The Insider (Movie Review by Bob Racine)

          2 hrs & 37 min, color, 1999

The making of a docudrama is quite a challenge.  I am speaking of a true story that demonstrates the old adage that fact can be, if not stranger than fiction, then at least as amazing and startling.  There are of course those movies that purport to be true but are little more than contrived tributes to factual persons or groups of persons.  This is especially the case when the tale told is cast in the form of a musical.  Al Jolson, Eddie Duchin, Glenn Miller, and the composing team of Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, and several other show biz figures, have had the supposed stories of their lives emblazoned on the screen, but dig a little and you will find that at least 90% of the details portrayed come from the fertile mind of a Hollywood scriptwriter.  All of these above showy productions took great liberties in cleaning up the person’s act, making sure they came out smelling sweet for a family audience.  But just Google any one of them, and you will see just how phony the whole shebang really is.  “Based on the life of - !”  So the credits read.  Those two little words, “based on,” can mean nothing more than a faint suggestion of what might have been fact, if only, or what we would like to believe was fact.

A docudrama is something else.  It is a serious and concentrated attempt to tell the unvarnished truth about a living or historical subject or event.  It is not created in order to sell anything; it is not propaganda.  See how the word breaks down: docu - drama!  It falls somewhere between a newsy documentary and an entertaining but serious depiction.  A documentary is concerned with facts; a docudrama is concerned with truth.  It is an attempt at least to get at the truth by way of the facts.  Scenes and even characters are created out of the screen writer’s imagination “for dramatic purposes.”  But no attempt is made to clean up the undesirable elements.  Dialogue more inspired than the conversation that actually occurred can heighten the salient points in a historical reenactment.  These additions can give clearer definition to what was at stake in the course of events under examination. 

In my estimation “The Insider,” released in 1999, is a superb example of how to do it right, with honesty and integrity and with first rate film-making skill.  (“All the President’s Men” from 1976 is another.)  The quality screenplay, adapted from Marie Brenner’s Vanity Fair article “The Man Who Knew Too Much” is the work of Eric Roth and Michael Mann under Mann’s firm direction.  Russell Crowe plays Jeff Wigand, the biological chemist hired by the Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company (manufacturer of Philip Morris Cigarettes) who, after he was fired, blew the whistle on the company’s insidious process of deliberately enhancing the addictive effect of its product.  He did this by way of an interview with Mike Wallace (Christopher Plummer) on 60 Minutes in 1996, thereby taking the bold step of violating his severance agreement not to talk.  At first he resists opening his mouth to anyone in keeping with that gag order, but when Brown and Williamson starts tracking his every move and spying on him and attempting to add more severe conditions to the agreement, ones that are threatening to his wife and two little girls, he changes his mind and begins corresponding with CBS program supervisor Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) and soon agrees to the interview with Wallace, after which his troubles and heartaches are just beginning.   

Oddly enough, it is not just the tobacco industry and its underhanded behavior that is scrutinized so much in this tense probe, but also television journalism itself and its ethical quandaries.  It seems that Bergman’s enrolling of Wigand into telling all gets him entangled in a dilemma of his own.  The top officials of the network balk at running the expose, once filmed, for fear of being sued by Wigand’s former employer.  When the other news people besides Bergman concur in the decision, thereby leaving Wigand hung out to dry, Bergman must use his wits to get the decision reversed and save Wigand from total despair, his marriage having already failed.   After the full interview is broadcast, Wigand is gratified to know that his children are able to learn why he had put them through all that crisis.  He then became a high school chemistry teacher, a job that led to other opportunities.

Questions are raised that defy easy answers – about free speech and privileged communication.  And they are handled in good taste, with excellent pacing.  The film may run a full two and a half hours, but it is inconceivable to me that any caring person would be bored.  Every scene without exception is gripping; there are no drags or lags.  And after fifteen years it remains quite relevant and contemporary.  We are still hearing much about the subject of tobacco’s addictive power and about efforts to lobby Congress to increase the excise tax on this product.  A recent editorial in the Washington Post took issue with those who feel that we should just let the long time smokers smoke themselves to death and concentrate on saving the younger crowd.  It maintained that lung cancer is a very real danger.  It kills people by very slow degrees.  My own father was “lucky” in that he was dead within less than three months after he was diagnosed.  Most victims are not so “lucky.”  When Humphrey Bogart was watched lighting up with his leading ladies in all those movies he made during the 1940s, few people knew at the time that those weeds were killing him.  He finally died a very horrible death in 1957.  If anyone wants to know how horrible, just let them read Lauren Bacall’s autobiography.  The good news:  Recent polls have shown that while in the 1950s a full half of the U.S. population were smokers, today less than one fifth are.  But the push stays on for reducing that figure far more.  And we all know now that smokers have become a segregated minority in public with smoke free public places. How sweet it is!  Wigand enjoys his share of the credit for that.

The movie benefits from three strong male performances, each one a sturdy example of the acting craft. 

Christopher Plummer does not attempt to imitate Mike Wallace’s manner of speech or reconstruct his personality.  Such an attempt would have been a fool’s errand.  But he does capture the man’s tenacity and unapologetic attack mode, smartly and cogently.  You can hear the spirit of the man at work, and that is enough.  The character we see can cut someone down in a few words when he picks up the scent of mendacity.  Plummer must have spent many hours watching footage of Wallace doing his thing.  Great supporting work!

Russell Crowe is magnificent in the shoes of Wigand.  He brings a lot of vulnerability and snap and controlled fury to the part.  The character he embodies can be a bit fast on the draw, but he can also seethe until tempered by the input of calmer individuals.  According to reports from those at the CBS network who have seen the film, his interpretation of Wigand is quite accurate.  This remains in my opinion his best work on screen.  Only “A Beautiful Mind” would compete for the honor.

Al Pacino as Bergman comes forth with another of his brassy, take-charge, no-nonsense depictions, combining sincerity and dedication to the art of journalism with the voice of rationality amidst pending calamity.  No one else I know of could handle that better.  His scenes with Crowe are letter perfect and tone perfect, two vastly different warriors trying to find a common strategy.  

Though her part is quite small, I need to put in a word for Diane Venora, who plays Wigand’s wife.  She does a splendid job, bringing her share of heart to the picture.  One of the most stirring moments is the one in which she announces to her husband that she is leaving him.  She does not stage an uproarious scene; she just simply confesses to him, meekly and tearfully, that “I don’t think I can do this.”  She knows she should stick with him, that a wife’s place is at her husband’s side in a crisis, but she has to back out.  This confession follows a death threat which she herself has read on their e-mail.  A little too much for her! 

There are many memorable moments of confrontation in this masterpiece.  I have seen it about a half a dozen times, and I hope to again.  It is easy enough to obtain from Netflix.

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.

Sycamore Row by John Grisham (Book Review by Bob Racine

                         Published by Random House, 2013

After each reading of a John Grisham novel, I feel as if I have learned more about the law and the justice system in our country than any textbook or crash course for non-schooled adults could possibly teach me, and his latest work is no exception.  In fact, it is the most revealing I have ever taken the time to absorb, it being the ninth of his writings I have checked out.  As many of us know, Grisham is himself a lawyer.  When you follow the intricacies of any suspenseful plot he devises, you can rest assured that you are getting an accurate and authentic portrayal of how the court system operates.  His stories may be fictional, but they are not fanciful.  I suppose you can call Grisham’s books legal thrillers.  The devices of his principal characters in their struggles for justice and rectitude and legitimacy do not consist of firearms or martial arts or implements of cloak and dagger.  The system of jurisprudence itself is both the means of embattlement and the arena in which the embattlement occurs.  There are no white knights or flawless role models or Perry Mason-style practitioners.  All the persons he depicts are deeply flawed.  Some drink to excess and/or smoke to excess and/or bend the rules almost to the breaking point; all make mistakes, sometimes whoppers.  No one is lily white, not even the main character, Jake Brigance.

Do any of you Grisham fans recognize the name?  Jake put in his first appearance in the author’s first novel, “A Time to Kill.”  In that earlier work he is a trial lawyer in Ford County, Mississippi (fictitious of course) in 1985 defending a black man against a murder charge for killing the two white men who raped his daughter.  That was three years before the time setting of “Sycamore Row,” in which the litigation is not a murder trial but a contest over the legitimacy of a will handwritten by a man named Seth Hubbard just before he hangs himself from a sycamore tree.  It seems Seth has done something very odd and heretofore unheard of.  He has bequeathed 90% of a 24-plus-million dollar estate not to his two grown middle-aged children, but to his black housekeeper named Lettie.  In a death note that reaches Jake’s hands after the suicide has already taken place, Hubbard predicts that his relatives, all of whom he despises, completely cut out of the inheritance, will be greedily contesting its terms but urges Jake, whom Seth has chosen, to fight them all the way.  Lettie must prevail.  What complicates these seemingly clear instructions is the fact that over a year beforehand he made out an earlier one dividing his fortune between all of his offspring and their children, one that this new one is supposed to nullify completely.  Jake is faced with the task of serving the wishes of a man he has never met or seen in the flesh and proving that the second will is valid.    

The book has some length, quite a number of characters, and much of it portrays the maneuverings of the attorneys on both sides of the aisle.  The reader knows well ahead what each of them is up to and something about how they are plotting to establish that Seth either was or was not of sound enough mind to compose such a holographic document and only a day before he dispatched himself.  What seems at first a rather simple affair for Jake compared with the sensational murder trial of three years before is beset by complications piling one on top of the other until the outcome appears to be anything but a slam dunk. 

Jake is up against more than the greed of Seth’s relatives; there is chicanery right and left on the part of the lawyers for the family and Jake himself is not above a little maneuvering of his own.  In short, he needs the fees after a very dry season.  Over those previous three years business has been very sparse and because the Ku Klux Klan protested his defending a black person by burning down the house he and his wife Carla owned, he lost all his equity and has been renting a shabby small abode.  This will probate that has fallen into his hands promises to deliver him and his family from the financial doldrums, but there are rocks and shoals around which he must navigate.      

The stage is set for a marathon fight in the same courtroom where “A Time to Kill” takes place.  But the fight is entangled in many questions that no one including Jake can answer.   Why would a millionaire leave 90% of his assets to a housekeeper, something unheard of in a deep south community?  What influenced his decision?  The man was dying of cancer and in wretched pain.  Was his mind beclouded by the Demerol he was taking in such large quantities?  Did he really hate his children that much?  Did Lettie, who cared for him in the closing hours of his life and nursed him on his deathbed, use some feminine wiles to induce him into leaving her such an astronomical sum, one that no black person in the state owns or has ever owned?  What came over Seth?  And what dark secret out of Lettie’s past lurks in the shadows?  It is that dark secret, hidden even from her, that eventually breaks the case wide open.

The legal trajectory that slowly leads to the final courtroom confrontation I found absolutely enthralling.  It is perhaps unsettling for many readers to learn how so many rules governing jurisprudence are honored as much in the breach as in the observance, even by judges on the bench.  Consider these observations either from or about his characters that Grisham drops along the way: “[Legal] ethics are determined by what they catch you doing;”  “He was well versed in the ethics of his profession when they could be beneficial, otherwise he ignored them;”  “Trials are not about fairness – trials are about winning.”  The most fascinating of all is the sleight of hand by which the lawyers influence the selection of the jury.  (Of course, Grisham deals at even greater length with that subject in “The Runaway Jury,” one of the most exciting of his earlier works.)      

There are many and varied moving scenes depicted in this book.  Seth’s funeral gives new coloration to the term tragicomic.  Droves in attendance but no one present to grieve, only to keep up appearances with money on their minds or, as in the case of the county sheriff, to perform a duty and cover the scene.  Jake’s many off-the-record conversations with the judge are potent and most revealing about the delicate and slippery side of practicing law.  There is a very heartwarming sequence in which Grisham visits the Brigance household (including a 7-year-old daughter) on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning.  There are conversations between husband and wife pertaining to the lifestyle forced upon them by Jake’s practice.  There is a subplot pertaining to Lettie’s drunkard husband and her wish to be free from him, one that ends quite tragically for him and for two innocent victims of vehicular homicide and almost puts a stain on Lettie’s reputation, something under these circumstances she does not need.  

All through the circuitous but well integrated narrative, we can pick up the sound and the rhythm of jackals circling their prey and with an appetite for conquest, and over against all this fury is the simple private person of Lettie reluctantly participating and apparently helpless against the onslaught and the front page publicity.  Even members of her extended family, whom she barely knows, come flocking around her hoping for a windfall from the expected inheritance.  In an area like Ford County, what are the chances of an unprecedented probate trial such as this grinding on without the issue of race raising its ugly head?  What are her chances up against the machinations of professional white attorneys eager to keep the money in white hands and collect handsomely themselves off a protracted litigation?  And whose hands can Lettie hold while the storm rages on?  One sentence in the novel sums up the crucial question: “After all the witnesses had testified, after all the lawyers had been silenced, after all the wise words had been uttered . . . could those [jurors] (ten of whom are white) reach deep and find the courage to uphold Seth’s will?”

5% of the fortune has been left to Seth’s local church and the other 5% to his brother Ancil, whose whereabouts are at first unknown and whom he has not seen or heard from in decades.  Without giving away the outcome of this tense narrative, I will simply say that Ancil, whom nobody is thinking about during the course of the proceedings, gets to deliver the stunning blow that tears the lid off the county’s shameful past.  The closing chapters of “Sycamore Row” had me in cathartic tears.  The heartfelt truth finally has the last, unwanted but cleansing word. 

Recommended for serious and probing adult readers with socio-political conscience and awareness!

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.

Antonio Vivaldi in Perpetual Motion (Poetry by Bob Racine)

He made the God of humanity a gift of flutes and strings.

Once birthed out of the resonant hollow of a seashell,

his Mediterranean mermaid mother rocked him

in a Venetian gondola.  There he found his fluty tenor.

He learned to play off the backs of dainty-footed cupids

and in time made the squeak of a fiddle sound

as if it were covered with silky moist seaweed.

If anyone ever heard the turtle’s murmuring voice, it was he.

While others were enchanted by epic grandeur,

he was content with puddles and simple fair weather frolics,

capering on the tips of his toes.

Not quite solemn, never a screamer or shouter,

more the playful vivacity of fish in a pond

or sainted elves scrambling in the brush.

Or a sweet bird of an ancient paradise, swooping over the altar!

Listen for him at the far corner of the cathedral,

never in the listener’s face or pounding the ear,

calling to human hearts across the length of years.

         

Look again, and he is a troubadour walking on water,

or a minstrel among the four seasons,

un-beholden to any lord of the earth.

He had no sad or tragic tale to tell,

no purgatory of pain to visit upon us.

All he had to give was the purity of his form.

 

Once summoned by heaven,

he approached its gate with harp and voice,

dancing once more with his native cherubs.

For sacred listening pleasure, I recommend Vivaldi’s Gloria, one of the finest choral works ever composed.  For any occasion I suggest The Four Seasons, my favorite chamber piece, and any one of his six flute concerti.

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.

It's a Wonderful Life (Movie Review by Bob Racine)

                        2 hrs & 10 min, b&w, 1946

Bedford Falls!  No fictional small town in the heart of America has ever gained the reputation among English-speaking movie-goers or inspired their lasting affection as has this mythical community.  It is the place in our imaginations that serves as the setting for a very special fantasy folk tale entitled “It’s a Wonderful Life,” created by writer/director Frank Capra.  A three time Oscar winner, his was a well heralded name in cinema during the 1930s and 1940s, a teller of moral stories that contained no grit or grubbiness or gross violence (or even the hint of it) but lived up to the highest dramatic and comedic standards.  In censorious terms “Wonderful Life” would be considered spanking G-rated clean.  Bad tempers, rowdiness, collisions between strong personalities, a tug of war between serene happiness and desperate fear and sorrow are as close as it ever gets to outright pain and raw shock for the viewers.  In a word, all of it is satisfying.

This is one of those motion pictures that has taken a very long time finding its audience, a few generations, in this case.  I have never heard a convincing explanation for why this family friendly, brilliantly mounted, dynamic, funny, passionate, blushingly romantic, exciting struggle between courage and defeat, gain and loss, loveable and life-size portraits of basic good and monstrous evil was a box office bust when it was first released the year after World War II ended.  It would appear to be the quintessential postwar tale, celebrating the “good life” that millions had just given their lives to preserve.  James Stewart (a veteran of that war and this his first picture after returning home) gives what he considered his best performance as the small town favorite son who tries over the space of almost twenty years to get himself out of what he regards as a shabby and “broken down” whistle stop. He wants to see the big world but is thwarted at every turn because of his stubborn sense of decency and commitment to the down and out.  Stewart thought it his best work and each time I see it I find it a little harder and a little harder still to disagree with him.  To me he is a cosmic gift that never fades from our memories, as firm in place as the firmament.  There will never be another like him, I daresay.                         

The name of the man he plays is George Bailey, about to leave for college when his father, the compassionate owner of a building and loan company risking his own small fortune to give Depression victims a fair break, has a fatal stroke and George has to stay behind to keep the company afloat and protect it from a miserly, greedy ogre named Potter (Lionel Barrymore) who is seeking to lay his hands on it and foreclose on the poor debtors.  Another factor that keeps him in town is his love for a gentle and attractive young woman named Mary (Donna Reed), whom he marries and by whom he has a brood of four children.   The tale winds its way through the 1930s and throughout the war, Bailey still a fixture in the town.    

I feel compelled to take a little space here to comment on Barrymore.  What a life force to contend with he proves to be on that screen.  Of course we would expect nothing less from a Barrymore.  I doubt seriously if Capra ever had anyone else in mind to play Potter.  Who else could have done full justice to him?  Though a wheelchair victim himself off camera, Barrymore never seemed to have trouble getting himself cast in many solid and rewarding roles throughout his career without ever having to compete with ambulatory actors.  With a broad chest and a giant rolling thunderclap of a voice he strikes a little fear in me just by opening his mouth and rattling the rafters.  The wheelchair becomes a throne of ill will.  Where did he or the likeness of him ever go?

Meanwhile, back to George!  Comes the war’s end, and he is driven almost to suicide by a stroke of terrible financial misfortune.  Did I say suicide?  Yes, I did!  Clean cut George, of all people!  But then another character comes into the picture, a man named Clarence (Henry Travers).  Oops, did I say man?  Not quite, though he once was.  Clarence is an angel sent in answer to prayer to save George from himself.  He is not your conventional one robed in white splendor uttering elegant truisms and casting an irresistible spell.  He does not even have wings, though he has been waiting for them for almost a century.  He has been told, however, that if he brings off this life-saving miracle he will earn his wings.  He is small of stature, speaks in such a colloquial twang that he could easily be mistaken for somebody’s grandfather right off the farm.  He does not even look sure of himself.  It takes a while before even he gets his confidence up. How does he save George?  By a hocus pocus transformation?  No!  By singing him songs?  No!  By preaching to him?  No!  By threat or intimidation?  No!  By force?  No!  But he does pull a kind of cosmic trick out of his hat, apparently one never before used, one he is not even sure will work.  For the benefit of those who have not seen the film, I will not disclose details, except to say it involves helping George understand what exactly his life has meant to others.  This last half hour of the film is in my estimation the best part.  All of it is pure gold – suspenseful, gripping, deeply touching and funny, as George puts up a titanic fight trying to resist Clarence’s help, not even believing he is who he says he is.   

  

Yes, it may be something of a fairy tale, but one that speaks metaphorically to real human beings and their major lifelong struggles, as fairy tales were originally meant to do.  It is a warm and wonderful narrative, told with a well-sustained sense of humor from start to finish – a mixture of the lightest and the darkest within all of us.  Capra was a master at directing crowd scenes and giving intricate structure to every phase of his storyline.  He gets top grade work out of everyone in the huge cast, including Thomas Mitchell (another movie icon from that period) as a coworker of George’s, who is party to the money crisis.    

Not exactly the kind of movie that gets made anymore but one that has transcended its time to lay siege to our hearts.  Chances are you will see it advertised for TV showing sometime in the coming month.  It has become a Christmas holiday favorite, not the least because the closing sequences take place at Christmas time, when everybody is in a tenderhearted mood – everyone, that is, except George Bailey who stares into the bottomless abyss.  Yes, love wins the day, and every time I see this movie (one of my 100 favorites) I always swear that this time I am not going to cry.  But I always do.  Have a boo-hoo yourselves and have a Merry Christmas.  

The disc is widely available for rental. 

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.