Common Senses

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A collaboration of film projects and again of directors, Common Senses turns out to be an interesting and compelling drama of lost folks told in an unusual manner. Chicago Filmmakers and Split Pillow recruited a group of five filmmakers to each create one chapter of a story meant to form a cohesive whole. There are markedly different feels to most of the chapters with the only link sometimes being the characters and the “Dogme ‘95” shooting process. Limiting filmmakers to working with only handheld camera work, natural sound and natural lighting, Dogme ‘95 has produced both excellent cinema (The Celebration) and pretentious wastes of time (julien donkey-boy). Thankfully tilting far more towards the former, Common Senses is another validation of the idea.

The first chapter is directed by Alexander Rojas who opens with a shot of Erin (Holly Montgomery-Webb) outside a Cook County correctional facility. She has just been released after serving time for an undefined offense, seemingly drug related. Her brother will put her up for a few days, “only as a favor to mom.” With a history of theft, her brother cannot stress enough that Erin should not “fuck with [his] shit.” She runs into Luiz (Luis Perez), an old acquaintance from school. He’s since become a hustler but one that “doesn’t do any of that oral or penetration shit.” How a smelly fat guy makes a living standing under bridges waiting for people to pay to watch him jerk off is not investigated at all but it’s a question worth asking. Luiz has been dealt a rough hand and has a tendency to just say “Fuck it,” and go with the flow. Chapter one is the weakest of the bunch with bits of unnecessary exposition and poor camera work. Handheld camera does not mean that the camera has to be moving constantly. It can certainly put a viewer right in the action but in this first part it comes across as unnecessarily jerky. Erin & Luiz have a nice time and end up the next day at a park where they meet a young kid named Adrian (Adrian Oscar Rodarte). Much to the surprise of the ex-con Adrian soon claims Erin as his girlfriend. He runs off to get some candy for her but doesn’t come back. Luiz and Erin do not react to the situation in the same way. Erin, already emotionally troubled, can barely deal at all while Luiz just says, “Fuck it.”

The film portrays Luiz, Erin and Adrian’s mom as they try to cope with circumstances that are beyond their control. Abigail (Cheryl Golemo) searches for her son while Luiz and Erin are looking for something else as well. Erin is searching for something to break her fall, whether it be joining the army or having a baby she seems desperately for any type of routine that would put a little order into her life. Luiz has been down long enough that he seems used to it for the most part with only the occasional moment of despair setting in. They each deal differently without any complete resolution by the film’s end.

The lead performances are solid, especially Perez who captures an unlikely hustler with remarkably ability. The collaboration of directors doesn’t always flow smoothly. The noticeably inferior camera work of chapters 1 and 4 disrupts and distracts from a fine narrative. The different styles of the filmmakers generally work well though even when the next does not necessarily carry over everything started previously. The final chapter’s largely improvised script is unexpectedly the best with impressive performances that really bring out the connections between Luiz, Erin and Abigail. Worth seeing if just to see something different Common Senses is thankfully more than that, and is something engaging as well.



The War Within

"Ignorance is not innocence."

Despite copious data that would indicate otherwise, suicide terrorism and fundamentalist Islam are inextricably linked in the public mind. It’s more comfortable to imagine villains to be driven to such an act by an extremist ideology, perhaps compounded by personal or psychological problems, than to imagine them as having tangible goals one could possibly relate to. If suicide terrorists are not religious extremists then one would have to start looking for what else could prompt such behavior. In states that are victims of suicide terrorism, the answers to those questions are quite often troubling as it is normally the case that it was some act, or acts, perpetrated by the victim state that triggered the bombing or bombings (Explanation being different from justification, etc.). In Joseph Castelo’s new The War Within, the would-be bomber is a combination of the two narratives.

A recipe of equal parts fundamentalist indoctrination and victimization by American foreign policy have created Hassan (an excellent Ayad Akhtar, who shares screenplay credits as well). The film opens with Hassan in Paris’ Latin Quarter. He’s abducted by American agents and taken to Pakistan for “questioning”. There he’s subjected to continuing sessions of torture that break the man he was before. His sole source of strength in prison is the support and care of fellow prisoner Khalid (Charles Daniel Sandoval), a member of “The Brotherhood”, a group Hassan initially rejected. The story of Hassan’s conversion from a secular, drinking, smoking, dancing mechanical engineer to a fanatically devout militant bombmaker is not fleshed out. It is more or less abandoned for the sake of catching up with Hassan a few years later though sufficient key details are parceled out in the occasional flashback.

Three years later a free Hassan is smuggled into the United States where he unites with a clandestine terrorist cell headed by Khalid. Assuring Khalid that there is no likelihood of his being detected, Hassan goes to stay with Sayeed (Firdous Bamji), a friend from his youth. Sayeed, Farida (Sarita Choudhury) their son Ali (Varun Sriram) are well adjusted to American life. They’re are a liberal, and largely secular bunch that do well to combine Pakistani and muslim traditions with American pastimes as when having an Eid barbecue. Being lifelong friends Sayeed welcomes Hassan, who tells him that he’s interviewing for jobs, back into his life.

After initial plans for multiple, simultaneous bombings are thwarted by the FBI, Khalid and Hassan try to salvage something from their original plans. Adjusting their objectives means for a longer stay than Hassan originally intended. He returns to Sayeed and with his help finds a job as a taxi driver while waiting for an opportunity to carry out his mission. Hassan has some difficulty with Sayeed’s lifestyle but his personal struggle grows with his reintroduction to Sayeed’s sister Duri (Nandana Sen). Though finding some Western tendencies of hers to be dissuading, Hassan and Duri start to rekindle a mutual attraction that is hinted as having existed in their shared past in Pakistan. This new twist in his life, along with his lifetime friendship with Sayeed make Hassan begin to struggle with his mission. Hassan sees different aspects of American life that give him pause and challenge his beliefs, and his willingness to carry out what he sees as his duty.

In what is probably intended to be a portrayal of a different side of Islam, Sayeed and Hassan are witness to a sermon at a mosque by an Imam who talks about jihad as “the struggle of everyday life.” This is one of the few but important missteps the film takes. Though likely well-intentioned, portraying the real conflict between moderate and fundamentalist Islam sheds no light on one of the films primary subjects, terrorism. “What I do, I do for Allah,” Hassan states, in one of many lines that obfuscate the causes of terrorism. Terrorism is a political tool, not a religious one. No matter how horrific, illegal and unjustifiable, each campaign of suicide terrorism has an explicit and stated political goal that needs to be addressed in one way or another. Castelo does a good job in showing that actions of the intended victim state were a causative factor but a great deal more time is spent on Hassan’s religious conversion.

When Sayeed, Hassan and a group of Sayeed’s friends are discussing the United States their conversation reveals the disconnect often present in the parlay over American policy. Sayeed’s thinks America is a pretty decent place though “things are not perfect here.” This is not at all related to a friend’s claim that, “This country is a greedy tyrant.” They seem to be disagreeing but it’s easy for them to both be correct because they are not talking about the same thing. Sayeed, in a somewhat contradictory position for his character, represents the self-centered point of view shared by many Americans. This is contrasted nicely with the strong condemnation the films gives of the policy of extraordinary rendition, where suspects are taken to third-party nations for interrogation by means not allowable under American law.

Through sure handed-direction, solid pacing and a slew of solid performances, The War Within is a conspicuously imperfect, but still quite good film. Hopefully some of the ideas the film has might creep in to the public mind such as the message on a billboard in the background of a scene in Times Square, “Democracy is best taught by example, not by war.”



The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till

Wolf-whistling as a capital crime

The murder of Emmett Louis Till and and subsequent sham of a trial for his murderers were key catalysts for the American civil rights movements. After the brutal lynching, Mamie Till-Mobley put her son in an open casket because she wanted “the world to see what they did to [her] son.” Keith A. Beauchamp’s investigative documentary powerfully captures the moment remarkably well, along with posing questions about the continuing lack of justice for Till, and by extension, other victims of racism.

Emmett Till was a 14-year-old boy when he went to Mississippi to visit his uncle Moses Wright and cousins in 1955. A trip to the grocery store led to Emmett wolf-whistling at shopkeeper Carolyn Bryant. Emmett’s cousins took him quickly away from the scene fearing that Mrs. Bryant was going to get a gun. Her husband Roy and his friend J.W. Milam decided that Emmett’s action was not only a crime, but a capital offense. Till was taken by the two, in the company of others unnamed, from Wright’s house in the middle of the night of 28 August. At some point during the night, Till was killed. His body was dumped in the Tallahatchie River, bound to a cotton bale with barbed wire. After a few days his grossly mutilated body was recovered and after some difficulty, returned to Chicago where it was view in an open casket by thousands of mourners. The graphic photos of Till mutilated corpse shocked much of the nation as much of white America saw images of crimes they were normally able to ignore.

Bryant and Milam were caught and put to trial for murder and kidnapping. Despite the NAACP and black newspapers finding several witnesses for the prosecution an all white, all male jury released them after deliberating for less than one hour. Bryant and Milam then proceeded to confess to author William Bradford Huie in national monthly Look, double jeopardy preventing the confessions from being cause for retrial. All this is recounted in a straightforward manner in the film. The case is not an unfamiliar one for people with any interest in civil rights or the history of the civil rights movement and the film presents only a few new insights into the crime itself. One important and depressing fact uncovered by Beauchamp is the participation of a few African-American youths in the original kidnapping, though not the torturing and killing, of Till. Till’s surviving cousins relate and react to the information with a visible distaste of knowing something yet not wanting to accept it.

Where the film truly succeeds is in composing an understanding of conditions in the South at the time. Mamie Till-Mobley recounts how friends and family in Chicago helped prep the Till boys on how to behave in the South, kind of a How to Survive Amongst Violent Racists course. Reporter Dan Wakefield, who covered the trial for The Nation recalls his surprise not so much at the crime, but at how the people of the town didn’t see what the big deal was. Virtually everybody involved expresses something approaching awe for Moses Wright, who fingered Bryant and Milam in their trial. This at a time when testifying against a white man was as dangerous as it was ineffective. More than the narrative of the crime, it is these and other similar details that give us the most insight into the case and the conditions of African-Americans in the US South.

The investigation by Mr. Beauchamp has uncovered more participants and led to the Justice Department reopening the case. 50 years is a long time to wait for prosecution given that most figures involved in the case are long dead. It is however, a testament to how profoundly the legacy of Emmett Louis Till resonates today.



The Fog

The Fog is all wet

John Carpenter’s resumé as a horror director is as impressive as just about any. The original version of The Fog is one of many films the director has the right to proudly look back on. Director Rupert Wainwright’s resumé is not quite as accomplished. It gets no better with the garish nonsense-fest that is his similarly titled remake. Though the original was not Carpenter’s finest film it was certainly better than competent, a label that wouldn’t apply to this one. The film opens by revealing much of the mystery the first one saved for the end. The rest of the film is spent filling in the details and offing the occasional character in ways that are not particularly innovative, impressive, scary or interesting.

Nick (Tom Welling) runs a charter fishing boat in Antonio Island, Oregon. After a successful outing with his assistant Spooner (DeRay Davis), he begins to take his charges back to the shore when his anchor catches on something heavy enough that his winch starts to pull the boat under instead of pulling the anchor up. The anchor finally comes loose but with it come a bunch of leper ghosts dressed as pirates. Wait, it gets dumber. Various relics of the past were knocked loose by the anchor and have now washed ashore. For some reason one of them starts a fire by inexplicably getting hot but the rest of them don’t do anything. Spooner and Nick’s cousin take Nick’s boat out for a party but find trouble when the titular cloud overtakes them. Some die, some don’t but you don’t really care one way or another.

More detailed boredom ensues with the audience finding out approximately from whence the fog came but not being entertained by the explanations. Elizabeth (Maggie Grace) and Stevie (Selma Blair) play Nick’s past and current love interests but with the exception of Stevie, you can’t really understand what any attraction could be because the characters have neither depth nor personality. The three are all descendants of the city’s founding fathers who are to be honored in an upcoming ceremony. The fog however remembers the founding of the town differently and has other plans. There are some scenes where a little suspense is genuinely built up and the film is well shot. Compelling pictures in this case though, do not make for a compelling story.

There is a good allegory to be made, as Carpenter did, about sins of the past coming back to haunt us in the present. Instead The Fog takes the past and throws it away to bury it and forget it instead of remembering and learning from it. How dumb is that?