(image via AllMoviePhoto.com)
On the weekend that Osama bin Laden was killed by US Navy Seal Team Six, Fast Five roared into American movie theatres to collect $86 million from US consumers. At the big, nameless cineplex in my neighborhood, Fast Five played on three screens that weekend. Next to one of those massive auditoriums, The Conspirator played rather quietly in a much smaller room. One way or another, I witnessed all three events: bin Laden’s death, Vin Diesel’s final(?) ride and Robert Redford’s contemplation of how the mob interacts with the law. I don’t expect that those three men conspired to tell me a unified story. I was kinda grateful they all converged unwittingly—if only for my unintended benefit. (And perhaps yours, too.)
Osama bin Laden was the archiest of arch villains. He starred opposite everyone who has lived in these United States in the drama that has unfolded following September 11, 2001 (or February 26, 1993, if you prefer). Even kindergartners who couldn’t pronounce his name were forced to play opposite bin Laden as TSA probed their Spiderman sneakers and Hanna Montana backpacks before permitting them to board a flight to see Grandma and Grandpa. Bin Laden was also the greatest mystery of the last decade. We were told he existed. And we were told, by his own video testimony no less, that he was responsible for random massacre after random massacre all over the world. That he had been captured, killed and disposed of without a gory public reveal made some sense. For myths to endure, they must never be completely exposed. Belief doesn’t need proof. It just needs conviction. And conviction was never a problem where Osama bin Laden was concerned. The mobs on both sides have always known precisely how they feel about him.
You may be one of the people who has already mobbed theatres to see Fast Five. With $150 million in domestic box office at press time, the odds favor it. Even if you haven’t, I don’t need to tell you much about the movie to give you a rich understanding of it. Big men and pretty women make sexy cars go real fast. It’s the same exact plot as the four films that preceded it. And, truth be told, if you appreciate that sort of thing…the Fast franchise is awesome. So much so that the latest film (which could be the final installment but probably won’t be) is pornographic. It’s money shot after money shot after money shot. And, like a money shot is supposed to do, it satisfies. For the most part. (Personally, I’ve never known Brazilian women to be so startlingly thin and assless, but I’ve not traveled that country as extensively as the filmmakers may have.)
(image via whysoblu.com)
If the odds say that you have already seen Fast Five, they also say you haven’t seen The Conspirator. It hasn’t played on more than 500 screens at any one time since its release last month—timed cleverly to coincide with the sesquicentennial of the attack on Fort Sumter that ignited the War Between the States. The Conspirator tells the generally under-reported story of the woman who was tried, convicted and executed for being thought to have conspired in the plot to assassinate President Lincoln. (Whoops. Maybe there should have been a spoiler alert there. Or, you could have taken a 10th grade Social Studies class. In lieu of running a Wikipedia search, of course.)
In The Conspirator, Redford directs an art house dream team: James McAvoy, Robin Wright, Tom Wilkinson, Kevin Kline, Evan Rachel Wood, Danny Huston and Colm Meaney. If that weren’t enough, casting director Avy Kaufman throws in two ex-pats from The Wire, the guy from Rubicon, one of the Boondock Saints, Nucky Thompson’s brother and Rory Gilmore. Some of those people barely have any lines in The Conspirator. (Actors on both coasts must have been tripping over each other to get even a morsel of a chance to work with the Sundance Kid.) The resulting film isn’t bad. It leans more toward Lions for Lambs than Quiz Show. But it isn’t bad. There are a couple of monologues that are pretty compelling. And the steady stream of cameos–which also includes the Stapler Dude from Office Space–makes the screen come alive every few minutes as Redford’s ensemble trudges earnestly through an intriguing history lesson. The lesson may be contextualized within the final throes of the Civil War but the tug-of-war between mob rule and the rule of law is pretty timeless.
Every nation shares a central task: mob management. Those great hordes who pledge allegiance to a system of taxation and get, in return, a preselected flag to attach to their car antennae are an excitable bunch. And they do not discriminate. They will welcome anyone whom they believe agrees with them as long as a noob doesn’t dim the fervor that fuels the mob. If the mob isn’t convinced of your fidelity? Well…too bad for you. The mob must celebrate itself after all. And when it isn’t affirming all that it thinks itself to be, it takes great satisfaction from harshly condemning and swiftly punishing those people or those ideas that would dare to challenge it. If we have learned anything from the oscillations of this grand American experiment, we’ve learned that the mob can yield to genuine democracy. Well, maybe it’s not all that genuine. And maybe it’s not all that democratic. But when the mob fractures and the resulting divergent passions do not wane, what else would you call it?
(image via History Matters)
Redford’s film makes no secret of its intention to draw a parallel between the physically brutish intranational divide that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Union and Confederate soldiers and the intellectually brutish divide that has driven Red States and Blue States to make each other purple with ideological rage. Rage is a funny thing, really. It can dull as quickly as it can swell. It can yield benevolent change much like it can wreak discriminate mayhem. Way back in the 1860s–when a nation was winding down a war with itself–the mobs on both sides took turns being satisfied. First, the South got its man. Then, the North got its men. And a woman, too. According to the law, at least one of them deserved it. When everyone’s already dead, “deserve” isn’t much of a differentiator. As long as the mob is satisfied, does it really even matter at what cost? Of course it does. But that’s not the mob’s concern. Not until remorse kicks in anyway. If’n it ever does.
Given the subject, it would have been easy for The Conspirator to spend all of its 120 minutes judging the Northern mob that wanted anyone accused of being connected with Lincoln’s assassination to be punished. It does that for a good chunk of those minutes as part of its argument that every actor deserves to be judged objectively within the confines of the law. It also spends more than a few minutes suggesting that the mob isn’t completely unwise as it indulges its own passions.
(image via the Associated Press)
Watching the world react to the news of bin Laden’s death was surreal. To say the least. In some ways, it was downright bizarre. The “USA! USA! USA!” cheers erupting outside of Barack Obama’s house and the “I’m so glad he’s gone” sentiments shared on Twitter and Facebook spawned from the same nebulous sense of victory. The boogeyman was dead! Finally! We won! Right? But who are we? And what was won? By the way, was anything lost as a result?
As I trolled for deeper and deeper coverage of bin Laden’s death in the days that followed, I found myself thinking more and more about both The Conspirator and Fast Five. The mob had a pretty good point. Some things are that simple. Given the choice between a dead boogeyman and a not-dead boogeyman, which would you choose? The mobs that flashed on Pennsylvania Ave or on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal were not wrong to celebrate bin Laden’s death. Or to call for any of the things they called for. They weren’t right either. Not entirely. More importantly, they weren’t alone. There was still that mob on the other side: the compatriots of bin Laden. Surely there would be some sort of reprisal, no?
If bin Laden’s mob comprised a sovereign nation, perhaps. If that were the case, those planes never would have crashed into those buildings. No nation built on any kind of law would execute such a desperate tactic. A nation, by definition, has a stake. Stakes make preservation a priority. But preservation is only possible when there is something to preserve. Bin Laden’s mob–like any group of religious extremists–was built on a shared sense of desperation. Desperation tends to hone your focus. Distraction isn’t really an option. If it were, you might abandon your search for meaning in favor of enjoying 90 minutes of fast cars and pretty women. And if you did, you probably enjoyed it. Just as much as any member of the mob relished dancing on the boogeyman’s grave.
