Change Your Image
khuban
Reviews
The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear (2004)
But the Emperor has no Clothes!
This remarkable documentary, well written, researched, and articulate, traces the odd, parallel paths of the rise and failures of the Islamist movement and the movement of the American neoconservatives. What makes this documentary so outstanding is not just that it clearly exposes many of the myths of the so-called "War on Terror," but the fact that it places the power of these myths in a larger and very important context.
This film's position is clearly that it is the failure of belief and of ideology in Western societies that has allowed neoconservative extremists to fill the gap with nightmares in order to assert power and influence.
Fear works well when people do not believe in anything, since that lack of faith makes them quite vulnerable. For the Islamists, fear attempts to fill the gap in societies that have lost their Islamic faith and roots.
The dirty little secret underlying all this is that both groups, the Islamists and the Neoconservatives, are, at the core, nihilists, in spite of their ideological rants and pretensions. One can only hope that a discerning public will eventually be exposed to the hollow, vain, and arrogant "men behind the curtain" in both societies, so that all can realize that these wizards of terror are just empty charlatans.
The sooner that happens, the sooner we can all click our ruby slippers together and return to Kansas, and, hopefully, to some measure of sanity, and, perhaps to a genuine faith.
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
A Real Horror Show
I have watched this film on several occasions, from when it came out in 1972 up to the present day. I cannot remember a film a grim, unrelenting, and disturbing as this one. Each time I watch this film, I come away morally disoriented and in a dark and pessimistic state of mind. The world portrayed in this film is one where there is no redemption, no forgiveness - only force, self interest, dominance, revenge, and deception. In the midst of such a world, I find myself empathizing with a totally vicious and despicable sociopath - Alex.
Why? Alex is what he is; a character with a kind of brutal honesty. Alex is the only honest character to be found, and he is immersed in a world of people and systems that are not what they pretend to be, or are attempting to make him something that he is not.
In a world without any moral content, Alex becomes a sympathetic figure, in spite of his vicious and self interested brutality. One is introduced to hell and compelled to sympathize with the devil, since it is only the devil that is truly honest about his evil. Everyone else is either deceiving themselves and others about their malignant darkness or simply pathetic. Fortunately, Kubrick introduces periodic elements of dark humor to break the bleakness and hopelessness of the world that he is presenting here.
It really does not matter though. This is a world of the damned. The film ends without hope, but with only the sense that the same cycle of violence and revenge in a world of unredeemable creatures is condemned to continue.
A real horror show indeed.
So why do I rate this movie so highly?
Perhaps, because it is just too true.
Last Days (2005)
Yes it looks real, but is it art?
If you would like to spend 95 minutes of your life watching someone stoned out of their minds, babbling incoherently, stumbling about, and passing out, well then, this is the movie for you! This is a film that insists on meaning absolutely nothing, and, as everyone knows, even Roger Ebert, nihilism is high art for the artistic elite. I suppose someone would consider a toilet seat art too, or perhaps a pile of soiled clothes, peeled paint on a dirty wall, or hearing "Venus in Furs" repeatedly. After I watched the DVD, I went down to my kitchen and discovered that my dog had defecated on my floor. I had the odd sensation as I cleaned up the mess that I was actually in this film fulfilling the last act. Maybe my dogs and I could audition for Gus. If its real it must be good art.