We are inundated by news. Saturated with it. Awash with it. Some is fact-checked, some have two sources, a lot of it—most of it—is just blather, speculation, filling time and selling soap...or pharmaceuticals. "I heard a guy who said..." followed by professional blowhards, who used to have a job, saying what they think, and their "act" is that they know. So much of what poses as "news" is "opinion"—newspapers traditionally limit that to just two pages. That's on the national level. On the local level, it's all sports and weather with the top story being somebody died...and the last story something about puppies. All smiles. "Have a good night."
It didn't used to be that way, back in the "old" days, before "24 hour news" channels (which never have 24 hours of news), and back when there were only three networks and each one had their own news department that encapsulated the news in 30 minutes (minus commercials). They didn't have time for opinion (we shouldn't have time for it at all). That's the way it was...and somehow you were assured that was right.
The only time you saw a lot of news was in the Dickensian "best of times, worst of times". Coronations. Moon missions. Assassinations. And the 1972 Munich Massacre. If you don't know about it, Spielberg made a movie of it...and its vengeful aftermath. But, to boil it down, during the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, a terrorist group called "Black September" broke into the Israeli compound in the Olympic Village, killed some, took hostages, made demands to be flown with the hostages to Egypt, and then everyone was killed, hostages and terrorists before the plane could get off the ground. And it was covered "live" on television.
By ABC Sports.
September 5, the film by Swiss director Tim Fehlbaum, tells the story of what was going on inside the ABC Sports facility and the herculean task of trying to report a terrorist attack with the same resources they used to show swimming, boxing, and track-and-field. In charge of their broadcast unit was Roone Arledge, head of the ABC Sports division and whose promotional mantra was "up-close and personal" in that he would have pre-produced background stories for athletes to engage viewers with the drama inherent in the matches rather then merely showing anonymous individuals competing. It was a brilliant model for sports-broadcasting, adding the back-story to the competition, raising the dramatic stakes and adding the element of "inspiration" to what was merely gamesmanship—which would, in turn, serve as inspiration to future generations of viewers who might, then, want to take on the challenges of sport—that's why "talent competition" shows these days fill up their time-slots with back-stories of simply everybody who participates. "Up-close and personal."
But, nobody was prepared for this. A world-stage of athletes from all over the world competing in peace, and that year in a country whose previous hosting was under the leadership of Adolph Hitler, who saw the Olympics as a political tool, advancing Germany's status, and trying to make a point of Aryan superiority in the process. That was the year of Jesse Owens and "The Boys in the Boat" so things didn't go according to the Master-Race plan. The 1972 Munich Olympics were envisioned by the country to bury past ghosts and be seen as a meeting place for peace after having plunged the world into war and committing genocide on an inhuman scale. And, again, things didn't go according to plan.
A Palestinian-militarist group breached the lack of security in the Olympic Village—armed guards and security would have provided a bad "image" for this post-Nazi German Olympics—and started killing Israeli athletes. They made demands that, if they weren't met, would mean the death of another Israeli on the hour. It was political warfare as theater, or—in the word that would become despicably familiar then from—"terrorism." To cover it would be to give the bastards what they wanted. But, cover it, ABC News did.
What else were they to do? Ignore it? Lives were at stake. Early on, Arledge made the decision that ABC News would not take over the coverage—they were half-a-world away and would have consisted of talking heads filling time. ABC Sports was on-site and closest to the story. In their zeal to do as complete a job as possible, they probably went too far—planting cameras across from the Israeli living quarters to get "good shots," deceiving security guards that their runners were athletes in order to smuggle film back and forth between their photographers and the ABC facilities. They punted. No one at the base could speak German, so an assistant editor (played in the film by Leonie Benesch)became the eyes and ears of official announcements and police scanners. The audio guy started soldering make-shift connections between walkie-talkies, telephones, and the control board.* For replays of video-tape, hands manually moved the reels. It was all duct-tape and spit and flying-by-instinct, but without the journalistic rigor associated with news coverage (except for the on-site presence of Peter Jennings (played by Benjamin Walker, whose voice-imitation of Jennings is eerily good).
They got the story. But, in one critical juncture, they got the story wrong—okay, they reported mis-information from the German spokespeople, but it was still wrong. And it was still put out in the world, and spread by other sources monitoring the ABC coverage, and it was just as wrong. That information was that the hostages were rescued in a daring raid by German police. It wasn't true. They were all killed and (although the truth didn't start coming out until 2012) that the raid was an unmitigated disaster. Those "rescued hostages" were all dead. There was a rush to judgment to get out the story. And rather than get the story right, they just wanted the pictures.
Eight years later, CNN started business and the business of getting the pictures, rather than the story right became a news business model. And we've seen examples of "news specialists" getting it wrong ever since. September 5 shows us where it all began...we in our bubbles and they in theirs...and how we haven't learned anything since. So much for keeping us "informed."
The WNYC program "On the Media" which is something of a "news-watchdog" has put out a series of handy "Breaking News Consumer Handbooks" with helpful advice on how to listen to "Broken News." There are quite a few of them, but I'll post a few salient ones.
* One thing they got right (but for all the wrong reasons): the invention of the "network bug"—those irritating graphics burned into the corner of network feeds to identify the source-station. ABC started burning their logo into their coverage because so many news sources were copying it and ABC wanted it known where the pirated sources came from. It also tells us who we can blame.
"There is a word in Korean – inyeon. It means providence or fate. But it's specifically about relationships between people. I think it comes from Buddhism and reincarnation. It's an inyeon if two strangers even walk by each other on the street and their clothes accidentally brush because it means there must have been something between them in their past lives. If two people get married,they say it's because there have been 8,000 layers of inyeon over 8,000 lifetimes."*
It begins from an outside perspective. Three people sit at a bar—two men, one woman (not that it would matter, really)—two of them are Korean and one is Caucasion/Jewish (not that it would matter, really). We never see who's talking, but a man and a woman are talking about them—"Who do you think they are to each other?" There's idle speculation over who's the couple, what the "third wheel" is doing there then, and what the trio (if they are a trio) are doing at a New York Greenwich bar at 4 a.m.? The ideas keep getting more elaborate and less specific and finally the woman just gives up the little tavern game: "I have no idea."
The story will span 24 years, but not the full 24. There will be long stretches that we're not privy to, and we'll see only the sporadic bursts of activity that have brought us—and them—to this bar and this conversation. It's like it was meant to happen...but not in this way.
Past Lives is a love story, but it might as well be a multi-verse movie, too. No super-heroes, no diverging time-lines, although it's not without divergence. It tells the story of Hue Sang (played Leem Seung-min as a child, then Teo Yoo as an adult) and Na Young (Moon Seung-ah in childhood)—or "Nora" as she will call herself (Greta Lee as an adult)—two very intelligent students—they're constantly competing about who'll get the best grades in school—in South Korea. When Na comes in second, she cries, and Hue is always there to comfort her...not that it happens too often. They are best of friends and in "puppy love"—Na announces that she will marry him—and they seem inseparable. But, in reality, they are: Na Young's father is a filmmaker and to advance his career decides to move his family to Canada. The two have a pre-arranged date before she leaves, and then, she is gone.
Twelve years pass and Nora is now 24 and living in the United States. One day, she asks her Mother if she can remember the name of her long-lost friend and tries to find him through the internet. To her surprise, she discovers that he is trying to find her, leaving a message/comment years ago on her father's web-site. She follows up and they begin to talk on Skype, reconnecting and catching up, and then becoming inseparable despite the distance and time-zones...and the vagaries of the internet. She's pursuing a writing career and he's studying engineering and they start adjusting their schedules to talk every day, even if they miss sleep or are late for class. They make the time. They've missed each other and make plans to meet again, whether in New York or in Seoul. But, the plans don't solidify with each others' commitments, and they can only leave it at a hopeful "See you then." Life's what happens when you're busy making other plans.
Then, Nora says they have to take a break. The visit's not happening any time soon—even though she's constantly looking up flights to Seoul—and he's committed to a language exchange program in China for a year and a half, and she has a residency in Montauk and she really wants to make a "go" of it in New York. It's a devastating decision, but they both agree to give each other space, even as they wonder at why it's mutually heart-breaking. This is crazy that something as ephemeral as an internet connection should be so important that its loss can wound. What is love, anyway, but something we imagine, something we hope, something we dream, even if its impossible?
I think about this often and too much, actually, to be practical. When I wrote about my favorite Hitchcock film, Vertigo, I started it recalling that old song "What is this thing called love?" To me, love is a form of insanity—and even that is too simplistic (and too cynical)—it gets in the way, complicates matters, makes you do things against your self-interest, and can knock you for a loop if it isn't letter-perfect. Love pulls at the heart-strings. And we don't HAVE heart-strings! We have connections...which are metaphorically the same thing. Yes, love gets in the way. But, it also makes the way better, the way sugar sweetens your coffee, even though you'd drink coffee, anyway. And the effects of sugar are ephemeral, too, they don't last, even though we keep reaching for the spoon. It makes the medicine go down, after all.
And, as I mentioned in that Vertigo article, I like movies that question love, and distrust the ones that make it look so easy, with their formulaic tropes ofthe "meet-cute," the "song-montage," "the-rough-road," and the "happily-ever-after,"—which always reminds of the Orson Welles quote "If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story." Movie love stories, especially "rom-coms," usually stop with the swell of strings and all complications resolved at the best of times...and then stop, leaving us with the sugar-rush of good feelings.
But, it ain't sugar. It's saccharine, which only feels like the same thing.
So, how does Past Lives resolve itself? Do they ever meet again? Well, I'm putting up the pictures, you can see for yourself, that, yes, of course they do! Do they still love each other? Yes, of course they do! Are they still bonded to each other and understand each other in ways no one else can? Of course they do. And a lesser film-maker than Celine Song would have ended it there.
So, of course, she doesn't. Along with her lovely shot choices, her impeccable casting and direction, and her seemingly simplistic and natural writing, she manages to make something so natural and common and ever-present, and yet so singularly individual, something really big. And something to contemplate and wonder at, like the sun coming up in the morning, or looking to the horizon and wanting the best life we could possibly have. She makes it look so easy.
But, good and wise movies...like love...are hard work.
This might be my favorite film of the year.
* Yeah. Before we make a throw pillow of this or jot it down to use as conversation at dinner parties, the character who says this—Nora—will parenthetically add "That's just something Koreans say to seduce someone." Hmm. Maybe you can use it at dinner parties.
The only time you saw a lot of news was in the Dickensian "best of times, worst of times". Coronations. Moon missions. Assassinations. And the 1972 Munich Massacre. If you don't know about it, Spielberg made a movie of it...and its vengeful aftermath. But, to boil it down, during the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, a terrorist group called "Black September" broke into the Israeli compound in the Olympic Village, killed some, took hostages, made demands to be flown with the hostages to Egypt, and then everyone was killed, hostages and terrorists before the plane could get off the ground. And it was covered "live" on television.
