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WAR OF IDEAS
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Posted By Stephen M. Walt
Monday, April 27, 2009 - 3:49 PM
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Last week a friend of mine sent me a link to a website for a film festival featuring over thirty movies about wine. That got me thinking: if Foreign Policy had a film festival, what movies should we show? There are some obvious candidates (see below), but rather fewer than you might think. After all, many aspects of foreign policy don't lend themselves to cinematic treatment, which is why I don't expect to see a gripping drama about the Doha Round or a lighthearted farce about the Six Party Talks on North Korea (though Kim Jong Il clearly has untapped comic potential).
There are lots of terrific war movies, of course, but most of them tell you relatively little about why the war happened or what the conflict was actually about. And spy movies have long been a popular genre, ranging from Hitchcock’s Thirty-Nine Steps to the gadgetry and glitz of most Bond flicks to the film noir seediness of The Third Man to the paranoid high-tech travelogue that is the Jason Bourne franchise.
But let's raise the bar high, and exclude pure war movies, spy capers, documentaries, and overt propaganda films like Triumph of the Will or Frank Capra's Why We Fight, and focus on movies that tells us something about international relations more broadly. Here's my personal top ten list, with apologies for my ethnocentrism (I don’t see enough foreign-language films).
10. Meeting Venus
Ostensibly a film about opera and an unlikely romance between a diva and an obscure conductor -- set in a fictitious "all-European" orchestra -- this droll sleeper actually tells you a lot about environmentalism, European labor unions, the historical legacy of the Trotsky-Stalin split, and the tangled politics of the European Union. Plus it’s got Glenn Close.
9. Independence Day
Basically a sci-fi flick the depends on you suspending disbelief throughout (e.g., how did Bill Pullman stay cockpit ready for an F-15 while serving as President, and where did Wlll Smith learn to fly a flying saucer?) It's Hollywood, so of course the United States gets to save the world. But it makes my list because it is balance-of-power theory in action: an external threat (giant alien spaceships), gets the world to join forces against the common foe.
8. Syriana
Yes, there are a lot of spies roaming around this movie, but its much broader than that; an exciting if somewhat incoherent portrait of the interplay of oil companies, great power politics, local militias, and the tension between modernity and tradition in the Middle East. Not to be taken too seriously, but not without insights either.
Not just a gripping movie, but also a film about a watershed historical event. One could argue that this is where the modern human rights movement begins.
6. Wag the Dog
Instead of invading Grenada or firing cruise missiles at Sudan, here the White House hires a Hollywood producer to invent a wholly fictitious war. Sounds absurd, but those WMD in Iraq turned out to be fictitious too. There's a whole IR literature on "scapegoat wars" (i.e., wars fought to distract the public from other issues), and this film just takes that impulse a step further. It's a cautionary tale in this era of digital special effects, a compliant news media, and the citizens who are all too inclined to believe whatever they are told. Could this be Roger Ailes's favorite movie?
5. Fail Safe
Almost-but-not-quite a war movie, and one of the best Cold War-era "will we blow up the world or not?" thrillers, with a surprising, sobering ending.
4. Gandhi, and A Passage to India (tie)
Everything you ever wanted to know about colonialism and the unavoidable clash of cultures that it produces.
3. The Great Dictator
Chaplin's lethal lampooning of Adolf Hitler and Nazism, released in 1940 and addressing anti-Semitism at a moment when plenty of other institutions were still ignoring it. Reminds us that making fun of despots is often an effective weapon.
2. Dr. Strangelove
Granted, it is a war movie (though the war depicted here won’t last long), but so much more. Kubrick punctured the absurdity of the conventional military thinking in a nuclear age as well as any scholar could, and managed to satirize the whole Cold War mentality to hilarious effect.
1. Casablanca
No, it’s not really a war movie (there are no battle scenes, and the emphasis is on politics, resistance, and of course romance). But it’s on my list, because, well, it's Casablanca. And where would modern discourse be without phrases like "Round up the usual suspects," "Here's looking at you, kid," "I was misinformed," "I'm shocked, shocked!…" and "this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship”?
HONORABLE MENTIONS: The Interpreter (not that good a movie, but how many films take place at the UN?); Rollover (an old B movie about a global financial meltdown triggered by crooked corporations, venal foreign investors, and corrupt financiers. Right, as if something like that could ever happen); Local Hero (hot shot rep from a multinational oil corporation is no match for the charms of a quirky Scottish fishing village); Duck Soup (the Marx Brothers show you what could happen if Glenn Beck ran foreign policy); Missing (about the CIA's involvement in Chile); Grand Illusion (a classic antiwar movie, but didn't make my list because it is set in the middle of World War I); Hotel Rwanda (humanity in midst of the world's most recent genocide); Charlie Wilson's War (partly about the Afghan War, but mostly about how things get done -- or not -- in Washington. My CIA friends tell me a lot of it is a crock, but Philip Seymour Hoffman is brilliant and Tom Hanks ain't bad); and last but not least, Reds (the Bolshevik Revolution was a major world event, and it's an excellent movie, too).
And YOUR nominees are?
STR/AFP/Getty Images
Battle of Algiers
The Lives of Others
Goodbye Lenin
Thirteen Days
"The Day the Earth Stood Still", because it's about external threats and arms control, and because it inspired Ronald Reagan's nuclear abolitionism. Really! Google it.
The 2002 version.
The Original Is Better Than the Remake
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
Starring: Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury; Director: John Frankenheimer
Team America, anyone?
It will never get the respect it deserves (for many legitimate reasons); but Team America brilliantly and perfectly satirizes American foreign policy with respect to fighting bad guys.
I concur and I am so glad to see some folks who agree:)
Not sure if these count as foreign policy films per se (perhaps IR movies?), but:
- "Lord of War"
- "Blood Diamond"
- "The Kingdom"
- "Jarhead" (yes, it's somewhat testosterone-heavy, but it was enjoyable)
- "Rendition"
- "Platoon"
- "The Killing Fields"
- "Thirteen Days" (even if it was slow)
- "Lions for Lambs" (though I guess this is more domestic-meets-foreign policy)
- And my less-orthodox pick: The original "Star Wars" trilogy (there's a lot of intergalactic foreign policy in those - but, in the 1st three: how does a Senator from a backwater planet become Galactic Emperor?!)
More seriously:
- The Wind That Shakes the Barley / Land and Freedom (both by Ken Loach, even though the second one is openly a war film)
- Completely agree with the Star Wars pick, even though they are...well...War films.
- Divine intervention (brilliant film about a Palestinian couple separated by a checkpoint)
Dr. Walt,
A foreign film I highly recommend: To Live. It tells the viewer a lot about Chinese society during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. Also, several scenes in the film show the Chinese crossing the Yalu River and intervening in the Korean War.
I also would add Battle of Algiers, but it can certainly be classified purely as a war film.
well, I mean "Yes Prime Minister!" I don't remember if it has some FR episodes in it but this British TV serial can be counted as a start of State criticism. I wish some wise guys make a similar one for the President. But then there are some good TV shows out there filling this gap.
Grand Sen~or.
or "Bananas" for that matter.
1. "Z"
2. "Hotel Rwanda"
3. "Burn!"
4. "Thirteen Days"
5. "The Lives of Others"
6. "The Quiet American" or "Our Man in Havana"
7. "Battle of Algiers"
8. "Ran"
9. "Blackhawk Down"
10."King Leopold's Ghost"
Best IR movies:
The Battle of Algiers (Docu-drama not a true documentary - Marxist propaganda, yes, but important to understand liberation myths);
Clear and Present Danger (The Iran-Contra scandal re-imagined in Colombia);
Catch-22 (shows the problems when government withdraws and allows the private interest of individuals to dictate actions in war – think Blackwater using smoke bombs to bypass US military inspection points in Iraq);
Crimson Tide and Hunt for the Red October (nuclear first strike);
Team America: World Police (to best understand and laugh at the Neocon paradigm, and the best showcase of Kim Jong Il’s comedic talent)
1941 and The Russians are Coming (civilian preparedness in an age of war - or John Belushi's response to Nazis vs. Carl Reiner and Alan Arkin fighting the Cold War);
The Trojan Women (understanding post-conflict debates about retribution/remuneration from the defeated);
Lawrence of Arabia (how did you miss this one?!? Imperial designs and exploitation of independence movements)
So - when are we renting a theater to screen all these?
I hope Peter O'Toole doesn't read this
Because leaving out Lawrence of Arabia is unforgivable!
Yeah Lawrence, the Empire destroyer;->
Look what the joker says;->
"the recent reform of the constitution in Costantinople
(i.e. the revolution) is entirely due to the American
mission." They have so educated the country (without
touching the politics) that public opinion rejoiced
in reform. They have colleges all over Syria, and Asia Minor, and in Constantinople (mostly self-supporting) and in
all of them the religious side is emphasised: also
every school is a mission station'.
Lawrence of Arabia; by J Wilson; pp.60.
Of course he didn't realize that he is also destroying his own empire. But later on Empire restored some of her Imperial Interests degenerated to "National" Interests shared by the EUS via the Corporates - back to the more clever original form of imperialism;->>
But now, the big mistake "Divide and Rule" is kicking hard back;->>
Grand Sen~or.
Excellent suggestion.
A great comedy about the decision to go to war with a country in the middle east. Full of dossiers with dubious sources, sweary spin doctors and James Gandolfini. Also, the contrast against local constituency scandal of a wall falling down is inspired.
It's not out in the US until late July though.
I'd pitch for No Man's Land, which won an Oscar for best foreign movie. Internal conflict, bombs, the colossal failure of the UN in ending misery in such zones...foreign policy was never more entertaining on screen.
David Ignatius, "Agents of Innocence" (worth a two-hour read, Professor Walt!)
I'm surprised nobody mentioned:
Three Kings
Very well made film about the purposes for the Gulf War and its consequences on ordinary Iraqis.
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
- not a "caper" film, but a deeper meditation on espionage, secrecy, national loyalty and Cold War relations.
Lawrence of Arabia
- war, shifting alliances, the rise and fall of empires in the Middle East, idealism, romance and disenchantment, nationalism vs. tribalism, racism, cynical manipulations and diplomatic exchanges - the whole international relations ball of wax.
Apocalyse Now
- Yes, the film takes place during the war, but it is not really a war movie since, the war background events serve as allegorical highlights for the whole American involvement in Vietnam, and by connecting with Conrad's text, as a further allegory of the tragic fate of "civilizing missions". The "Redux" version of the film contains a fascinating extended scene at a French plantation, with a long argument about the French Indochina War and the Vietnam War. This takes the film to a new level as an exploration of colonialism and imperialism.
First, emphatically agree with Mr. Kervick's nominations, as well as everything he said about them.
My suggestions:
1. The recent War of the Worlds remake by Spielberg. The reason is exactly along the lines as Prof. Walt's nomination of Independence Day, but with the flip-side outcome: breakdown in social order as a result of the spectacular eclipse of governmental authority by an evidently greater power. That aspect of the film is masterfully presented.
2. Thirteen Days, the Cuban missile crisis flick from about 10 years ago. Wildly inaccurate by most accounts, but still a bracing introduction to perhaps the most dangerous moment the United States has ever faced. Convincing portraits of most of the key players; the device of adopting the point of view of a non-key actor but one with extensive access to them worked surprisingly well in my view.
Requiem for Dominic: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100476/
Circle of Deceit: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082429/
Walker: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096409/
The best thing about Wag the Dog is that very shortly afterward the President was involved in a sex scandal and went to war with a country due to its persecution of balkan Muslims (in the movie we attacked Albania because the balkan muslim country Albania because Americans wouldn't know much about it).
How about Africa Addio? It's both a horribly offensive shoxploitation flick (it is alleged they actually staged some graphic killings of animals and maybe even people) and the only documentation of the genocide of Arabs in Zanzibar. India has one story of decolonialism, Africa Addio has several different colonies of different colonizers. The fact that it seems to sympathize with the colonialists and regards the end of the era as a tragedy makes it more offensive but also more unique.
Valkyrie
7 Days in May (either version)
Elizabeth - the Golden Age
The Nightmare Years (William Shire)
Munich
Exodus
Sieg Im West
13 Days
All Quiet on the Western Front
HBO's 2002 film "Path to War," a dramatization of the debate over Vietnam within the Johnson administration. And debate is the operative word here. Some great back-and-forth scenes of the Security Council attempting to hash out what the heck U.S. interests are, what the heck is going on, and what the heck to do.
Also, Torn Curtain.
The Fog of War - Robert McNamara
TurcoPundit
The list is disappointing, not so much because of a failure to select foreign films but for a failure of imagination. I mean, you only discuss films that in a very straightforward way relate to international politics, very much in the same way as documentaries do, whereas fiction in film has the potential to raise issues in many indirect ways. Think, for instance, of Gran Torino, Clint Eastwood's latest, and does it not very obviously reflect on the experience of the Iraq War? Is it not a most ideological film, probably more than any other I have seen in the past year?
Cynthia Weber's International Relations Theory - a critical introduction is a very interesting book, as the author manages to present all main theories in the field by discussing movies, most of them "non-political" movies, like Lord of the Flies, or The Truman Show. Take a look at it to see if you think she succeeded.
I think many that come to mind don't fit this field.
Still:
Munich
Hotel Rwanda
The Partition
Divine Intervention
and The Syrian Bride
are some that come immediately to mind
The Russians are Coming
The Mouse That Roared
The Experts (Travolta, 1989)
_The Girl in the Cafe_ is a BBC television movie about G8 talks in Reykjavík. Bill Nighy plays the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kelly MacDonald (from _Trainspotting_) plays the girl in the cafe. Premise: she accompanies him to these meetings and creates a scene by bringing global poverty and African debt forgiveness to the table. Climactic scenes in the conference rooms. Improbable, but satisfying.
The Battle of Algiers – Pontecorvo (1966)
The Sorrow and the Pity – Ophuls (1966)
La Guerre est Finie – Resnais (written by Jorge Semprun) 1966
Z – Costa-Gavras (1969)
La Hora de los Hornos – Solanas (1968) *
The Yacoubian Building – Marwan Hamed (2006)
Michael Collins – Neil Jordan (1996)
La Escopeta Nacional – Garcia Berlanga (1978) **
Rome Open City – Rossellini (1945)
Paradise Now – Hani Abu Assad (2005) ***
• flawed Argentine period polemic with hauntingly surreal images, including La Recoleta cemetery in Buenos Aires, the mausoleum of the Argentine aristocracy
** maybe not as good as Bunuel’s Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie but worthy of inclusion for its wonderful allusion to a real incident: interior minister Manuel Fraga’s accidental discharge of a barrel of birdshot into the posterior of Franco’s daughter
*** psychologically brilliant Palestinian portrait of a suicide-bomber
Burn after reading -(Coen Bros.) Although more of a DC comedy (an extremely accurate portrayal of washington-ites!) the scene where the 'Russian cultural Affairs officer' rejects the info they try to sell him is classic. The end is amazing too:
CIA Superior: What did we learn, Palmer?
CIA Officer: I don't know, sir.
CIA Superior: I don't f-in' know either. I guess we learned not to do it again.
CIA Officer: Yes, sir.
CIA Superior: I'm f-ed if I know what we did.
CIA Officer: Yes, sir, it's, uh, hard to say
CIA Superior: Jesus F-ing Christ.
I was surprised to see that The Godfather didn't make the list.
Ah yes, good point. I would recommend John C. Hulsman & A. Wess Mitchell's "The Godfather Doctrine: A Foreign Policy Parable" (Princeton, 2009) for more on this.
The Constant Gardner
Dr. Schivago
Seven Years in Tibet
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is all about diplomacy! A Chernobyl-like disaster in Klingon territory forces the beginning of a detente with the Federation, but players on both sides interested in preserving the status quo attempt sabotage.
"There is an old Vulcan proverb: only Nixon could go to China." - Spock.
And I know it's a *film* festival, but you could use this one as a launch pad into the geopolitical ideas that played out in TOS, TNG, DS9...
Barry Lyndon
18th century, as if we have made all that much progress. To my mind, this movie is even more about Henry Kissinger than Dr. Strangelove.
Day of the Jackal (1971}
OK, sort of a spy novel set w/in the French/Algerian international/civil war. Depicts national/international counter-intelligence organs in action at both the national-political and bureaucratic-operational level.
Absence of Malice
Depicts the extremely lawyer-ridden/press-intensive style of US government. Contrasts w/ modern and ancien Euro-styles of the movies above. Wilfred Brimley conducts administrative hearing and US Attorney does not even realize he is being fired. Compares with "wiretap" scene in Day of the Jackal
Amazing Grace
Late 18th, early 19th century. Depicts Human Rights, called Slavery then. Reminds me of corrupt, millionaire's club (US Senate) today.
I have a hard time believing that nobody mentioned Canadian Bacon. A fantastic movie somewhat along the lines of Wag the Dog, and pretty hilarious, as well. I had a Foreign Policy professor who used examples from it on a weekly basis.
A trenchant satire of WWI as a proxy war in Africa between African troops from a German and French colony. The title in French is better as it's a pun: Noir et Blanc en Coleur
Kingdom of Heaven - Ridley Scott epic that delves melodramatically into the clash of civilizations in the holy land during the time of the crusades.
Also, maybe, Empire of the Sun - British, American, Australian expats swept up by the Japanese when they took Shanghai during WWII. Watch a young Christian Bale deal with all sorts of different cultures.
TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE
its got everything! Terrorists, Kim Jong Il, Explosions, Naked Puppets and the theme song to end all theme songs.
Team America should be at the top of the list. And Goodbye Lenin
Some more films to think about
The Mission (1986) - interesting perspective on foreign affairs and the muddle of interests, hopes, and abuses.
Night and Fog/Nuit et brouillard (1955) - why ficionalize when there is solid documentary footage on horrific government policy?
Animal House, for the ending revealing that Bluto becomes Senator Blutarski. This plants a seed in every adolescent's mind, which eventually blossoms as the realization that it's closer to an eternal truth than an outlandish joke.
Seven Samurai and The Godfather: Part II made me conceive of banditry and organized crime as forms of social order not far removed from primitive forms of government.
When We Were Kings showed me how two people could acquire, in a completely alien culture where they should be considered roughly equivalent, completely opposite symbolic meanings. (It's a documentary, but it's not directly about war or foreign relations.)
I can't believe that no one has mentioned Mars Attacks! Is there a better movie about diplomatic relations?
Charles Ferguson, No End in Sight (yes, I know it's a documentary)
The Constant Gardner - failed states have to come in somewhere
Along the same lines - maybe? - The Tailor of Panama? Or better yet, City of God (maybe invoked on a Wallersteinian kick?)
Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.
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