FAIR GAME (Doug Liman)

-

Aside from being a political biopic, FAIR GAME is also a great spy tale based on the memoir of its heroine, Valerie Plame, who was exposed as a CIA agent allegedly as a means to get back at her husband, diplomat Joseph Wilson. This is already too familiar, especially that this story is said to have inspired Rod Lurie’s film NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH (remember the Vera Farmiga character?)

Anyways, FAIR GAME attacks the issues surrounding the “Plame Affair” head on, and director Doug Liman works around the details with maximum impact and a burning desire to give justice to its heroine, who is a victim of political struggle. Every scene unfolds in vivid detail, like a great spy thriller. Towards the second half there’s a great verbal joust between leads Naomi Watts and Sean Penn which proves the film is something to be taken seriously, because the events feel real, and the actors are so deep into their characters the tension is  intense.

Many a film had already exposed the Bush administration and its fiasco on the Iraq war as a major SNAFU (that’s Situation Normal All Fucked Up to you)— JARHEAD, GREEN ZONE, Michael Moore’s films, even DELTA FARCE, but FAIR GAME differs because its victim is a woman, and a woman who is disarmingly human as the film presents. Plame never wanted to butt heads with the White House; she just wanted her job back. Thanks to her husband’s determination through his media rallies, Plame testified against the injustice done to her and heads rolled, but not long until Bush started meddling again.

If this film does not get you angry in the end, I don’t know what will.

So the film is anti-feminist then? Not really. Plame’s ordeal was tough, and we witness her survival all throughout. What rule says that a man cannot reinforce his wife’s confidence? Plame, afterall is a human being capable of doubt, of fear, of choosing to remain mum. But as she Naomi Watts says in the film, “they cannot break me because I have no breaking point”.

The beauty in FAIR GAME is that it is based on a subversive memoir; hence the film takes its angst and its direct-to-the-point storytelling from the source material itself, with no fear of misrepresentation or false claims. As what critics claim as “righteous anger” filling the entire film (a term I have never heard of, and will certainly use for future reference), FAIR GAME serves as a reminder that the David and Goliath still applies to this day, that is if you know how to strategize.

RATING: 5/5


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TUHOG (Jeffrey Jeturian)

-
Image
Film within a film-structured movies are always interesting watch. Not only do they provide a much-needed deconstruction of form and content of cinema itself, but also that much-needed emotional punch a cinephile would surely love.  Like in BAD EDUCATION (Almodovar, 2004), we witness the characters tell the back story via montage, as if we are part of the cast of characters watching an actual movie. The form was successful in evoking pain and regret, and also of empathy. In TUHOG, Jeffrey Jeturian and screenwriter Bing Lao tackles sensational media in the Philippines, especially in cinema. The film opens as a film producer hears a pitch for a possible movie- a story of a grandfather who rapes his own granddaughter.  The director of the film soon after visits the victim of the crime, Floring (Ina Raymundo). Coercing both she and her mother, Perla (Irma Adlawan) to sell them the movie rights to their story, we witness as exploitation cinema unfolds. To think of it, capitalizing on ta
Read more

ANINO SA LIKOD NG BUWAN (Jun Lana, 2015)

-
Image
* English title "Shadow behind the Moon" The best term to describe Jun Lana's latest film would be a cinematic charade- a game of identities, of motives, of suppressed passions, and of uncertainty. Or the film equivalent of a Russian doll, if you will. "Anino sa Likod ng Buwan" only has three characters- husband and wife Nando (Anthony Falcon) and Emma (LJ Reyes) and military man Joel (Luis Alandy). What started as a seemingly routine banter among friends gradually and intensely escalated into an examination of society, where the definition of immorality is blurred during a time of insurgency.  And in fact, the film does discuss the subject of immorality from various paradigms. When does adultery become acceptable, and to whom? Is sexual liberation more heinous than murder? Why is immorality always a double standard? The film plays out the ideas in endless games. Or are they really games at all? Lana could have stopped there, but he didn'
Read more

A study of spaces in Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit's 'Happy Old Year'

-
Image
Space is both an overarching theme and visual signifier in Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit's Happy Old Year . Its protagonist, Jean (Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying) comes home from a lengthy stay abroad, determined to declutter her life, and along with it, old things that belong to a past she is desperately running away from. As we watch Jean plan the redesign of their family house into a more spacious and minimalist residential office, we also witness the transformation of the persons that inhabit the house, as well as their connection to other people, most of them absent from the frame. Jean the destroyer Millennials have often been criticized for being rash with their actions, and for having their way, no matter what. The filmmaker, a millennial himself, understands this stigma, and subliminally argues that millennials are the way they are because of a multitude of factors: rising cost of living, the evolution of discourse as a result of technology (such as film streaming se
Read more