Ginger & Rosa (***1/4)

The more I see films about teens, the more I think they can be divided into films with age-appropriate leads, usually independent films about artistic types, and films in which actors in their 20s play the teens, which are usually more mainstream. But this must be one of very few in which the actor playing the lead is actually younger, by years, than her character. That would be the remarkable Elle Fanning, who just a few years ago memorably played a little girl in Phoebe in Wonderland, and who had a breakout role in 2011’s Super 8. Here she is ginger-haired Ginger, born when the Hiroshima bomb was dropped (as the opening shot lets us know), and now, with the Cuban Missile Crisis looming, worried that others will destroy western civilization, including her home in England. She’s an aspiring poet whose wheelhouse includes deep thinkers Simone de Bouvoir and Bertrand Russell. She plays 45s by the likes of Dave Brubeck on her little record player, with the tics and pops rendered authentically on the soundtrack.
 
Ginger and Rosa are the sort of friends who are so close they can only grow apart. (Rosa is more interested in boys than politics.) Writer-director Sally Potter establishes this with low-lit shots of carefree times that seem inspired by the French New Wave. If this were 1967, these young women might be getting high and listening to psychedelic music, but Potter has chosen to set her story five years earlier, centering the story around a small group of intellectual types (viewers may recognize Annette Bening and Timothy Spall in small roles), of which her estranged parents (Alessandro Nivola, Christina Hendricks) are a part, rather than a larger countercultural movement. Not that the film is especially heady; if anything, it’s about how intellectual pursuits don’t negate earthly desire, or disappointment. And it’s about Ginger’s relationship with a mother she does not respect and a father she idealizes. Potter is known for arty films such as Orlando and The Tango Lesson, but this one is a straightforward narrative that should satisfy those who like sensitive coming-of-age stories. It also announce Fanning as a real talent. She shows the ability to cry on cue and do an English accent, but it’s in a scene where she reacts to learning that her father is an imperfect idol that you can really see her skill — there is heartbreak written all over her face.

IMDb link

viewed 3/14/13 7:30 pm at Ritz 5 [PFS screening] and reviewed 3/15–25/13

The U.S. vs. John Lennon (***1/4)

? This documentary is broader than the title would suggest. Although the second half does explore the Nixon administration’s efforts to discredit and deport the former Beatle, who had moved to New York, nearly an hour is devoted to what preceded that. There’s a good deal of footage of both Lennon the political activist and other activities happening at the same time, mostly centered around anti-Vietnam War protests. Contemporary interviews of various leftish types such as Angela Davis, Gore Vidal, and George McGovern supplement the old clips.

+  The period footage of Lennon himself is most fascinating. This includes, for example, footage of Lennon and his second wife, Yoko Ono, co-hosting The Mike Douglas Show and featuring Black Panther Bobby Seale as a guest. There’s also Lennon/Ono’s famous “bed-ins” designed to raise awareness while placating a press fascinated by the newlyweds. While the singer’s aims were serious, he appeared not to take himself too seriously, unlike many of his contemporaries. The sight of thousands of demonstrators in Washington, DC, chant his simple hit song “Give Peace a Chance,” also reveals Lennon as a savvy marketer of nonviolence. (This footage is an upbeat change from the vulgar chant directed at the Johnson White House, seen earlier.) Ono is also one of the people interviewed by the filmmakers, and she’s helpful in explaining Lennon’s state of mind, which could be described as paranoid, except that the government really was out to get him.

- The movie’s a lot better at putting the investigations into the context of Lennon’s life than the activities of the Nixon administration, though there are some efforts in that direction. Watergate mastermind G. Gordon Liddy would appear to be the only pro-“establishment” figure interviewed. (Nixon White House counsel John Dean and a couple of 1970s FBI agents appear too, but expressing regret.) Additionally, I would have liked the film to further explore the effect of the investigations on Lennon’s psyche. One can presume that his move away from political music (along with his retreat from political activism) as well as his two-year “lost weekend” that began in 1973 might have stemmed from the stress created by the government’s lengthy efforts to deport him. But it would have been useful for the film to discuss this.

= ***1/4 A worthwhile film that will appeal to Lennon fans and students of cultural history, less to those interested in political skullduggery.

IMDb link

Sir! No Sir! (**3/4)

The history of U.S. military opposition to the war in Vietnam, as told by the participants, raises as many questions as it answers.

David Zeiger’s debut feature tells the story of perhaps the most powerful drive to oppose the American war in Vietnam, the one within the American military. It began with isolated individuals but burgeoned in coffeehouses near military bases, in underground newspapers, and in Army barracks. (This was the war that gave rise to the term fragging, which referred to the killing of an officer by his own soldiers.) The movie is the history of a movement, not the story of the war itself. (For people who don’t know much about Vietnam, this isn’t the place to begin.) Nor is it particularly meant to persuade. Zeiger, a former protest organizer, more or less takes for granted his subjects’ view that the war was immoral and lets the ex-soldiers tell the story of what they did about it. There are no historians, no journalists (other than in period footage), and just about no non-soldiers in the interview segments at all, save the ubiquitous Jane Fonda. Fonda has been a lightning rod for critics of antiwar protesters for decades. Love her or hate her, though, the footage of her and others being cheered on at overseas rallies by thousands of in-uniform soldiers at the height of the war makes it clear that she spoke for a great many of the military rank and file. I would have liked to see more of an attempt to quantify the film’s implication that opposition to the war was the rule, not the exception, among the lowest ranks, but the period footage alone clarifies that this was a mass movement. (One statistic that the movie does throw out is that there were over half a million “incidents of desertion.”)

The sole reliance on the participants to tell the story is both the strength and weakness of the movie. It gives the film focus, but also raises many questions about which a historian’s perspective might shed light, such as the idea that the widespread reluctance of ground troops to carry out their missions was what caused President Nixon to switch to an air-based strategy. Near the end, the film explores a bit (not enough) of the revisionist history that has followed the war, notably the myth of the spit-upon Vietnam veteran. I’m not sure it completely justifies its subtitle, “The Suppressed Story of the GI Movement to End the War in Vietnam.” After all, the issue surfaced not long before this movie was produced in the presidential campaign of John Kerry (who’s not seen in the movie). Yet Kerry’s opportunistic strategy of portraying himself as a war hero, not a hero of the antiwar movement, suggests that those who supported the Vietnam War have been successful in framing the issue as one of protesters versus troops. In fact, Sir! No Sir! shows that the fierce debate about the war pervaded the military itself. As one veteran states, these soldiers weren’t proud of their service, and didn’t think themselves heroes, because what their government was asking them to do wasn’t heroic.

IMDb link

posted and slightly revised 8/15/13