Charlie Wilson’s War Director: Mike Nichols It is difficult to know what to make of Charlie Wilson’s War. For the Golden Globe awards, it was listed under comedies. While there is some verbal repartee, it is not exactly an overall comedy.? In its picture of a ‘good-time Charlie’ congressman who gets himself involved in the Afghan struggle of the 1980s against the Russians, it presents as a kind of hero or anti-hero a man who did deals for upping the budget appropriations for covert operations to defeat the Russians. Admirable? Despicable? Hero? Patriot? American who acted self-confidently according to the national doctrine of ‘manifest destiny’, guilty of a huge presumption? Tom Hanks has developed a screen personal of the upright American, so it is more than a bit disturbing to see him snorting cocaine in a jacuzzi full of strippers and receiving the highest award from the organisation of covert agencies. Julia Roberts can act Brockovich-tough, but who is this wealthy Houston woman who takes up an interest in the Afghans and pressures legislators and donors behind the scenes, declares she is a born-again Christian but whose behaviour gives born again a double standards name?? These are very ambiguous characters, of ambiguous moral stances, who are seen as the true anti-communist patriots – which may justify everything. So, this means that Mike Nichols’ film is quite unsettling. And, with Philip Seymour Hoffman giving another of his outstandingly different performances as a disgruntled CIA operative who finds a cause worth manipulating for in Afghanistan, it is even more unsettling. Clearly, we are meant to be thinking about American policy in both Iraq and Afghanistan post-September 11th, and that makes the film more disturbing. What is going on now?? Covert and overt? We have seen Redacted, Rendition, In the Valley of Elah and, especially about Afghanistan, Lions for Lambs. At the end, the CIA agent warns that with the retreat of the Russians in 1988 after the American-supplied arms brought down so many Russian planes and helicopters and destroyed so much artillery, that mad crowds were coming into Kabul. Charlie Wilson suggests a modest appropriation for building schools in Afghanistan but the DC powers that be have lost interest in the country and in the people. And, so, enter the Taliban. I hope Charlie Wilson’s War is not passed over as an American comedy. Its themes are far too deadly for that. |
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