After Kony: Staging Hope (2011/First Run DVD)/Bill Moyers: Beyond Hate (1991/Acorn/Athena DVD)/Sidney Lumet’s Daniel
(1983/Paramount/Legend DVD)/Witness: A
World In Conflict Through A Lens (2013/HBO DVD)
Picture: C+/C/C+/C+ Sound: C+/C/C+/C+ Extras: C+/B/D/D Main Programs: B-/B/B/B-
Murder,
genocide, terrorist attacks, brutal attacks, homicides, threats, prejudice,
bullying, rape, hate. It seems we see
more of that in the media than ever before, whether in the U.S. or
otherwise. Why? Do some people like this situation to take
advantage of other’s misfortunes? To
hold onto power falsely? To ruin the
world because they hate it and themselves while pretending to have some
satisfaction with it? A cycle of new
releases and one you may have missed cover the spectrum of these issues well.
Bil
Yoelin’s After Kony: Staging Hope
(2011) is a fine documentary finished before the anti-Kony internet movement
that was nice, but failed to get the genocidal maniac captured. The 99 informative minutes here show us in
more detail than most U.S. media how Joseph Kony and the “Lord’s Resistance
Army” fought briefly for, than suddenly against the Acholi people of Northern
Uganda for over 20 years, terrorizing them, recruiting young people by force,
rape, torture, murder and much, much more.
With Kony on the run, how does a nation and people heal and find way to
fix things when some scars will last forever?
Enter
Melissa Fitzgerald, a stage, theater, performance and acting artist who has
come to the country to set up artistic expression for people all over the place
and help them deal with an ugly night, are the government could not stop and is
still permanently affecting huge numbers in an under told story we should all
be aware of.
Miss
Fitzgerald narrates the program very thoroughly and allows the many survivors
to tell their nightmares to us, then we often see them acted out and dealt
with. It is a remarkable thing she has
done to go to this dangerous place to help people so selflessly and have such a
positive effect. We meet so many great
people as well who in no way should have ever gone through the living hell they
have endured. There are also issues with
poverty, hunger and HIV/AIDS, but this work does not shy away from them either.
I hope
the U.N. (et al) gets Kony and brings him to trial, but until then, Uganda
hopefully is at a turning point and this work stands as a testament to what
was, is and hopefully will be in terms of a better future finally after such
horrible times.
Extras
include text on the filmmakers, Photo Gallery Trailer Gallery and DVD-ROM PDF
Study Guide on the subject.
Though
made 20 years before, Bill Moyers:
Beyond Hate (1991) has dated little as our host examines the history, dark
ironies, cruelness, consequences and ugly state of hatred and how it leads to
so many of the world’s ills. I remember
seeing this when it first aired and it stayed with me. Now, even after so many changes, the Internet
era, end of the USSR & Cold War, new surge of terrorism and comebacks of
hatreds we thought would not return, the priceless points and valuable
information presented is as important as ever.
The
interviews with various experts and the words of ignorance, hate and anger of
the awful people who fan the flames of hate are also here to embarrass those
ignorant enough to admit their hatreds.
Especially when you have a sort of ideological war between news media,
even major media, such a solid journalistic approach to the subject stands the
test of time and makes us realize one of the reasons hate has increased in too
many ways is because major media has irresponsibly allowed some forces to try
and kill journalism. Another solid entry
in Athena’s long, ongoing DVD series of Moyer’s great works, this one needs
revisited as much as any issued to date.
Extras
include Facing Hate, the second show
made the same year which has Moyer doing a full-length interview with Elie
Wiesel, informative text on Moyer & select participants in these shows and
another one of Athena’s nicely illustrated 12-page booklet on the programs
here.
Based on
the E.L. Doctorow book, Sidney Lumet’s
Daniel (1983) is an underrated, impressive adaptation of a story that
examines hate, witch hunts, the death penalty, freedom of speech and freedom in
general as we see a alternative version of the Rosenberg Story. That was the 1953 incident where two people
were charged with treason and spying for “communists” (often a metaphor for
American Jews, et al at the time) and executed by the U.S. Government in the
madness of the Communist and Hollywood Witchhunts.
Fresh off
of his work in the likes of Ordinary
People, Timothy Hutton is the title character, one of two now-adult
children of the version of the Rosenbergs (Mandy Patinkin, Lindsay Crouse) who
had no children in real life. He has a
sister (Amanda Plummer) who is not always well and in conflict with her
brother, but he is determined to not just let their parent’s death be
over-simply explained away. He wants to
know the all the details of how they were targeted and killed.
He does
not remember them being involved in half the things they were accused of and
loved them as they loved him. He knows
something is not ringing true about the history he has been fed and will not
stop until he has piece of mind. Hutton
is great in the role, including his voiceovers and camera appearances
discussing how certain kinds of torture and murder were always reserved for
those with little or no power in human history.
Coming
off of a great epic film like Prince Of
The City, Lumet was up next to make the epic Al Pacino Scarface, but unhappy with some of the politics of that project,
let Brain De Palma take over and made this film instead. While that film has transmuted in all kinds
of ways (which needs a separate essay), Daniel
(especially in the new boring, conformist Reagan cinema that had arrived by
1983) was not a hit any more than Scarface
and was also lost in the critical shuffle.
Now, it is one of the most underrated films of one of the greatest Hollywood filmmakers of all time.
Much of
the cast comes from the stage and all are terrific. The film expertly moves back and forth from a
slightly sepia-toned 1950s to naturalistic full color of the late 1960s/near
modern times and this works totally as a narrative approach and not some fancy
device that backfires as it usually does today.
The many
kinds of hatreds discussed in the above releases also find manifestation in
several tough scenes in this film, showing that Lumet could be as realistic as
any filmmaker today and all that makes Daniel a film more than worth
rediscovering.
There are
sadly no extras, but maybe Legend can add some if they do a Blu-ray version.
Finally
we have a new documentary mini-series in the Michael Mann-produced Witness: A World In Conflict Through A Lens
(2013) for HBO. We get four shows
featuring four very brave, bold, dedicated photojournalists telling important
stories on location in Juarez, Libya, the South Sudan and the slums of Rio respectively. Some
of this gets ugly and you will see footage here you would never see anywhere
else.
Eros
Hoagland covers the Narco War in Juarez, Michael Christopher Brown tells of the
trails and tribulations of dealing with the madman Gaddafi in Libya, Veronique
De Viguerie goes to meet with and photography the Arrow Boys fighting Joseph
Kony (see above) and his men in the South Sudan and Eros Hoagland also covers the
drug and power was in slums of Rio De Janeiro between gangs and the government.
Now this
is the kind of new, fresh, hard hitting journalism TV needs more of, and yet,
here it is trapped on the great pay TV series HBO. They should syndicate it. this should be an
ongoing series and I hope more episodes are on the way, because this can only
be the very tip of the iceberg.
There are
no extras.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Kony
and Witness are HD shoots on
location and may have some flaws here and there, but I thought they looked good
and were shot very well under the sometimes extreme circumstances. Some shots are impressive and some sadly
so. The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1
image on Daniel comes from a pretty
good print, only limited by the format’s standard definition. This is a well shot film that looks as good
as anything on the list, but being the oldest of the releases, shows how 35mm
film’s endurance is highly inarguable.
That
makes those three on par with each other, but the 1.33 X 1 on Moyers is from professional analog
videotape and has its share of moiré patterns, staircasing, aliasing errors and
other flaws that the case warns about anyhow.
Still, color can be very good for the format and these were well edited
for their time.
Witness is the only one of the four DVDs
to offer lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes on its programs, but with location audio
issues and other unavoidable audio flaws, it is pushing it a little bit. This is about as good as this could sound,
though I wonder how this would sound in lossless form. The lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo on Kony has some of the same audio issues,
but is not bad overall. The lossy Dolby
Digital 2.0 Mono on Moyers is the
poorest here with slight background noise throughout and audio that might be
second generation. The lossy Dolby
Digital 2.0 Mono on Daniel is the
oldest and most well-recorded of the four, done under controlled studio
circumstances with possibly some post production audio and location audio that
is not bad for its age.
- Nicholas Sheffo
