Movies, Movies, Movies

Last Friday night, Daughter Number 2 and I went to the Loews Cineplex at Boston Common to see Mission: Impossible III (me for the second time). Across the street from the theatre was a crowd of militant Catholics protesting The Da Vinci Code, which opened that same day. All of the demonstrators held placards denouncing the movie as false and evil. In the middle of the group, a layman recited prayers through a bullhorn while priests of different ages, attired in their natty black suits with white clerical collars, stood off to one side looking on. At the very front of the gathering, facing the theatre, were a dozen nuns aligned neatly along the sidewalk curb dressed in traditional black and white habits.

“What are they doing?” asked DN2.

“They’re protesting the movie.”

“What movie?”

“Well, from the look of it,” I replied, “I’d say it was March of the Penguins.”

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The missus and I did wind up seeing The Da Vinci Code the following night at the same theatre. Have you seen it? I keep hearing the critics hate it, but I thought it was pretty good. What was funny to me was how much I forgot of the book version of The Da Vinci Code. I read it just a little more than a year ago, but throughout the entire movie I kept going, “Oh yeah! That’s right — I forgot about that.” Evidently my last remaining brain cell is not quite up to task anymore. Toward the end of the movie, the hero, Robert Langdon, has to figure out the answer to a riddle, a simple 5-letter word (the whole story, by the way, is a riddle inside a conundrum inside an enigma inside a brainteaser inside a puzzle). I remember when reading the book I felt sure it was “venus,” only to be proven completely wrong. So what did I do when I watched the movie? I kept guessing it was “venus.” Maybe if I watch it again I’ll be right.

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Mission: Impossible III is by far the best Mission: Impossible of them all. It’s smart and it doesn’t rely solely on action (although action, of course, is its raison d’etre, let’s not forget that). At one point the Laurence Fishburne character complains that the super bad guy in the movie (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) is like the invisible man. Then he adds: “Welles, not Ellison” . . . to the delight of myself and possibly two others in the audience. And this time around they didn’t overuse those darn masks. I hated that about the show and especially the second Mission: Impossible — the answer for everything is to impersonate someone by quickly sticking a voice simulator chip to your Adam’s apple, tossing on a mask and wig, and presto! their own mothers couldn’t tell the difference. How cheap. In M:I 3 they actually made the process seem a bit difficult. One agent had to photograph the bad guy from all angles and send the images to a computer. Then a mask was constructed in a kind of mask-making kit that — as a nice touch — looked like it had been used a few times before. Finally, we saw Ving Rhames help Tom Cruise put the thing on (TC was already wearing a fat suit). It was well done and made me think impersonating someone might not really be that easy after all. I appreciated that.

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Everyone has heard of the famous director D.W. Griffith and his landmark 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation, right? Pop quiz: how much do you actually know about the movie? What is it about really? I always assumed it was supposed to be some major, patriotically-themed celluloid masterpiece that pushed the limits of filmmaking — which is true as far as that goes, as it was technically patriotic and it did break new cinematic ground. Let me tell you all the good stuff first: the movie, three hours long, was shown in playhouses — not cheap nickelodeons, mind you — and ticket prices ranged from 75 cents on up to a whopping two dollars. The movie was brought from city to city by touring companies who traveled with their own projection equipment and orchestra (a complete score was composed for the movie). In the first two years it ran, The Birth of a Nation grossed 10 million dollars, which, if my calculations are correct, comes out to exactly one billion kerjillion bazillion dollars in today’s money. Modern film editors must certainly get a kick out of how the scenes were strung together (I think they used blunt hatchets back in those days) and historians undoubtedly enjoy the funky tableaus faithfully copied from photographs and paintings, such as the Confederate surrender at the Appomattox Courthouse. The acting is good and, let’s face it, Lillian Gish, who played the heroine, is the cutest little thing you ever did see. It’s an entertaining film.

Here’s the bad part: The Birth of a Nation is, hands down, the most blatantly racist movie I have ever seen. Ever. I restrict myself not to just today’s standards when I say this. Even in 1915 the film was considered outrageous and extremely controversial — and the publicity resulting from that unquestionably accounted for much of the movie’s revenue. I even learned a new word from reading the background material: negrophobic. Based on a play called The Clansman (can you see where this is heading?), the film follows the fortunes of a Northern family and a Southern family from before the Civil War on through its aftermath. During Reconstruction, the viewer is acquainted with how the North rubbed the South’s face in it, sending down scalawags and carpetbaggers to take advantage of the South’s stricken white race by promoting the rise of the Negro — who were portrayed in the movie mainly by white men in blackface. Soon we see that all the Negro wants to do is get drunk, bust up the town, and lecherously pursue white women while the poor, huddling white inhabitants remain in the South at their own peril. What’s a Southern gentleman to do? Obviously, he needs to put on a white sheet and fight back.

Yes, for all of you who might not have known, The Birth of a Nation, the first full-fledged cinematic extravaganza in our country’s history, is a film that glorifies the Ku Klux Klan. It shows how the KKK saved the South from being crushed under the heel of the Black Man. There is a heart-rending scene where a young white girl jumps from a cliff to her death rather than suffer molestation from a black Union soldier. There’s the radical Northern politician who found out too late the evil designs of his mulatto protege, Silas Lynch (interesting name, eh?). And then there’s the heroic founder of the Klan saving Lillian Gish just before a forced marriage to said mulatto. It has it all, folks. Everything, that is, except decency, respect, and the truth.

That being said, you’ve just got see it.