Capone's Art-House Round-Up with Michael Moore's WHERE TO INVADE NEXT and IN THE SHADOW OF WOMEN!!!

Hey, folks. Capone in Chicago here, with a few films that are making their way into art houses or coming out in limited release around America this week (maybe even taking up one whole screen at a multiplex near you). Do your part to support these films, or at least the good ones…


WHERE TO INVADE NEXT
The latest documentary from professional rabble-rouser (and I say that with all due affection) Michael Moore (ROGER & ME, BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, FAHRENHEIT 9/11, CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY) is that it comes across as one of his most subtle films—relatively speaking—in terms of the message he’s trying to deliver about the state of our union, especially in the context of the rest of the world. After a silly introductory about the many wars in which America has become embroiled over recent decades, he plots his own invasion of foreign lands with himself as the sole member of the invasion force. To what end? Well that’s where the subtlety comes in. And slowly over the course of WHERE TO INVADE NEXT’s two hours, it’s revealed that Moore is hoping to export American ideas and practices about education, the justice system, workforce practices, sex and equal rights into other nations. Naturally, things don’t go as planned.

I don’t think I’m ruining anything in saying that Moore discovers that all of the core ideals at the heart of the American Dream are not only alive and well in these other nations, but they are also sadly lacking within our borders. Perhaps the most startling section of the film is early on in dealing with schools in France, who serve excellently prepared, healthy lunches; have frank and open discussions on sexual attitudes; and don’t teach to the test. The kids are healthier, rates of STDs are lower, and (as we see in a quick jaunt to Finland) educating the entire person is resulting in much smarter kids.

Moore takes measured looks at factories where workers are actually valued by their employers, prisons where murderers have a fair number of freedoms and are taught to be self-sufficient; national governments where women hold the highest offices; colleges where tuition is free, thus freeing graduating students from decades of debt; and a healthy number of Holocaust memorials throughout Germany, underscoring the need of nations to acknowledge their darkest days. (Moore wonders where the abundance of US memorials to Native Americans and slaves are.)

What sets WHERE TO INVADE NEXT apart from Moore’s other works is that, even as he’s taking the occasional potshot (well deserved in many cases) at American practices, he’s often simply praising the good works of other countries and holding them up as an example to the US and the rest of the world of what we once were capable of and what we might be again. Sure he’s still cracking jokes and creating visual gags, but mostly he’s just gazing in astonishment at how others make sensible policies look easy. The film’s final segment in Iceland, where a great many women are in top positions in government, Moore lets the statistics on corruption (or lack thereof) do the talking for him—although his interviews with many of these leaders are fascinating and quite revealing.

With example after example, Moore isn’t trying to parade a bunch of countries that are better than America. His thesis is that many of these great ideas were at one point in history part of the American ideal and way of life. These were nations that didn’t like the way things were going where they were, and so they changed them, a practice that seems to have been subverted by special interest groups stateside. Using his own slanted, yet effective, brand of storytelling, Moore is pointing us in a direction that he believes will result in a better America. For those who criticized his films in the past for emphasizing problems without suggesting possible solutions, he’s done that in spades here, and it left me not feeling angry but strangely hopeful. In many ways, WHERE TO INVADE NEXT is the Michael Moore movie for people who don’t like Michael Moore movies.


IN THE SHADOW OF WOMEN
There’s something quite wonderfully old-school New Wave-ish about this black-and-white tale of a dysfunctional romance that somehow finds a way to function, from one of the few remaining masters of French cinema Philippe Garrel (JEALOUS, A BURNING HOT SUMMER).

IN THE SHADOW OF WOMEN centers on the tumultuous relationship between middling documentarian Pierre (Stanislas Merhar), and his editor wife Manon (Clotilde Courau). They’re working together on a film about surviving members of the French Resistance during World War II. They are both clearly unhappy in the marriage, but rather than simply end it, they both discover the fleeting joys of cheating—he with Elisabeth (Lena Paugam), an intern at the film archive where he works; she with a pretty boy that we barely get to know.

As part of the film’s pitch-black humor, we aren’t really meant to like any of these characters, and director Garrel (writing with frequent Luis Bunuel collaborator Jean-Claude Carrière) makes that pretty easy by making his two leads insufferable, whiny hypocrites, who complain when all is well about as passionately as they complain when things are a mess. Still, there are few funnier moments than watching Pierre get more and more jealous of his wife the more he cheats. And when he finally discovers her dalliance, he’s crushed, and we celebrate his pain like it’s a global holiday. Tables are turned and then turned again, and as much as we fully understand that these two maniacs don’t belong together, we still root for them to keep things on track because we wouldn’t wish them on anybody else.

IN THE SHADOW OF WOMEN is all about the droll delivery, the callous attitudes, and making certain that almost no one in this story places any real value on emotion. Elisabeth might be the only character we actually sympathize with, but even she knows she’s getting involved with a married man and dives in headfirst. Although most of the characters are fairly appalling, Garrel seems to save a little extra vitriol for the men. There seems to be a foregone conclusion in this movie that men will cheat because they can, whereas women only do so when they’re lonely and need to feel wanted and alive.

Resorting largely to stereotypes about the sexes, but still bringing a little something extra to the mix through clever writing, the film exists largely to make certain that men and women understand that, for the most part, the other sex has your number, and there’s little you can do or say in the realm of cheating that hasn’t been done or said before, with more intelligence, wit, and cunning.

-- Steve Prokopy
"Capone"
capone@aintitcool.com
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