Theest attack determines: Jonathan Demmes Polit-Paranoia movie "The Manchurian candidate"
A sleeper in the wife house. His name gives him the Manchurai – the stranger, Wisse Land, a mix, even more than China and the Soviet Union. Jonathan Demmes "The Manchurian candidate" is a successful paranoia thriller, the remake of one of the most important films of the US film history, and an electrifying parabola on the opposite matter – still in its weak is the film rating.
You did not like this mother. Cold and dead look like your eyes, the voice is sharp and as hard as your hairstyle, the movements are controlled as that of a machine. But the real machine is her son. In the war he became victims of a brainwash; From Auben considered a highly decorated, brave soldier, he is in truth inside, remotely controlled by strangers made in the brain implanted computer chip. Now he fights for the office of the US Vice-President, and there may be no doubt that he will soon reach all means according to the very first office of the state. A sleeper in the wife house.
"I am A Believer, I on Optimist." says his mother, as she has just enforced the candidacy of the son – for his wife – in the party bands. But this is a faith and a victory that the ahnelt, with the once the fascist hordes pulled her bloody track through the world. That a new fascism is drrewing, this time with a democratic face, is the unspoken thesis on which the movie "The Manchurian candidate" and Richard Condon based on this underlying, eponymous bestseller of 1959. Some hold the for pure paranoia, others, such as the US sociologist Richard Sennett, who just before the prassidal election before a "gentle fascism" warned, find it is something true turn – in any case, this is an excellent plot for a backward thriller, and small similarities and allusions to reality are absolutely intended.
A paranoia classic, an American history
Now Jonathan Demme has with "The silence of the Lambs" 1991 Weltruhm cried, but the promise of this epochal work could never be enlarged, filming the fabric – for the second time to John Frankenheimer, without his legendary, over 40 years old film adaptation the current new version is not to be understood. Frankenheimers "The Manchurian Candidate" is perhaps the most demanding political thriller ever made in the USA, one of the rough classics of US cinemas. He came to the cinema in 1962, and because in the end there is an assassination and he seemed a bad thing otherwise, the film landed after the murder of John F. Kennedy first in the poison cabinet. It was not until 1988 he was recreated with a broad audience – with sensational success.
Since the film had the career of director John Frankenheimer ("Seven Days in May", "Black Sunday", "Ronin") Wiederied, his title – by the movie, did not become the novel – already praised: he stands for political consporation, "Fifteen column", Gentle coup, brainwash. In 2000, for example, a rapporteur of the election campaign of George W asked. Bush, whether whose father once again as Viceprasident had been lusted only in the wife house to make sure, "that Reagan stays with the script", And in 2001, some in Washington described half jokingly, halfway in Ernst Monica Levinsky as "Manchurian intern" and speculated whether she had probably been lusted by the enemies of the prasident or even the Israeli secret service in the wife house to destabilize the government.
Even today, Frankenheimers version meets the first viewer no less under the belt line, like Hitchcocks "Psycho", Kubricks "Dr.Strange" or the films of Bergman and Antonioni from about the same time. Everything is overall at Frankenheimer, more shrill, as satirical, often on the border for absurd, so that you still suspect how weird and waterproof this has to have worked in 1962. An anarchist film beyond all Hollywood mainstream asthetics, disharmonious in every relationship. A game with the expectations and taboos of the audience, which will be in front of the head from the beginning. Government, Army and System are not "Well", American dead Americans, loving their beloved, and no cavalry rides at the end in saving gallop, especially: the conditions are impenetrable, mysterios. An anticipation of the Gelangweit-Starren "Corporate", Aliens and Zombies of the 70s cinema, which parasitar has undermined the majority company and transformed into a vanity dictatorship.
Film like book telling of G.I. Raymond, which in the Korean war in captivity and turned over by Russian and North Korean special agents, in one "Sleeper" is transformed – a killer machine that totes on a programmed code from patient cards and words. In the election campaign, it looks like the complicated plot, he should do the Prasidential candidate, so that the Vice candidate, Raymond’s stepfather, who can take power, who wants to communist communist with his mother communist communist. Frank Sinatra played the main role of Raymonds war chamers, as in "From here to Eternity" and "The man with the golden arm" a hero far everything "Heroic". Angela Lansbury plays the big role of her life as the mother the candidate. And also the ever-bold Janet Leigh has a striking appearance.
A dream of coming things
What the effect of the film, which is not attributable within the US culture of the sixties, is based not least in its open interpretation of the former political reality. Open will be open for example "Witch hunt" Played under McCarthy: 205 Communists, argued that in a famous speech in the early 1950s, saben alone in the US Foreign Ministry. In Frankenheimer’s film there is a scene in which the McCarthy modeled Senator Islin publicly accused the Minister of Defense, "The 207 Communists in the Ministry of Defense" to cover and threatens to name them. There are Bose, for all, for all, Communist Einsters, but also Bose Communists. There is no reason in this movie, trust in something, even in the functioning of the system.
The other is the lifer of the film. In shockingly prophetic way, Frankenheimer seemed anticipated, what came to be an envision of those political murders, which was shaken from the day of Dallas 1963 America. By taking over the cinemas from the cinemas, for a while, for scientific events was completely closed, he seemed to confirm the prevailing mood of universal conspiracy. There are also two macabre calls: The impressors of the brain-manipulated attack is called Harvey like Lee Harvey Oswald. And in 1968, Frankenheimer turned a documentary about the election campaign of Robert Kennedy, accompanied the candidate 102 days in the election campaign. At a party in his house in Malibu spoke a guest, a writer, Kennedy: "You know that you are being disguised, right?" And shortly thereafter, on the 5. June, the evening of the crucial preset victory in California, Frankenheimer Kennedy went to the Ambassador hotel, and stood there in his speech behind him. "I saw his head on the TV shields and at the same time his jerking in real." Paid Frankenheimer 1995 in an interview, "Then a body grazed past me, and it was as a camerie an electric stout from his body. I never have something before or ever spurt. It was Sirhan Sirhan." Shortly after Sirhan Sirhan Kennedy appeared. Can this only be coincidence?
"The Manchurian Candidate" is not a prophetic movie. But a movie who looked like a few and turned into film, which was in the air at a certain moment. Film, in its best moments, is exactly this, is a dream or nightmare – from things that will come.
Contemporary US Culture Today, previous 40 years ago
Jonathan Demmes daring version, which is now running in the German cinema, is not a remake of the Frankenheim Film, rather a variation, because the changes in history, the shifts in weights and the atmosphere are so blatant that one sees two completely different films. Demme stay away from the part of the apocalyptic, rapidly prophetic sound of the book: "The Smugness and Complacency of this Country Will Be Dragged Through The Blood and Noise in The Streets Until It Becomes a Country Purgy and Purified." He steams against Frankenheimer. Everything is less trimming, less intense, no longer pure fear that goes under the skin. Almost one means the fear of the director to traces that the contemporary US culture today is Feiger than 40 years ago and such an ie only if there is more gentle. At the same time, the threat seems to become self-resistant, more every day, therefore also less exciting. Spat after the 11th. September we know: The next attack is determined, alone when and who he is considered is the question. Anyway, the realistic, more serious, also humourless. He goes directly to the core of the story, and shows the realitat of a prassidential fight, and pays the fact tribute that private crimes and hidden conspiracy are not only merged with the public life today in America. Even many attacks on state, catching and burger freedom do not come from the outside, but are consequences of own hybris. But the end is almost awarded compared to the version of 1962 – Nevertheless, the consporation is always and everywhere.
At the same time, there is a recumbent. Bose is not a foreign nation, but a transnational economic company that has become the state in the state and plans a coup from right. Nothing new for the US audience who experienced daily, as corporations – from enron to Halliburton – buy decisions. You are donated, cynical. And a remote-controlled prasident? Well, even about an alleged button in the ear of the counterholder has already been speculated. Si Non E Vero, E Buon Trovato. Finally, the film also takes the patriotic rhetoric on the grain, the talk of the "Homeland Security", that is so popular in America. "The real danger is that of the abolition of the burger rights." it is called, it is thread "a coup, a regime change in our own country." Here the new version meets the black of the present. Because even if films can not be put on one to one in the reality, you must breathe them from each pore to get them into mythical overhead.
This occupies some Meryl Streeps presentation, which until terrorism ambitious mother and US senator. She is the heart of this movie because it is close to the realitat, and they always exceed: on the one hand icy professional with mistrular corporation language and nasel-elitar Eastern custodian accent in the original, also the knight helmet-like hairstyle of Washington Power women, On the other hand, with incestuosem touch, at all times hard on the cant to the hysterical collapse – in every pore a gloss performance. The scene, in which she enters a space full of old power people, and whose fixed positions brings in a few minutes into serrated, is also linguistically, in the redekismanst and gestures to the smallest detail. Acts as a counter image, tight in Sinatras Footstaps Denzel Washington: trustwurried, integer, with credible warstrauma, he is the tailoring of an integral America that his values have not forgotten without being naive.
Actually, this movie comes to Spat for a few weeks. Because it’s about an election campaign, and even in the US he was allowed before the 2. November. Subversively, however, the criticism of the US political system has remained, but only the illusion that they cause something to do meaning, one must have to be destroyed,. Anyone who observes the masked candidate of a well-being new group world to the words of radio spokes that are permanently warning of terrorists, will not see the influence on reality. This is the strong of Demmes Remake, but also his problem, the reason why he can not unfold mythical so-called: the culture of fear, could still speculate on the Frankenheimer, has become a reality.
Notes: John Frankenheimer’s initial filming of "The Manchurian Candidate" has been released on DVD at MGM in two versions: very inexpensive (CA. 9 euros) under the old German rental title "Ambassador of fear". This edition is not bad, but moves on the border to scam as it is on the hull as multilingual (U.a. English) is called the film but still only as purely German-language edition. However, English is the very Lucide Audio Momentar Frankenheimers, in which sensually the English dialogues of the film are repeatedly horns – the soundtrack exists, and was locked only by the rental. In a significantly more expensive version, the English-speaking original is also available on a DVD, which also has a lot of bonus material. About informative is the book of the US Pop Historiker Greil Marcus over "The Manchurian Candidate", The 2002 in the British series "BFI Classics" has appeared.