2008 Woodie Awards
Reel Geek
The Meaning of a Political Film
By Jennifer Schneider
9/10/07 - Features
I wrote in this column last spring about a spate of documentaries being produced on current environmental crises, films like An Inconvenient Truth and the not-yet-released The 11th Hour. Political documentaries have been around for a long time now, and we're not surprised to see them; in fact, I welcome most of them, learn from them, appreciate them. The political documentary is a genre I understand. Even Michael Moore's creative and complex documentaries are identifiable, categorizable. As disturbing as the content of these movies may be, the form is straightforward. It's rare I'm thrown for a loop.
The political feature-length narrative film, on the other hand, is a grab-bag. You reach in, and out pops Traffic (2000). Out pops The Constant Gardener (2005). Out pops Blood Diamond (2006). And, for that matter, you'll also get a whole spate of classics, from All the King's Men (1949) to The Manchurian Candidate (1962) to Network (1976).
Fiction movies addressing political crises or cultural malaises of the day run across a spectrum of eras and genres; even trying to define what counts as a "political movie" in Hollywood is a complex project. Is 1967's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, which addresses race and prejudice in a light-hearted, sentimental way, political? Is Dr. Strangelove (1964), a dark comedy, political? I would say yes on both counts, but defining "political" so broadly means that any number of films is, indeed, political, and then we must ask if it is even worthwhile to assign the term in the first place.
This is not just academic navel-gazing. Figuring out what we mean by "political" will in turn tell us what counts as a good political film. I think the best political films, including many of those listed above, made profound, complex statements about the events of their time. No matter where you stand on the ideological spectrum, you would have to be living in a paper bag to underestimate the ripple effects of An Inconvenient Truth or the cultural resonance of a classic like Network.
The political feature-length narrative film, on the other hand, is a grab-bag. You reach in, and out pops Traffic (2000). Out pops The Constant Gardener (2005). Out pops Blood Diamond (2006). And, for that matter, you'll also get a whole spate of classics, from All the King's Men (1949) to The Manchurian Candidate (1962) to Network (1976).
Fiction movies addressing political crises or cultural malaises of the day run across a spectrum of eras and genres; even trying to define what counts as a "political movie" in Hollywood is a complex project. Is 1967's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, which addresses race and prejudice in a light-hearted, sentimental way, political? Is Dr. Strangelove (1964), a dark comedy, political? I would say yes on both counts, but defining "political" so broadly means that any number of films is, indeed, political, and then we must ask if it is even worthwhile to assign the term in the first place.
This is not just academic navel-gazing. Figuring out what we mean by "political" will in turn tell us what counts as a good political film. I think the best political films, including many of those listed above, made profound, complex statements about the events of their time. No matter where you stand on the ideological spectrum, you would have to be living in a paper bag to underestimate the ripple effects of An Inconvenient Truth or the cultural resonance of a classic like Network.
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