I’ve been speculating in this space over the past couple of weeks that, in spite of the efforts of much of the mainstream press, American isolationism may be declining–at least when it comes to world cinema. The evidence–apart from the impending opening of local art-movie venues and the current Chicago International Film Festival, now in its third and final week–includes the exciting non-American prizewinners at Cannes and Venice, a striking change from past years, bitterly contested or else studiously ignored by our more provincial reviewers, and the announced departure from the New York Times of its first-string film reviewer, Janet Maslin, a prime example of alienated labor when it comes to movies in general.
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Another shining example of shrinking American isolationism is David O. Russell’s Hollywood war film Three Kings, which Lisa Alspector’s enthusiastic Reader review persuaded me to run out to see a couple of weeks ago. It’s a skeptical look at this country’s role in the gulf war that, for all its ideological ambivalence and stylistic difficulties, seems a more responsible and accurate reading of that war than any comparable movie made about the Vietnam war. Considering that so far it’s practically the only Hollywood film we’ve had about that war, the accomplishment seems even more impressive, and makes it an honorary foreign movie of sorts, even with all its action kicks. Without wishing to make too much of the parallels, I can’t resist finding Russell’s more optimistic view of the American viewer’s intelligence similar to the Chicago festival’s assumption that we might actually want to see movies from all over the world. By contrast, what must David Edelstein of Slate think of us when he accords more space and respect to adolescent yahoo and publicity hound Kevin Smith (who told Edelstein, “I tried to do something good and got hassled for it…to spread the word of Christ, and also throw in a few fart and dick jokes”) than to any other filmmaker at the New York film festival?
