plus some more about the green mile.
Darin, Fernando, and I went to see The Insider (a 2.5 hour film right after a 3 hour one--yow), and we were of three minds about it: Fernando thinks it's the best movie he's seen all year, Darin liked it a lot, and I mostly liked it but had a much more mixed reaction.
The Insider is the story of how Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe) came to blow the whistle on the tobacco industry with the encouragement of 60 Minutes segment producer Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino). The ramifications of Wigand reneging on a draconian non-disclosure agreement with Brown & Williamson at the same time that Bergman is left to twist in the wind by the highers-up at CBS make for an interesting comparison.
And as Darin pointed out, as you compare and contrast the movie's introductions of Wigand (who's cleaning out his office as others are having an office party) and Bergman (who's arranging an interview with the leader of Hezbollah for Mike Wallace), you realize the movie's title does not refer to Wigand, but to Bergman, who is the ultimate insider--schmoozing with everyone, making things happen, the power behind the behemoth that is 60 Minutes.
The acting is very good. I thought Russell Crowe did a good job of showing us a man who's difficult to get along with without making him annoying, abrasive, or histrionic. Christopher Plummer makes a great Mike Wallace without doing an imitation of Wallace. (I did wonder why they didn't dye his hair black.) And Al Pacino is remarkably restrained, given his predilection to go over-the-top.
A lot of the cinematography drove me nuts, although Darin liked it and I got the feeling that Fernando (a former cinematographer) really liked it. The director, Michael Mann, has a very stylized vision, and sometimes it felt as though scenes had been set up just so he could film it in this totally cool way. He makes extensive use of hand-held camera, so we have lots of herky-jerky motion that usually took me right out of the movie: they didn't just happen to find Al Pacino at a table discussing the tobacco industry. So rather than being "realer" and more in tune with the documentary feeling of the movie, the filmmaking stuck out like a sore thumb for me.
The script isn't real tight--there are bits in there that go nowhere. And once again, Mann's female characters are useless, helpers, or viragos. (Ask me what I thought of Heat. Actually, don't.) But the development of Wigand's and Bergman's stories is real interesting, as we see what this story--probably the biggest story of the 90s--does to each of them.
The Green Mile spoiler: some people have objected to the ending, in which John Coffey, the retarded black man who works miracles, gives permission to his white jailers to execute him, thereby removing any guilt they might have as a result. I disagree that Coffey's absolution is what justifies his subsequent execution. Stephen King doesn't work that way, although Coffey's recognition and acceptance of what's happening is important.
What justifies Coffey's getting executed (in the Old Testament world that King lives in, in which you pay for everything you do) is that Coffey does kill somebody. He uses Percy Wetmore as his instrument of executing Wild Bill in cold blood. Wild Bill might deserve what's coming to him--but he's already on death row; he's gonna get his. And Percy, as despicable as he is, doesn't deserve to be someone's executioner-by-proxy. Coffey has to pay for this act, as understandable as it is. And that's why it's okay to execute him at the end.
As if execution were okay. But you know what I mean.
The answer to yesterday's question: President Clinton criticized Yeltsin's policy in Chechnya, which is pretty brutal. Yeltsin responded in a way guaranteed to make everyone who's been just a teeny bit worried about his stability lay awake at nights. Clinton then pointed out that Yeltsin hadn't exactly been circumspect about criticizing Clinton's and NATO's policies in Kosovo. That's what world leaders do, after all: criticize one another. One of the few joys in the job, one suspects.
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Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com