Preview
SILVER CITY
Starring Chris Cooper, Richard Dreyfus and Danny Houston
Written and directed by John Sayles
Friday, October 1
Globe Cinema
Do any of us really believe that the world will be any safer with John Kerry and the Democrats at the helm of the United States?
One famous American had the answer way back in 1911. "Our democracy is but a name," wrote Helen Keller. "We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee."
But, today, some of the staunchest, most dedicated leftists in America – those who have long expressed a desire for real change – ignore Keller’s potent message in their rush for superficial change.
Even writer-director John Sayles, the auteur behind such films as Matewan and City of Hope, believes in the desperate need to replace Bush with Kerry.
"Kerry is an option because he’s the mainstream democratic option," says Sayles. "And it’s a better option than George W. Bush. If you have to take a step away from the wrong direction, Kerry’s better than having the fox in charge of the henhouse, which goes beyond the usual petty differences between Republicans and Democrats."
His interest in regime change is not only a political ideal. It is the motivation behind Sayles’s newest cinematic offering, Silver City, a none-too-subtle attack on George W. Bush and his administration of lies. It is also Sayles’s attempt to offer a creative voice in the wilderness of media coverage that has smothered free speech in the United States.
"If 9-11 hadn’t happened, there’s no way Bush would have a chance in the next election," says Sayles. "But the Republicans have an enormous amount of money, they have an enormous amount of control over the media, and they have people believing they’ve done a great job, when they haven’t even done a good job with the things they planned to do. If their plans were going according to schedule, we’d be in Syria right now."
Creating a thinly veiled fantasy Bush in gubernatorial candidate Richard (Dickie) Pilager (Chris Cooper), Sayles employs the classic elements of film noir – murder, investigation and double-dealing – to explore the ills of mass media and politics. Sayles hopes to dispel the media-conjured illusions that surround the Bush regime and awaken voters to the truths that exist, if only they will look for themselves.
"Silver City is about people lifting a rock and finding out what’s going on. It’s about investigation," explains Sayles. "But it’s also from the kind of Raymond Chandler tradition where there’s this very glossy exterior and there’s this much darker stuff behind it, and that seemed kind of perfect for a campaign where you’re saying one thing, but that thing you’re saying for public consumption is the opposite of what’s going on."
It’s a noble effort from a noble man, but one has to wonder if it may also be naïve. Even if Silver City helps effect change in the next election, all Sayles will have accomplished is a maintaining of the status quo. The difference between the Democrats and Republicans is purely superficial – one group carries a pen, the other group carries a gun, but the results are invariably the same. More importantly, however, the act of making Silver City plays into the very system that Sayles is attempting to criticize.
As Howard Zinn points out in A People’s History of the United States, "The two-party system… gives people a choice between two different parties and allows them, in a period of rebellion (or dissent), to choose the slightly more democratic one. It is an ingenious mode of control."
So while Sayles is adding his voice to the criticism of America’s media outlets by trying to get voters "to look at some of these things that have been going on," he is also unwittingly supporting the bipartisan system that shamelessly manipulates media and, thus, the psyches of its electorate. Ultimately, a creatively cinematic vilification of Bush, no matter how well veiled, is nothing more than a cog in the wheel of bipartisanism – which is a cancer in the body politic.
Some would argue that at least he is making an effort, and he certainly is doing more than the U.S. media that so many, including Sayles, have so long put their trust in.
"Fahrenheit 9/11 should not have had to be made into a documentary movie," Sayles explains. "All that material should have been on the nightly news years before, and that should have been part of the national conversation."
A valid and important point, but, sadly, change in the United States will not come from a reawakening of traditional media, an awakening of alternative media or a shift from Bush to Kerry. The first is impossible, as U.S. history shows, the second is too little, too late, and the third is nothing more than the same governance with better P.R. The best hope for the United States is that they will shuck off their two-party system, that they will welcome a third and maybe even a fourth party, so that real representation can begin.
But even when offered an opportunity to discuss the possibility of expanding voters’ choices — which is embodied in Ralph Nader’s second run for the highest office – Sayles, without missing a beat, glosses over the issue, turning his focus back on bipartisan politics, and the need to remove Bush from office.
"Most people wish (Nader) wasn’t running, even people who voted for him last time," says Sayles. "It’s a distraction. The scariest thing about the Bush administration is not that they’re doing things that you don’t like, it’s that they’re changing the rules."
But, so long as the supposedly enlightened, like Sayles and Michael Moore, focus on the symptom rather than the disease, making their target a shift between levels of internal evil, rather than a revamping of their entire system, the world must keeping living in fear that the unchecked imperialist giant to the south can and will strike whenever and wherever it pleases.
"Our movies," says Sayles, "are politically conscious as opposed to being politically unconscious." One has to wonder if that is enough. |
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