The Thomas Chronicles

I’ve talk to a few people who watched this movie, and they universally panned it. From the jittery camera direction to the “amaturish acting”, quite a few of my associates roundly dismissed the movie as a queasy thrill-ride version of the Blair Witch Project, whose infamy in camera jittery-pokery was, and still is, legendary. I believe ‘nauseated’ is the term. Among them, I was of the minority opinion. But then again, for readers of this blog, this should come as no surprise.

Like my compatriots, I could have done without all the shaking and hair pulling and screaming hysterics. It was a sensational movie to begin with. How much more sensational is a thirty story beast rampaging Manhattan? However, I think the movie provides invaluable insight, if you have the eyes to see it.

First of all, if you go see this film and want to derive anything meaningful from it aside from the obvious, you must accede to the premise of the story off the top without question. Know that you are going to get wobbled out of your membranes and jolted until something falls out. That’s just a given. Two is to approach this with an open mind and not treat it as just another scary monster gore-fest. At least, this is how I tried to approach this movie.

When I left the theater, I was dazed but not because of the shaking camera. As a Christian, I looked at that movie and thought, “Is this how people are going to react when calamity befalls us as it surely will?”

As far as it goes, the group, collective dynamics exemplified in the movie is SPOT ON. I’ve been to parties almost exactly like the one portrayed in the movie, although admittedly less posh, and the human interaction between the characters is pretty darn realistic. The halting semi-coherent speech. The desperate desire to have all the information about what’s going on while refusing to give any information to others. The psychotherapy relationship dramas. These characteristics are the traits of people thirty years old and younger.

On the flip side, also exemplified in the movie is the intense loyalty and bonds between the characters to where they would follow each other willingly toward death, even as an alternative is presented to them. This trait is also ubiquitous to my generation and younger, and by the way, it’s this generation that’s in Iraq right now.

But the main insight I derived from the movie is one based upon my faith’s assertions of the End Times. I think the monster in the movie is metaphor for the Apollyon and his hoard. The Bible describes these creatures as being scorpion-like, which I think is portrayed in the movie.

10And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months.

11And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.

I think that JJ. Abrams used this scripture as the starting point of this movie and built the plot around it. Strangely enough, I haven’t seen another Christian seeing the connection between this movie and Revelation. Though of course, this movie doesn’t present the coming of Apollyon, the Destroyer, exactly as the Bible laid it out, but it has echoes. I’ll not analyze it more than this.

I’ll sign off tonight on a side note. Over the course of a couple of months, I’ve spoken to relatives and acquaintances in Houston and Los Angeles and everyone said they feel in their bones an impending calamity befalling our nation. I’ve seen this reflected in the anxiety we all feel about this current Presidential election and in the daily news reports around the world, as though we’re all holding our breaths, waiting.

I also find it interesting that for the holiday season this past November and December, we were treated to two apocalyptic-esque movies, The Mist and I Am Legend. And now we have Cloverfield.

What this ultimately means, who knows? But I don’t lightly blow off the collective anxiety and fears emanating from all corners of our entire nation. Something is clearly happening. I’m just not sure I know what that is.

And another thing…

For people who complain about Cloverfield’s wobbly camera action, I’ve got a question. What’s the difference between all the stomach churning “home video” feature of this movie and all the strobing, flashing, epileptic visual style of actions movies? To me, they are only a two degree difference between them.

I have a confession to make. I love Stephen King’s writing.

I think he’s one of the most gifted writers of his generation, the Baby Boomers. The fact that he chose to direct his efforts to write predominately horror is incidental. His real gift and the reason why he’s become a household name is his knack of peering into the souls of men and relaying what he saw with sympathy.

His characters are all too human; their defects, their virtues, the little petty evils they do when they think others aren’t looking. They are like us, and he shows us just how capable we are of the most heinous acts. In his most recent movie adaptation of his novella, The Mist, he made this commentary of us via the characters:

Amanda Dunfrey: You don’t have much faith in humanity, do you?

Dan Miller: None, whatsoever.

Amanda Dunfrey: I can’t accept that. People are basically good; decent. My god, David, we’re a civilized society.

David Drayton: Sure, as long as the machines are working and you can dial 911. But you take those things away, you throw people in the dark, you scare the shit out of them - no more rules.

He turns his spotlight on mankind and finds us wanting. We, as another one of characters opined, are essentially a mad race. This is Stephen King’s novels all over. He takes the most malevolent person we think possible and reminds us that he’s still human— like us. His novels don’t shirk from the inevitability of such evil, that they make a desolation of their lives and the lives around them, but they are still nevertheless very human (minus the overt supernatural elements, of course).

This is why I find the statements of his most recent interview with Time Magazine puzzling to say the least.

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I watched a rather awful movie over the weekend. It was yet another remake of War of the Worlds. Granted that this movie’s production value ranks down on the second or third tier quality as far as movies go, but I watched about half of it in this kind of horrid fascination. The apparent justification for this remake was that it would be the “the first authentic movie adaptation of the 1898 H.G. Wells classic novel.”

Well, at least they can say that much.

The movie was set in the 19th century Victorian era, the time H.G. Wells wrote the book. The costumes contained proper neck-ties, vests and pocket watches for the men; while the women wore full-length gowns, all long-sleeves and buttoned up to the neck. Men walked or ran or rode rickety bicycles; I recalled seeing only one car throughout the half I watched, and it was one of those open-aired vehicles that resembled a moving carriage than an actual car.

All these things should have created a somewhat credible environment from which the director could tell the tale, but this wasn’t so. I don’t think the failure of this movie as a movie on its own terms had anything to do with its production values or budgetary constraints. The movie failed because neither the actors, nor the director, nor the story met at any one point. In fact, they seemed utterly disengaged from the other.

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In the middle of writing my previous post, I thought writing one post just doesn’t do it for me. There is just too much to be said about this movie.

I am still surprised at all the politics surrounding this movie. The Lefties want to pigeonhole this movie as propaganda for the Bush White House (how come their accusation is almost exactly the same as the Iranians?… hmm…), and they also attack it for not goose-stepping to the Politically Correct Party line. All the Righties, praise the thematic virtues portrayed in the movie, but deride parts of it as “homoerotic”.

For this post, I’m going to just stick to the film itself.

Firstly, let me say that this movie truly is a feast for the eyes. The most distinctive aspect of this movie visually was its texture, which oscillated between a grainy rust-colored tactile appearance that made you feel as though you’re touching rough sedimentary rocks and flowing surrealism. The latter, however, gives you the sensation of touching layers of silk; from the woman at the Oracle, to the soft dust drifting up from the battlefield.

Indeed, sensuality seems to be the order of the day with this film. Even the sickening scenes of the dead does not lack for texture. This is even further enhanced by its gothic appearance, and its chiaroscuro effects make it seem at times more like a moving painting than a war epic.

With that said, of the valid critiques against this film, the most prominent is its lack of characterization. Much of the dialog follows the comic book genre in that it tries to convey as much as possible about the character in as short a space as possible. Thus, you short declarations that tell you a) what kind of person this character is and b) what they are doing or about to do.

For instance, “Spartans! Ready your breakfast and eat hot for tonight we dine in Hell!”

Not quite the stumbling, angst-ridden dialog we’ve come to expect in a movie. Even in the Lord of the Rings’s Aragon, portrayed by Viggo Mortensen, the king becomes this self-doubting (almost self-loathing) character, who is never really sure if he’s doing the right thing until the very last moment.

In fact, that’s one of the most refreshing things about this movie. There is a certitude in the characters not seen since… well, I don’t remember when.

What was the last movie you’ve seen where the characters behave with assurance and certainty that what they are doing is the right thing? These characters make their decisions and don’t look back.

As Ymarsakar pointed out from my previous post, Leonidas’s certainty and his “loose canon” proclivity to “correct justices” with violence creates a kind of catharsis for the viewer. In a sense, problems are resolved in the movie on a pretty fundamental basis (”You’ll find plenty of earth and water down in that well.”).

However, because of this lack of indecision on the part of the King, we don’t get to see the character as more well-rounded and, for lack of a better term, more human. What we receive is a caricature, an archetype of what a King should be— a noble man who willingly shoulders the fate of his nation and his people and would move ruthlessly in its protection.

This caricature, however, would not entail superfluous dialog to examine his inner thoughts, nor would it entail him being racked by doubts of his decision. To do so would detract from the stolid figure of the King, on whose words rest the fate of an entire nation. The same thing could be said of the queen and the rest of the soldiers.

Indeed, this is a morality play reaching for operatic heights. Whether or not it achieves this ambition, I’ll leave to the reader.

Another valid criticism of this film is its sequence of events, or how the story unfolded. Many people viewing this movie would already have a rough sketch of the Battle of Thermoplyae in their mind. The outcome of this battle was already known for most; thus, in my opinion, paramount in the making of this movie would be to show how the story unfolded. How does event A go to event B, and so on.

Although I thought the director did an adequate job, I thought the initial visit of the Persian emissary could have been delineated further. Likewise, I thought the run up to war should have been further developed to add to the import of the moment when they finally depart for the Hot Gates. By delaying their departure, the film could have also taken more time to develop Leonidas’s love for his wife as well, instead of leaving it at one sex scene. In my opinion, this would have added to the poignancy of the ending and would have given the viewer a better understanding of what’s truly at stake.

With all this said, I thought this was a remarkable movie (as if that wasn’t apparent already).

The movie to me is much like an epic poem and/or an opera, mythical in quality, caught somewhere between reality and fantasy. (I mean, really, we don’t expect Ogre-esque creatures to saunter through our livingrooms, now do we?)

Like epic poems, every aspect of the hero is elevated. The warriors exude fearlessness, heroism, and masculine virility accentuated in the form of their extreme fitness and their prowess on the battlefield. And like an opera, the characters are two-dimensional and tragic.

Even the music reaches for the melodrama of opera with all its uses of choruses (not Greek choruses, of course, but choirs). Indeed, it seems as though the director dragged opera and epic poetry and fused them together with modern sensibilities. That too is reflected in the music, which goes from choruses and stirring strings to hard metal rock.

Needless to say, you shouldn’t watch this movie if you want historical accuracy. Herodotus and/or Xenophon would do very well instead. But if you want to be entertained with the force of melodramatic opera, this movie just might be up your alley.

Note: This is going to be the first in a series of posts regarding the movie 300.

Okay, I know everybody and the grandma has posted something on the phenomenon surrounding the adaptation of Frank Miller’s 300. Like so many topics in our polarized political environment, this movie couldn’t just be politically neutral. It had to be at the center of this titanic tug-o-war match between the conservatives and the liberals, and in my opinion that speaks more to the values of each group than the movie itself.

What attributes do this movie extol?

Honor. Freedom. Loyalty. Masculine virility. The glory of men dying so that other men may live free. And the right of free men to choose their destiny.

Much of these, dare I say, virtues are shown in the camaraderie on the battlefield of an almost mythical ancient Greece. Battles are never clean, sterilized affairs. It isn’t so now; neither was it then. But in the ancient world, the fate of nations and peoples were decided by men standing only feet, occasionally inches, apart thrusting sharp objects into each other. If anything, this movie watered down the reality of war in the ancient world. They didn’t play it up.

One vitriolic critic of this movie, New York Post’s Kyle Smith, said this of the movie.

Sparta’s king, Leonidas (Gerard Butler of “Phantom of the Opera,” who sounds like he grew up in the Glasgow section of Sparta), is told by a messenger that Persia’s king, Xerxes, demands tribute — a token gift. There’s no shame in diplomacy, but Leonidas goes berserk because he heard that the Athenians, those “philosophers and boylovers,” didn’t pay. Then he punts the messenger down a well.

That well is a primeval chasm, and the scene carries a terrible splendor. But Leonidas has just thrown himself down a moral well. The messenger’s warning that no one kills the mailboy is absolutely right. Leonidas, though, is just getting started; he bellows about honor as he begins a decathalon of dishonor. Rampaging in his leather Speedo, he murders wounded enemies, desecrates their remains, insults allies and confuses death with glory. His troops are like al Qaeda in adult diapers.

The crack about boy-love becomes central when we meet Xerxes: He’s modeling the latest in earrings, dog collars, lipstick and eyeliner, like an 8-foot RuPaul. It’s hard to escape the idea that Leonidas is a king who just doesn’t like queens.

Kyle, never short of cynical self-righteousness and belittlement in this article, went straight for the jugular by attacking the moral premise of King Leonidas’s actions. “Thou shalt not kill”? Is that it?

However, this emissary was not talking to just a representative of the Spartan people. He was talking to its king… and treated him as a third rate servant in his own house. As this movie was at pains to point out, theirs is a very unforgiving world… As was ours, once upon a time.

I would be first to say that I am not a historian, and I wouldn’t know whether or not Frank Miller’s and Zack Snyder’s vision of ancient Greece was accurate or not. I don’t think that matters. Not in the slightest.

This movie was not meant to reflect reality but it used a facsimile of reality to illumine a point. If one’s objection to the movie is its extreme brutality and barbarity, that’s fine, and even in some ways commendable. But if one used the brutality of the movie to denigrate the movie’s themes of Honor, Loyalty and Courage in the face of indomitable evil, then we have ourselves a problem.

If one does not exalt honor, loyalty and courage, what does (what can?) one exalt? Your stomach? Your appetites?

Kyle Smith points toward the Spartan’s ruthless killing of wounded enemy soldiers as a sure sign of the immorality. And yes, it was utterly ruthless.

Smith writes, “… [King Leonidas] begins a decathalon of dishonor. Rampaging in his leather Speedo, he murders wounded enemies, desecrates their remains, insults allies and confuses death with glory.”

But how would you approach evil? With cakes and bon-bons?

You must remember that at this point in the movie, these Spartans and Thespians have just come from witnessing their own people nailed to a tree so horrifically that all you saw on-screen were various human limbs. As they watched this unspeakable evil, the city behind them burned to ciders and the only remaining survivor from the Persian raid, a boy, just died in the arms of the king.

Imagine yourself there as a Spartan, as a human, the smell of burning flesh drifting out from the city, the earth blackened by fires and ash, and before you are 20 or 30 of your people impaled on a tree, feeding its roots with the stain of their blood. From the look of their bodies and how their faces writhed in agony, you could tell that they were alive before being hammered into it’s bark.

These were men, women and children. People you’ve known, traded with, neighbors. Some probably were distant relatives.

If I had been in their shoes watching fellow American’s literally crucified— not abstract people, but my friends next door— I don’t think I would have behaved differently from these Spartans.

And I don’t think I would be alone in this.

It is well-documented that after our troops liberated the first Nazi concentration camp, our men started killing every black shirt they saw on site. Nazis wearing a black shirt was virtually an automatic death sentence and it was carried out by our soldiers. Why? Neither President Roosevelt, nor Eisenhower, nor Patton could stop our troops because they just didn’t trust our government to do the right thing if they were made prisoners. Check the records for yourself and see just how many SS soldier we made prisoner.

For Smith to say that Leonidas “confuses death with glory,” I’m not sure what he would consider glory in such circumstances. What greater love is there that a man should lay down his life for another?

There are many, Kyle Smith being just one of them, who does not recognize heroism and glory in our modern world. Indeed, we have been educated and raised in a sea of subjective uncertainty and cynicism. Not even the glories of previous ages are left untainted by post-modernism.

How often do you hear now of Wake Island in WWII, the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812, and the Alamo and Goliad in the Texas War of Independence? In all these instances, we were severely out-gunned and outnumbered, and our loses were horrific. Of those listed above, the only battle we won was the Battle of New Orleans (a fascinating history if you’re interested).

Some also accuse this movie of being xenophobic because it was partisan to the Greeks and Western Civilization rather than evenhandedly showing the virtues of the Perisans as well. Moral equivalence demanded that both the Spartans and the Persians be portrayed as evil savages.

It’s an outrage, an outrage I tell you, that the writer and director dared to pick a side in this fray and say that one was morally superior to the other.

From what he wrote, Smith and others described the actions of the Spartans as reprehensible and morally repugnant. At one point in his diatribe, he made the inexcusable comparison of the Spartans with al Qaeda. He, of course, conveniently left out the part that it was the Persians who are invading, the Persians who slaughter their people and burned their cities, the Persians who previously attacked them at Marathon, the Persians when has already conquered and enslaved hundreds of other peoples… and the handful of men opposing their advanced are called “al Qaeda in diapers”? I submit that it is only moral cowardice that would make such a statement.

Yes, the writer and director landed fully on the side of the Greeks, the progenitors of our Western Civilization.

What manner of man cannot simply love his own culture because it is his? Must everything, every story, be turned inside out in the name of tolerance?

Black is white.

Up is down.

Right is wrong… Welcome to our brave new world.

Related Posts:

ShrinkWrapped: Mythology and Civilization
Scaryduck: Film Review: 300
Victor Davis Hanson: With Your Shield or On It
Heroine Content: 300
Michael Medved: “300″ Tells Relevant Tale of Timeless Heroism

Saint Diana.

Yes, that’s what I said. Saint Princess Diana.

… and that’s enough to turn my stomach.

The Queen is often a quiet reflective movie on the disconnect between the British people and their monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. The story traces back those few fateful days just after the death of Princess Diana. It is also a story told largely through the eyes of Queen Elizabeth II, who is played magnificently by Helen Mirren.

Many of us remember waking to the frontpage news of Diana’s mangled car in some nondescript Paris tunnel and the worldwide grief that ensued. It was truly a hideous death. Here was a once member of the royal House of Windsor dying by the roadside pleading for help, coked and drunk out of her ever-loving mind, while the paparazzi stood by snapping their horrid pictures.

The director thankfully omitted those gruesome details from the movie and limited it to the reactions of the Royal Family on the phone and watching TV. I thought then as I do now that this was a tragedy of the first order but not in the way most people think of it.

This is also a movie about the ascension of Tony Blair to the office of Prime Minister and the values of the Labour Party moving to center stage.

The movie lovingly portrayed Tony Blair’s angst over the future of the Monarchy as, with Diana’s death, the British people demanded Queen to come to Buckingham Palace and give Diana a full state funeral.

The Queen, quite rightly, believed that Diana’s death should be borne with quiet dignity— a quality, she said, that the world has always admired in the British people. What is more, since Diana is no longer the wife of Prince Charles, and wife to the heir to the throne of Great Britain, her funeral should be handled by family members as a private affair rather than an affair of state.

The real tragedy exemplified in this movie is how a large portion of the once stolid British people, who once ruled the waves and a fourth of the earth, have become a febrile, hysterical people.

Perhaps this is too harsh to say, but in Great Britain and America, people “touched” by her death behaved like little school children desirous of consolation from an adult. When that adult (the Queen) tacitly chided them to behave more like the adults she believed them to be, they threw a tantrum like the grubby little children they have become.

To illustrate this point, here are a few comments on the movie left by British citizens:

There is nothing about the royals themselves that could be considered worthy of the public respect which they demand. The fact is that we are expected to bow and scrape to them simply because they were born with the name of Windsor or obtained it through marriage. It is part of the culture of deference that is one of the most objectionable features of life in modern Britain. Attitudes to the monarchy demonstrate how deeply the habit of ring-kissing is ingrained in our ‘democratic’ political system. Of course the Tories are true-blue royalists. The striking thing, however, is how willing all of the opposition parties are to kowtow to the Queen.

(I’ll spare those reading this post the more vicious comments, but here’s the link if you want to read it.)

Neither the armada of the Spanish Empire nor the V2 rockets of Adolf Hitler was able to force Britain to lower the Royal Standard from it’s place at the pinnacle of the flag pole. In fact, not once in all of Britain’s history has the flag of the House of Windsor bowed. It took the might of the British people and Tony Blair’s Labour government to commit that remarkable feat. Unlike customs in the United States where we fly our flag at half-staff, the Royal Standard DOES NOT (or did not, anyway) fly or bow. It is the flag of the sovereign (i.e. the Queen does not pay taxes to herself).

True to her oath as Queen of Great Britain, she placed the British people before herself, even though they no longer shared the same values. She came to London, conducted a national address to Her subjects, and gave Princess Diana a state funeral (Unbelievably, it’s the same one prepared by the Queen Mother for herself.). She underwent all these humiliations to appease the British people and their leader, Tony Blair.

Don’t get me wrong. I honor Tony Blair for his staunch support of America at great political costs to himself and his party. When no one wanted to come up to bat for us, he stepped forward. But it seems for his entire political career he played to have it both ways.

Whatever affection the American people feels for Tony Blair, we should be reminded that Tony Blair is the Prime Minister under whose leadership stripped the British aristocracy to nothing, dissolved the House of Lords into a common political appointment racket, castrated the British military, and forced the Monarchy into nothing more than a figurehead without any real teeth. It is also under Tony Blair’s leadership that the British are becoming more European at the expense of their alliance with the United States. It’s all part of his efforts to “modernize” Britain.

In a word, many of the worrisome attitudes and actions of the British of late can be traced either directly or nearly directly to Number 10 Downing Street.

He ripped the Monarchy into just a figurehead and portrayed himself as the savior of the Monarchy. He touts Britain’s alliance with America while eroding it by joining and catering to the EU.

I am gratified that Mr. Blair chose to support America in our War on Terror, but the backlash against him by the media and his own Labour Party was not unexpected. One cannot suddenly reverse a lifetimes’ position and transform magically into a Winston Churchill.

To paraphrase what the Queen said to Blair at the end of the movie, the media will turn on him and it will come unexpectedly and all at once… and so it has.

To this day I marvel at all the shrines erected in Diana’s name (and they are literally shrines). Her death was tragic and her life was tumultuous to say the least. But this was a woman with severe personal problems.

This should garner our pity, not our adoration.

The true Saint of the latter half of the twentieth century, Mother Teresa, died only a few days after Diana half a world away… and the world shrugged.

Update 2/26/06 10:32 a.m.

In all fairness, however, Tony Blair’s government might be an improvement on Margaret Thatcher’s. I bears reminding that Thatcher’s government was the one who proposed that the national debt be distributed equally among the entire British citizenry without regard to income. This meant that the poorest citizen would take on the same percentage of the national debt as billionaires.

Although I disagree with many, many things that the Blair government has done, not least of which is legislating entertainment to become politically correct (For instance, the BBC banned the Benny Hill Show to suit the feminists; they showed him the door without so much as an apology. The Benny Hill Show is shown exclusively outside of Britain now.), perhaps their censorship, their heavy taxation (people in the country can’t afford to enter London for a holiday for all the fees. I mean really, 20 pence to just use the toliet?)— perhaps all of this benefits the British people as a whole in comparison to the immoderate laissez-faire “let them eat cake” policy of Thatcher’s government.

Who knows what’s going on with Britain? They’ve destroyed centuries of traditions in the name of modernization, and I can’t honestly tell you if they are the better for it.

Only time will tell.

Last week I saw a very interesting British made-for-TV movie, called Archangel. The movie is set in Russia, and from the outset of the movie, we have a feel for what Russia has become since the “old days” of the Soviet Union. For myself, what makes this movie good is that it’s not just an interesting story, but it’s also a window into modern-day Russia. And with this window, I can imagine what it must be like from the inside Russia looking out rather than from the outside looking in.

The movie opens with Fluke Kelso, a very persistent visiting Oxford professor, describing the murderous brutality of Joseph Stalin to an auditorium of people. Kelso, who is played by Daniel Craig, said after the lecture, that what the Russian people really want is the return of the “old days” of Stalin. “ ‘Stalin,’ ” Kelso said, in the voice of the Russian Everyman, “ ‘Stalin would know what to do with these terrorists.’ ”

It gave me the chills just hearing those words spoken. Stalin was the Soviet dictator who murdered approximately ninety to a hundred million people. But I don’t think we can really fathom that sort of mind-numbing carnage. How can we? Can we imagine it by taking the worse, most tragic memory of our lives - the death of a loved one, for instance - then multiple that by horror by… well, infinity? Just the scale of the killings renders the entire subject matter incomprehensible.

Indeed, we keep shrinking the number of those dead by genocide. Why? I think it is because all of us refuse to admit to ourselves that we, too, are capable of being a little Hitler or Stalin. In the 1950’s, the number of Jews dead at the hands of the Nazi ranged around 18 to 25 million (not including the priests opposing Hitler, the homosexuals, the disabled, the retarded, etc.). Around the 1960’s and 70’s, the estimation declined to 12 to 15 million Jews killed. Then some time in the late 80’s to early 90’s, the number shrank to 6 million. (Himmler himself was irate at this number. He said he saw the actual papers and he insisted it much more than double this number. He was proud of his work after all.) Now, many people deny that the Holocaust happened at all! (Eisenhower knew what he was doing when he ordered the camps filmed. He also walked all the townspeople outside the camp through those tortured camps to burn that imagine into their memory.)

In like manner, the same is true of the entire tragedy of the Soviet era. The generally accepted number of people killed by Stalin now hovers at 20 million, even though everyone knows this is a gross underestimation. To send a person to a gulag is as good as sentencing them to death; 99% will die, or to put it another way, you had only 1% to live. Those people weren’t counted.

But this is not true for a Russian. As Zinaid, the woman to whom Kelso became involved in the movie, said, “The ‘Old Days’ are always with me.”

The story turns on Kelso’s search for Stalin’s diary, a notebook that had been buried immediately after Stalin’s death. This search leads from him from a nightclub full of casual prostitutes - which has become so common in Russia, it’s almost become a cliche - to the seedy, frozen slums of Moscow. The dangers are veiled and yet palpable at the same time. When Kelso walks past a huddled group of thugs along the stairs of an apartment, we don’t expect them to necessarily attack him. But when they do attack him, we are mildly surprised (at least I was…)

You can almost divide this movie into two parts. The part told in flashbacks and the part told in the present. By doing this, the movie virtually walks you through the history of its characters and the history of Russia itself, the past mirroring the present, the present digging back into the past. In my opinion, if anything, it deepens the mystery.

Yes, this is a mystery story with elements of the fantastic. The film, however, guides you step by step through the unraveling of this mystery without asking the audience to do too much work on their own. But throughout, there is always the shadow of Stalin draping over the story like a toxic cloth wrapping itself around all the characters and even in the buildings.

The director, Jon Jones and his cinemaphotographer, was careful to use dull colors and plenty of shadows when panning around the Russian landscape. To me, this more than anything builds up the sense that everything in Russia below the thin veneer of civilization is corroding. And fast. This is particularly disturbing since they still have a few thousand nuclear warheads pointing in our general direction.

Without spoiling the movie, by the end, Daniel Craig’s Kelso seems much more like a man who is driven by the events around him rather than an independent agent searching for the truth.

One of the reasons why this movie works well in my book is because the level of authenticity in its portrayal of modern Russia. For instance, the city of Archangel was teeming with people in the 1980’s, despite the high levels of radioactivity. Now, it’s sparsely populated with few people on the street. You can taste the futility and despair that is so rampant in many parts of Russia. It is through this level of authenticity that one can suspend one’s disbelief in the fantastic portions of the story and allow it to continue without too much difficulty.

Let me warn, however, that this movie is NOT an espionage movie in the flavor of a high-tech Tom Clancy character or a superhuman Robert Ludlum movie character. Furthermore, the movie is a bit slower to build the plot than other movies of its kind, which requires more attention than an average action movie. Kelso is a historian after all, not a spy.

If for no other reason than its entertainment value, I recommend this movie, both as a window into where Russia is currently at and where she might be heading.

For more on Russia reversion to totalitarianism:

Michelle Malkin: Who killed Anna Politkovskaya?, What does Putin Want?
Allahpundit: British cops: All signs point to KGB in Litvinenko murder
Col. Stanislav Lunev: Russia’s Secret Police: Powerful Tool for Totalitarianism