Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Emile de Antonio & In the Year of the Pig
Watching In the Year of the Pig, I felt like I was in an auditorium at a college in the late sixties or seventies because this, or a small art house theater is were probably the only likely locations where you would view the films of Emile de Antonio. I could almost flashback to a room with brown metal folding chairs and the bright white light of a chatty Bell and Howell or Eiki projector and the kind of abrupt silence when house lights came up to change reels after forty minutes that was accompanied with the internal decision making of whether or not you were going to stay and watch the whole thing. You know you are watching something important, but there might be something more fun or pleasant to await you outside the room.
Emile de Antonio was a radical filmmaker who had a point to impress upon his viewer. But he was, it seems to me, intellectual in his passion. He was more Noah Chomsky (the subject of the book Necessary Illusions and the film Manufacturing Consent which were dedicated to de Antonio by authors and filmmakers Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick.) than Michael Moore. He was the kind of director who would be featured in publications like Cineaste ("America’s Leading Magazine on the Art and Politics of the Cinema. His first feature Point of Order is a skillfully hewn collection of newsclips that create a kind of narrative arc to tell the story of the Joe McCarthy era. It should always be available as one of the first sources for students and others to understand that time of the politics of fear. I first saw it on VHS during the mid-nineties shortly after the Newt Gingrich Republican congress was strutting its stuff and it felt oddly contemporary at that time.
And, unfortunately, one will feel such parallel history (i.e. Iraq, war on terror) when they view In the Year of the Pig. This film is one of the first to abruptly and scathingly question the United States involvement in Vietnam. It opens with images of firebombing, militarism, and refugees from villages. These images are intercut with segments of black with reconstituted sonic soundscape of helicopter noise. There is no narrator. The film consists of interview segments and illustrative footage, sometimes in counterpoint. At one point General Westmoreland states that there is no torture of Vietnamese, but edits to follow, show footage contrary to that claim and another interview with a soldier talks about outright assassination of prisoners.
The first 45 minutes of Pig are a history lesson of the French and early American efforts prior to the gulf of Tonkin resolution. French and American historians and journalists (including David Halbertstam) review the full history of colonialism and politics of the region. Ho Chi Minh's transformation from western educated student to Marxist revolutionary is covered, along with the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the Dinh brothers and Madame Nhu (she is still alive and is said to be preparing her memoirs--wow) The last hour of this 1968 film cover the Johnson years, particularly the Tonkin Gulf resolution (the WMD bluff of that time, in my humble opinion) to what at that point was the current state of messy affairs.
Hearts and Minds,the 1974 film on Vietnman, which sometimes is similar to tone and spirit of de Antonio's film, helped galvanize my perspective on the war. I well remember Daniel Ellsberg's interview in the film where he very emotionally talks about his decision to share what later became known as the Pentagon Papers. Daniel Berrigan's presence near the end of In the Year of the Pig played a similar role. After the history lesson and a summary of how bad things had gotten, the only solution seems to be, no, has to be, consciousness and action.
In the Year of the Pigis one of the films that is a part of a four disc DVD collection called Emile de Antonio-Radical Saint which its main release date has been delayed until July 8. I look forward to seeing his films on Nixon, the Weather Underground, and a retrospective film on his own filmmaking career, Mr Hoover and I, which features much information on the huge FBI file that was gathered about de Antonio.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:32 PM
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