mctrane Reviews

Carla's Song (1996)

interesting mix of whimsy and woe

[10 February 2002]

Ken Loach is a remarkable storyteller. Notice how subtly Carlyle's George changes from a loveable lout to noble lover; now find a recent Hollywood film that accomplishes something even close. Moving dramatically from the grey grime of Glasgow to the green pandemonium of Nicaragua in 1987, this film charts a remarkable story of how international politics becomes an international dance of love becomes international politics.

The reviewer who argues that the film glorifies the Sandinistas has it all wrong (except perhaps in the world of doublespeak where simply to treat the Sandinistas with sympathy is to glorify them . . .) Loach rather glorifies the kind of loving devotion that leads George to make a remarkable self-abnegating gesture at the end of the film. Even as I believe that the film is primarily about the love between Carla and George, I am happy for the legions of viewers in the U.S. who, upon watching this film, might be inspired to investigate what the U.s. was up to in Nicaragua in the 1980's. As Noam Chomsky so calmly puts it, U.S. involvement in sponsoring terrorism against the Sandinista government is a completely "non-controversial" issue (underlying strong, though naturally unenforceable acts of censure against the U.S. from both the World Court and U.N.). In the film, Scott Glenn has a few nice moments articulating this position. Very worthwhile. And when we finally hear Carla's song, it is moving indeed.

Limbo (I) (1999)

A superbly existential morality tale!

[10/10 · 2 July 1999]

It's certainly interesting to note how various viewers respond so differently to the conclusion of Sayles' magnificent film. Natural enough that a conclusion that so flagrantly violates viewer expectations of what a conclusion should be, and do, should meet with so much frustration, even anger, from so many viewers.

But the viewer able to entertain a different sort of ending may be able to experience something quite extraordinary, nothing less than an existential epiphany of what it actually means to *be*, in the world. For at the moment when the film ends, Sayles' protagonists have created a fullness of meaning, a fullness of love and compassion, *within*, and not falsely transcendent of that very moment. And it is arguably not only illusory, but a downright lie to say that we are *ever* able to do more than this, though our ego spends its lifetime protesting otherwise.

Very few films, independent or otherwise, shatter the web of samsara, the play of egoic illusion which fuels so much of our experience, and upon which benighted human activity rests. Certainly, the Hollywood machine's machinations are bent on *furthering* the interests of samsara. Witness the almost constant barrage of weak messianism, nicely exemplified in that Matrix nonsense about Keanu Reeves' character being "the one." The only redemption offered in *that* film is from the need to confront the machine; Keanu enacts that confrontation *for* us, leaving us free to enjoy further illusion in the comfort of knowing that, since we're human, we will, we must, simply triumph over such illusion, in the end. Keanu is just a prettier version (for most of us!) of "the one" that we all are.

This sort of comfort is proffered through facile forms of closure in all the arts, in music even more egregiously than in film. And I deem it proof enough of the triumph of our conditioning to the interests of such closure that so few of us can stomach what happens at the end of *Limbo*.

For *Limbo* steadfastly refuses to offer up some closure that would be false to the actual experience of *lived* life. We want to pretend that the characters, if we like them, don't *really* have to die, or if they do, we, immortal aesthetes that we are, will get a chance to relish, and properly subordinate their tragedy to our own ends.

Well life doesn't work that way, and neither does Sayles' masterful film. And despite what many commentators have suggested, the film does not end in limbo. The characters are either going to get rescued or shot; the conclusion is thus quite definite in its open-endedness. But by not showing us *either* of those eventualities, Sayles gives us something much better, much more definite still. For the love and mutuality we witness in the film's final moments is truer, more real, than the modalities of rescue or death could ever be. And if we are willing to grant Sayles his "donnee" (would James?!), we may experience something quite extraordinary, something quite extraordinarily real.

Thank you, John Sayles. Thank you.