The Manchurian Candidate «««
PG-13, 129m. 2004
Cast & Credits: Denzel Washington (Ben Marco), Live Schreiber (Raymond Shaw), Meryl Streep (Eleanor Shaw), Jeffrey Wright (Al Melvin), Kimberly Elise (Rosie), Jon Voight (Senator Thomas Jordan). Screenplay by Daniel Pyne and Dean Georgaris based on the 1962 screenplay by George Axelrod and the novel by Richard Condon. Directed by Jonathan Demme.
Director John Frankenheimer’s controversial, political suspense thriller, The Manchurian Candidate (1962) arrived in a time when America was under the threat of communism and maybe even, nuclear annihilation given that the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred that same year.
Back then, I can understand why the film’s star Frank Sinatra had the picture pulled from circulation after President Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, never to be seen again until 1987 when it was re-released to theaters and then to home video. Sinatra was afraid people would draw parallels to accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald ‘s Communist ties and the JFK assassination to the fictional assassination depicted in the film.
I am not all surprised that 42 years later, director Jonathan Demme’s remake of Frankenheimer’s classic comes not only during a presidential election year but during a time when Americans no longer feel safe on their own shores after the terrorist attacks of September 11.
Instead of communists during the Korean War brainwashing American soldiers into becoming killing machines through a simple game of solitaire as depicted in the original, American soldiers are now being brainwashed by greedy American corporations during the first Gulf War.
Brainwashing techniques have advanced over the course of 40 years watching this new update. Instead of playing cards, unsuspecting military servicemen like Captain Ben Marco (Denzel Washington) and his staff Sgt. Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber) have microchips implanted in their brains after being ambushed during a routine night patrol in Iraq. All it takes to set them off is for the both of them to answer “yes” to confirming their identities when the mysterious person calls asking if it is either Raymond Shaw or Ben Marco they are speaking to.
There are plenty of references to September 11 and whether or not Homeland Security is doing enough to protect America.
“I know how much Americans have to fear today,” says Shaw who early on becomes a candidate for the vice presidency of the United States. “I believe that freedom from fear is not negotiable. We must secure tomorrow today.”
This isn’t just the same kind of political rhetoric we’ve just heard at the Democratic National Convention earlier this month, but also the same thing President Bush has been preaching to the public since 9/11.
Watching The Manchurian Candidate, I couldn’t help but make comparisons to Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry being awarded the Purple Heart during his tour of duty in Vietnam. Like Kerry, the Shaw character also gets a Purple Heart and unlike the proof the right wing media has been questioning when it comes to whether or not Kerry really earned his medals, we realize early on that Shaw didn’t earn his.
When Marco presents evidence to Shaw’s vice presidential opponent (Jon Voight) that his adversary has ties to a major corporation, I was reminded how director Michael Moore showed President Bush to have ties to the House of Saud and Vice President Dick Cheney’s involvement with the Haliburton company.
“You are about to become the first privately owned and operated vice president of the United States,” says Eleanor Shaw (Meryl Streep), the domineering mother and senator who is clearly the driving force behind her son’s campaign.
Like so many remakes of classic movies before it, The Manchurian Candidate is a curiosity piece to anyone interested in seeing what a notable filmmaker like Jonathan Demme can do. Just like he did with Silence of the Lambs, Demme once again leaves us with an ominous feeling that something bad is going to happen. We just don’t know what.
There are some great moments as in the brainwashing scene that looks like something out of a futuristic nightmarish science fiction movie where the soldier’s heads are attached to a large surgical machine with several hoses coming out of it. I liked how the scenery changed, for example, when Shaw gets that first phone call in his hotel room and the entire setting becomes a whitish glow like he is entering Heaven. This is Demme’s obvious way of allowing us to see what’s going on inside Shaw’s head.
The nagging question though remains. How do you improve upon what is already deemed a classic? The answer is Demme can’t. The conspiracy notions here are as much window dressing as Streep’s performance whose reddish hair and combative personality bear an obvious resemblance to New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (though Streep maintains she didn’t base the role on her). The film’s plot twists can only considered surprising if you have seen the original and can distinguish the differences between Washington’s Marco character and the one Sinatra played.
What makes this update work is in the way the film makes us feel sympathy for Schreiber’s character. Shaw is like Frankenstein’s monster who not only hates what he has become but how his life has turned out thanks to “Mother.” He realizes he must be stopped but can’t bring himself to pull the trigger.
The 1962 original offered a foreboding sense of doom for the country given the fact JFK was assassinated a year after its release, enough to pull it from circulation for the next 25 years. Unlike its predecessor, this new Manchurian Candidate doesn’t offer a feeling of peril or uneasiness. We’ve been feeling this way ever since 9/11 thanks to the news media. If there is anything foreboding it might be the recent terror warnings and the rising threat levels to Washington, New York and now several other American cities and news of al-Queda’s supposed plans to disrupt the democratic presidential election process between now and perhaps Inauguration Day.
The film is only timely because this is an election year. Michael Moore’s Bush bashing fest, Fahrenheit 9/11, is coming to DVD in October, one month before Election Day in an obvious attempt to help sway voters who still haven’t made up on their mind on who to choose for president. No one will care about the documentary after the election is over.
Unless another terrorist attack happens between now and January, nobody’s really going to care about The Manchurian Candidate afterwards. The best thing about this latest remake is like all the revamps of many classic movies before it (Ocean’s 11 (1960), Psycho (1960), Planet of the Apes (1968), etc.) the film makes one appreciate the hauntingly suspenseful intensity of the original even more.
©8/2/04
PG-13, 129m. 2004
Cast & Credits: Denzel Washington (Ben Marco), Live Schreiber (Raymond Shaw), Meryl Streep (Eleanor Shaw), Jeffrey Wright (Al Melvin), Kimberly Elise (Rosie), Jon Voight (Senator Thomas Jordan). Screenplay by Daniel Pyne and Dean Georgaris based on the 1962 screenplay by George Axelrod and the novel by Richard Condon. Directed by Jonathan Demme.
Back then, I can understand why the film’s star Frank Sinatra had the picture pulled from circulation after President Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, never to be seen again until 1987 when it was re-released to theaters and then to home video. Sinatra was afraid people would draw parallels to accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald ‘s Communist ties and the JFK assassination to the fictional assassination depicted in the film.
I am not all surprised that 42 years later, director Jonathan Demme’s remake of Frankenheimer’s classic comes not only during a presidential election year but during a time when Americans no longer feel safe on their own shores after the terrorist attacks of September 11.
Instead of communists during the Korean War brainwashing American soldiers into becoming killing machines through a simple game of solitaire as depicted in the original, American soldiers are now being brainwashed by greedy American corporations during the first Gulf War.
Brainwashing techniques have advanced over the course of 40 years watching this new update. Instead of playing cards, unsuspecting military servicemen like Captain Ben Marco (Denzel Washington) and his staff Sgt. Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber) have microchips implanted in their brains after being ambushed during a routine night patrol in Iraq. All it takes to set them off is for the both of them to answer “yes” to confirming their identities when the mysterious person calls asking if it is either Raymond Shaw or Ben Marco they are speaking to.
There are plenty of references to September 11 and whether or not Homeland Security is doing enough to protect America.
“I know how much Americans have to fear today,” says Shaw who early on becomes a candidate for the vice presidency of the United States. “I believe that freedom from fear is not negotiable. We must secure tomorrow today.”
This isn’t just the same kind of political rhetoric we’ve just heard at the Democratic National Convention earlier this month, but also the same thing President Bush has been preaching to the public since 9/11.
Watching The Manchurian Candidate, I couldn’t help but make comparisons to Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry being awarded the Purple Heart during his tour of duty in Vietnam. Like Kerry, the Shaw character also gets a Purple Heart and unlike the proof the right wing media has been questioning when it comes to whether or not Kerry really earned his medals, we realize early on that Shaw didn’t earn his.
When Marco presents evidence to Shaw’s vice presidential opponent (Jon Voight) that his adversary has ties to a major corporation, I was reminded how director Michael Moore showed President Bush to have ties to the House of Saud and Vice President Dick Cheney’s involvement with the Haliburton company.
“You are about to become the first privately owned and operated vice president of the United States,” says Eleanor Shaw (Meryl Streep), the domineering mother and senator who is clearly the driving force behind her son’s campaign.
Like so many remakes of classic movies before it, The Manchurian Candidate is a curiosity piece to anyone interested in seeing what a notable filmmaker like Jonathan Demme can do. Just like he did with Silence of the Lambs, Demme once again leaves us with an ominous feeling that something bad is going to happen. We just don’t know what.
There are some great moments as in the brainwashing scene that looks like something out of a futuristic nightmarish science fiction movie where the soldier’s heads are attached to a large surgical machine with several hoses coming out of it. I liked how the scenery changed, for example, when Shaw gets that first phone call in his hotel room and the entire setting becomes a whitish glow like he is entering Heaven. This is Demme’s obvious way of allowing us to see what’s going on inside Shaw’s head.
The nagging question though remains. How do you improve upon what is already deemed a classic? The answer is Demme can’t. The conspiracy notions here are as much window dressing as Streep’s performance whose reddish hair and combative personality bear an obvious resemblance to New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (though Streep maintains she didn’t base the role on her). The film’s plot twists can only considered surprising if you have seen the original and can distinguish the differences between Washington’s Marco character and the one Sinatra played.
What makes this update work is in the way the film makes us feel sympathy for Schreiber’s character. Shaw is like Frankenstein’s monster who not only hates what he has become but how his life has turned out thanks to “Mother.” He realizes he must be stopped but can’t bring himself to pull the trigger.
The 1962 original offered a foreboding sense of doom for the country given the fact JFK was assassinated a year after its release, enough to pull it from circulation for the next 25 years. Unlike its predecessor, this new Manchurian Candidate doesn’t offer a feeling of peril or uneasiness. We’ve been feeling this way ever since 9/11 thanks to the news media. If there is anything foreboding it might be the recent terror warnings and the rising threat levels to Washington, New York and now several other American cities and news of al-Queda’s supposed plans to disrupt the democratic presidential election process between now and perhaps Inauguration Day.
The film is only timely because this is an election year. Michael Moore’s Bush bashing fest, Fahrenheit 9/11, is coming to DVD in October, one month before Election Day in an obvious attempt to help sway voters who still haven’t made up on their mind on who to choose for president. No one will care about the documentary after the election is over.
Unless another terrorist attack happens between now and January, nobody’s really going to care about The Manchurian Candidate afterwards. The best thing about this latest remake is like all the revamps of many classic movies before it (Ocean’s 11 (1960), Psycho (1960), Planet of the Apes (1968), etc.) the film makes one appreciate the hauntingly suspenseful intensity of the original even more.
©8/2/04
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