Molotov Memories.
Every documentary has a subject, but a good documentary also evinces a theme. The Weather Underground pursues those white student radicals of the 60s who split off from the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) to form a more desperate sect of bomb-planting revolutionaries. Their disgust with American policy during the Vietnam War was a particular expression of generational backlash. These former students were in a position to take issue with all the benefits of skin and caste they enjoyed. Acting upon their embarrassed self-awareness as fortunate whites, they felt, as one interviewee says, "a duty and an obligation" to overthrow what they clearly perceived as a "racist, genocidal, unjust" government. When the crazed dream disintegrated, and after years of hiding from the FBI, they came back to society as professors, local activists, virtually anonymous Americans. Filmmakers Sam Green and Bill Siegel cleverly pace the interviews with telephoto shots of crowds on streets and in corridors: Anywhere. Anyone. A totally successful re-integration.
Its a story that has gone back underground. Today, its an almost forgotten history carrying an archaic sense that being young meant devotion to an idea and a passion for issues. But The Weather Underground is most interesting when forcing those old radicals into self-examination. Theyre brought close to realizing that though times have changed, youthful recklessness has not. Mark Rudd admits mixed feelings: "Knowledge of the U.S.s position in the world was too big. I still dont know what to do with it." Some, like Naomi Jaffe and David Gilbert, havent entirely let go. Others remain embittered, like Bernardine Dohrn, now married to Bill Ayers and with two children. Dohrn still wears that "I have nothing to smile about" look on her face that she had when a young firebrand.
Now chagrined, they have some small understanding that their dangerous folly ("like a Childrens crusade gone mad") was an excess of privilege and timeless naivete. Some of this realization comes post 9/11. "When you feel that you have right on your side, you can do some horrific things," says Brian Flanagan, compounding regret with wisdom. Thats what these students didnt have three decades ago when they leaped into anarchy and violence, rash reflex responses to the political awakening of college years. (Its the same root of silliness that gives Oliver Stone his mania about LBJ.)
As the filmmakers tote up the homeland bombing incidents and flash back to the Weathermens incendiary remarks mixed with whimsical effrontery, you can see that each of these young people swayed to the poetic echoes of To the Finland Station as much as to Bob Dylan (The Weathermen took their names from "Subterranean Homesick Blues": "You dont need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"). Yet they never thought beyond their readingor their own excitement. Making history vied with making a hit record as the countercultural thing to do. The film barely explores the different rationales that distinguished the white radicals and black radicalsall they shared was impetuousness and a common national history. Thats why a black interviewee could reject the tactics of the Weathermen with the riposte "Its Custeristic... Theyre muddleheads and scatterbrains."
Mark Rudd is quoted: "I cherished my hate as moral superiority"a confession of blistering honesty that conveys the heat of privileged activism. Something more was going on than kids acting on principle. And arrogance wasnt just a trait of the dangerous ones. An SDS conservative, Todd Gitlin, is interviewed about the 1968 convention that saw the group splintered. He calls the Weathermens defection "piracy" and contemptuously dismisses their "Join us or fuck you" attitude. Gitlin gives away his own resentment as he "watch[ed] them run away with the student left," clearly angry about the stolen limelight and the weakened position, clearly pissed about the oppositionas if the "student left" was in itself a valorous elite.
Using privilege as a theme requires almost superhuman humility; the filmmakers must show that the worst behavior of the Weathermen is inherent in all youthful zealotryespecially when activism is not learned from the experience of hardship. As each interview harkens back to Vietnam as an all-purpose justification ("The Vietnam war made us all a little crazy"), the subjects demonstrate a hollow incentive. Not having earned the right to denounce American injustice, their "Bring the War Home" behavior seems based in presumption.
Its almost comical to see privileged youth transform themselves into fightersand ideologues. "To do nothing is violence," a young Dohrn insists, an overstated though heartfelt imitation of Black Panther rhetoric. Their commitment to "attack every single institution of American injustice" ratchets up the rarely admitted tension between working-class youth and college youththose who do well to get along contrasting against those who are restless.
Yet the Weathermens restless madness touched on something basic: the necessity for people to proclaim their beliefs. They dared to challenge: "White youth must choose sides now. Youre either one of the oppressed or one of the oppressors." That only sounds simple; its a complicated truism youll never hear from Eminem.
The Weather Underground Directed by Sam Green and Bill Siegel
LAuberge Espagnole
Lying naked in bed with a married woman, his cute little butt smiling vertically at the camera, Xavier (Romain Duris) the hero of LAuberge Espagnole, represents Frances answer to the pampered youth of The Real Cancun. While studying European economics in Barcelona, Xavier is preparing for a job in the French ministry. Unfortunately, LAuberge Espagnole only pretends to examine the character types that run the new Europe. Its actually about Xavier enjoying himself like all French bourgeois movie heroes, and like his multiculti housemates from England, Germany, Scandanavia, Italy. If Duris resembles the young Tom Hanks, its because LAuberge Espagnole is nothing more than Bachelor Party for Europes diplomatic class.
Director Cedric Klapisch borrows some sensibility from antecedents like Truffauts Stolen Kisses (the affair) and The 400 Blows (the beach-front ending), but his superficiality is exposed in the early scene of Xaviers job interview. Ignoring the experience of corporate life and existential mystery that was memorable in Laurent Cantets Time Out, Klapisch clutters such moments with fast-motion and quick-edited collages.
Klapischs style suggests the MTV generations new visual language (via digital apparatus) is more important than conveying social, political, personal essence. Visually its as animated and post-modern and cutting-edge as Amelie (Audrey Tautou plays the French girl Xavier leaves behind), but the hi-def camerawork, plus the digital editing (its over-Avid) lacks Amelies sentimental conviction. Xaviers classmates never countenance the issue of immigration. No contemporary political issue ever crosses their minds. Xavier only applies his education to adultery and self-gratification. (He befriends a lesbian roommate who teaches him how to seduce women; meanwhile the dorms gay male character remains closeted.) Its all Klapischs rad rationalization for modern Europes political insensibility.
The title refers to an ethnically mixed disha "Euro-pudding," one character says. It equally pertains to economic and class consolidation, a reality of the global satellite era. Xavier, the son of a hippie mother and capitalist father, is dismayed by the choices he faces. He undergoes a CAT scan that induces multilingual dislocation. Klapisch uses this sequence to show off more digital-era technologya cultural development that both defines contemporary youths perception and inhibits comprehension. Maybe thats why these clueless co-eds sit in a courtyard singing "No Woman No Cry" without a hint of irony. LAuberge Espagnole is a new-style coming-of-age film that proudly inspires no reflection. Fittingly, its theme song is Radioheads "No Surprises."
LAuberge Espagnole Directed by Cedric Klapisch