The Manchurian Candidate: the review

(The Hubby says there are spoilers in this review, both for the current version and the original version. I don’t think there are, but read at your own risk.)

There are three important sides to looking at Jonathan Demme’s remake of The Manchurian Candidate: the movie as it stands on its own, the movie as it stands in comparison to its predecessor, and the movie as it stands in relation to reality.

For those of you who are misfortunate enough not to have seen the original, The Manchurian Candidate is the story of Bennett Marco, an Army Major who leads a squad on a routine patrol, where they get ambushed and are saved by the heroic actions of Sgt. Raymond Shaw, who then becomes a big war hero. Shaw’s family is politically connected, on the inside track to the Vice Presidency. But Bennett Marco is not quite sure that what he remembers happening during that ambush actually happened, and maybe Raymond Shaw isn’t all he’s being touted as.

I’m stating the premise of the story as broadly as possible because while the details of the two Manchurian Candidates differ, the stories are roughly the same. In the original, the army men are on patrol in Korea when they’re brainwashed by the Chinese Communists; in the remake they’re brainwashed during Desert Storm by evil global titan Halli…I mean, Manchurian Global. In the original, Raymond’s stepfather is the Vice Presidential candidate; in the remake, Raymond is. In both of them, something extremely sinister is in the air.

So, on to the sides:

1) The movie on its own is quite good. There are some great performances: Meryl Streep is absolutely wonderful—many people have pointed out the ice chewing scene, but I think the look she gives Raymond in one scene is…just…killer (“So, I can tell him to do…anything, huh?”); Denzel Washington is great as the Army major whose rather tenuous grip on reality seems to be melting completely; and Liev Schreiber is very good as the guy who has always done what his mother wants, even when he thought he was doing something on his own (the way he says, “Yes, mother,” is definitely Norman Bates-esque). So I do recommend it as a movie to go see.

Which leads me to:

2) No, the movie’s not as good as the original, which I saw during its re-release in 1988. (When I was, you know, 3.) The Queen of Diamonds! “What I meant to say was, Are you Arabic?”! That amazing New Jersey Ladies’ Garden Club scene! I heard John Frankenheimer interviewed on Fresh Air about how they did the initial master shot for that scene: he built a stage in two parts where one could swing out and the other back in, so when they did a 360-degree rotate around the room, starting in New Jersey and ending at the Chinese Politburo, they did so without a cut. Which was simply brilliant.

It’s hard to imagine what life was like during the Cold War. (Hey, I was even conscious during some of the Cold War, and I don’t remember what life was like during it.) Everyone worried about whether this international incident was going to lead to thermonuclear war and the destruction of everything on the planet. Paranoia about our political system was fairly off-beat in the early 60s—JFK hadn’t been assassinated yet, let alone RFK, MLK, or MX.

Which leads me to:

3) The biggest problem with the current version of The Manchurian Candidate is its political sensibility. It’s like it wants to make a statement without offending anyone. It collapses not so much under the cynicism of the filmmakers as the cynicism of the audience. Manchurian Global’s plot to have the first corporately owned Vice-President of the United States? Who needs brainwashing? The Mayberry Machiavellis just offer them tax cuts!

The politics in the film are complete hogwash: a surprise pick of a Vice Presidential candidate at the convention? A surprise pick of a never married guy in his mid- to late-thirties?

There are some sly digs in at our current setup: references to the global scope of the never-ending War on Terror make a nice backdrop to what’s going on, together with the hard-to-read scroll at the bottom of the screen during the cuts to news coverage, in which we learn that Walmart has had its best quarter ever, with a $40 trillion dollar profit or something. (I know it said “trillion.”)

The name “Manchurian Global” is, um, somewhat problematic. Okay, it’s stupid as hell; who thought that one up? I know they had to get the word “Manchurian” in there somehow. The problem is, evidently, they had to do it without offending anyone. Like, you know, the Chinese. China is the biggest factor in the future. There’s a lot one could do about China being behind a giant conspiracy. Though not if you wanted global distribution, I guess.

When I heard there was going to be a remake I had all sorts of ideas of what kind of plot they were going to concoct. America’s spendthrift ways have been financed in large part by Asian nations, China among them, in large part because the yuan is pegged to the dollar. I don’t really understand currency markets, but it goes something like this: we buy a whole bunch of stuff from China, sending our money there; they send the money back to us as loans to finance our insanely wealthy lifestyle; we eventually have to pay them back.

Our interest rates have been too low for too long, investors want return on their money, rates are going to go up. Which is going to hit us all pretty hard 5 or 10 years from now (particularly as the Bush administration’s fiscal policies—yes, the Bushies, not the Clintonistas, who left a surplus, remember?—are really frightening the world markets with their economic irresponsibility).

But what happens if, say, we’re starting to get squeezed with our foreign debt and the price of oil goes through the roof (which is will: if you don’t know about the Peak Oil discussion, you should) and China says, “Oh, by the way, we’d like to annex Taiwan now.” What are we going to say? China is going to be able to squeeze us any way they’d like, because we like to drive SUVs and buy cheap imports. They could turn us into Argentina circa 2000 without very much effort.

We’re going to do whatever China wants. Let’s hope they’re nice about it. We’re all Manchurian Candidates here. Why don’t you pass the time with a little solitaire?