I didn’t really buy in to this legend of Will Ferrell’s Burgundy. There are laugh-out-loud moments, but they are few. Great characters waiting around for a better story.

Every lover of film knows that film has the power to mold, change one’s life. It does- or at least we have to believe it does. So it is with any kind of love. But in the spring of 1968, film lovers, for a brief period of time, believed that they could change the world with their love and their art. The removal of Henry Langois, the founder of Cinematheque Francais, lead to a protest for cinema which only proved to be a snowball rolling downhill which grew in to a popular revolt, firebombs, riots, politics and more. It became a worldwide phenomenon and ‘gave birth’ to modern cinema.

I am 24 and love films. I discuss the merits of Chaplin over Keaton, Beatles over Elvis and Hendrix over Clapton in the same breath- in the same breath as the issues of the Vietnam war (assisted by Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July), of Christ (The Passion, Last Temptation), of the holocaust, of everything. The characters in Bernardo Bertolucci’s magnificent ‘The Dreamers’ have a similar belief structure based on what they absorb from film.

So after I got home from this movie, I found myself humming the song ‘Revolution 1’ from The Beatles’ “The White Album”, for no particular reason. Except for the lyrics.

You say you’ll change the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it’s the institution
Well, you know
You better free you mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao
You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow
Don’t you know it’s gonna be all right

Guess what? “The White Album” came out in 1968. Listen to that song. If it means anything to you, stop reading this review- you will love “The Dreamers”.

Oh, to have been in love and in France. I know nothing of what that would feel like. But to have been in love, in love with film and to have been young in France in the spring of 1968? I think I know something of the feeling- but nothing of the experience. And that is what ‘The Dreamers’ is about. Bertolucci’s film can tell us what it felt like to have been a young wide-eyed, idealist American, Matthew (Michael Pitt) in Paris for a year to learn French in 1968. He can tell us of his experience where his fantasy through films, fantasy through his child-like twin friends Isabelle and Theo and the reality of what was happening on the streets would collide to change his life. But films cannot tell us, and films cannot tell Matthew, how we would react if we were thrown out on the streets in between a screaming mob and the charging police. Sometimes, thought, it seems as though film can and does.

And so it was with Theo and Isabelle- who must always be mentioned in the same breath. And so it was with Matthew. Where they draw the line- between art and their lives- is what makes them different and what will define how they live the rest of their lives.

Matthew (who bears a striking resemblance to a young Brando- which would make this the ‘first tango in Paris’) has been in Paris for some time- lonely, watching films at the Cinematheque and picking up scraps of French. When the revolt begins, he comes in contact with Theo and Isabelle, twins who believe so strongly that they are the same person that they cannot imagine life without the other. They invite Matthew to live with them when their parents are away for a month. What begins as a playful friendship through a love of film and interest in politics spirals in to a fantasy of sex and decadence where the reality outside the window takes a back seat.

Bertolucci’s ‘The Dreamers’ is influenced by film. That is an understatement. Every scene is homage to another from the past, present, foreign, silent and even his own (The Last Tango in Paris). But it does not stop there- his characters, Isabelle and Theo, are living their lives in homage to the films they love. They act out scenes from films and require each other to guess where it is from. Failure to answer correctly would result in some childish, yet provocative punishments. They want the most important moments in their lives to be as they were in the films they adore. Isabelle says she was born in 1959 on the Champs Elysees and her first words were “New York Herald Tribune”- and we cut to the scene from Goddard’s “Breathless” (1959) where Jean Seberg is shouting the same words. We have Bertolucci shooting scenes from past films with his own characters as players- running through the Louvre, chased by their own shadows. But this is not all- the film is not a film for film-buffs to smile and chuckle at their own encyclopedic knowledge of film.

While Matthew loves the twins and what they represent, he views them as an outsider looking in- never fully becoming part of their world of two. His own belief structure and values does not let him- Isabelle and Theo’s belief structure would not allow him in. He is a plaything in their child-like fantasy of decadence and view of the world through art which comes crashing down when the reality of the streets enters their bedroom in the climax and they are forced to make a choice about how they will live their lives.

At that age, can films tell you are? Or should we learn from them and but decide for ourselves. Are we Theo or Matthew? All of us do not get these moments of truth, but on the streets of Paris and around the world in the 60s- this revolution and Vietnam- everyone felt like they had theirs.

It is a film for film buffs to recognize the power and limit of their love for the medium. To quote another film, “The Matrix cannot tell you who you are”. And rightly so- though many young people today think that movie can. You do not need to know of Godard, Truffaut, or even Bertolucci to love this film- though it would help. All you need to have is a love of art, a love of the world and at some point in your life, to have believed that one can change the other.

Notes: This movie is rated NC-17 and yet I have managed
to write a review with no mention of it- what a feat! There are scenes of
total nudity and implied ‘social impropriety’. My point is, who cares? Add that fact to the review above, does it really change your opinion about what I said?

Directed by Philip Noyce
Cast: Michael Caine, Brendan Fraser, Do Thi Hai Yen
Rated: R Length: 118 minutes

The film opens with a shot of boats on Saigon River in the evening. The river seemed impossibly serene until I noticed lights flashing in the distance, beyond the city. All of a sudden, I no longer noticed the river, or the boats, or the city but found myself focusing on the lights in the distance. They were flashing and once in a while streaked across the evening sky. Far in the distance, the French-Indochina war was raging. Yet it was so simple to keep my myopic view of the river, to forget that conflict was on the horizon.

The Quiet American, set in the 1950s in Indochina (now Vietnam), stars Michael Caine as British journalist Thomas Fowler who shares my myopic view. In his time covering the conflict between the French and the communists from Saigon Fowler has grown fond of his life there and in the company of his opium and his woman finds it easy to remain uninvolved. The woman he loves is Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen) and in her he has invested his ego. As do most men, he sees his worth in her need for him. Phuong used to be a dancer, and though she seems to have genuine affection for him, her need for him arises from desperate circumstances.
Fowler meets a bright and idealistic young American, Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser) who says he has come to provide medical aid where possible. Pyle is the titular quiet American, and we soon suspect that he may have reasons to be quiet. Problems arise when the London Times call Fowler back for his inactivity. Fowler realizes that his world is coming apart- he would have to leave his beloved Phuong and return to an unhappy marriage in London. ‘I thought you liked London,’ Phuong asks him. ‘I like it just where it is,’ he replies. Jumpstarted in to action, Fowler sets out to the north with French troops in search of a story. The story he finds is that there is a third force rising in Vietnam led by self-appointed General Thè against both the communists and the French.

Another story he discovers is that Pyle has fallen for Phuong and in a scene of unabashed, romantic idealism he proposes to Phuong in front of Fowler. Brendan Fraser offers a performance that departs from his usual nitwit (but adored) persona, that provides a strongly American wide-eyed, out-to-set-the-world-right counterpart to Caine’s cynical, world-weary Fowler.

While he continues his investigation on the third front, his romantic life comes crashing down around him. The discovery of a careless lie of his sends Phuong in to the arms of the American Pyle and he is consumed with grief. Still, the magnitude and pertinence of the story he was investigating keeps him going and leads him to suspect the Americans of involvement in the third front. In a shrewdly crafted climax, we see characters moving towards inevitable inhumane actions that their world-views allow them to justify. ‘Sooner or later, Mr. Fowler, one has to take sides if one is to stay human.’ So says Fowler’s assistant Hinh, and such is the fate of the two main characters of the film.

Michael Caine, who was nominated for an Oscar for this performance, is as always a delight to watch. The weight and wisdom he brings to Thomas Fowler in his narrative, delivered in retrospect, is the pulse of the film. In his moments of confidence, we believe that he is a sure-footed Brit; but beneath the surface, his vulnerabilities about his love, about his age and towards the end, about the meaning of the conflict in Vietnam are lurking.

What is remarkable about this story is that the original novel by Graham Greene was written before American involvement in Vietnam officially began. In that sense, it is supremely prophetic. The movie was set to be released towards the end of 2001, but after the tragic events of 9/11 it was postponed for its ‘anti-American’ sentiment. It would be unfortunate if people choose not to watch this movie for these reasons, as they would be depriving themselves of a confident and thought-provoking film. There is never a right time to release such a film for people who hold the questioning of one’s government as unpatriotic. In the same breath I would say that a film like this will always seem current- as relevant today as the time it was written, maybe even more so.

Director Phillip Noyce has made two films back to back that speak of periods in history their respective countries are not proud of. Rabbit-Proof Fence is about the shameful treatment of aborigines in Australia until not too long ago. In both films, Noyce has broken out of the ranks of the Hollywood clones and found a voice. While his previous big-budgeted ventures (the Jack Ryan films Clear and Present Danger and Patriot Games) were creditable, they will never have the long-term impact on the minds of the viewers that these will achieve. He is confident of the story he wants to tell and of the abilities of his actors.
So remarkably are the two threads of this story woven together that there are times when I wonder if the political intrigue serves as a backdrop to the love triangle or if it is the other way around. Then again, maybe they are both one and the same, with each character serving as a metaphor for the country they represent- Fowler, the old imperialist, and Pyle, the end-justifies-the-means young American, both fighting over the Vietnamese Phuong, who seems to have no say in her future. This is handled with kid-gloves in a scene where Phuong tells Fowler of her friend who was to leave with her French boyfriend, but was cruelly abandoned at the airport. Will the British and the American do the same?

Notes:
– The original 1958 film of The Quiet American turned Greene’s novel into an anti-communist story from its original cynical (and prophetic) view of the situation in Indochina.
– A rare Hollywood film to be shot mainly in Vietnam. Surprisingly, most Vietnam war movies are shot in other Asian countries such as the Philippines, or even worse, the United States.