Rendition and the Modern Issue Film in an Era of High Broderism

There are several things you might expect a review of  Gavin Hood's new film Rendition, out today, to begin with. Perhaps a discussion of Reese Witherspoon's first role since 2005's Walk The Line; maybe a mention of how it is the first piece of popular culture to really deal with Bush-era torture; maybe even an overall verdict on the efficacy of the film as a political thriller. I'm going to begin with a discussion of High Broderism. Allow me to explain.

If you're a regular blog reader, chances are you're familiar with the term High Broderism. However, if you're not so fortunate, allow me to provide a working definition:

Main Entry: High Bro•der•is•m
Pronunciation: \hahy-broh-der-iz-uh m\
Function: noun
1 : a blogospheric catch-all term for the sort of laziness in our political culture which declares "a pox on both their houses" regardless of context, always holds that two sides in any political conflict must be equally at fault and equally extremist, and the center is wherever the middle distance is between two political opponents, regardless of their actual policy prescriptions. See: Unity 08.

The actual phenomenon being described by the term is a rather pervasive one, with a whole array of nasty effects on our discourse. However, maybe the nastiest effect is that the following statement might be reasonably assumed by progressives, based on harsh experience, to be a preamble to a most noxious bout of HB: "There exist, in our world, political issues that require true nuance and shades of gray, in which all major sides have at least one legitimate argument in their favor." Statements like this are usually followed by something along the lines, "which is why I don't understand why, for the good of the great centrist middle, Republicans and Democrats can't work together and arrive at a consensus decision on..."

I'll leave the reasons this is an inane analysis to the countless great writers who've covered it in depth. What I'd like to talk about is not why this is a politically inanity, but why it is a moral absurdity: just as mature people acknowledge there are issues which truly entail shades of gray, we also need to acknowledge, as a necessary flip-side, that there are also debates where to say there are shades of gray is to misunderstand the discussion entirely and not grasp that one side is factually correct and the other side is simply wrong, that debate in this context is a purely academic exercise.

This is not an extremist tact, but a simple observation - let's look at climate change, perhaps the purest recent example of such a case. It's simply not accurate to say that the debate on climate change in this country has been one between those offering excessively market-oriented solutions, and those offering economy-destroying shifts with no regard to pragmatic reality - the debate in this country has been between those who refuse to acknowledge anthropogenic global warming, and those who just plain acknowledge it is happening and is an emergency, regardless of their suggested course of action. One group has the data on its side - the other does not. It is only fairly recently that debates between environmental groups such as Friends Of The Earth and Environmental Defense even approached the level of relevance, given the need to overcome the skeptic vs. believer debate.

If climate change has the best claim to being the apotheosis of this phenomenon, then the Bush administration's use of torture to extract information is likely the second best. Granted, there are a few serious thinkers who believe that the use of torture is not categorically unacceptable (e.g. Sam Harris, Alan Dershowitz), but the case for the Bush-style of torture as doctrine has been reduced to such thin gruel that it must be relegated to the same category of 'resolved' as the climate change 'debate.' We know that it endangers our security, provides false information almost without fail, erodes our moral authority, is indefensible from a conservative perspective and a libertarian perspective alike, all before we get to progressive arguments about human rights. Just as climate change skepticism is now limited to the domain of die-hard apologists such as Dennis Prager and Rush Limbaugh, it's rare that someone outside of a Malkin-like level of credibility seriously attempts to defend the policy status quo. This is not some budgetary line-item disagreement where we can effectively scold each other to see the other side - there is a correct interpretation here.

Rendition gets this to a truly surprising degree, and for that reason alone it is a minor miracle. It is a competently made (if not spectacular) political thriller about an Egyptian-born family man who is torn away from his DC-based family and interrogated on tenuous grounds for a terrorist attack he had nothing to do with, and in its clear, unapologetic stance, it's very much a throwback to the issue films of the 1970's such as Norma Rae and The China Syndrome, films unabashed about being full-throated morality plays.

Now our issue films tell us otherwise. "These are complex issues," the modern issue film is supposed to say as it gives us an entirely simplistic us vs. them set-up presented as complexity, "so to editorialize, or even betray an opinion, is to be simple-minded." Rendition more or less understands the environment in which it's being released and bucks this cinematic broderism at every turn, and if for only that, progressives should give it a modicum of respect.

At its core, Rendition is a very simple story (which, considering its foreign-to-too-many subject matter, is probably for the best.) Or, rather, two stories - that of a husband, Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally), an Egyptian-born, NYU-educated family man living with his several-months-pregnant wife, Isabelle (Reese Witherspoon) in a DC suburb, with a five-year-old son in tow. Rendition opens with all the trappings of a disaster movie in setting us its protagonists - we establish the family man, good-guy nature of Anwar as he calls his from  a business trip in South Africa, and is put on the phone with his 5-year-old son. The child's first words? "Did you get me something!?" Oh, for joy...

(For further discussion: How different is the family man torn from his family on a business trip in the modern disaster movie to the family man torn from his family on the front in a WWII-era war film? It's sort of the opposite dynamic, no? In a modern disaster movie, if a main male character has a family to live for, we can safely bet our life savings that he'll survive through the volcano/earthquake/comet/ice age with them as a motivator, but if a main male character is in an old-timey war film and has a wife waiting for him at home, especially one with a little one on the way, he is virtually guaranteed to be blown away before the next reel. But I digress.)

But before Anwar can join them at home, he is taken by mysterious agents at the airport terminal and shuffled away to a secret dungeon-like holding area in an unnamed country to be tortured for information, in a process overseen by a CIA lackey Doug Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) hastily promoted as his partner died in a recent terror attack, and the head of the secret prison, Abasi Fawal (Igal Naor). His phone, y'see, supposedly was called by an Egyptian-born co-conspirator in a recent terror attack, and with him being an Egytian-born chemical engineer, Abasi suggests, well...it leads one to wonder. Without spoiling anything from the second half of the film, Anwar has no idea why he's been taken from his family, endures awful bodily harm, and his fate, good or bad, is dependent almost entirely on forces beyond his own control.

The wife's story is not much more dynamic: she waits for him. And waits. Then she calls upon an old flame (Stellan Skaasgard) who works for an influential Senator (Alan Arkin), hoping he might able to help her. Skaasgard's character has to investage, which means she has to wait. And so on. In fact, for a film supposedly focused on these two characters, it's somewhat amazing how little action they actually take. There are some shifts of focus to Gyllenhaal's character, as he develops a sort of miniature moral crisis about the torture he's effectively endorsing with his presence, but most of the time is spent, with one big exception I'll get to in a bit, on this couple, waiting for alleviation of their physical and/or psychological torment. In essence, we have two intercut short films here, each about...waiting. The dramatic possibilities here, for obvious reasons, would seem limited.

And yet.

And yet, it somehow manages, just barely, to hold together and work as a compelling thriller.

Mostly because we don't notice how little actually, y'know, happened, until after we've left the theater - we're too caught up in the intense sense of dread and foreboding atmosphere, an atmosphere that is somewhat reminiscent of Michael Haneke's minor classic Funny Games. Hood slowly builds by letting us suspect this story will not end well, with a sort of hopelessness uncommon for a studio film. Which brings us to the strongest card in Rendition's deck - it manages in this way to both be honest and thrilling. The scenes of torture are a good illustrative example of this; they manage to be appropriately horrifying without once seeming exploitative, primarily because Hood never seems to be going for the easy way out, for the money shot. Each cringe on behalf of us as audience members, each shudder, is earned the hard way - through forcing our imagination to see the image Hood comes oh-so-close to providing and then yanks away before it hits our eyes.  The film features one of the most disturbing shots I've seen in any film this decade - we cut, in media res, to Ibrahami just screaming like a banshee, not out of any physical pain, but at what his eyes hint is a true realization of the nature of his dilemma with all of its weight, a week ago a suburbanite dad, now stuck in a torture room in a foreign country for reasons he doesn't know. It is horrific, but more than that it is morally shaming in a way that feels organic. The merciless camera, which refuses to turn away, does us far more psychic damage than an over-the-top glance at blood and guts ever could.

Rendition is also one of those films where, no matter how much you might appreciate it, you can sense as you're watching it what the likely criticisms will be:

1. Hopelessly one-sided - doesn't look at both sides of the issue. See above.

2. The characters here are paper-thin. This is more or less correct, but I disagree as to how much it matters in this context - this is not a film that aims at character study, but one that wishes you to invest enough in its characters to be able to find it emotionally affecting during the short shelf-life of the viewing itself, and by standard it more or less works, largely thanks to the fine work here, particularly by Withrspoon and Metwally.

3. This film's pacing is all muddled. Agreed 100%, and here is where we get to the big exception I mentioned earlier.

Throughout the film, we cut from the main action we're concerned with to the family life of the Abasi, whose daughter has been missing and is suspected to have left home to live with a local vagabond, much disapproved of by the parents. These take up a good 25 minutes or so of the film, 25 minutes which somehow manage to feel both too melodramatic and too distant. All of this is leading to a quasi-twist at the end - without spoiling anything, I'll simply reveal that there is an attempt at hyperlink cinema here which goes awry. Apart from our lack of emotional investment, the late-in-the-game stab at messily drawing so many threads together threatens to topple the film under its own weight. As mentioned before, this film's story is a simple one - it is stunningly asymmetrical to demand towards the end that we imbue it with such universality.

But by this stage, Rendition has made its point. As a film experience, it is a modest but not immaterial accomplishment - a compelling, if strikingly uneven, political thriller. As a statement, Rendition has considerably more value - an unabashed advocacy film at a time where it is not just unhip to do so, but the age of Broder has made it downright impolitic.

Hopefully the latter gets more attention than the former.

Comments

[mamacat]

That this movie was made by the Hollywood establishment is a very great credit to both their artistic talent and their political savvy.
As the movie tries to show us, (while so little is being done on political subjects by the likes of Anderson Cooper and Larry King) is that senseless and immoral crimes are committed daily, in our name, authorized by the crazies in the White House.
While our ancestors fought WWII to protect us from powers that could choose to ignore the Geneva Conventions, our President scoffs at the Geneva Conventions as outdated and irrelevant.
The right wing hate mongers will undoubtedly now make further attacks on the institutions that are trying to protect our liberties, but the free press (in the form of movie studios) has not been completely bought out. Who knows, maybe Murdoch's next move will to buy a major studio, to make his own brand of fake info-mercial.

[TommyMcCarthy]

Many thanx to the moderators...nameless, faceless, but apparently very dilligent (not to mention busy)

This article is the other one I posted a comment to which appears on my profile but not in the "comments"...again just trying to help.

Obviously it's not neccessary to print this "note to the moderators" .......highest regards & keep up the good work.......tm

[TommyMcCarthy]

P.S. How did consensus-building, moderation, and inclusion of the views of others come to be viewed as a sin, and how did David Broder, of all people become the enemy...tm

[TommyMcCarthy]

Hands down the hardest thing for we political junkies of whatever party or philosophy to remember is that the vast and overwhelming majority of our fellow citizens not only do not grasp the finer points of this or that policy discussion....they are often startlingly, alarmingly unaware of of even the most basic facts about Major issues that confront us.

This is not nesessarily because the are stupid or shallow but simply because they are Busy with thier own struggle to survive in the globalized economy, and they are very poorly served by the new "dumbed-down tarted-up" programming ever more euphemisticlly referred to as NEWS.

I continue to believe that the average American given half a chance is more or less fair minded and would be appalled by Rendition (the practice) and when made aware of it would support efforts to end it.

To the extent that "Rendition" (the movie) calls attention to this horrific abuse (among MANY) in the "war on terror" and makes people aware that our government ACTUALLY does this to REAL PEOPLE in our name....the film will have preformed a valuable public service.

I'm hoping for a rash of popular films with titles like "Democracy Hijacked" and "Treason in the Oval Office", and "Wiretap" and the like to remind the average mall-goer just how far thier very own rights have been eroded by an administration that almost 25% of them voted for twice!!!........tm

[anotherbozo]

"Hopefully the latter gets more attention than the former." I'm with you, Bolotsky.
I saw an ad for this film a month ago, have been holding my breath ever since. I'm not at all interested in whether it's a good film, only in how many people see it. I understand it has flaws, but so did Crash and Babel, which did relatively well. I was thrilled when Ebert called Rendition "a perfect film," not because he's accurate but because he's a middlebrow who may be a harbinger of good attendance.
And with a hit, how better to hit the Bush administration squarely between the eyes, with what Hollywood does best?

[DonB]

Well said.

The biggest threat to our democracy is not the far right but High Broderism. It was HB that led a lot of sane pundits and Democrats to say "well if Bush wants to invade only one of the countries in the axis of evil then I guess that is the middle of the road, centrist, moderate approach and I will support it". It was HB that led a lot of sane people to support the Robert and Alito nominations because after all they weren't as crazy as some of the other names mentioned.

We need true progressive voices to challenge HB. What gave us the current national nightmare was all the reporters covering the 2000 campaign who made HB arguments and sold Bush to the American public as the "straight talking Texan".

[TomR]

----
...there are also debates where to say there are shades of gray is to misunderstand the discussion entirely and not grasp that one side is factually correct and the other side is simply wrong, that debate in this context is a purely academic exercise.
----

This tactic of presenting "both sides," where one opinion is factually-based and the other delusion-based, effectively muddies the audience's perception of truth/reality and invites doubt where none should exist. Person A believes the moon is made of rock while person B believes it's made of cheese: we report, you decide. It's a subtle form of manipulation to distort a person's belief system toward another's agenda.

Black and white thinking can create a distorted thought pattern known as catastrophizing. Like Cheney's 1% rule: if there's a 1% chance of a country attacking us, then we'll attack them first. Catastrophizing takes the most extreme possibility, no matter how remote it may be, and use it as the basis for decision-making. When the world is presented to the audience in such stark, distorted, black and white terms, it makes it easier to manipulate the audience toward one's goal (i.e. attack Iraq or the warning will come in the form of a mushroom cloud).

The world exists in shades of gray. But, as you say, it shouldn't be used as an excuse for lazy substitute for analyzing/examining the world around us.

- Tom

[TomR]

Draft 2:

----
...there are also debates where to say there are shades of gray is to misunderstand the discussion entirely and not grasp that one side is factually correct and the other side is simply wrong, that debate in this context is a purely academic exercise.
----

This tactic of presenting "both sides," where one opinion is factually-based and the other delusion-based, effectively muddies the audience's perception of truth/reality and invites doubt where none should exist. Person A believes the moon is made of rock while person B believes it's made of cheese: we report, you decide. It's a subtle form of manipulation to distort a person's belief system toward another's agenda.

Black and white thinking can create a distorted thought pattern known as catastrophizing. Like Cheney's 1% rule: if there's a 1% chance of a country attacking us, then we'll attack them first. Catastrophizing takes the most extreme possibility, no matter how remote it may be, and uses it as the basis for decision-making. When the world is presented to the audience in such stark, distorted, black and white terms, it makes it easier to manipulate the audience toward one's goals (i.e. attack Iraq or the warning will come in the form of a mushroom cloud).

The world exists in shades of gray. But, as you say, this realization shouldn't be used as a lazy substitute for analyzing/examining the world around us.

- Tom

[rmwarnick]

Look up the term "American exceptionalism." This is the reason why we allow our government to commit crimes against humanity, and then wonder why America is hated by so many. After all, we're the good guys!

Stop and think. If the USA does something that we would condemn if another country did it, then justice demands accountability.

[Halsey]

I've not yet seen the film..but.."think" that the very topic was incredibly brave to approach.
(I'm praying that the father is NOT really a terrorist..pleeeeze!)...

is hyper-broderism taken from the once readable David Broder?

[FearlessFreep]

This sounds something like A MIGHTY HEART, that fine movie from earlier this year where Angelina Jolie played Daniel Pearl's wife. (I have a theory that movies come in twos.)

[sterncell]

Who understands what's at stake today, the brains running corporate America, sorenmeetsdylan? Exxon has spent the last decade lobbying against the existence of Global Warming, American car companies cannot produce a product anyone wants to buy and Wal Mart treats its employees like serfs.

[sorenmeetsdylan]

Ah, another movie from lamebrains in Hollywood without the vaguest idea what is at stake or what constitutes morality.

[greenmonk]

All Hollywood films are not all created equal. They don't all come from the same pot. From sleazy slasher flicks to a few great academy award winners that rise above any political partisanship.

Films are usually based on either a novel, or a screenplay of an actual event. In this case it is loosely based on the Maher Arar case. The innocent Canadian who was kidnapped by the American Government and sent to Syria to be tortured. In either case it is penned by artistic people who research and think and have at times given us great works.

Hollywood is where they make movies. It is just the name of the place - unless you think the actual place is possessed which I'm sure some fundy wackos do - then get over the location. The question to you is; who do you want to make your movies for you? The government? Maybe just your own political party should set up a production center? If you take your logic to its ultimate conclusion, then all writers should be censored. Freedom of expression stifled. Ever hear of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury?

Blanket statements like "lamebrains in Hollywood" reveals the stunted intelligence of the one-dimensional wingnut. All of a sudden "The Passion of the Christ" comes out of Hollywood, and the Hollywood is evil argument is not heard.

[andyg]

The fact that Maher Arar is from Syria and was sent home.