a review by Jeffrey Overstreet
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Directed by Jonathan Demme; written by Daniel Pyne and Dean Georgaris, based on the film screenplay by George Axelrod and the novel by Richard Condon; director of photography, Tak Fujimoto; edited by Carol Littleton and Craig McKay; music by Rachel Portman with the song “Fortunate Son” by John C. Fogerty performed by Wyclef Jean; production designer, Kristi Zea; produced by Tina Sinatra, Scott Rudin, Mr. Demme and Ilona Herzberg; released by Paramount Pictures.
130 minutes. Rated R.
STARRING: Denzel Washington (Ben Marco), Meryl Streep (Eleanor Shaw), Liev Schreiber (Raymond Shaw), Jon Voight (Senator Thomas Jordan), Kimberly Elise (Rosie), Jeffrey Wright (Al Melvin), Ted Levine (Colonel Howard), Bruno Ganz (Delp), Simon McBurney (Atticus Noyle), Vera Farmiga (Jocelyn Jordan) and Robyn Hitchcock (Laurent Tokar).
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Whenever a new remake arrives in theatres, critics complain about how unnecessary it is. But chances are they’ve seen several versions of Hamlet in their lives without complaining. There’s no reason why great cinema, like great theatre, cannot be re-staged by other directors. Such an act is a credit to the original film-especially to its author. It suggests that the story is good enough to offer us even more, if seen through different eyes and told with a different voice.
That doesn’t mean all remakes are worth seeing. Many have proven highly unimaginative, or merely derivative. Many remakes have been based on shallow or questionable source material. Perhaps the worst examples have been American-made remakes of foreign films that lacked the subtlety and sophistication of the originals. (It still hurts to think about the difference between Wings of Desire and City of Angels.)
Jonathan Demme’s remake of Charade, The Truth About Charlie, was buried by critics for falling short of the standard of the original. But Demme wasn’t trying to equal the quality of Charade-he was using Charade as the “text” for a whimsical and experimental jaunt that had virtues all its own. Call it a “Shakespeare in the Park” version. Granted, the result was a mix of pros and cons, but he was unjustly attacked and derided for falling short of a goal that he had not, in fact, set for himself.
A couple of years ago, Christopher Nolan’s American version of Insomnia showed that once in a while, with the right talents, Americans are capable of offering a second version superior to the first. That’s exactly what Demme has done this year. His version of The Manchurian Candidate, like good Shakespeare, takes the excellent source material of John Frankenheimer’s 1962 film and recreates it in a new style, with energy, wit, and a profound sense of cultural relevance. It goes further than that, in fact, altering the story considerably so that it ends up as a re-imagining more than a remake. Those who know the original inside and out will be stunned by this version’s unexpected departures from the original plot.
In both films, there’s something rotten in the United States of America. As in Hamlet, the nation’s “royalty” has become deeply corrupted by greed. There have been killings and cover-ups, and the worst crime is still on the agenda-an assassination by a trained killer. The conspirators have pulled the wool over the eyes of a nation. But a princely hero has seen a vision-not a ghost, but a dream made up of repressed memories-that leads him to discover the cover-up. And so he seems like a ranting lunatic, trying to wake up his countrymen and his superiors to a wicked conspiracy that threatens the future of the nation.
In Frankenheimer’s film, the conspiracy was performed by a group of Communists from all over the world. In this version, the conspiracy is perpetrated by corporations who hold themselves above the law, who are like nations unto themselves, serving their own agenda at the expense of American democracy. Many critics will criticize this film as basic fearmongering, portraying corporations negatively. And it is true, the film does throw fuel on the fire of the prevalent cultural paranoia regarding the agendas of corporate powers. But it is also hard to ignore the fact that many large corporations are conspiring against the law and even their own customers. From Enron to Martha Stewart to Haliburton, shady dealings are in the headlines every day. Thus, this revision seems completely justified.
Once again, the plot concerns the brainwashing of military personnel, who return from combat (the Gulf War this time, not the Korean War) praising one of their fellow soldiers as a war hero. Raymond Prentiss Shaw (Liev Schreiber), son of the powerful Senator Eleanor Shaw (Meryl Streep), is credited with saving his whole platoon from an attack in Kuwait when, in fact, he did nothing of the sort. Ben Marco (Denzel Washington) is one of several soldiers who begins to have dreams that contradict his programmed memory. When his views are corroborated by a troubled and psychologically ruined veteran (the great Jeffrey Wright), he begins to try and find the truth that has been wiped from his brain. Like Jason Bourne, he finds that he cannot go to the authorities because the authorities are in on the crime. He is a man fighting for a country that does not know it has been betrayed, trying to bring to justice the very powers that execute justice.
Denzel Washington plays Marco with a slow-burn rage, deep grief, and a sense that he is two steps from hopelessness-his character seems more damaged and distraught than the Marcos that Sinatra played in ‘62. He proceeds in a feverish sulk, determined to know the truth even if that truth never sets anyone free. He eventually appeals to the hero himself, Shaw, whose fame has taken him right to the threshold of “vice” presidency. As the elections draw near, Marco plants seeds of doubt in Shaw’s mind, a conflict that greatly upsets his tyrannical, diabolical mother.
Viewers are likely to feel a sense of panic as Shaw begins to realize what is happening to him. He fears the truth, because he knows he is almost helpless against the powers that have gained control over him, turning him into a deadly assassin who can be “activated” and sent into a murderous trance. In a sense, The Manchurian Candidate is like Blade Runner-the story of programmed killers who realize their time is running out, and who must do everything in their power to expose the malevolence of their superiors before they self-destruct.
In the first film, the brainwashing took place with methods of hypnosis. This film puts the soldiers through a more intense reprogramming, involving severe physical abuse, drugs, and the implanting of microchips. What might have seemed like cynical anti-Americanism a while ago seems disturbingly plausible in a post-Abu-Ghraib world. The science fiction elements are somewhat implausible and create several moments that challenge our willing suspension of disbelief. But it is the nature of great science fiction to employ implausible technology in a way that symbolizes true cultural phenomena. In this case, the power of the microchip to change memories and control behavior serves as a metaphor to illustrate the way that the media drills through our skulls and plants images, ideas, and impressions about people and events into our minds.
When the powers that be tell us that questioning authority is unpatriotic and the media carefully buries certain points of view and trumpets others, democracy is squelched. When a nation’s understanding of its security is compromised by the lies of the government, it becomes more and more likely that people will realize their peril only when it is too late. This reality fuels The Manchurian Candidate with urgency and relevance, drawing the audience the edge of its seat, not by action, but by a sense of familiarity: yes, this is what is happening to us. The film could be written off as merely exploitative… if there weren’t so many reflections of the truth in its distorted mirror. Demme’s picture of America does not deny that there are dangers from foreign nations threatening us, but it also asks who holds the real power in America, and questions how much politicians are responding to the wishes of businesses instead of to the desires of their constituents.
The film features some of Jonathan Demme’s finest work. He gets us sweating and biting our nails as the corporate villainy closes in on Marco. Where The Silence of the Lambs had a fearsome, vicious, malevolent villain with a name and face, The Manchurian Candidate‘s villain terrifies by being invisible-faceless, nameless. It’s not even human. Is it a man? A woman? A corporation? A government agency? We don’t know, and we won’t be too sure at the conclusion either.
Demme’s fast-paced, schizophrenic visual style, complete with his usual emphasis on actors in close-up directly addressing the camera, is delivered in vividly colorful cinematography by Tak Fujimoto, who also filmed The Village. Rachel Portman’s soundtrack is sinister and strong, blending well with the angry rock and roll contributions of Wyclef Jean, who makes effective use of “Fortunate Son.”
Demme’s cast is first-rate, and none of them disappoint. Washington gives one of his strongest performances, equaled only by Liev Schreiber’s starmaking turn as Shaw. Schreiber’s been doing remarkable work for years, but this is the first time he’s had a role in a major film that is worthy of his talents. He is fully convincing as a man who shines in front of the cameras, but in more candid moments he’s hollow, conflicted, weak, and terrified of the truth. In the original film, Shaw was a war hero, but it was his stepfather who was running for office. Screenwriters Daniel Pyne and Dean Georgaris smartly merged the two characters, and it works (after all, the elections that are quickly approaching are cloaked in the language of “war heroes,” images of a photogenic and youthful vice-presidential candidate, and rumors about corporate connections and the possibility that a candidate can be “bought”).
Kimberly Elise and Vera Farmiga play the two romantic interests with intelligent variations. Elise isn’t just sexy and compassionate-she’s good with a pistol as well. It sounds like a hokey update, but it works. Farmiga is no longer a 50′s-era ideal; she’s a mature adult, divorced, and conflicted. She also has one of the most strikingly interesting faces I’ve seen on the screen in a while, an interesting mix of Patricia Arquette and Sarah Jessica Parker. Hopefully we’ll see her again.
Shaw’s monstrous mother was a formidable presence in the first film, as played by Angela Lansbury. She moved behind the scenes, only occasionally emerging to make a major move in a sordid game. There was even an implication of an incestuous connection between them. Here, the mother is a senator who can whip her colleagues into agreeing with her. She dotes on her son, calling him her “plucky idealist,” and lets the scandalous suggestion of unhealthy affections sting a little more sharply. Meryl Streep plays Eleanor as if she’s both Hillary Clinton and the Wicked Witch of the West. In fact, there’s too much of her. She’s so over-the-top that she nearly unbalances the film, reveling in her character’s egotism so intensely that she almost turns it into satire.
There are other missteps. Demme’s too willing to employ horror film clichés, like the “madman” who fills his diaries with wild scribbling from margin to margin and who draws wild frightening pictures on his walls. There’s an evil mad scientist who straps his victims in for a “checkup from the neckup,” appears like an evil spirit in their dreams and, of course, over their shoulders in the bathroom mirror. The good mad scientist played by Bruno Ganz (Wings of Desire) exists only to fill in loads of exposition just when we need it. But Ganz makes the character delightfully odd, and just when I thought Demme was going to let him get away without gracing us with that extraordinary smile-ahhh, there it is. The suspenseful finale leads to a conclusion that is a bit too confusing and bewildering-dramatic things happen, but it’s hard to understand what is going on in the characters’ minds when they do.
But these are easily forgivable lapses. The original film, for all its audacity and brilliance, had some clunky Hollywood clichés and clumsy episodes too. There was that laughably amateurish fight scene between the suspicious military officer (Frank Sinatra) and a mysterious Asian soldier. The two main characters had glamorous Hollywood blondes for girlfriends.
Demme makes so many good choices here, but two of them stand out. First, he makes Eleanor and Raymond Shaw Democrats. In doing so, he avoids making this film a direct attack on Hollywood’s favorite scapegoats-conservative Republicans. While the idea of a “privately owned candidate” stems from language used to describe President George W. Bush, Shaw’s as much a Kerry or an Edwards as he is a Bush. This helps emphasize the fact that the U.S. government is sorely compromised in ways that reach beyond the boundaries of party politics. Money, greed, lust for power… these are temptations that can corrupt any candidate, and have clearly compromised leaders in all camps. “We can’t clean up the world with dirty hands,” Shaw remarks, and he’s right. But what’s the world to do when everyone has dirty hands? Stand idly by while we slip toward the edge of the abyss?
The decision to de-emphasize one of the original film’s most memorable sequences-the scene that illustrated the brainwashing of the soldiers by merging images of an international conspiracy and a high society tea party-is another wise move. Any attempt to recreate that sequence would have distracted us from the story and made a point-for-point comparison of the films too tempting. Instead, he focused on making a film that is uniquely his own. And as it stands now, Candidate is the most Oscar-likely motion picture so far this year.
It is almost impossible to watch this film without thinking of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. Demme’s fictional election year is corrupted by many of the lies that Michael Moore has argued as fact in his political “propagand-umentary.”
In fact, The Manchurian Candidate has actually softened my perspective on Moore. Just as I feel sympathy for Ben Marco, who knows things about the government that nobody wants to hear, I feel for anyone who is left clumsily fumbling around for the truth in the middle of a jungle of lies. When Marco… or Moore… gets hold of the tail of a conspiracy, he’s likely to jump to the wrong conclusions. Moore may think it’s an elephant hiding in the bushes, when in fact it may be a rhinoceros. But at least he has the truth by the tail. That’s more than can be said for his countrymen. And the nation’s leaders, those who bear the most responsibility, are hypocrites to say that there’s no beast hiding there at all.
The villains in The Manchurian Candidate want to “free people from the terrible burden of an emotionally compromised past.” In other words, they want to take the mess we’ve made of things and sweep it under the carpet, hoping we’ll forget what we’ve seen. We’d certainly like to be rid of the pain, the guilt, and the awful responsibility of cleaning up the world with our dirty hands. But God has given us a conscience for a reason. He has designed pain to serve a purpose. Ben Marco is taking up his cross, shouldering his responsibility, and following where the pain leads him. C.S. Lewis writes that pain is God’s megaphone. It is a signpost pointing us to the problem. If we let the media, the government, or any influence distract us from the mistakes of our past, those mistakes will be our undoing. Demme’s movie is a sledgehammer, and he means to use it to wake up a sleepy and irresponsible audience. More power to him.