Comedian and writer JARRED KEANE on movies, motives and suspicious awards

Cannes in a Van welcomes Jarred Keane into our ever-growing collective film hub. He’s an Australian writer/comedian making his way round the world one joke at a time. Right now he’s here, giving us a hand and he’s written some things about some stuff. It’s worth reading so here’s a taster…

JUST TELL ME A STORY: MOVIES WITH SUSPICIOUS MOTIVES AND OSCARS 2013

With awards season here, all the big films are leaked onto the web, free for anyone to download and get an opinion no one wants to hear. This year though, an oddly high number of these films have a strange undercurrent of “America Rules.”

There’s ‘Lincoln’ telling us how hard it was to overcome racism and slavery. ‘Django Unchained’ doing the same thing with more gun violence, and an hour of extraneous footage and racial slurs. ‘Argo’ glossing over US war crimes to say how awesomely the CIA once saved a few white people’s lives. And ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ saying how good the US are at getting revenge on an evil man.

Now, even though Lincoln and Django Unchained have the most in common on the surface, ironically, that’s a shallow judgement. Sure, DiCaprio is the antithesis of Day Lewis in creating a nuanced and enthralling character, who also has a weird beard and obsession with slaves, but that’s stretching it. Lincoln aligns more with Zero Dark Thirty because there’s a congratulatory agenda behind everything, and they skip over ugly facts to essentially say, “this is how it happened, isn’t it amazing? America! Stop hating on Obama!”

Argo however, tells you right away the US installed a dictator who was horrible (putting it kindly) to his people, then when that dictator was kicked out, the US protected him because they had multiple other dictators in other countries, who they’d lose if they gave up this one. That’s really, really uncool. And true. But the film then goes on with the great character development and suspenseful storytelling. Lincoln doesn’t do that. It just has a funny musket scene amidst 2.5 hours of unending seriousness. If all goes according to my genius plan, Affleck will take the Oscar, while Spielberg scratches his stringy, Lincoln-eqsue beard (my plan is to wish really hard). And Bigalow can make a gripping movie which isn’t about the amazeballsness of soldiers in the Iraq & Afghanistan wars.

Lincoln only proves that even if politicians are wearing silly hats and ridiculous moustaches, watching them argue and brood about how serious their decisions are, is boring. Yes, Day Lewis at this point, could win an Oscar for a cameo in a porno, but he gives us a tired old man with only hints at complexity – he’s a caricature hero. For all the emphasis on the moral crusade against racists, there’s barely a mention of women’s rights, or that their great nation had just spent 60 years buying up land, killing and displacing vast amounts of Mexicans and Native Americans.

Okay, history may not be completely boring, but it’s at least confusing and annoyingly dishonest, so just tell me a good story, please! That’s the way you learn about history. You see a good film and think “Wow, amazing, I wanna learn more about this!” Then you do, and it’s not at all that exciting, so you think “Aw, that sucks, but at least I know stuff now. Thanks Hollywood!”

We’ll be featuring more writings from Jarred and other commentators soon.
You can find his blog at inlieuofalot.wordpress.com

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