muvies

The Manchurian Candidate

Maybe Johnathan Demme's brain has been altered by some sinister Hollywood plot. In "The Truth about Charlie," and now, "The Manchurian Candidate," his directorial mastery is still intact and incorporates dazzling new editing styles and bold imagery, but his soul seems missing. He is completely out of touch with the real world and has created two colorful confections that actually just disrespect the audience's intelligence.

This is a remake of a fairly bad cult film from the 60's of the same name, and it looks to be as overrated as the original. Much seems to be being made of its topicality and searing anti-authoritarian message. So topical, in fact, that its run in theatres may coincide exactly with the phase in the political cycle it follows: the action opens during the democratic national convention and ends on election night (or thereabouts, I left, bored out of my mind, 10 or fifteen minutes before the final credits).

It's the story of "the first privately owned Vice President" - Liev Schrieber as a politician who has been implanted with a chip in his brain which allows operatives of a company called Manchurian Global to control him at will be speaking a magical password to him over the phone. Denzel Washington is the Gulf War veteran whose the only one who suspects the truth, and must fight throughout the movie against the fact that his ideas are the very stereotype of a paranoid schizophrenics.

So I never got over the total scientific implausibility and psychological jejuneness of this implant. They actually drill a hole in Liev's head to put it in - it's some kind of biochip that sits deep in his brain right in the exact right place. To me this is over-the-top so-bad-it's-good b-movie type of plot material, but it's not really treated that way. There's too little consciousness of the absurdity of the device. Given that it is the essential metaphor of the film, standing for Halliburton-style corporate control of American politics, this makes the story fundamentally broken. We watch disbelievingly as Denzel convinces government bigwigs of the reality of this conspiracy WAY too easily. It's utterly absurd.

There are several other enormous plot holes. Such as, Why has the FBI hired a cute young girl to sell Denzel groceries and seduce him, starting long before he's really on anyone's radar as a whistleblower? (Maybe it's answered in the last reel). And then it turns out the implant was the Veep's mom's idea (she's played by Meryl Streep). Demme hammers us mercilessly with the Freudian implications of this, including a scene in which she zaps him into zombie mode with a keyword, takes his shirt off, kneels in front of him seductively, rubs his chest and has to hold herself back from french-kissing him. Bleah!

It's a shame because Denzel gives a fantastic performance, full of shame, reticence and confusion. He's really got a lot of range. Everyone's good, in fact. And like I said the direction is very sure-handed. The screenplay is just crap. Aside from the ridiiculous story, the dialog is wooden and soap-operaish. Not really true, heard stuff too often.