TWO DOCUDRAMAS PROVIDE TRIVIA FOR THOSE IN PURSUIT
Based on the nonfiction book of Vincent Bugliosi, Four Days in November: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (2007), the film Parkland (the name of the hospital that received dying bodies of both John F. Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald) does not try to respond to the speculative JFK (1991), directed by Oliver Stone, but rather to identify unsung heroes and unexpected villains. The heroes include emergency room physician Dr. Charles Caricco (played by Zac Efron), who tried valiantly to save their lives; photographer-journalist Abraham Zabruder (Paul Giamatti), the only one to film JFK’s assassination; and Oswald’s persevering brother Robert (James Badge Dale). Beyond Lee Harvey Oswald, the villains include his crazed mother Marguerite (Jacki Weaver); secret service agent James Hosty (John Livingston), who could have arrested the assassin weeks before and then was ordered to burn his file; and the paparazzi. But two facts, perhaps forgotten over the years, are fully documented amid the panic that pervades most of the film: Scurrilous one-page notices accusing President Kennedy of treason did not result in heightened security to protect him, and the Dallas Police likewise did not protect Lee Harvey Oswald. The fact that federal officials removed Kennedy’s dead body from Dallas, where the crime was committed, despite protests of Dallas medical examiner Dr. Earl Rose (Rory Cochrane), may not be as well known. The later life of the heroes and villains is revealed in titles at the end of the film, which was directed by Peter Landesman. MH
Captain Richard Phillips (played by Tom Hanks), civilian captain of the unarmed ship Maersk Alabama, was carrying cargo in the pirate-infested Indian Ocean adjacent to Somalia in 2009. Pirates boarded the vessel and for 4 days held the brave captain, who cleverly saved his crew, until rescued by SEALs. Captain Phillips, directed by Paul Greengrass, is the docudrama based on Philipps’s 2010 book (with Stephen Talty) A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS, and Dangerous Days at Sea. But the fast-moving film pretends that the rescue took a single day, and unexplained to this day is whatever happened to the $30,000 ransom paid to the pirates from the ship’s safe. MH
A TOUCH OF SIN IS A CRUDE SLICE OF CHINA TODAY
If you want to understand contemporary China, you can take a tour, read books, or for real depth, you must see A Touch of Sin (Tian zhu ding), directed by Zhangke Jia. In French realism style, four main characters are portrayed as if in real life, without commentary or even clear divisions between separate stories, based on events well known to Chinese: (1) A rural villager in his 60s who believes that the local millionaire is corrupt. (2) A 30ish migrant worker is trigger happy, shooting anyone to survive. (3) A 20ish receptionist in a massage parlor, after attracting love from a married man who fears divorcing his jealous wife, has to fend off a patron who demands sex with her. (4) A late teenager accidentally cuts himself at a garment factory and then tries to seek employment elsewhere in a big city. Rural areas, small towns, and metropolises lack a sense of law and order; power is wielded by the one with the gun or the goons. Traditional Chinese customs persist to unify, but ruthless capitalism rules. Character development is extraordinary, particularly in revealing an intense alienation and rootlessness which Karl Marx decried as the hallmark of exploitative capitalism. The film serves as an indelible critique of how China is “building socialism.” MH