran operations in Afghanistan in the mid-1980s, served as a technical adviser on the film. He had worked with De Niro on Meet the Parents (2000) to help him with his character who was a retired CIA agent. He agreed to take De Niro through Afghanistan to the northwest frontier of Pakistan and into Moscow for a guided tour of intelligence gathering.

John Frankenheimer was going to direct with De Niro starring. The veteran director died in 2002 and the actor stuck with The Good Shepherd because he had already put so much work into it. To keep the project going De Niro agreed to a deal that would see him either direct or star in Roth’s version if the screenwriter wrote a sequel to the years De Niro had been researching, from the Bay of Pigs to 1989’s fall of the Berlin Wall. Post-9/11 conditions made the material more relevant and a studio more willing to back the film. The Good Shepherd moved to Universal Pictures with producer Graham King agreeing to help finance it. He had a deal with Leonardo DiCaprio, who expressed interest in playing Wilson.

De Niro planned to shoot the film in early 2005 but scheduling conflicts with Martin Scorsese’s The Departed (2006) forced DiCaprio to drop out of the film. De Niro approached Matt Damon who was also making The Departed but he would be done earlier than his co-star and De Niro would only have to wait six months to do the film with him. However, Damon was scheduled to star in Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant! (2009) right after The Departed but a quick phone call to the director and he agreed to delay filming in order to give Damon the opportunity to make De Niro’s film. However, when DiCaprio left so did King and his money. In June 2005, James Robinson and Morgan Creek Productions agreed to produce The Good Shepherd with De Niro’s Tribeca Films and a new deal was set up at Universal Pictures for them to distribute the final product. The budget was reduced to $90 million which meant that most of the principals, Damon included, took a significant cut in their normal salaries.

To design the production, the filmmakers brought in Jeannine Oppewall (who did amazing work recreating 1950s Los Angeles in L.A. Confidential). She did an incredible amount of research for the film that ended up filling 10-12 six-inch thick, three-ring binders. The film was shot in New York City, the Adirondack Mountains, Washington, D.C., London, and the Dominican Republic. The interiors of the CIA were built in the Brooklyn Armory, a large edifice built in 1901 for the United States Calvary. It is currently home to the U.S. Army and the National Guard. Oppewall visited the CIA’s headquarters in D.C. and did additional research and worked with Bearden to create sets for the CIA’s office, Technical Room and Communications Room. Her team tracked down the right set dressings and also found authentic teletype machines, reel-to-reel tape recorders and radios used in the CIA during that time. Bearden made sure that the filmmakers got the historical aspects correct but understood that it had to be fictionalized to a certain degree as they weren’t making a documentary.

The Good Shepherd immerses us in plenty of spy jargon, double crosses and covert operations while everyone speaks in cryptic, veiled threats. The higher up Wilson climbs, the more careful he has to be about the people he can trust. At one point, early on in his career, Wilson is given some advice: “The mental facility to detect conspiracies and betrayal are the same qualities most likely to corrode national judgment. Everything that seems clear is bent and everything that seems bent is clear. Trapped in reflections you must learn to recognize when a lie masquerades as the truth. Then deal with it efficiently, dispassionately.” As a result, he becomes increasingly paranoid and rightly so as he is privy to so many of the government’s dirty secrets while also harboring a few of his own. The film also makes it pretty clear who holds much of the power in the United States and this is beautifully underlined in a scene where Wilson meets with a powerful mafia figure (Joe Pesci) who asks him what kind of legacy does he have in the country to which Wilson replies, “We have the United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting.”

Robert De Niro does a fine job with an ambitious screenplay that covers a lot of ground and a lot of characters. Close attention has to be paid to everything that is said because The Good Shepherd refuses to spell things out. It also isn’t a flashy James Bond film. De Niro said, “I like it when things happen for a reason. So I want to downplay the violence, depict in a muted way.” The film is ultimately about the dangerous nature of secrets and how they cannot only hurt a country but an individual as well. The film shows how these secrets take their toll on the country (i.e. the Bay of Pigs fiasco) and on the individual. Wilson is something of a tragic figure: a man who wanted a simple life but instead opted for one in service of his country, acting as one of its keeper of dark secrets. Along the way he lost his humanity, condemned to spend his days living in the shadows.

The Good Shepherd received mostly mixed to positive reviews from mainstream critics. The New York Times’ Manohla Dargis wrote, "The Good Shepherd is an origin story about the C.I.A., and for the filmmakers that story boils down to fathers who fail their sons, a suspect metaphor that here becomes all too ploddingly literal." However, she did like De Niro's direction: "Among the film’s most striking visual tropes is the image of Wilson simply going to work in the capital alongside other similarly dressed men, a spectral army clutching briefcases and silently marching to uncertain victory." In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan praised Matt Damon's performance: "Damon, in his second major role of the year (after The Departed) once again demonstrates his ability to convey emotional reserves, to animate a character from the inside out and create a man we can sense has more of an interior life than he is willing to let on." Time magazine’s Richard Corliss also had praise for the actor: "Damon is terrific in the role – all-knowing, never overtly expressing a feeling. Indeed, so is everyone else in this intricate, understated but ultimately devastating account of how secrets, when they are left to fester, can become an illness, dangerous to those who keep them, more so to nations that base their policies on them."

In his review for The New York Observer, Andrew Sarris wrote, “Still, no previous American film has ventured into this still largely unknown territory with such authority and emotional detachment. For this reason alone, The Good Shepherd is must-see viewing.” USA Today gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "What makes the story work so powerfully is his focus on a multidimensional individual — Wilson — thereby creating a stirring personal tale about the inner workings of the clandestine government agency.” Newsweek magazine’s David Ansen had a mixed reaction to the film. "For the film's mesmerizing first 50 minutes I thought De Niro might pull off The Godfather of spy movies ... Still, even if the movie's vast reach exceeds its grasp, it's a spellbinding history lesson.” Rolling Stone magazine’s Peter Travers felt that it was “tough to slog through a movie that has no pulse.” In his review for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw gave the film two out of five stars and criticized Damon's performance: "And why is Damon allowed to act in such a callow, boring way? As ever, he looks like he is playing Robin to some imaginary Batman at his side, like Jimmy Stewart and his invisible rabbit. His nasal, unobtrusive voice makes every line sound the same."

The Good Shepherd is eerily relevant to our post-9/11 climate with the CIA running covert prisons and reportedly torturing terrorists; the National Security Agency conducting wiretaps without warrants; and columnist Robert D. Novak’s July 2003 article revealing of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative after an administration source reportedly gave her name. All of these incidents made the material in the film more relevant. The Good Shepherd refuses to simplify its themes or resort to the frenetic style of editing that is in vogue in Hollywood and instead takes its time and immerses the viewer in a fascinating, shadowy world. This is a film that invites repeat viewings because it is rich with so many characters and intricate plot details.

For further reading, check out this link at the CIA's website which examines the historical accuracy. Not surprisingly, they don't find it too accurate.

Here's another fascinating article that takes a look at Dr. Timothy Leary's association with the CIA and their use of LSD as a truth serum of sorts.

Here is also an excellent review of the film over at Ferdy on Films, etc.

SOURCES

The Good Shepherd Production Notes. Universal Pictures. 2006.

Horn, John. “Intelligence Design.” Los Angeles Times. November 5, 2006.

Luscombe, Belinda. “Robert De Niro in The Director’s Chair.” Time. December 3, 2006.

Stax. “Good Shepherd Seeks Flock.” IGN. June 4, 2004.

Stax. “Good Shepherd Gets Fleeced.” IGN. November 12, 2004.

Stax. “Damon Makes a Good Movie.” IGN. November 30, 2004.

Stax. “Jolie Turns Good Girl.” IGN. January 28, 2005.

Stax. “The Good Shepherd Begins.” IGN. August 18, 2005.