The Meta-Racism of American Movies

Well, as with so many of the posts on this blog, the impetus of this article was a conversation i had with a group of friends at a party the other night, this friend was Italian, and had taken offense at a recent Hollywood film which had a sequence set in Rome. The friend found the depiction of Italian culture to be false and stereotyped, and labelled the film racist, the film was Eat Pray Love. This discussion got me thinking about the way in which Hollywood portrays foreign cultures, often with little success or autheniticity. I had a similar discussion with some french friends six months ago about Lost In Translation, a film set in Japan, and one of my absolute favorite films.

Eat Pray Love is a 2010 film starring Julia Roberts about a woman who experienced a breakdown and decides to spend a year in Italy, India and Bali. The first three months she spends in Rome, where she eats and eats. The film ends up portraying the Italians as simplistic, offensive and more than slightly obsessed about food (okay this part may be realistic). However to label the film racist is simply too harsh, the film is intended to be a celebration of Italian culture, and indeed i ended up wanting to go back to Italy (I lived there for a year). Racism is defined by intention, and this film is not at all ill meaning, the film is intended as a celebration of Italian culture, which simply comes off as being an oversimplified version of Rome, so whilst the film is slightly problematic, it's flaws come from the fact that it is an American film about a foreign culture, that cannot even begin to depict the complexities of a foreign culture.

Lost In Translation is a 2003 film about two strangers who meet in a Tokyo hotel. This movie is far more problematic, as it can easily be accused of ridiculing the Japanese people. The title of this film is Lost in Translation, and it describes two people who go to Japan with no real understanding of the culture, and yet who fall in love with the city and with each other, thus, although narratively the film has no real understanding of the Japanese people, as this is loosely a first person narrative. Despite this, the film is also a heartfelt love letter to the city of Tokyo and it's culture, the city looks beautiful and the way Tokyo is portrayed is intensely meaningful.

The inherent problem with any foreign director making a film about a city of a country is that they don't have an implicit understanding of the complexities or the true ambiance of a foreign city or country. Despite this, labeling these films racist fails to justify their intentions, as in many ways these films are meant as celebrations or valentines to the cities where they are set. Whilst a lot of these films are clearly problematic, their good intentions cannot be overlooked.

Cold Mountain Review

Well now we come to one of my least favorite films in recent memory, Cold Mountain is a 2003 American drama film directed by Anthony Mingella, adapted from the acclaimed novel of the same name by Charles Frazier. The film stars Nicole Kidman, Jude Law in leading roles, with Renée Zellwiger and Donald Sutherland in supporting roles. The film is about a love affair between the daughter of a pastor in North Carolina and a confederate soldier fighting in the civil war. Kidman plays Ada, afragile young woman struggling to adapt to life in a new environment, and Donald Sutherand plays her father, the reverend Monroe. Jude Law plays W P Inman, a deserter, and Renée Zellweger, a farmhand who comes to help Ada.

I will confess, i have read this book, well, i tried, in an adaptation of the original novel, the film succedes, it is trite, melodramatic and soppy, much like the book, however i found the whole thing to be very silly, and of little consequence. The film was directed by the late Anthony Minghella, who was perhaps one of the most erratic directors, it was he who directed the much reviled The English Patient, but who also directed The Talented Mr Ripley and Truly Madly Deeply, both fantastic movies.

Cold Mountain suffers from what i will refer to as vignette syndrome, a great number of films featuring long journeys and/or multiple storylines tend to be reduced to being simply a series of cartoonish episodes rather than a long story arc. It is important to note that Cold Mountain is a picture that features not only a long journey but also two storylines, and Minghella reduces the story to a series of cartoonish vignettes, and by the end of the movie, he goes too far trying to outdo himself to show us how horrible the war was.

The film also suffers from a lack of chemistry between it's leads, Nicole Kidman does an admirable job but there is a total lack of chemistry between her and Jude Law. The films only saving grace is Renée Zellweger, who gives a fully fleshed out performance as Ada's farmhand. The film overall just feels cold, lifeless and boring, much like the mountain itself. Rating: D-

 

Ada: What we have lost will never be returned to us. The land will not heal - too much blood. All we can do is learn from the past and make peace with it.