Rosewater By Jon Stewart ~ Film Review

By: Uel Ceballos


For a first-time director, Jon Stewart made an impressive directing debut through his first masterpiece, Rosewater. He was brave enough to create a film which was opposite to his personality as a comedian. One would expect Stewart to create a satirical film just as his TV show The Daily Show but he optioned a biopic film of Maziar Bahari that explored a sensitive political issue.

I wasn’t clearly aware of this event in Tehran until I saw Rosewater. The chaos of things however wasn’t a surprise to me. It happens everywhere. It happens in our own country as well –the cheating on the election, the suppression of the freedom to express, and the violent attack of the regime to the outrageous protesters and reformists. For such event to be told is one thing, but for that to be told in a film is another. As I said, the brutality against the common people is not news to me as well as the participation of America in each and every event-worth-putting-to-the-history-book. Jon Stewart has definitely made a bold act here, revealing to the world the dark side of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s administration, and releasing it just a year after Ahmadinejad stepped down from the office. While I’m quite sure that details in the film are based to the real life of Maziar Bahari, I couldn’t help thinking that some details are probably not covered to avoid tarnishing someone’s or some administration’s image. Nonetheless, apart from the accuracy of the events told, Rosewater is a good film.

Oftentimes, the impact of the film is risked when the story is a true-to-life one. Since you can’t add more exciting twist, you can’t change the order of the events, and you can’t add characters more than who is actually involved, all you can do is to make the film as tasteful and exciting as you can make it. Biopic film often suffers the tendency of falling into the category of a boring, monotonous film. However, Rosewater made it across the line with the right mixture of drama. Gael Garcia Bernal is a good choice. I’ve often pictured him as the charming actor that he is but to see him in a serious journalist role is something to look forward to. The musical scoring is one sure of a delicious spice for the film; it did so much to uplift the spirit of the story. The choice of the beat and the type of music were compelling enough to provoke the sympathy of the audiences. I admired the way that the filmmakers beautifully incorporated a potential music to the major turnout of the events in the movie. From that part when Bahari was telling Rosewater of the massages he has gotten addicted to, going to the scene where he danced inside his cell after learning that Hilary Clinton kept pushing for his realease– the music was a clear indication that the things were starting to build up, with the rising sensation of hopes for Bahari’s situation. I found it brilliant for the filmmakers to deliver the story in a not-so-unusual but compelling treatment, thus making the serious topic palatable even to those who are not so much into politics. I know it wasn’t meant to be an entertaining film but really to see Garcia Bernal smirking discreetly and dancing sexily (I know, I know that was not sexy dancing and he wasn’t meant to dance sexy after all but he couldn’t really help being hot when he moved like that), make the people curve a smile in their lips too.

Overall, the whole point was delivered and it sure did call international attention. It's not only in Tehran that journalist and media men are arrested and tortured for bearing witness, it has been a common situation anywhere else especially in countries with authoritarian and dictatorship form of leadership. To end this article I’d like to quote Bahari in the last part of the film where he said, “finally, I was free, but my joy is tempered by those I left behind. People that did not have the advantage of international attention. Countrymen and women, whose only crime against the state is not believing in its perfection.” May justice be served to those who need it.

Wag the Dog ~ so who's the tail and who's the dog?

by: Uel Ceballos

Opening in an idiomatic expression about “tail wagging the dog”, the film had foreshadowed the exploration of manipulation and control that would be pretty much evident on the following scenes. “Wag the Dog” was a black comedy film that sardonically made jests of the serious matters in politics, of which have placed the people involved in the matter of life and death. It starred by two of the greatest actors in Hollywood, Robert De Niro who played as the spin doctor and Dustin Hoffman who did the role of a film producer. The story was focused on the president whom face was never showed in the camera and all the diversion that his team was doing just to distract the public from the sex scandal issue that he had gotten into.

Conrad Brean (De Niro) had to switch the attention of the public in a matter of days before the election day arrive thus he came up with this idea of creating a fake war with Albania and in able to artistically maneuver it as real as it had to appear, he found creative resource from the Hollywood film producer, Stanley Motss (Hoffman). Why did it have to be Albania? What have they done with them? The plain answer was nothing, they have done nothing FOR them and that was Brean’s reason for using Albania for the faked war that he had brewed – such a dark fact that by just doing nothing, your nation could be a subject to someone’s idea of faked war was already worth of wondering.

The film was luxuriantly stuffed with humors – a mind and eye opening farce about what could be the most real drill in the world of media and politics of which majority of the public are unsuspicious and unaware of. De Niro and Hoffman really did a great chemistry here, with Hoffman showing once again his knack for comedy business. I burst laughing my heart out because the dialogues were hard-hitting to the issues being targeted and the deliverances of the main actors were just so perfectly amusing. In able to get the message, you would have to be all ears in their exchanges of conversations, and as a viewer you got to watch, listen and digest all at the same time what were being shown to you by the movie. You got to develop a complete common sense so you could grasp the message that this film was trying to inculcate on you.

The plot was a completely amazing turns of events, from Hoffman gathering his talents, them planning the Act 1 and Act 2, to the music composer complaining ‘bout the difficulties in rhyming Albanian, the big deal issue on whether the talent “Albanian” girl should hold a dog or a cat (they settled on a white Calico cat) while she was trying to escape her smoldering village after the “terrorists” have attacked, up towards to the event that they ended with an insane convict to play as their “hero” of the “war”.

It would be a privilege for the viewers to see the passionate Hollywood producer Motss did his masterpiece, which he considered to be his greatest work ever. Motss even produced music compositions that served poignantly to earn the sympathy of the public and got them immersed on the expected “effect” of war of which the Albania had declared with their country. The use of music, the manipulation of media, the maneuvering of events, the anticipated outcome of events – these were all in the control of the few people who were trying to turn the things upside down and place back the vote favors to the incumbent president of the state.

Now after watching this, things might have somehow changed your way of thinking. The film had demonstrated in one way or another how the people, the masses, were being influenced and (at some certain points) manipulated by the media; and how the people of higher ranks and capacities were taking advantages of it to control the turns and twists of events. You would certainly see the media and the politics at its most deceiving and controlling acts after seeing this full of brain and wits movie. So, better check on this now.