2hrs & 1 min, color, 2013
How many of you remember The
Weathermen, more accurately known as The Weather Underground? During the 1960s there was a movement called
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), dedicated to the creation of a more just
system of government and economics and opportunity for all classes of citizenry
in these United States and the beleaguered nations of the known world. As the title suggests, the movement started
among U.S. college students, active not only in protest against the Vietnam War
which was underway at the time but against all use of “imperialistic” measures
on the part of our government. And yet
it was peaceful in its methodology and the pressures it tried to bring to bear
upon those in power to effect needed change.
But by the end of the decade many in the movement had grown increasingly
dissatisfied with the pace of change and out of this dissatisfaction grew a
more radical, militant and subversive offshoot, who became convinced that only
by armed warfare against the government could any national face change be
brought about.
They called themselves the
Weather Underground , born on the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor in
1969. Violence for them replaced
peaceful pressure and protest. Several
banks were robbed, government buildings were bombed (the Pentagon, the Capitol
and the State Department), even a Brinks truck was attacked and a police
officer killed during the melee. Their
activity continued far into the 1970s, though it began to peter out after the
Peace Accord with Hanoi was signed in 1975, with only scattered pockets of
incident between then and 1981.
Naturally you would expect
any movie pertaining in any way to the Weathermen to contain at least some
violence. But “The Company You Keep,” smartly
mounted by Producer/Director Robert Redford, written by Lem Dobbs and based
upon a novel by Neil Gordon, is a completely non-violent narrative. It has its setting in the recent past long
after the movement’s activity has come to a halt and many of its former
instigators scattered to the wind have been reduced to names on the FBI wanted
list. Those who abhor explicit violence
can take comfort from the complete absence of gunplay or bloodletting. No one even gets socked or punched or
tackled. Even the arrests that are
dramatized are non-violent. No car
chases, not even any sex! This is not,
therefore, a thriller in the usual sense of the term. But it is intelligently made, scripted, acted
and emotionally involving. Perhaps we
could call it a thinking person’s thriller.
I as a thinking and somewhat caring person delighted in every minute of
it, in spite of some drubbing by other critics.
The screenplay centers upon a
widowed lawyer (Redford) and his eleven-year-old daughter (Jackie Evancho –
yes, the singer) living in Albany, New York, still grieving over the
wife/mother’s recent accidental death.
The girl has been through a severe emotional time of it, but what she
does not know is that her locally respected, professionally successful and
loving father has another identity and her life on account of it is about to be
shaken up once more. He is a former
member of the Weathermen who for thirty years has been eluding capture under an
assumed name. Dad is exposed thanks to
the tireless and slogging work of a young newspaper reporter (Shia Labeouf)
investigating the arrest of a woman (Susan Sarandon) also a longtime Weather
Underground fugitive affiliated with Redford.
The connection is made in newsprint and the shadow game between the reporter,
the FBI and the previously respectable lawyer begins.
As it so happens Redford,
wanted for the murder of a bank employee, was not in the bank, having already
withdrawn from the robbery and the movement, but since his car was used to make
the getaway he has been the target of the FBI for thirty years. Only one person who knows that fact can clear
him and that is an old lover (Julie Christie).
His hunt for her carries him and us across country through many twists
and turns. En route he gets to see how
other former participants are presently living.
One in particular (Nick Nolte) is not sure he wishes to help his old
friend and endanger his own livelihood from a lumber business. Chris Cooper plays Redford’s innocent
brother, who nevertheless takes care of the eleven-year-old daughter while the
hunt is in progress. One moment our
fugitive is a man of spotless repute, the next he is a pariah that not even old
acquaintances are eager to assist.
Actually the reporter’s
strand of narrative in the film is as gripping as that of the lawyer’s. Under the gun of his ill-tempered editor boss
(Stanley Tucci), on a small newspaper competing with the major dailies, he is
ready to move the earth and the sun to get to the bottom of Sarandon’s and
Redford’s stories and make a big name for himself. Like the ex-radical he is tracking he too
does a lot of traveling about the country checking out clues and interviewing
people once in cahoots with Redford and the lawless network. He uncovers so many details that he incurs
the wrath of the FBI unit searching for Redford when it appears that he is
ahead of them and maybe interfering with their search. Of course the net inexorably closes, all
bumpy roads leading to the same place, a quite suspenseful and gripping climax
and the revelation of a deep shady secret that Redford and Christie share.
Redford made a casting error
on the film that is glaring – that of himself in the lead. His septuagenarian face and figure make him a
most unlikely father of a preteen child.
But his charisma and focused attention to the many intricacies of his
character’s dilemma largely compensate for this oddness. No one could have crafted this production and
its highly political content better than he.
I have enjoyed all the many films he has directed; he has a good sense
of balance and proportion, and he is not afraid to tackle difficult subject
matter.
What keeps us emotionally in
the story’s grip is of course the question of the child’s fate. If caught, Redford knows that not only would
he lose his freedom but her as well and she him. We are allowed to examine the subject of
radicalism and the mindset of a terrorist but from a very personal vantage
point. How does one complete the kind of
past these people have run from? What
becomes of old shibboleths that once threw otherwise civilized people into
drastic and explosive and antisocial compacts?
How does one live with secrets, hidden or exposed? Even apart from what such a one might owe
society and its system of justice, how does one live with the defeat of the
former cause when time has proven it impossible of realization?
There is much reflection
verbalized in this film, but Redford does not get mired in words. There is movement and atmosphere and vibrancy
and bracing tension and of course keenly wrought performances by a choice bunch
of professional actors and actresses in supporting and featured roles. And let’s hear it for Dobbs’ script! There are lines that ought to be carved in
stone for future generations.
To read other entries in my
blog, please consult its website:
enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn
about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.
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