The Conspirator: A Review for History Nerds

The Conspirator:  Finally, a more thorough follow-up.

Here was my original mini review for normal human beings and/or the average movie watcher:  2010 historical drama about the trial of Mary Surratt after the Lincoln assassination; directed by Robert Redford and starring James McAvoy, Rachel Wood, Robin Wright, and Kevin Kline.  It’s great.  It’s very well done, the acting is excellent for the most part, and the cinematography is beautiful.  See it if you like historical dramas or are as rabid a McAvoy fan as I am.

But I couldn’t quite leave the review at that.  What follows is a little bit more about the three main historical gaffes that bothered me.  In doing research for this post I came across this article, which goes into every tiny little historical imperfection of the movie.  If you really want to nerd out, read that as well.  I don’t have the patience to recount all the minor complaints I had.  Plus that guy already did it for me.

Issue #1:  Washington D.C. was too clean.  When Lincoln was assassinated in 1865 the Civil War had gone on for four years.  Troops had been stationed all around Washington, the city had many permanent and temporary hospitals that treated more than 20,000 men over the course of the war, and it had been the staging area for campaigns like Manassas.  It was kind of a mess, you guys.  There was a serious overpopulation issue between the residents, the soldiers, and the freed slaves pouring in from the South.  There were unpaved streets that turned into giant muddy canals after a hard rain, there was a weak sanitation system and the mosquitos reached near plague-like proportions.

Yet in Redford’s D.C. the streets sparkle and glisten, the uniforms of soldiers are rakish instead of ragged.  Even the Old Capitol Prison where Mary Surratt is held is merely shabby chic.  The piles of hay on the floor of her cell are clean and golden, with tiny wisps of dust and chaff glittering in the air, lit by the sun streaming in.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME.  Would it not have been better to use the talents of cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel (who also worked on Drive) to beautifully light the surroundings but keep them dingy?  As they should be?  It was a desperate time for our country, an uncertain time!  Why is everything so GD clean?  Metaphors!

Issue #2:  Who the heck is that dude playing John Wilkes Booth?  Booth was like the Brad Pitt of the 1860s – except, you know, totally bonkers.  He was charming, talented, smart, and very very very handsome.  SO handsome.  Like Swarthy Disney Prince handsome.  Because Booth is barely in the movie at all, for so short a time that the acting didn’t really have to be outstanding, then maybe Redford should have focused on finding an actor who actually looked like Booth.  And could deliver a single line competently.  Shouldn’t have been hard.

            Toby Kebbell is a handsome guy.  But in this getup he looks like Borat.  None of the fine yet strong features of Booth.  Maybe the chin.  I don’t know.  It’s really hard to tell from the pictures I was able to find but when I watched the movie I was immediately put off by how un-Booth Kebell was.  OK also, the crowd in the theater didn’t start screaming until AFTER Booth jumped to the stage and yelled Sic semper tyrannis.  Not immediately after Booth shot Lincoln.  Duh.

Issue #3:  The glorification of Frederick Aiken.  In the movie Aiken (played ably by James McAvoy) is a bright young thing on the rise in Washington.  He’s a Union veteran who was wholly devoted to The Cause, a man saddled with the unenviable task of defending one of the most hated persons in U. S. history.  He’s eager, honest, he grapples with being shunned by his friends and would-be girlfriend and worries that his career will be marred forever but dammit he just has to do it it’s his duty he’s a PATRIOT! 

Uh, yeah.  Except the real Frederick Aiken offered his services to Jefferson Davis at the start of the war, before joining the Union Army.  If he even joined voluntarily, it’s not clear if he was drafted or not.  He also supported the candidacy of Vice President John C. Breckinridge, who later became a general in the Confederate Army.

I’ll concede that the details of Aiken’s life are sketchy at best, especially before the trial.  But when all the other characters in the movie are so clearly Right and Wrong, wouldn’t it have made for a more interesting movie if Redford had played up some of those ambiguities?  Made the audience wonder at his motives?

But all in all I still maintain that it’s a decent movie, and worth giving a shot if you like historical dramas.

Movies by Month: May 2012, part 1

Meek’s Cutoff:  2010 western directed by Kelly Reichardt and starring Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Bruce Greenwood, Will Patton and Shirley Henderson.  A small group of settlers break away from the Oregon Trail on what they believe is a shortcut to The West, and they come to realize their guide probably has no idea where he’s going.  When they encounter and capture a Native American the group is divided as to whose directions they should listen to next:  the potentially clueless fur trapper guide or the potentially dangerous Indian hostage.

            You have died of dysentery.  And boredom.  I weep for this period of American history that has been ruined for my generation by a computer game.  But at least the computer game was entertaining.  The pace of the movie was plodding, nothing really happens, they just walk and walk and the ending is stupid and inconclusive.  It would have been way more interesting if any context had been given; I had no idea that this was based on a true story or about the background or conclusion of their journey until I started researching it for this entry.  Skip it.

War, Inc.:  2008 political satire directed by Joshua Seftel and starring John and Joan Cusack, Marisa Tomei, Hilary Duff and Dan Aykroyd.  A hit man is sent to a fictional Arabic country to assassinate an oil tycoon.  His cover is to pose as a trade show host, but his story starts to unravel upon meeting an enchanting American journalist. 

I was just going to let this one pass me by, but was led to believe it was sort of, kind of a sequel to Grosse Pointe Blank.  That was a lie.  But the Cusack’s!  And Aykroyd!  I was misled.  I see what they were going for, but the satire was a bit heavy-handed, way too obvious.  There were a few small moments I found funny, but not enough to keep my attention.

Mississippi Burning:  1988 crime drama directed by Alan Parker and starring Gene Hackman, Willem Dafoe, R. Lee Ermey (heart), Brad Dourif, Michael Rooker and Frances McDormand.  It’s loosely based on the murders of three civil rights workers in 1964.  Hackman and Dafoe are an FBI odd couple sent to investigate the crime and bring the killers to justice.  Should be totally easy in a hostile Southern small town during the Civil Rights era, right?  It’s a little over the top at times, a bit preachy at times, a bit North-good-South-bad at times, but I still found it very enjoyable.

These Amazing Shadows:  2011 documentary about the history of the National Film Registry, directed by Paul Mariano and featuring interviews with a bunch of awesome movie nerds.  A few years back I finished watching the AFI Top 100 movies list, and since then have been slowly (and far less methodically) trying to watch Ebert’s Great Films list and the National Film Registry list.  It’s daunting.  As of 2011 the NFR included 575 films deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.”  And about 25 new films are added each year.  It’s a Sisyphean task, but maybe by the time I retire . . .

            Anyway, it’s a great documentary if you love movies.

Brothers:  2009 drama directed by Jim Sheridan and starring Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman and Sam Shepard.  Sam (Maguire) is a stand-up guy:  a Marine about to embark on his fourth tour of duty, wonderful father to two little girls, married to his high school sweetheart, and has a haircut you could set your watch to.  Tommy (Gyllenhaal) is the black sheep of the family, just let out of prison as his brother is heading off to war.  When Sam is reported missing and presumed dead, Tommy steps up to help his sister-in-law keep her life together.  Tommy is found alive, but when he returns home he’s not the same man he used to be, and becomes obsessed with the idea that his brother may have been sleeping with his wife.  Good story in theory, right?  Yeah, I just didn’t think it was all that good – with the exception of the performances by Portman, Gyllenhaal and brilliant Bailee Madison as the older daughter.  The music is terrible, adds a significant cheese factor.  Maguire was tolerable right up until the climax, when he overshot it.  Maybe the original version is better.

The Warriors:  1979 cult action-thriller directed by Walter Hill and starring Michael Beck, James Remar, Deborah Van Valkenburgh and David Patrick Kelly.  When a powerful leader is killed at a NYC gang summit, word gets out that a crew called The Warriors is responsible.  They have to make it from the Bronx back to their home turf at Coney Island before one of the other gangs takes them out.  Um, it’s hilarious.  It’s campy and super ‘70s and I really liked it.  A gang that dresses as if KISS formed a baseball team?  But I think that watching it at a late night screening at my local independent movie theater surrounded by really enthusiastic people in costume probably helped.

J. Edgar:  2011 biographical drama directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Armie Hammer, Naomi Watts, Josh Lucas and Judi Dench.  If all you know about J. Edgar Hoover is that he was the head of the FBI and that he may have been gay or a cross-dresser, you are missing out.  The film gives him context; most people don’t remember the 1919 anarchist bombings that helped shape his character, or about his childhood stutter or his overbearing mother.  It’s a bit over the top at times, but I thought it did a fine job giving the broad-brushstrokes version of the FBI’s history, and it captured the good and the bad of Hoover.  He helped build the Library of Congress, standardized finger printing, centralized criminal records, and embraced scientific methods of detection and forensics long before anyone else did.  He also blackmailed civil rights leaders, illegally wiretapped like everyone in America, and was paranoid and power-hungry.  He’s a fascinating man, and I thought the movie was decent enough.