Has Hell Frozen Over?!

Right-wingers are just gushing over Oliver Stone's latest, World Trade Center. Check out this bit from the New York Daily News:

"It is one of the greatest pro-American, pro-family, pro-male, flag-waving, God Bless America films you will ever see," Fox News pundit Cal Thomas wrote in his syndicated column.

"What? Oliver Stone, who indulges in conspiracy theories and is a dues-paying member of the Hollywood left?" Thomas asked. "Yes, THAT Oliver Stone."

The Washington Times also ate earlier criticism of Stone.

In an editorial on Monday, the conservative paper recalled that it expressed "the greatest regret" on learning last summer that "the conspiracy-addled director" would do "Hollywood's first major movie about that day of days." But after a screening, the paper said, "Mr. Stone has made a truly great movie."

Like most Hollywood products these days, the film is based on a true story. It's about John McLoughlin and William J. Jimeno, two Port Authority officers who were trapped in the rubble when the WTC towers collapsed. They were the last of the survivors to be found. Personally, read Cal Thomas' words makes me want to skip this film but, being an Oliver Stone fan, I feel obliged to see it. I suspect that the positive reviews from the right are indicative of a lack of a conspiracy theory, the heroes are manly, they have wives grieving for them at home, and, as was the case in New York at the time, there were American flags everywhere. I have to admit that I'm not really sure what "pro-male" means but, if you've ever read about Stone himself, you know that he is a "man's man", so to speak. I mean, he was a soldier who served in Vietnam; he parties hard; he works hard; he argues hard; and, looking at the films he's written and directed, it's hard to argue that he's done anything "anti-male". He writes and makes movies about men, for the most part. His male leads include professional football players, Alexander the Great, and Conan the Barbarian. Stone wrote the screenplay for Scarface. He's been "pro-male" his whole career.

In a certain sense, Stone shot his wad with Nixon. I thought U-Turn was OK when I saw it, but with Any Given Sunday and Alexander behind him, U-Turn now seems downright great. It's hard to say why but I will note that U-Turn marked the last film Stone made with cinematographyer Robert Richardson. Rodrigo Prieto did a great job on alexander, however, and the weakness of that film was the script. Since parting ways with Stone, Richardson has shot Errol Morris' documentary Cheap, Fast and Out of Control, Martin Scorcese's Bringing Out the Dead, and Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill flicks. I don't care for Tarantino's work, as a rule, and Kill Bill was no different. But those two films were mighty pretty to look at! Watching them, I got the distinct impression that Richardson probably co-directed it. While the violence and 70s cliches are all Tarantino, that film's style was all Richardson. The colors, the angles, the camera movement - that's gotta be Richardson's doing.

For World Trade Center, Stone recruited Seamus McGarvey. Of the films he's shot that I've seen are High Fidelity, Enigma, and The Hours. Some good photography but nothing that really sticks out in my mind. Perhaps I just need to watch them again. It's just that I'm a fan of very (hyper-?) stylized films. If you've got the acting talent and story to go along with it, you can make great cinema. Stone and Richardson working as a pair created some of the greatest cinema ever, in my opinion. I loved the way they make a radio booth seem expansive in Talk Radio with the camera movement; their Rashomon-like look at the nature of truth in JFK with the use of various film stocks; the hallucinogenic style of The Doors. Some fantastic stuff. There's this false dichotomy today about American cinema: either it's an indie film or a Hollywood blockbuster. Either it's a complex character portrait or it's about a disaster or a superhero. I appreciated that Stone made big-budget films that were complex. They had complex characters and were technically complex as well. The films' styles created ambience, added to the story, and made the audience think about what they were seeing. (Or tried to, at least.)

The Trailer for WTC makes it look like a very straight-forward, stylistically. But I suspect that Stone is treading familiar territory when it comes to the story. It's about men - courageous men - who fight to survive. The characters and plot are very different from those of Platoon but the main themes are the same in each. There doesn't appear to be any politics here, however. Stone's oeuvre is generally viewed as a labyrinthe of conspiracies but I think it's about time we start viewing his work from other angles. Conspiracy is relevant to only two of his films but masculinity is dealt with in nearly all of them.

World Trade Center opens 9 August.