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POLITICAL
FILM SOCIETY CELEBRATES A FIFTEENTH BIRTHDAY
It was in Honolulu during the last week of March
1986 that the idea for the Political Film Society was approved
during the first meeting of the now-defunct Hawai`i Political
Studies Association (HPSA). Within two weeks, the Society
was launched with the same membership as the HPSA, but word
spread throughout the political science profession, and membership
increased even beyond the academic world, making the Society
an international organization. When HPSA folded, the Political
Film Society continued, providing newsletters to members and
awards to outstanding filmmakers for raising political consciousness
through film. In 1998, the headquarters moved from Honolulu
to Hollywood, where the Political Film Society was incorporated
as a nonprofit under California law, developed a website,
and for the first time offered a syndicated program on the
American Radio Network.
JOHN
BOORMAN ISSUES A WARNING ABOUT THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION
On
December 31, 1999, the government of Panamá took control of
the Panamá Canal after eight-five years of American sovereignty
over the Canal Zone. A clause in the reversion agreement,
negotiated to appease conservative Senators who were otherwise
reluctant to ratify the treaty, provides that the United States
has the authority to resume control in the event of a civil
emergency. The Tailor of Panama, based on a
1996 novel of the same title by John Le Carré, begins in Britain,
which lost the Suez Canal in 1956 when Washington opposed
the Anglo-French-Israeli attempt to seize the canal from Egyptian
nationalization. Ever since, Britain has deferred to American
policy in order to pretend to be an empireless superpower.
Andy Osnard (played by Pierce Brosnan), a member of MI6 (Britain’s
equivalent of the CIA), after being scolded by his superior
officer for botching an operation in Spain and sleeping around,
is assigned to Panamá, presumably to cool his heels. After
a flight that features aerial views of the canal and the suspension
bridge that links North America with South America across
the canal, Osnard checks into a hotel and contacts Harry Pendel
(played by Geoffrey Rush), a tailor who makes the best English
suits in the country and thus is personally acquainted with
the ruling class as well as opposition leaders.
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When
Osnard presses Pendel for information about the political
situation, threatening to expose Pendel’s previous criminal
record to his American wife Louisa (played by Jamie Lee Curtis)
while offering him cash to help pay back an overdue loan,
the tailor makes up a story about a "silent opposition" led
by Mikie Abraxas (played by Brendan Gleeson), whose past opposition
to Bush’s pet dictator Noriega cost him imprisonment and torture.
Osnard then reports to the British Embassy to take up his
post, meeting Ambassador Maltby (played by John Fortune) and
two political officers, Luxmore and Francesca (played by David
Hayman and Catherine McCormick). The staff naturally resents
Osnard’s arrival, believing that they know everything about
the country, whereupon Osnard mentions that he has already
heard about the "silent opposition." Nevertheless, Luxmore
conducts the standard briefing for Osnard, informing him that
George Bush, as CIA Director, brought Manuel Noriega to power,
but later arranged to depose him early in his presidency during
1989 so that those who rule Panamá will always know that they
must play ball with the United States or suffer the same fate.
After touring the town to see the gap between rich and poor,
hearing that the city's skyscrapers are known as Cocaine Towers
and that the eighty-five international banks are called Launderettes,
Osnard soon learns that the tailor secretly sides with those
who are dissatisfied with the status quo. Accordingly, after
getting more information about political realities, Osnard
concocts a scheme that will provoke the Americans to salivate
about prospects for yet another military intervention. Suspense
builds. Rather than summarizing the scheme, which is the most
delightful part of the movie, suffice it to say that Osnard
plays Don Juan, swindles the Americans and his MI6 boss of
$15 million, provokes Abraxas to a needless suicide, and leaves
the country before American marines arrive to eliminate the
nonexistent "silent opposition" after he pays off the British
ambassador, the only one in the story who figures out his
scheme. The director, John Boorman, won a Political Film Society
award for Beyond Rangoon (1995). The film clearly
raises consciousness about the ruthlessness of the Bush clan,
albeit too late to have an impact on the outcome of the American
election, but presumably not too soon to warn the British
public about the folly of being lap dogs of American neo-imperialism.
Therein may lie an explanation for the failure of Columbia
Pictures to give more publicity to the film, which should
make a tidy profit in international distribution, especially
among those who are cynical about American foreign policy.
MH
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