I subscribe to cable TV, which I turn on mostly to watch free movies or PBS documentaries or anything without commericials so I don't have to keep the remote handy to mute the sound. I also want to avoid the urge to kill myself.
A while back the Independent Film Channel (IFC) offered In The Loop, a British satire (2009) which makes fun of just about everything which goes on among the Powers That Be. I loved it. I watched it three times, and enjoyed it more each time I saw it. I had trouble with the accents initially, so it was guaranteed after my first viewing that I would watch it again. I was still laughing out loud when I saw it the third time. Here's an excerpt from the New York Times review War of Words, Misspoken And Spun.
If Anglo-Saxon epithets were armaments, Britannia would rule the waves, thanks to the uncivil tongue of Malcolm Tucker, a powerful press officer. Almost nothing he says can be quoted here. Loosely based on Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s press secretary, and played by Peter Capaldi as a wiry dervish of Scottish hostility, Malcolm is so completely cynical that he attains a kind of integrity and thus becomes both the film’s chief monster and the closest thing it has to a hero.
The American and British heads of state are never named or shown, and no rogue nation or political party is ever mentioned, but the real-world template for “In the Loop” is easy enough to identify. The British-American push to war involves dubious, possibly cooked intelligence, and voices of dissent inside both governments are silenced and suborned.
But though it all sounds very 2003, the film’s insights are less topical than procedural. It’s not about something that happened but rather about the way things work. Using a mock-vérité style familiar from television shows like “The Office” (and his own series, “The Thick of It,” in relation to which this film is somewhere between spinoff and stepchild), Mr. Iannucci [the director] maps the queasy interpersonal power games at the heart of any political endeavor. The inhabitants of his universe are in essence well-connected cubicle rats, or junior high school clique members with media access and large standing armies, or perhaps Renaissance courtiers with BlackBerrys and power suits.
If you haven't seen the film, I highly recommend it. Enjoy these clips, which are no substitute for actually watching the movie. The first one is the trailer. Warning, there's a lot of profanity in this movie.
Dave
The British tv series,"In the thick of it", which is closely related to "In the loop." and is mentioned in the New York Times review is excellent as well. It helps to be vaguely familliar with the British political scene of the last fifteen years ,particularly the ghastly unspeakable horror of New Labour,to fully appreciate it, but if you can get a hold of some video of it, I think it will be well worth your time. Use subtitles if you can for the accents.
Posted by: Mike | 03/10/2012 at 07:29 PM