Ender's Game [2013]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-II)  ChicagoTribune (2 1/2 Stars)  RE.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (B-)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J.P. McCarthy) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (S. Adams) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review

Ender's Game [2013] (screenplay and directed by Gavin Hood based on the award winning sci-fi novel (wikipedia) by Orson Scott Card [IMDb]) is one of the most thought-provoking sci-fi films to come out in years or perhaps in decades.  Though action and even 3D special effects it has, these are decidedly beside the point.  (Note to Readers, as is almost always my preference, I saw the movie in 2D rather than 3 and the 2D worked just fine).  The film has far more in common in terms of style with Gene Roddenberry's original Star Trek television series, famous/infamous for its spartan sets and lofty thematics/dialogue, than with far more visually oriented sci-fi films ranging from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey [1968] and James Cameron's Avatar [2009] where the visuals clearly enhanced and/or arguably _became_ the story or the more recent/flashy StarTrek remakes where the visuals appeared to even try to _mask the lack_ of a compelling story.  

The current film, Ender's Game [2013], is set about a century to century-and-a-half in the future.  We're told in an initial voice-over that 50 years previous the Earth had been suddenly attacked by an ant-like alien race called the Formics that had apparently sought to take the earth as its own.  In the desperate battle that ensued, we're told that tens of millions of people died UNTIL a lone pilot named Mazar Rackham (whose name that every school child around the world now knew) decided to crash his aircraft into the heart of the aliens' mother-ship.  His action not only destroyed the mother-ship, but also (to everyone's surprise) caused the entire alien fleet to stop functioning and simply "fall out of the sky."  Mazar Rackham's action proved a brilliant, "out of the box" and spectacularly effective stroke that saved humanity from destruction.  But ever since humanity has been trying to prepare itself for "Round 2" against this utterly foreign alien species.

How does one prepare to fight an "utterly alien/foreign species?"    That becomes the first "lofty question" posed by the story's scenario.   It seems imperative that the earth's military leaders become nimble, capable of "thinking outside the box" as well as decisive. 

Now who would be best capable of doing this?  The world's leaders become convinced ... children.  Why?  As Col. Graff (played magnificently in the film by Harrison Ford) who appears to head the Earth's chief (and necessarily combined) military academy explains: Children are best able to integrate complex and diverse data and respond to them in surprisingly effective ways.  

But what of the morality of _using_ children in this way (as child warriors)?  "What's going to be left of these [child warriors] afterwards (after the coming next war with the aliens)?" asks Col. Graff's assistant, the psychologist Maj. Gwen Anderson (played again magnificently by Viola Davis).  "What does it matter if there may be nothing left at all?" responds that Colonel in a way that every other Israeli would probably utterly understand.   But that's exactly it.  Almost all of us would be torn here.  Using children's natural capacity to integrate information in novel/effective ways "as they play" into a means to prepare and fight a war seems really, really evil.  On the other hand, the threat is so grave -- possible complete annihilation -- that almost _anything_ goes.

So then Col. Graff and Maj. Anderson along with the rest of the staff at humanity's combined military academy go about training their child warriors and more specifically choosing humanity's future commander for this impending war.  Their focus centers then on a particular child named Ender Wiggin (played by Asa Butterfield) who appears to have been enough of  "a bullied misfit" (bullied but not overly so) to have developed exactly the qualities that they are have been looking for in humanity's next military commander: Someone capable of responding creatively and effectively to threatening challenges.  Can he rise to the challenge?  That's the rest of the film ...

Interesting are Endor's own reflections in which he realizes that to defeat an enemy one has to come to understand him.  But as one comes to understand him, one also comes to love him. 

And that, of course, becomes the final question that the story raises: Does war, in fact, remain "the only way" to respond to a conflict?   Again, the film's repeatedly about "thinking outside the box" and it becomes quite an interesting and thought provoking tale.


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Enough Said [2013]

MPAA (PG-13)  ChicagoTribune (3 Stars)  RE.com (3 Stars)  AVClub (B)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (S. Wloszczyna ) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review

Enough Said [2013] (written and directed by Nicole Holofcener) is a simple enough relationship dramedy of sorts. 

Eva (played by Julia Lewis-Dreyfus) is a 40-something divorced mother with a 18-year-old daughter, Ellen (played by Tracey Fairaway) who's getting ready go off to college at the end of the summer.  As such, the home's looking be pretty empty come the fall.  So reluctantly she gets talked into going to a party by a friend.  "Maybe you'll meet someone" is the premise.  "Ya right," but perhaps Eva's a little more vulnerable / a little more open to meeting new people this time than in the past.

So ... at said party she does actually meet two new people: First, she makes a new client. Eva's a massage therapist and she runs into a somewhat intimidating woman, but her age, named Marianne (played by Catherine Keener), a poet, who's interested in her services.  Second, she meets a guy, who's kind of a lug, though an amiable one, named Albert (played masterfully by the ever smiling, James Gandolfini, who's tragically died since the shooting of the film).   He too was divorced, and had a daughter about to head off to college.  So the two hit it off.

Now what would be the odds that Albert's ex would be Marianne?  And it takes some time for Eva to figure out that the "loser" that Mariane had been married to and complains about as Eva's massaging her is ... Albert, whose not-flawless but easy-going manner Eva's gotten to like.  And since Marianne and Albert are exes, neither initially knows that Eva is massaging and becoming chatty-friends with Marianne while she's also dating Albert.

This can't really end well ... and it doesn't.

The only thing is that to be honest I felt sorry for Eva because I could easily imagine myself having done the same thing as she did in the situation ... nothing and somehow hope for the best.

It would have been easier perhaps to break things off with Marianne.  But then a message therapist isn't exactly going to be throwing away good clients.  Done legitimately, it's actually quite hard work and one wouldn't want to easily throw away good, polite and grateful clients.  Then honestly, as Eva confides to a friend: if you knew someone who's dated someone that you're interest in, wouldn't you hear what they have to say... even if it is negative?

So there it is, and yes, Eva's budding relationship with Albert is more or less certainly doomed.  It's just a question of when / how the axe will fall.


However, here then the title of the film becomes interesting.  What if Marianne had bit her tongue and not talked so harshly about Albert?  Yes, she had no idea that Eva knew who he was much less that she was dating him.  But even then, what if she chose to not be so negative?  Okay, things didn't work out between Marianne and him.  She was clearly more intellectual and he more easy going.  But rather than hate one's ex (yes, even one's ex) why not just wish him/her the best?

We're all created and loved by the same God after all ...

So perhaps _way too much_ "was said" in this film and ironically it was Eva (and neither Marianne nor even Albert) who ended up being hurt.   Hmm. 


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All is Lost [2013]

MPAA (PG-13)  ChicagoTribune (3 Stars)  RE.com (4 Stars)  AVClub (A-)  Fr. Dennis (4+ Stars)

IMDb listing
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (A. Alikan) review
AVClub (M. D'Angelo) review

All is Lost [2013] (written and directed by J.C. Chandor) is a remarkable one man story about a lone yachtsman (played in the film by Robert Redford) that the script simply labels "Our Man" who finds himself in crisis at sea (as the opening credits tell us) "1500 miles from the Sumatra Straits" (somewhere in the Indian Ocean).

What's he doing out there?  We don't know.  In fact, learn next to nothing about the yachtsman during the whole course of the film.  In an opening voice-over, we hear him writing out what sounds like a generic letter of apology.  To whom is he writing this letter?  To unnamed loved ones?  To humanity in general?  To God?  Again we don't know.

As we hear him compose his short letter, we're also treated to an utterly generic view: gentle waves of a body of water extending out to infinity banging on "something metal."  What's this "something metal" floating out in a all-but-infinite body of water in the middle of nowhere?  Well, as we hear the yachtsman compose his letter, we're slowly given an ever improving view.  And as he finishes his rather short and very generic letter, we realize that the metal object that we've been observing, floating out in that all-but-infinite sea, is but one of those giant metal container boxes that container ships now carry that had apparently fallen from its ship one day (when?  we have no idea) and had been floating randomly on the sea ever since.

A credit on the screen then tells us that the story began "8 days earlier ..."

On that day, we're shown that at some random time during the day, the yachtsman is awaken (from either sleeping or napping ... we don't know) by a crash caused by the above described random metal container floating out at sea.

The random metal container, apparently containing gym-shoes, not only crashes into the boat, but punctures a hole in it.  It's not a huge hole.  It's eminently fixable.  And we see the yachtsman come to patch it up reasonably well with epoxy and some fiber-glass cloth.  But it did shake him up as perhaps nothing previously did, and the hole caused by the random-metal container that had been floating out at sea did cause some damage.  The yacht had at least temporarily taken in (unexpectedly) a fair amount of water, the result being that most of the yachtsman's electronics onboard had been fried.

So though he the yachtsman manages to patch-up his boat, he's now "sailing blind" or more correctly sailing "deaf" and "mute."  He's unable to communicate a distress-call to anybody via the radio and he can't receive any important information (mostly about weather...) either.   So he soon finds himself, out in the middle of nowhere, hit by a couple of very nasty storms (that perhaps previously he would have been able to avoid). The rest of the film, of course, unspools from there ... and of course the story goes largely downhill.

The question that the viewer inevitably starts to ask is whether (or not) the anonymous yachtsman is going to make it out alive.  On one hand, this is a "Hollywood movie" with the lead role being played by one of Hollywood's most beloved / talented actors.  On the other hand, the film's title is "All is Lost" ... So the viewer soon realizes that the story could really go either way.

It's also obvious that the story is intended to be taken as being about more than just "a lone yachtsman out at sea in a boat."  I'd say that the story a remarkably insightful allegory about aging:  For much of our lives "we're fine."  And like the yachtsman in the film, we may take this for granted, blissfully napping in our boat, perhaps even "drifting through life" until ... BOOM something happens and we're "not fine."   And that something may not be fatal.  Like the yachtsman, we may be able to "patch it up."  But it MAY rattle us, and may have other consequences that (cumulatively) set-us down a course toward our end.  And in the course of our dying, we're repeatedly forced to work with less-and-less, until ...

Great, thought provoking story ... definitely deserving Oscar consideration for acting, direction and screenplay.


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Rush [2013]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (L)  ChicagoTribune (2 1/2 Stars)  RE.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (B-)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (S. Wloszczyna) review
AVClub (B. Kenigsberg) review

Rush [2013] (directed by Ron Howard, screenplay by Peter Morgan) is straight-up car-racing movie that doesn't involve any bank-robberies or shooting.  Instead it's about an epic rivalry between two very different 70s-era formula-one drivers the brash/playboy Englishman James Hunt (played in the film by Chris Hemsworth) and the relentless/methodical Austrian Niki Lauda (played in the film by Daniel Brühl).  Both were incidentally from upper/upper-middle class homes (Hunt was the son of a London stockbroker, Lauda the son of an Austrian banker) and both were effectively disowned by their families for choosing to waste their lives on frivolity.

Yes, it's clear from the film that formula-one racing required money.  Niki Lauda is shown as having impressed the Ferrari family enough to convince them, Austrian though he was..., to race for their team, while Hunt managed to convince a British racing consortium that he stood the best chance of beating Lauda having done so back in their formula-three "minor league" pasts.  But then, this is part of the formula-one mystique.  Its drivers and races (held in all sorts of exotic cities across the world) could be compared to the medieval jousting knights and tournaments of old.

So then this then is the set-up of the film: the high-rolling/partying Englishman Hunt chasing the more cerebral Lauda for the 1976 Formula One Gran-Prix championship.  Both of course have love interests.  Hunt enters the 1976 season married but not particularly faithful to an English supermodel named Suzy Miller (played in the film by Olivia Wilde).  And during the course of the season, Lauda marries his German speaking Italian girlfriend Marlene (played in the film by Alexandria Maria Lara) who he had met, quite accidentally apparently, at a Ferarri family party.   The love lives of the two racers do, in fact, play significant roles in how the racing season (and hence the film) plays out.

All in all, I found the film to be very exciting.  Yes, car racing is often characterized as simply "racing around in circles."  Yet, formula-one racing is, in fact, more than just that.  Each of the race courses is different and when one adds variations in climate / weather / road conditions, one's left in awe at the bravery (or angry at the arrogance/recklessness) of the drivers.   IMHO it makes for one heck of a film!


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The Fifth Estate [2013]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  ChicagoTribune (2 Stars)  RE.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (C+)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (C. Lemire) review
AVClub (B. Kenigsberg) review

The Fifth Estate [2013] (directed by Bill Condon, screenplay by Josh Singer, based on the books Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website by Daniel Domscheit-Berg [IMDb-p] [IMDb-ch] and  WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy by David Leigh [IMDb] and Luke Harding [IMDb]), which enjoyed a special screening at the recent 49th Chicago International Film Festival  prior to its wide-release in the United States, is about one of the most controversial people of recent times, Julian Assange [IMDb-p] [IMDb-ch], the founder of the (universal) whistle-blower site wikileaks.org.  It's a film that is IMHO paradoxically both fascinating and dated and ultimately could serve as a very good young adult discussion piece.

The film is dated because the continued revelations stemming from nouveau über-leaker (yup, I loved putting that word construction together ;-), former National Security Agency contract worker Edward Snowden, make it clear that neither Assange nor his website are now essential for deep dark government / corporate secrets to be exposed.  What are needed are people disturbed after coming into contact with something that they find profoundly wrong willing to be(come) whistle-blowers and a Free/Credible/Professional Press to report (after appropriate fact-checking...) the news brought to it by them.  Indeed, among the true heroes of the film, one would have to say, would have to be the staff at The Guardian (website) who always took Assange seriously and (as per the film) were always willing to extend a hand to help him (Whether he was willing to accept their advice/help becomes another matter and a plot-point in the film).
 
However be this as it may (that Assange and his website are and perhaps always were "unncessary" / "irrelevant"), thanks to his Samson-like will (perhaps mixed with some arrogance) the world has indeed been changed by him.  Both the People and the Press are awake, if only temporarily, as a result of him.  And that makes him then, IMHO, a fascinating person. 

Now who is this Julian Assange [IMDb-p] [IMDb-ch] (played in the film by Benedict Cumberbatch), and where (what milieu) did he come from?  This is what this film is about.  Yes, it's gossipy (Australian, Assange is presented as having come from a hippy single-mother household and spent at least part of his childhood with her in some sort of a New Age-y cult called "The Family" ... Assange denies this).  To some extent the film is formulaic (Like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as presented in The Social Network [2010], Julian Assange, human rights activist that he may feel himself to be, is presented in the film as someone who relates far better to the virtual world of the Internet than to actual people).  And to a good extent the film's observations may once more be irrelevant (Why should one necessarily care if Julian Assange "may have trouble relating to people" if despite his flaws he made the world a better place (for all)?)  Still as gossipy or trite as the film may be characterized as being, we are all people and wish to understand the people who effect our world _as people_ as well.  So IMHO the film-makers' attempt to try to understand who Assange is and what makes him tick is ultimately legitimate.

In the film-makers' attempt to do so, they lean heavily on Daniel Berg [IMDb-p] [IMDb-ch] (played in the film by Daniel Brühl) Assange's (former?) friend and the author of one of the two books on which the film is based.  A German hacker / human rights activist, Berg is presented as being initially in awe of the Australian hacker and wikileaks founder who he meets in person for the first time at a hacker convention in Berlin (Indeed, Berg had been asked, presumably by Assange, to introduce him at a conference that Assange was to give at the convention).  It would also appear that Assange, presented in the film as a profoundly mistrustful-loner, was genuinely appreciative of both Berg's programming abilities (comparable to or at least "in the same league" as his own) and access (to the anarcho-hacker community in Berlin/Europe) and was at least initially appreciative of  Berg's friendship (Berg and his circle of friends were people who would have been able to understand both Assange's abilities and motivations). 

But Assange is presented in the film as a deeply contradictory figure: Though it's clear that he wants to defend human rights, he can't seem to relate well to people.  As such, his beloved creation Wikileaks is presented in the film as something of a virtual Potemkin village.  On one hand Assange talks of Wikileaks as "a movement" with "hundreds, thousands of volunteers."  But when Berg asks him about this in a very practical way (Why not share some of the verification work that Wikileaks has to do with some of those volunteers?) it becomes clear (AT LEAST IN THE FILM) that Wikileaks is basically JUST Assange and Berg.  Those "hundreds of volunteers" are generally just decoy electronic mailboxes and identities.

Now there is actually a logic to this: Volunteers themselves could become compromised, become sources of leaks, but ... what does it do to the credibility of a "movement" when honestly no one knows how large it actually is and one progressively discovers (perhaps even to one's dismay, as Berg apparently did) that "the movement" was essentially only the size of one or two people (him and Assange)?  Add then the obvious:  Berg's world is larger than simply Assange.  Berg has a girlfriend, another computer programmer named Anke (played by Alicia Vikander).  Assange is presented as having difficulty enough relating to Berg.  He's presented then as having no idea of how to relate to Anke, and then Anke is presented as someone who really comes to dislike him.  (Note here that as gossipy as this all may sound, Assange has famously (or infamously) been accused of criminal sexual misconduct in Sweden.  At least on some level, therefore, he's objectively had some trouble relating properly with women).

Now Assange is presented as having (had) other allies/sympathizers, notably at The Guardian (website).  Nick Davies (played by David Thewlis) of The Guardian is a significant character in the film in good part to remind us of this and of the fact that the second book on which this film is based was written by David Leigh [IMDb] and Luke Harding [IMDb]) of The Guardian.  But is Assange able to trust them?  Or is he just too closed in on himself to be able to trust anybody (even potential allies in some powerful quarters who could be / have been useful to him)?  That appears to be a question that the good folks at The Guardian ask about him.

The Fifth Estate [2013] becomes then the second (Hollywood) film of its sort -- the other being The Social Network [2010] about Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg -- in which a computer programming whiz who has arguably changed the world has been also portrayed as someone with deep problems with relating to others.  Is it fair?  Should it matter?   And is this characterization even particularly correct?  Zuckerberg, for instance, is married.  And Assange has been "relateable enough" to repeatedly call the film a pack of lies.

Anyway, IMHO the film would probably make for a very good "young adult" discussion piece about both the way news is presented (and at times "outed") in our world today and also about the ever increasingly important role that previously marginalized "geeks" are having in it.  

And without a doubt positively, film makes the anarcho-hacker milieu of Berlin's neon-lit internet cafes today supremely interesting.   As the film has Assange himself marvelling to Berg when he first arrives in Berlin, "Who would have guessed that the former heart of jackbooted Fascism would now be such a center of internet freedom."   Yes, indeed, who could have possibly guessed that after so much history (both as the center of Hitler's Germany and then at the very fault-line during the Cold War) it would today be unbelievably cool for a young person today to be able to say: "Ich bin ein Berliner." ;-) 

So in the end, good film folks, very good film!


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The Counselor [2013]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (O)  Michael Phillips (2 Stars)  RE.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (B)  Fr. Dennis (1/2 Star)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Chicago Tribune (M. Phillips) review
RogerEbert.com (D. Callahan) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review

Do you reject the glamor of evil?
-- Profession of Faith at the Baptismal Rite

About the most positive thing that could be said of the film, The Counselor [2013] (directed by Ridley Scott, screenplay by Cormac McCarthy) was that the wardrobe and makeup people outdid themselves in dressing-up the film's long-long-gone/sinister "power couple," the ever smiling/ever stoned Reiner (played by Javier Bardem) with a perfectly spiked "black sun" hairstyle (Honestly, how could one ever sleep in that, and how much time would it take to get it all groomed to such perfection each morning?) and his quite literally "tough as nails" girlfriend Malkina (played by Cameron Diaz).  I generally NEVER notice nails, but Malkina had PERFECTLY MANICURED "platinum" (or stainless steel ...) colored finger nails that INSTANTLY give one the impression that she was half-human/half-unbelievably-bad-news.  Then she had a LONG, LONG, MEANDERING "leopard style" tattoo that began at her neck and then flowed down her side, down to her a...).  Together the two raised a pair of "snow cheetahs" which they'd let loose each late-afternoon, to  run-down (and kill ...) jack-rabbits on the Texas prairie outside of El Paso where they lived, as they calmly sat drinking shaken flavored martinis and contemplated the sunset each day.  The Devil himself could not have been more exquisitely drawn.

Into their world entered a lawyer, known to us only as "The Counselor" (played by Michael Fassbender).  Already apparently wealthy, he apparently simply had a taste for more.  And so he enters into a fairly "high return" (hence also high risk ...) drug deal with said power couple.  Both Reiner and Reiner's middle-man Westray (played by Brad Pitt) who does Reiner's negotiations across the border with the (Mexican) drug lords warn (indeed try to _counsel_) "the Counselor" that he's getting into a world far more dangerous than his wildest imagination.  But "the Counselor," a dressed-for-success type-A personality lawyer won't take their counsel for caution and jumps right in.  Besides, he has a striking trophy-wife-to-be named Laura (played by Penélope Cruz) who he wants to impress with his prowess/success.

This can't possibly end well... and, of course, it doesn't.  It ends horribly, horribly badly and involves killings so grotesque that if not mirroring the _reality_ of the cross border City of Juarez today, would have no possible place on the screen / story-telling today.

Even then, honestly ... the prophet Isaiah offers good advice:

Hear, you who are far off,
what I have done;
you who are near,
acknowledge my might.

On Zion sinners are in dread,
trembling grips the impious;
“Who of us can live with the consuming fire?
Who of us can live with the everlasting flames?”

He who practices virtue and speaks honestly,
who spurns what is gained by oppression,
brushing his hands
free of contact with a bribe,
stopping his ears lest he hear of bloodshed,
closing his eyes lest he look on evil.
 
He shall dwell on the heights,
his stronghold shall be the rocky fastness,
his food and drink 
in steady supply.

-- Isaiah 33:13-16  (Morning Prayer Thursday, Week 1)

Yes, there is Evil in this world, but there certainly is no need to glory in it. Honestly, this film is not for the faint-hearted and of little conceivable value to anybody else.


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Walesa: Man of Hope (orig. Wałęsa. Człowiek z nadziei) [2013]

MPAA (UR would be R)  Fr. Dennis (4+ Stars)

IMDb listing
Filmweb.pl listing

Walesa: Man of Hope (orig. Wałęsa. Człowiek z nadziei) [2013] [IMDb] [FW]* (directed by Andrzej Wajda [IMDb] [FW]*, screenplay by Janusz Głowacki [IMDb] [FW]*) is a biopic from Poland about Lech Wałęsa [IMDb] the Nobel Peace Prize winning founder of Poland's Solidarity Trade Union (which played an instrumental role in bringing down Communism in the former Soviet Bloc). The film won Silver Hugo award recently (awarded to Robert Więckiewicz [IMDb] [FW]* for Best Actor for his performance in the film's title role) at the 49th Chicago International Film Festival.  The film also open the upcoming 25th Polish Film Festival in America to be held between Nov 8-24, 2013 here in Chicago.

When writing about another recent biopic, the Hollywood-produced film Jobs [2013] about the legendary cofounder of Apple Computers, I've noted that such films about "great leaders" can be tricky.  They can be fawning works of adulation and/or they can be hatchet jobs.   The current film about Wałęsa made by Andrzej Wajda [IMDb] [FW]* an admitted friend seeks to portray him in folk hero hues that will certainly annoy many, many Westerners (okay many, many Western liberals...) already appalled by the rise and continued presence of the self-evidently contrived, forced winking, flaming saccharine spouting American folksilla Sarah Palin [IMDb-p] [IMDb-ch].  Yet Lech Wałęsa [IMDb] was not Sarah Palin [IMDb-p] [IMDb-ch], was he?  PLEASE ... say it isn't so?  There was much, much more "there" THERE in the Lech Wałęsa [IMDb] of the 1980s, right?  (I do believe that there was much more to Lech Wałęsa [IMDb] and that the film shows this to be so, BUT what a fascinating question to consider when viewing this film! ;-)

The film is built around the device of Lech Wałęsa [IMDb] (played in the film by Robert Więckiewicz [IMDb] [FW]*) being interviewed in the 1980s while Poland was still under the Communists by an Italian journalist (played by Maria Rosario Omaggio [IMDb] [FW]*).  The device is effective because it underlines the unexpected qualities of the man.  It's clear from her somewhat grandiose initial questions that the Italian journalist is (perhaps necessarily) far more accustomed to interviewing preening Italian celebrities or perhaps Italian politicians.  And here she's interviewing a very practical, "down-to-earth" to downright _earthy_ Polish trade-union-leader proudly wearing an Our Lady of Częstochowa lapel pin, who while admitting to an "authoritarian streak" himself (I love that, and respect him _and the screenwriter_ all the more to (having him) admitting to that ;-), HATES PRETENSE OR JARGON.   "Will this interview help me or hurt me?" he asks the journalist as they begin the interview.  "I suppose it depends on your answers to MY questions," the journalist answers, irritated that he's actually posed the first question ... and to her ;-).   Sizing her up then, he shrugs his shoulders as if to say "What the heck ;-)" and consents to proceed ;-).  Note here the obvious: The right-brewed faux populist Sarah Palin that we know would NEVER EVER CONSENT to an interview like this and in a manner like that. "What the heck?"  Take a chance?  Right.  Instead, she'd SAFELY SPEW on FoxNews about the "lame street media...."

Where then to start Wałęsa's story?  The film-makers decide that December 1970 would be a good place to begin.  Why then?   Well in December 1970 there was an (illegal) strike at Wałęsa's place of employment, the Gdansk (then V.I. Lenin...) shipyard.  He was on the strike committee.  Yet he and his wife Danuszka (played magnificently throughout the film by Agnieszka Grochowska [IMDb] [FW]*) are about to have their first child.  Danuszka's just gone into labor and Lech's heading out the door of their tiny apartment with her to go with her to the hospital when he receives word that the strike (that he's voted against) has begun.  What to do?  GIVEN HONESTLY ONLY A SPLIT SECOND'S AMOUNT OF TIME TO THINK ABOUT IT, he decides (1) to ask his neighbor (present) to go with his wife to the hospital, (2) take off his watch and wedding ring, placing them in the hand of his aghast wife ("Lechku, what THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?") telling her "I'm sorry, BUT THIS IS IMPORTANT ... ;-)" ("BUT ... I'M IN LABOR....") "And if I don't come back, please sell these (the ring and the watch)," and (3) runs out the door to head to the strike WHERE HE SPENDS HIS TIME TRYING TO CALM THE WORKERS DOWN AND KEEP THEM FROM GETTING KILLED.

Of course he gets arrested.  At the police station, he repeatedly asks if he could talk to his wife.  "I need to know if I have a son or daughter."  "Shut up, you'll find out in five years after we're done with you!" "But you idiot, I tried TO STOP THIS STRIKE." "You have ANY WITNESSES?"  "YES, YOUR OWN POLICE."  The police official checks out the story.  It turns out that several of the baton swinging police officers who had been SUPPORTED BY TANKS remember "a guy with a black mustache" who was trying to calm the workers down.  Surprised, the police official tells him, "Your wife and son are okay."  "I have a son!" Lech happily repeats.

There's still the matter of "signing a few papers" and he'd be allowed home.  What papers?  Well, release forms AND ... one stating that he'd be willing TO COOPERATE WITH THE AUTHORITIES if/when they make "occasional inquiries" about some of the workers in the shipyard.  HE DOESN'T WANT TO SIGN.  But he's told (1) "You've ALREADY COOPERATED WITH US in trying to calm down the workers today" and (2) "You're not going home unless you sign the paper."  NOT NECESSARILY TOTALLY OPPOSED TO CIVIL AUTHORITY (EVEN IF it was being run by the Communists at the time) and WANTING TO SEE HIS WIFE AND SON ... he signs the paper and is allowed to go home (and see his wife and newborn kid).

In this early sequence we see WHY WALESA WAS/IS DIFFERENT:  If at times PERHAPS he was/is "a hack" -- he free admits to the journalist his limited education, his distrust of intellectuals who he believed/believes "think too much," and to trusting/following "his gut" -- HE WAS NEVER A STOOGE.

The story then that followed was of one who was BRAVE, often VERY SMART ("I always had a quick sense of KNOWING EXACTLY HOW MUCH WE COULD ASK OF THE AUTHORITIES AND WHEN") and in the absolute _best sense_ of John Paul II's "acting person" theology FREE long before the Iron Curtain came down.  After being arrested in Gdansk by no less than the local Communist Party Secretary coming to his door (with a Kalishnikow carrying police escort ...) at the proverbial "3 AM" and flown then by Polish military helicopter "somewhere East" (HOW FAR "East" he initially CAN'T TELL) he's told by one of the Polish officials transporting him: "You know our friends 'out East' keep asking us why we shouldn't just dispose of you."  Without missing a beat, Lech replies: "If you kill me, you know you'll just make me a Saint."

So this is one heck of a movie about an authentic folk hero.  Yes, his "shoot from the hip" / "anti-intellectual" limits are obvious (and presented in the film as such).  But that is, of course, the WHOLE POINT OF (CATHOLIC/THEOLOGICAL) SOLIDARITY: We (all of us) have been created by God to complete each other (cf. Col 1:24, Rom 12:3-8, 1 Cor 12:12-26).  Great film folks, great film!


* Reasonably good (sense) translations of non-English webpages can be found by viewing them through Google's Chrome browser. 


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