Intelligence, Please…

I was inspired by Jason’s “Ten Books That Have Most Influenced Me” post of a few days ago, and inspired additionally by some of the feedback I got on a Facebook post about having seen a relatively controversial film earlier in the week. Plus, top 10 lists are easy to come up with, and are a nice online placeholder until I have time to write something of more consequence (not that controversial movies aren’t of consequence).

All that being said, I’m not a film expert or scholar – these are just my picks. I’ve seen a lot of movies, but haven’t seen them all – feel free to use the comments section to add your favorites (that’s kind of a perverse word for controversial movies). Also, I don’t intend the order in which they are presented here to reflect any sort of value judgment I’m making in terms of ranking which is most or least controversial – in fact, I’ve deliberately grouped them by subject matter. Ten was just a nice round number.

Without further ado:

10. The Last Temptation of Christ (1988, starring Willem Dafoe, directed by Martin Scorcese – Cineplex-Odeon Films)

In a deliberate departure from Holy Scripture, Scorcese adapts Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel for the silver screen and portrays Christ as wholly fallible, viewed through the lens of Jesus’s struggles to reconcile his divine purpose with very human desires for a normal existence. This characterization, of course, sent metaphysical and doctrinal shockwaves around the globe, leading to riots, halted distribution, and attempts to purchase the film’s rights for the purpose of destroying it. Uncuriously, Scorcese was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director for the film. Also uncuriously, Harvey Keitel (Judas) received a nomination for a Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor. This film is a must-see because Martin Scorcese has a gift for turning suffering into beauty (if you’ve ever seen Apocalypse Now, you know what I mean – and if you haven’t…go see it!).

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9. Death in Gaza (2004, directed by James Miller, written by Saira Shah – HBO Films)

This absolutely heartbreaking documentary makes me cry every time I watch it. British documentary filmmaker James Miller set out to capture the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the eyes of its most helpless victims: the children ensnared in a very grown-up struggle with no end in sight. I weep when I watch this film because Miller thrusts upon the viewer the total intractability of the situation in Israel, Gaza, the West Bank…really all facets of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The funeral for the 12-year-old boy – who absorbed a stray bullet, but was immediately martyred by his family and friends (put another way, “used for realpolitik before he was cold”) – is particularly chilling.

Another bit of controversy in this film is that the director was gunned down in the dead of night and was killed instantly while this film was being made. He and his assistants had wandered out in kevlar, with flashlights and white flags near the Rafeh Crossing between Gaza and Egypt. Despite their shouting (in English) that they were journalists, Miller was shot in the neck by an unidentified occupant of what appeared to be an Israeli APC (armored personnel carrier, used to guard the bulldozers in the “no-man’s-land” area at Rafeh). Writer Saira Shah decided to leave this footage in the final cut in memory of James. This film is a must see because it will shatter forever whatever preconceived, hyper-partisan, American notions – whether you primarily support Israelis or whether you primarily support Palestinians in this plight – you have of the forces at play in this struggle.

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Now, changing gears:

I could not find video for this film - sorry. It was also called "Noirs et Blancs en Couleur," and was originally titled "La Victoire en Chantant"

8. Black and White in Color (1976, written by Georges Conchon and Jean-Jacques Annaud, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud – France 3 Cinéma)

This film, set during World War I in Africa’s Ivory Coast, relentlessly and satirically (and brilliantly!) skewers French attitudes about race, as villages of German and French colonials – getting their newspapers from their home countries on about a 6-month delay – go to war with each other at the outbreak of the Great War. Each side vies for control of local African tribes – through force, fraud, and everything else Thomas Hobbes warned us about – so that they can use slaves to fight (and ostensibly die) in their place. The movie is entirely in French, save a few scenes with Germans, but has subtitles – it’s a must-see because the script is absolutely brilliant, the humor is irreverent, and this is one of two films in history to showcase the entire French national anthem in one of its scenes (can you name the other?).

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7. To Kill A Mockingbird (1962, starring Gregory Peck, directed by Robert Mulligan – Brentwood Productions)

At the peak of the Civil Rights era, this brave screen adaptation of Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning-but-banned-in-some-places novel of the same name shocked America in two ways: first, it outraged opponents of the Civil Rights movements because of the sympathy it showed to the unfortunate circumstances in which Tom Robinson – a black man in a small, southern town, accused of raping a white woman – finds himself, through the eyes of a white tomboy named Scout Finch; second, it outraged Civil Rights proponents because, despite attorney Atticus Finch’s (Peck) best efforts, Tom is convicted of rape – the good guys, it turns out, definitely do not always win. This film is a must-see because Mulligan and Lee teach us that “You never know somebody…until you step inside their skin and walk around a little.”

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And now changing gears again:

6. KIDS (1995, starring Leo Fitzpatrick, directed by Larry Clark – Excalibur Films)

A social commentary of people my age (teens in the mid-90′s) living a relatively carefree lifestyle in Manhattan, bouncing from house party to house party, and occasionally, oh, I don’t know, bashing someone’s temple in with their skateboard trucks at Washington Square Park in broad daylight. Oh yeah, and the movie is about this kid – Telly – who has HIV, and refuses to sleep with any girl who isn’t a virgin. Unaware of his illness, the smooth-talking pipe-layer bounds around town on a machismo conquest of the Big Apple’s finest teen tail, while the first girl he infected tries to warn Telly’s next target. Sadly – and I don’t really count this as a spoiler, because this isn’t your typical crescendo-climax-ending type movie – Telly’s best friend Casper decides to have unprotected sex with the first girl Telly infected…just before the credits roll. This film is a must-see because it not only demolished a lot of myths and stereotypes about HIV and AIDS, but it really brought the problem home to me, as the film’s characters were people who could easily have been my classmates.

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5. Philadelphia (1993, starring Tom Hanks, directed by Jonathan Demme – TriStar Pictures)

Brilliant young attorney Andrew Beckett is fired from a conservative law firm in Philadelphia when the senior partners at the firm discover a) that Beckett is HIV-positive, and b) that Beckett is a homosexual. Joining Hanks’ star power is Denzel Washington, who plays Joe Miller, the ambulance-chasing attorney who helps Hanks’ character bring a discrimination suit for punitive damages against his former employer. Andrew Beckett’s courageous journey in raising poignant ethical and legal questions in his suit while we, the audience, watch him suffer through chemotherapy – thought at one time to be an effective treatment for HIV – is an enduring lesson that reminds us all of our humanity. Add to this Miller’s own innate homophobia, and his toils to shed himself of a lifetime of prejudice against homosexuals, and this film becomes a pejorative-with-hopeful ending. I say hopeful because Beckett passes away just as the final disposition of his case is determined; as with To Kill A Mockingbird, the good guys sadly don’t always win.

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More gear-changing:

4. The Basketball Diaries (1995, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, directed by Scott Kalvert – New Line Cinemas)

This somewhat fictionalized autobiographical account of the teen life of author Jim Carroll stunned audiences with a depraved picture of drug addiction among teens. A basketball prodigy on an unbeatable New York City high school team falls victim to the clutches of heroin addiction before he ever even takes a legal drink; the film also manages to touch on sexual abuse issues, as the school’s basketball coach is the kind of pervert who likes to watch the boys soap up after practice, and even makes a pass at DiCaprio at one point in the film. Certainly recreational drug use has been around in America for several decades, but the widespread use by teens is a phenomenon relatively new to the national fabric, spanning the last 50 years or so. Addiction awareness, however, has not been so prevalent, and it’s tales like Carroll’s that remind us that there is a grotesque, inconsolable, uncontrollable world out there – a darkness that acts because it needs to, acts without permission – a world in which the party is over long before it ever starts, and the afflicted have to lie, cheat, beg, borrow, and steal just to make it through the next few hours of a given day. This film is without a doubt DiCaprio’s best work.

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3. The Salton Sea (2002, starring Val Kilmer, directed by DJ Caruso – Castle Rock Entertainment)

Jazz trumpeter Tom Van Allen-turned-crystal-meth-junkie Danny Parker (Kilmer) wades through life as through quicksand, playing the dual role of police snitch and full-time crank-head as he tries to anesthetize the pain over the loss of his murdered wife. As the lines between day and night, friend and foe, reality and fantasy continue to blur, Parker befriends other junkies who look up to him, tries to help an embattled neighbor (and gets shot for doing so), and tries to rip off a truly depraved crank dealer who lost his nose to some undisclosed accident (could be drug or gun-related), and who wears a prosthesis in its place. A newly ramped up look at the drug underworld in the era of crystal meth, this is a must-see movie because it captures the way a person’s muted and drug-addled joie-de-vivre literally fights its way through the haze from the inside to try to make sense of a junkie’s life.

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Alright, let’s bring this thing home:

2. A Clockwork Orange (1971, starring Malcolm McDowell, directed by Stanley Kubrick – Warner Brothers)

Four boller hat, combat boot, and codpiece-wearing British delinquents rove the streets of London and surrounding countryside by night, wreaking havoc on homeless men, defenseless couples, and helpless women – for fun. They break into homes, loot and trash possessions, kidnap and rape women, and regularly drink some sort of (likely hallucinogenic) concoction, which the group’s leader, Alex (McDowell), says will “sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit o’ the ol’ ultra-violence.” But this isn’t half the controversy behind this film; no, when Alex is apprehended and incarcerated, and the state tries to reform him by subjecting him to video of some of the same violence he perpetrates on others, but set to Beethoven (his favorite composer) does the story really get interesting. Alex attempts to commit suicide, and is visited in the closing scene by a high-level British bureaucrat or politician. We assume that Alex is no more reformed than the day he was first jailed, but because of injuries sustained in his (questionably legitimate) suicide attempt, the reform program is written off as a failure, and the politician spoon-feeds a smiling Alex during a photo opportunity, just before the credits roll.

I was fascinated by the violence in this film and the strained relationships between Alex and his parents (and Alex and his school masters) the first time I saw it (probably in the eighth or ninth grade). But the more I watch it, the more I look at it as an indictment of government’s attempts to shape anything – even the most violent and deplorable of social narratives – for political gain. It could also be about a brilliant criminal mastermind learning to game the system. The film was adapted from Anthony Burgess’s novel of the same title, and Burgess was no stranger to symbolism. Alex is portrayed in the film with long false eyelashes on one of his eyes; this was Burgess’s way of telling the reader that Alex had insight into society that his peers lacked.

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1. Eyes Wide Shut (1999, starring Tom Cruise, directed by Stanley Kubrick – Hobby Films)

It is no small surprise that Stanley Kubrick twice graces my list of controversial films; I have great respect for the man’s ability to leave me with so many questions about so many subjects completely unanswered – that, my dear friends, is art.

To this day, there isn’t a movie on film (or in digital format) that unsettles me more than Eyes Wide Shut, and it does so every time I watch it – sometimes more than the previous time. Maybe it’s the taboo sexual themes. Maybe it’s the idea that even successful people are willing to throw their lives and their beautiful wives (Nicole Kidman) down the drain to explore a sexual curiosity. Maybe it’s the desperation with which Cruise wants to throw himself into this underworld of Orgies in the Hamptons. Maybe it’s the quasi-Satanic rituals, or the über-creepy masks, or the unbearably unnerving chanting and subsequent two-note piano riffs that make my skin crawl. Maybe it’s just an incredibly well-written script with twists and turns about once every ten minutes. I don’t know. All I know is that I literally have goosebumps as I write this, and had to shut off the YouTube clip when searching for it. There is so much to unpack in this film, and I can’t honestly say I even know what it’s about, though I’ve seen it beginning-to-end several times. It’s a must-see because…well, I’ve never had an experience like the ones I have had wrestling with the content of this film.

Thanks for reading – I know that was a lot to get through. Like I mentioned before, please use the comments section to discuss some of your picks!