Heal This Movie

Steal This Movie, Fight Club, and American Beauty
film review by Jon Reinsch

In a new release, a reporter seeks the essence of an enigmatic figure by interviewing his friends and associates, each shedding a contrasting light. Citizen Kane 2000? No, it's Steal This Movie, and the mystery man is Abbie Hoffman. Having gone underground, and desperate for help in getting his story out, he's approached the reporter himself. Long ago, something like this apparently happened to director Robert Greenwald. After years of trying, he's finally responded to Hoffman's challenge.

Hoffman was a cofounder of the Yippies, representing the guerrilla theater wing of the antiwar movement. They were responsible for such antics as attempting to levitate the Pentagon and running a pig for President. After the '68 Democratic Convention, Hoffman, as one of the Chicago Seven, was put on trial for incitement to riot. Although he was eventually released, he had drawn the attention of FBI Director J. Edgar Freako (as the Yippies called him). Steal This Movie focuses a harsh light on the government's campaign of harassment against Hoffman.

In this docudrama, Vincent D'Onofrio (Full Metal Jacket, The Whole Wide World) plays Hoffman. D'Onofrio obviously worked hard at Hoffman's accent, and conveys both the ebullient rabble-rouser of '68 and the morose fugitive of the mid-70's. Perhaps because of the deliberate silliness that got Hoffman's name in the papers, the inner seriousness of D'Onofrio's portrayal comes as a surprise. Janeane Garofalo (The Truth About Cats and Dogs) is appealing as Hoffman's wife Anita. Their love story makes for one of the happier aspects of the film.

The film's frenetic style suits its subject, but it sometimes gets in the way of exposition. Yes, music was a big part of the era, but was it necessary to cram some 30 songs onto the soundtrack, sometimes drowning out the dialog? And there's an overuse of hackneyed devices like black and white freeze frames with explosive flash sounds--telegraphing that This Is History.

Some of the best moments are at the Chicago Seven trial, where the filmmakers were forced to abandon music, restrict themselves to a smaller arena, and slow down. It was here that Hoffman and fellow Yippie Jerry Rubin attempted, in Anita's words, to "destroy the notion that the court was a neutral zone." The ensuing deconstruction makes for decidedly unusual courtroom drama.

The filmmakers' sympathies are definitely with Hoffman. It is undeniably heroic to keep on struggling for justice, year after year after year. Still, Steal This Movie makes Hoffman out to be more pure-hearted than he probably was--or than it's reasonable to expect anyone to be. Not that it shows him without flaws, but we rarely see the mix of motives that underlie the actions of real people.

Abbie Hoffman's story suggests certain questions--unexamined in this film--about progressive movements in general. Is there a way around the quandary that the very actions that energize one group alienate another? Is it precisely those naive enough to think they can change the world overnight who make long-term progress? Hoffman died in 1989, so there were many radicals in the streets of Philadelphia and LA this August with no idea in whose footsteps they were following. It is this film's manifest intent to educate them. At the end, Hoffman addresses the camera and says "It's your turn now."

One of last year's movies was so wickedly iconoclastic that even Abbie Hoffman would have loved it. With the release of the extras-packed DVD for Fight Club, it's time for a look back. This is not a movie; this is a gob of spit in the face of turn-of-the-century American civilization.

The film pissed a lot of people off--either because they misunderstood it, or because they resented its assault on their complacency. Watching the DVD with all four commentary tracks has only increased my admiration for the intelligence and vision of the team behind this act of cinematic subversion. Edward Norton is particularly insightful; it's clear how deeply he thought about his character.

Fight Club shares certain features with American Beauty--a fine film that was far more popular. Each attacks bourgeois consumerist values through the story of a superficially successful guy with a meaningless job, the sole purpose of which is enhancing corporate profit. Each meets a buddy/spiritual adviser whose pronouncements range from wacked-out to profound. Each escapes from his job, extorting a handsome severance package in the process. Both protagonists eventually find that the momentum of their transformation has carried them too far. For each there is a kind of birth in death. They are two of the most problematic narrators ever: one of them is dead, and as for the other...

With all these parallels, the social criticism of American Beauty is muted in comparison with Fight Club's . In the former, Lester Burnham tries to regain something he had in his youth. So he rebels by smoking dope and lusting after his daughter's friend. That path isn't open to Fight Club's Jack; he never had Lester's ease. So by necessity his journey is a rockier one.

In Fight Club, Tyler Durden has nothing but scorn for guys like Lester, who buff up just "to look good naked." Lester buys himself his dream car and then lectures his wife that her couch is "just stuff." Whatever you say about Jack, at least he's no hypocrite--his sofa gets blown up, and he totals his car.

It's surprising, but Fight Club is ultimately the more optimistic film. At the end, it's far from clear what's real and what isn't--and there are huge problems to be faced. Still, somebody seems to have survived and to have learned from his experiences. Jack has resolved--or taken to a new level--his relationships with both Tyler and Marla. Not so for American Beauty's Lester; he attains a Buddhistic serenity, but only in death. For some of us, that's not a satisfactory answer. Maybe, just maybe, if you kill the Buddha on the road, you won't have to die to attain nirvana. Or at least to grow up.