El Conde

Any Resemblance to Persons Alive or Dead or Undead is Purely Dictatorial

or

"It's Said That When One Samples the Succulent Muscle of a Still Palpitating Heart, It's Hard To Go Back To Being a Normal Person."

Political satire can be very heavy-handed. 

 

But, then, so can vampire movies.

 

Chilean director Pablo Larrain—he made the bio-pics Spencer and Jackie—now has a new film which combines the two and brings him a little closer to home. El Conde—which translates to "The Count"—imagines Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet as a vampire, secreted away after faking his own death, and preparing for succession. 

 

Obviously, we're not talking about a film with a strict adherence to the truth, or even to vampire lore—vampires in El Conde have no problems with sunlight (not even a sunburn, although one can't tell anything about pigment as the film is in black and white)—but, instead, is a horror-fantasy using historical figures for dramatic purposes. After all, Bram Stoker used Vlad Tepes as his model for his "Dracula", which might have inspired Larrain in the first place. Of course, liberties were taken because when have facts ever gotten in the way of a good story. Not on film, anyway.

Larrain starts his film far in the past in 18th Century France, creating a fictitious origin story for Pinochet, starting with him as a vampiric French soldier named Claude Pinoche, who, at the time of the French Revolution, deserts—and after witnessing the beheading of Marie Antoinette (he can't resist licking the guillotine blade as royal blood is so tasty). He fakes his own death—using the means at his disposal—and then travels across Europe, joining respective militaries and suppressing any revolutions by the common people, until he makes his way to Chile, where he rises in the ranks to dictator after helping overthrow the communist government of Allende in 1973. As per history, Pinochet stepped down in 1990, remained Commander-in-Chief of the Army until 1998, but was arrested in London for human rights violations. He was returned to Chile in 2004 citing his ill health, where he still faced trial for atrocities, tax evasion and embezzlement and died in 2006.

Or did he?

 

Larrain maintains that Pinochet stopped privately drinking blood in order to weaken himself and "die" before a watching populace, whereupon after a state funeral, free from prosecution, he "retired" to a remote farmhouse compound (complete with guillotine for nostalgia's sake) for the occasional "fly" into town where he would swoop in and carve the heart out of someone's chest, put it in a blender (chop or puree, I wonder? Then a couple of quick pulses) and help himself to a "cardiac smoothie".

But now, Pinochet (played by Jaime Vadell) has lost the will to live and makes plans to actually die, leaving the estate to his wife, Lucia (Gloria Münchmeyer). His children, Luciana (Catalina Guerra), Mercedes (Amparo Noguera), Jacinta (Antonia Zegers), Anibal (Marcial Tagle) and Manuel (Diego Muñoz) all worry that their inheritance will be at risk, so they arrange a visit to Mom and Dad. But, before they do, they contact the Roman Catholic Church and arrange that a saintly nun, Carmen (Paula Luchsinger), visit the compound under the guise and conducting an audit, but with the real intention of performing an exorcism on their father and dispatch him with a stake.

That's the plan, anyway. But, one doesn't live 250 years and become an international despot without learning a few tricks of survival, and things don't go exactly as the kids plan. For someone else is playing a longer game than Pinochet—the iron-willed person (Stella Gonet) who is narrating the story, and makes a grande entrance about half-way through.

Oh, it's weird...and it's grisly (I mean, he's a vampire AND a South American dictator)...and (as I said) a bit heavy-handed. And it's rather gorgeously photographed (by Edward Lachman). For all the shivery aspects of it—there's a particularly nasty part where young Claude Pinoche pummels the face of a prostitute plotting to kill him with a mallet—there are the odd beauties as well, including one rapturous sequence where a newly fanged vampire takes flight and it feels like a free-form ballet that is just lovely. But, it also, at times, veers dangerously close to camp, which will kill a vampire flick faster than a stake through the heart.

One blanks when thinking about how one could improve it—maybe excising the second half complication that seems like its gilding one too many lillies (except that it's so deliciously perverse)—but then, Larrain was marching down a dangerous road to begin with, and probably should be glad that the individuals portrayed are too dead to take him to court for slander.

 

At least, one hopes they are...

The Boy With Green Hair

The Boy with Green Hair (Joseph Losey, 1948) So, I would expect you to take a look at the headline, then look at the poster, and then look at the director and go..."waitaminnit—Joseph Losey? That British director who made all those films with Harold Pinter?" Yeah, "that" Joseph Losey. This was his first film. And he was American, being born in La Crosse, Wisconsin. As for his reputation for being British, it's much the same story as for "French director" Jules Dassin (born in Middleton, Connecticut). The confusion comes because these American directors started their careers right before the 1950's.

Blame the confusion—all of it—on Joseph McCarthy (and put his minion, Roy Cohn, as an asterisk).

Losey (and Dassin) were caught up in the Communist hunt in the 1950's and left America to work—and wait for things to calm down and the industry "black-list" to be officially/unofficially ignored.

As for The Boy With Green Hair, it's not a bad start for a first film; I've been working on a post for one of Fred Zinnemann's early films, My Brother Talks to Horses, which is just plain weird, but one has to start somewhere.

There was a boy

A very strange, enchanted boy

They say he wandered very far

Very far, over land and sea

A little shy and sad of eye

But very wise was he

"Nature Boy" words and music by eden ahbez

Police find a silent and bald child (Dean Stockwell—he was 12) wandering the streets and bring him, calling on Dr. Evans (Robert Ryan) to find out what the situation is. Through coaxing—and some food—Evans learns that the boy's name is Peter Frye, that his parents are missing and have been since travelling to London during the second World War. The small Frye has been traded from relative to relative until being taken in by Gramps (Pat O'Brien), a retired vaudevillian who, it turns out, is not really his grandfather. Despite the lack of blood-ties, Peter found a stable life with the old man, who is genial and caring and has a boy's sense of play and wonder.

Peter has settled enough to be regularly attending a school, with its clique-mindedness and "new-kid" insecurities, and though he makes friends, there's also others who make school-life testing beyond what might be on a page. Much is made that Frye doesn't have any parents—any "real" parents, like a "normal" kid would have—and it becomes apparent (once others bring it up) that he might be considered a war orphan (as his class is setting up a collection at school for the European kid-survivors. This gets to young Peter and more and more, his thoughts turn to the war and its consequences on people...people like him. It doesn't help that there is much in the news about civil defense and the escalating tensions of nuclear proliferation. "Duck and Cover" sounds like a good idea until the shock-wave comes along. It puts a lot on Peter's mind about the consequences of the last war and the likely next one.

So, imagine the kid's surprise when he wakes up from one troubled night's sleep with GREEN hair! At first, he thinks it's funny—what a goofy thing to have green hair. Gramps is alarmed, but goes along with it. But, the kids at school—they consider Peter a freak and begin to regularly haze him and try to cut his hair off—him with his pacifist ideas and all. The fascists! And if they weren't bad enough, the parents are equally aghast. A BOY with green hair! What WILL happen to the neighborhood? And despite being a good-natured soul, Gramps feels the public pressure about this kid that stands out, and Gramps takes him to the barber to get his head completely shaved. A crew-cut wouldn't be good enough, not even in the 1950's.

A vision of European war-orphans explain it all to Peter.

It's a bit precious and more heavy-handed than it needs to be, especially with the intended audience of kids (hopefully accompanied by their intolerant parents, but—I dunno, I'll bet the folks just dropped the kids off and with any luck, picked them up later) and all the folks blarney provided by O'Brien. Ryan makes a tolerant father-figure, and Stockwell is everything you'd want in a child's performance—nothing mawkish or mugging (he seems more adults than a lot of the movie's adults). But whether the plot actually convinces that tolerance—in the midst of possible nuclear annihilation—is anything more than a good idea, especially considering the actions of the adults in the movie, I'm not sure. It feels like just a verification of kid-victimhood, without any recourse for rescue. And I don't think kid's "get" allegory.

One other interesting aspect of the film is its score—by Leigh Harline—making extensive use of one of the Summer of '48's music hits, "Nature Boy," a strange and haunting song that almost literally fell into Nat King Cole's lap. It lends the movie a touch of the exotic that makes it a bit more credible...and heartfelt.

And then one day

One magic day he passed my way

While we spoke of many things

Fools and Kings

This he said to me:

"The greatest thing you'll ever learn

Is just to love and be loved in return"

Secret Honor

Secret Honor (Robert Altman, 1984) Okay, here's a weird one for you. Altman, in one of his career slumps was teaching at the University of Minnesota Communications Department, and used the class to help film this one-man show with Philip Baker Hall as Richard Nixon and written by the guys who made the equally provocative but dramatically inert Executive Action back in 1973. Altman, in his commentary, basically begs off any credit, saying "I just pointed the camera and came up with the video monitors, so I could cut away if I needed to." Nice strategy, though.

The play's the thing, however. And it's a bit of a toad. Nixon, post-retirement, goes into his study to record what...memoirs, instructions to the help, a defense strategy...what? All of them. He arms himself with a bottle of scotch and a gun. And starts to babble, his thoughts bouncing from one stray thought to the next, going over history, explaining his actions, sobbing over his family, railing against Kissinger, all in a stream of expletives undeleted that sound a bit like the way Nixon talked, but with far more dramatics. Nixon would speak in sentence fragments, off the cuff, in a stream of consciousness that's fascinating...and frustrating to listen to. But it was usually in a dull monotone, and certainly more cohesive. Here, Hall cranks the melodrama to eleven, and the sentence fragments are jammed into each other with much hesitation, his thoughts pinballing from thought to thought, and while it sustains the interest, it ain't too Nixonian.

But now, here's the thing. Clearly the movie was written by folks who despised the man, but more often than not, they take Nixon's side. Specifically, how Nixon post-WWII answered an ad in a California newspaper looking for a "young energetic man, preferably a veteran" to run for office. This "Gang of 100" as Nixon refers to them, are a deep-seated conspiracy of money-men, financiers, mobsters and hoity-toity's and presumably boogy-men who guide his career up to and including Watergate. Not quite the Mason's or the Illuminati, Nixon does their behest, and here he regrets his actions, including the assassination of Allende and his taking-on of the "whore-monger" Kissinger to steer his Ship of State. 

It becomes clear that his job for the evening is to fall on his sword for his Cabal, but by the end of the play, he has whipped himself into such a resentful state over the outcome of his life that, rather than eat a bullet, he instead raises a clenched fist in a triumphal act of stubborn defiance, shouting "Fuck 'em!!," and resembling those very anti-war protesters he so despised. For folks who didn't like the man, they sure end the thing on an heroically triumphal note. It is, after all, labeled "A Political Myth."

Still, it beats Oliver Stone's Nixon by a crooked mile.

Where's My Roy Cohn?

The Law's Little Caesar
or
"The Evil That Men Do Live After Them..."

"Where's my Roy Cohn?"

uttered by Donald Trump when his appointed

Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, recused himself

from the Russian investigation.

I would suspect a lot of people of a certain age don't know who Roy Cohn is/was and, if they do, it is more because he is prominently featured in Tony Kushner's play "Angels in America," where the character is such a despicable presence that, if one had no idea that the person actually existed, one would think they were entirely made up—so venal and self-deluded a presence is the character in the play.

Truth is stranger than fiction, however, and "you can't make these things up."

Cohn was a New York lawyer with an addiction for power and prestige and money. He was born to a wealthy family, the only son, but liked to live such a flamboyant life-style that he ran through it quickly. He graduated from Columbia Law School at 20 and had to wait until he was 21 to take the bar exam. He immediately began working in a Manhattan law office and started making a name for himself prosecuting communists under the Smith Act. He was on the prosecuting team during the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg—and as with most things with Cohn—his true role is controversial as far as truth and ethics.

Alan Dershowitz came up with the astounding declaration that the Rosenberg's "were guilty—but framed."

Cohn capitalized on this and worked the media and legal angles to promote his work with the Rosenbergs. This caught the attention of J. Edgar Hoover, who recommended Cohn to Senator Joseph McCarthy, who was hanging his Senate career on aggressively seeking out communists in the State Department. McCarthy hired Cohn as his chief counsel during the hey-day of McCarthyism, "the lavender scare" (exposing gay employees of the government) and the Army-McCarthy hearings.

It was the latter that proved McCarthy's downfall and it was instituted through the arrogance of Cohn, himself. Even though Cohn had aggressively sought out to kick out homosexual employees, there was much evidence that he was doing so hypocritically—that Cohn himself was gay—and when another counsel on McCarthy's staff, G. David Schine, who was close to Cohn, was drafted, Cohn tried to use his office and his authority to influence the Army into giving Schine preferential treatment. Such use of influence and office for personal gain lead to counter-suits, public hearings, and the censure of McCarthy, which ended his influence and political career.

Cohn went into private practice and became infamous as a fixer. His clients ranged from prominent Mafia chiefs to George Steinbrenner, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, Rupert Murdoch and Donald Trump. He was also an unofficial adviser to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan during their presidencies and was a lifelong fixture in conservative circles. 

He was also a lifelong Democrat.

He was disbarred in 1986 for attempting to obtain the signature of a comatose client's on a will naming Cohn as a beneficiary.

He died several months later of complications from AIDS. 

Matt Tyrnauer's film goes through the whole sordid process, detailing Cohn's life with talking-head interviews of relatives, associates—like recently convicted Roger Stone, still awaiting sentencing—none of whom have anything good to say about him, other than an admiration for his ruthlessnes and a grudging acknowledgment of his tenacity in the face of all odds, or even facts. One gets the impression with Cohn dead that they can finally say what they thought of him without repercussions—which might be comforting if Cohn's slash-and-burn venality weren't so ever-present in the actions of his survivors or his students.

One might even consider Where's My Roy Cohn? an example of character assassination...if there was any character involved.

Vice (2018)

Hook, Line, and Sinker
or
What Becomes of the Broken Hearted...

"A year ago, my approval rating was in the 30's, my nominee for the Supreme Court had just withdrawn, and my Vice-President had just shot someone. Ah, those were the good old days..."

President George W. Bush at the 2007 Broadcasters Annual Dinner

"Never apologize. It's a sign of weakness."

Capt. Nathan Brittle She Wore a Yellow Ribbon

"Demand me nothing. What you know, you know. From this time forth, I will never speak word."

The Tragedy of Othello Act 5, Scene 2

"There comes a time when deceit and defiance must be seen for what they are. At that point, a gathering danger must be directly confronted. At that point, we must show that beyond our resolutions are actual resolve."

Richard Bruce Cheney

Once at work there was this guy that I just loathed. He didn't work much or very hard and would rather talk and boast than actually do anything resembling what he was being paid to do. His output wasn't that good, of course. So, to beef up his paycheck he started doing overtime, which meant that he was at work more and our schedules would overlap more. I didn't like that. I liked it when he wasn't there, causing issues.

The one day I could count on was Saturday. He didn't want to work Saturdays and would whine if anybody suggested it. That gave me one blissful day of work when I didn't have to deal with his shit. Then, one Friday he announced that he was going to work overtime on Saturday. I looked enthused. "Oh, you're going to love it! It's work-work-work, nose to the grindstone, and the supervisors really push us hard." He curled his lip as if I suggested he not take my last onion-ring. "That doesn't sound like any fun," he grumbled. And true to his goals, he didn't show up that Saturday.

The reactions I got from co-workers (of a similar opinion about this guy) was raised eyebrows, wide eyes, and a conspiratorial silence. They couldn't believe that I would turn his deficiencies and tendencies to my advantage and manipulate them into his deciding to not show up. Once he left the room, I took great pleasure in saying "I...am an evil son-of-a-bitch."

It's in moments like these that I know what it must be like to be former Vice-President Richard ("Dick" to his friends and "dick" to his enemies) Cheney, the very definition of "shadow government" during the George W. Bush Administration. Cheney would disappear for days, incognito, while W. stayed out in the forefront acting presidential, while Cheney would be in one of several offices he had squirreled around Washington doing God Knows What out of the scrutiny of the public eye...or the President's.

One of the weird by-products of the current Trump Administration is that, in comparison, the George W. Bush tenure looks pretty good—just as George H.W. Bush's Administration looked better in comparison to his son's. The things is, they weren't good by any stretch of the imagination. They're just better than the shit-storm we're going through now. 

So, it's probably good that Adam McKay made Vice at this time, just to slap us around a bit in case we get too sentimental about water-boarding and freelance merc's as a business model. And slap around he does, sparing nobody, not even the shallowness of the American voter, in his study of Richard Cheney, a political operative who maneuvered himself into power whenever the Republicans were in the White House and served as a consultant to oil executives when they were not. 

After an anonymous quote ("Beware the quiet man..."), McKay starts his bio-pic/screed with the 9-11 attacks, when Cheney (say what you will, but this is astonishing work by Christian Bale) is whisked away by Secret Service agents to a secure command bunker, along with other key White House advisers—like Condoleeza Rice (played by LisaGay Hamilton) and wife Lynne (Amy Adams) who has demanded of the Secret Service that she be taken there from a beauty salon—cloistered in the key moments of the planes hitting the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. POTUS Bush (Sam Rockwell—great work here) is in the air and (I know this from another source) frustrated by the spotty communications achievable on Air Force One in the midst of the crisis. At the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carell) takes an order from Cheney that fighter jets are to be scrambled to shoot down any civilian aircraft still in the air. Rumsfeld questions whether it's approved by the President and Cheney, not having checked, says "Yes," puts down the phone and contemplates the question—as Michael Moore put it in Fahrenheit 9-11—"which of our friends screwed us."

There's a telling moment early one when a young Dick Cheney is working as a lineman in Wyoming, when a fellow worker falls and breaks his leg, badly. The guy is in obvious pain, going into shock, and a bunch of the workers gather around to observe. A foreman comes by and tells everybody to get back to work. Cheney hesitates and has to be told again to get back to work. No "we'll call an ambulance" or "the situation is handled" just "get back to work" and Cheney turns and does what he's told.

As a young man in Wyoming, wife Lynne is getting tough. She's had to bail Dick out of jail twice for DUI's and she's had enough. She's seen enough domestic abuse in her childhood that she's not going to go down that path in her own family. "This is not the man I intended to marry" she yells and a cowed Cheney vows he'll do better and change, but, as he makes his way to a government internship program, he develops another addiction to replace the alcohol, one that Lynne heartily approves of—power.

At a meet and greet, he sees a cocky, youngish up-and-coming functionary named Donald Rumsfeld, quite apart from the old men making up the majority of the speakers, and Rumsfeld spells out what it will take to succeed in three simple rules: 1) You don't go blabbing—keep your mouth shut; 2) do as you're told; 3) be loyal. Oh, and "if the wife calls, they're in a meeting." With those edicts, the interns become indoctrinated into the Old Boys' School of self-perpetuating power. Before he's done, Cheney will violate all of those rules.

McKay's film then outlines Cheney's career—first as Rumsfeld's assistant during the Nixon Administration, then gaining more access with Ford by circumventing the influence of Henry Kissinger and becoming Chief of Staff. When carter gained the White House over Ford, Cheney ran for Wyoming House seat, which he won, giving it up to be George H.W. Bush Secretary of Defense, then during the Clinton years, serving as CEO for Halliburton.  When Bush's son, George W. ran for President, he wanted Cheney to be his Vice-President, but Cheney played shy until he could leverage more power concessions from the Veep job from the less experienced Bush by couching them as "mundane." Dull they may be, but they gained him access to in-roads of government to conduct his own form of cronyism and punishment.

McKay, who started as a writer—for awhile on Saturday Night Live—and as director of the Anchorman films and Talledega Nights, then upped his game on the impressive distillation of Michael Short's book The Big Short. That film was such a success, McKay tries to pull the same tricks, with black-out sketches—Dick and Lynne suggest Lord and Lady MacBeth with a brief Shakespearean sequence (that does not work), or a sequence where waiter Alfred Molina discusses what choices the Bush party have in violating civilian rights after 9-11 (rather clever way to look at it), and a lovely fake-out half-way through the movie (that's hilarious).

But, the through-line with the mystery narrator named Kurt (Jesse Plemons) is distracting throughout the movie and its pay-off is a bit precious when it wants to be hard-hitting. It's emblematic of an intention to be tough and cynical with a "just kidding" approach that doesn't do any help to the cause than be momentarily entertaining, which, along with the thrumming of a vague "fisherman" metaphor that McKay keeps pushing, keeps the film from ever seeming like more than a trifle with a sterling performance at its center.

One should stay until the end, though, because the film turns much braver in its final minutes, with a defiant Cheney breaking the fourth wall of an interview to admonish us all in the audience from being too self-satisfied and smug in our criticism, and a mid-credits sequence in which an opinion focus group ("What DO we believe?") falls apart into fractious chaos about...the movie itself, then throws out a last damning line about audience's tastes and priorities...that may be the core point of the movie all along. And its most damning one.

If it's not there to just "go out' on a laugh.

Would you buy a Used Unitary Executive Theory from this man?