REALLY MODERN TIMES
by Chris Dashiell

A group of exhausted soldiers dig a ditch while bantering at an isolated winter outpost. The unit leader goes on patrol with his second in command. A few minutes later we see the two men on the ground, embracing and kissing in the snow.

The place is the Lebanon border. The soldiers are in the Israeli Defense Force, and the movie is called Yossi & Jagger, an emotionally affecting portrait of love in uniform directed by Eytan Fox. With a wry, understated humor, the film explores the tensions between official Israeli military culture, rigidly homophobic in nature, and the passionate, secret attachment of two gay soldiers, Yossi (Ohad Knoller), a tough leader who has difficulty showing his tender side, and his funny and charismatic partner, nicknamed Jagger because of his rock star good looks, played by Yehuda Levi.

This rather subversive theme is not the only reason that the film irritated the IDF. The depiction of life in the military is more than a bit irreverent. Living in close quarters, the men are bored, irritable, and horny. Two pretty female soldiers show up -- one of them is sleeping with an obnoxious colonel, the other has a crush on Jagger. The casual relationship between men and women soldiers might come as a revelation to American audiences. The unit has plenty of sexual intrigue, but that doesn't seem to adversely affect their discipline.

The film is short (just a little over an hour long), but Fox's style is unhurried and observant. We see the characters go through a typical day -- eating, joking, and preparing for an ill-advised night operation. This is not really a critique of the Israeli military. Wider issues of Israeli policy towards Arabs or Palestinians are not addressed, because Fox, and screenwriter Avner Bernheimer, are concerned only with the personal conditions and situations of the soldiers. The picture is a brief, poignant look at the way ordinary human beings cope with the stress of army life. Gradually the strands of the story come together, as the need for love and connection meets the crisis of war head-on.

Yossi & Jagger quietly depicts the wholly negative effects of the closet, not only on gays but on the rest of us. Forcing people to conceal who they are ends up hurting everyone in the long run. What with our Chickenhawk-in-Chief cynically using the gay card to try to get elected, the film serves as a welcome reminder of gay people all over the world putting their lives on the line, even as we speak.

In 2002, a couple of Irish filmmakers, Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Briain, got a lucky break. The result is a remarkable documentary called The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Bartley and O'Briain went to Venezuela to do a documentary about that country's populist president Hugo Chavez. They ended up capturing on film one of the most amazing political stories of recent years.

Chavez, a former army officer, was elected President by a landslide in 1998. His supporters are primarily the poor, non-white majority of that country. Now, Venezuela happens to be the fourth largest oil producer in the world. In the past, even though the state owns the oil, all the profits went to the 20% of the population that is well-off and white, who in turn kept the price down for U.S. oil companies. Chavez had the courage to say that all the people should share in the profits, and set about breaking the grip of the Venezuelan millionaires in order to do it.

The film shows how the privately-owned media kept up a continuous barrage of attacks on Chavez. Particularly fascinating is how the images of an anti-Chavez march, in which hidden snipers opened fire on the President's supporters who were defending the palace, killing and wounding many people, were manipulated on TV to make it seem as if the pro-Chavez people had fired on the marchers. This "fact" was then repeated as gospel by Bush's press secretary Ari Fleischer, reflecting the administration's stern opposition to Chavez, also documented by clips of Colin Powell and George Tenet pontificating against the Venezuelan president as "not having America's best interests at heart." The wealthy opposition leaders even went to Washington to meet with Bush officials prior to the climactic events shown in the film, raising the question of whether the CIA had prior nowledge of, and provided support for, the anti-Chavez coup.

In April of 2002, a group of businessman, with the help of leading army generals, had Chavez arrested and taken to an island, and then dissolved his elected government. Oil executive Pedro Carmona was installed as the new president, in violation of the Constitution, since Chavez had refused to resign, and no referendum had taken place.

What happened next was astounding. Despite the private media concealing what had really happened, the truth leaked out through the efforts of pro-Chavez officials who had gone underground. Riot police were in force in the streets of Caracas to put down demonstrations, but people gradually began to mass anyway, in the hundreds of thousands, marching towards the presidential palace to demand the return of their elected government. Eventually an estimated one million people had surrounded the building. The palace guard, still loyal to Chavez, went against army orders and retook the palace, arresting the interlopers, although Carmona and others got away (not before looting the safe). The Chavez aides and officials returned, and with the help of lower-level army officers who realized that they'd been deceived, Chavez himself was finally released, coming back to power two days after the attempted coup.

Bartley and O'Briain were right there in the middle of the whole thing, with privileged access inside the palace, even after the coup, when the right wing seemed to have triumphed, so the film provides a bird's eye view of the entire gripping political drama from beginning to end. It's frightening to see how democracy can be so easily subverted by the power of big money, and the lies of corporate media. But the film also provides an example of real hope. If enough people stand up for their rights, the arbitrary power of a rich minority may be forced to back down. The poor people of Caracas said No, even in the face of possible violent repression by the army and police, and they said it with such force, and in such numbers, that freedom triumphed. Such action, and such vigilance, will continue to be needed in our perilous times, in Venezuela and everywhere.

Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin's great 1936 film, rolled into town recently in a brand new print. Seeing it on a big screen with an audience -- an appreciative audience roaring with laughter -- is a vastly different experience than seeing it on TV and chuckling to oneself. The story has the Tramp as a worker who becomes unemployed after suffering an hilarious nervous breakdown in a factory. He tries his hand at various other jobs, gets periodically chased and locked up by the police, and makes friends with a saucy girl played by Paulette Goddard.

This is the film where Chaplin gets sucked into the bowels of a machine, tightening screws as he get squeezed through a series of cogwheels. There's also a great scene with a gadget that's designed to feed him so that he can work without interruption. The picture satirizes the dehumanizing effect of industry, and the rise of big business. But it's also a story about trying to find a home when there's no home to be had.

Modern Times is more episodic than Chaplin's previous film, City Lights, and is therefore generally ranked slightly lower than that film (and rightly so, I think). But it's very funny indeed, and showcases Chaplin's comic timing and athleticism to great effect. The long, lovely sequence in which the Tramp and "the gamin" (Goddard) set up a fantasy home in a deserted department store has that perfect mixture of goofiness and sentiment that characterized Chaplin's best work. Other highlights include the Tramp turning his jail cell into a homely little cottage, and the final episode where he tries to make a living as a singing waiter (the first time his voice was heard in a film -- he's singing gibberish in French).

At one point early on, Chaplin picks up a construction flag that's fallen out of the back of a truck, and runs after the truck trying to return it. Around the corner behind him comes a street demonstration, and because of the flag, the Tramp appears to be leading the protesters. He gets arrested, of course. We should remember that there was labor unrest in those days, and it's instructive to see how Chaplin turns this political fact to comic advantage. The Tramp is not political, but just by virtue of who he is -- a man perpetually on society's fringes -- he is caught up in the storm. In real life, Chaplin's politics were liberal, but his enemies took pains to paint him as a dangerous radical. I guess there's something radical about wreaking havoc in a factory -- but who can watch this film and not root for the wreaker?

The theater management, too accustomed to Dolby and THX, didn't lower the mono soundtrack to an appropriate level, so I almost had to cover my ears whenever the music blared (the charming score was composed by Chaplin himself). But the image was absolutely crisp, and the savvy audience stayed with the film's madcap energy all the way.

Modern Times was the official farewell of silent film, made seven plus years into the sound era. Besides Chaplin's little nonsense song near the end, the only voices come from machines -- like the phonograph on the eating machine, or the huge surveillance screen in the restroom where the boss tells the Tramp (who's taking a smoke break) to get back to work. The incursion of the world of machines into the old, gentler human world has its counterpart (in Chaplin's mind) with the triumph of sound over silence in the movies.

The final shot is of the Tramp and the gamin walking away from us, down the road. One of the funniest movies ever made ends sadly, wistfully: we say goodbye to the dreams that once seemed so real, and exit the theater into an ever more uncertain future.

©2004 Chris Dashiell
CineScene