Assayas' 'Carlos' is a true epic
by RENE RODRIGUEZ, pressdemocrat.com
The term "epic" often gets bandied around to describe movies that don't really
fit the description. But Olivier Assayas' "Carlos" is the real deal -- a
5½-hour narrative, with more than 100 speaking parts, in eight languages,
covering two decades in the life of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez (Edgar Ramirez),
better known as the terrorist Carlos the Jackal.
Born in Venezuela, educated in Cuba and Moscow, and devoted to Marxism, Carlos
-- Ilich's self-imposed nom de guerre -- begins his career as a hard-line
idealist, aligning himself with the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (PFLP) as a way to strike a blow against western Imperialism, the
enemy he proclaimed to be his life-long foe.
Beginning with a literal bang in 1973 Paris, when a car bomb takes out a PFLP
agent, Carlos delves deep into the ignominious career of its titular subject.
Although director Assayas ("Irma Vep," "Demonlover," "Summer Hours"),
continuing to display a wholly unpredictable artistic palette, opens the film
with a title card labeling it as a work of fiction, a lot of what we see -- the
day-to-day machinations of grassroots terrorism, the exploitation of small-time
criminals by world superpowers, the precise methods to carry out kidnapping
raids -- has the ring of documentary truth.
Big chunks of the film are devoted to some of Ilich's most notorious
assassinations, bombings and crimes, such as his siege on the OPEC delegation
in 1975 Vienna on the orders of his PFLP commander Wadid Haddad (Ahmad
Kaabour), rumored to have been handed down by Saddam Hussein.
The raid and ensuing hostage standoff consume nearly 90 minutes of screen time
-- practically a stand-alone movie -- but Assayas' extended and detailed
re-enactment places you inside that horrible room, and later in an airplane
sitting on a runway, as the tension mounts and the terrorists must contend with
the reality that their demands are not going to be met.
Ramirez, in a bravura performance, doesn't so much put us inside Ilich's head
as make us bask in the man's vanity and grandeur (the pop music artists heard
during certain montages, from The Feelies to New Order, are part of the
soundtrack playing inside his self-enamored head).
The movie also details Ilich's multitude of romantic relationships, the most
critical being his marriage to German revolutionary Magdalena Kopp (Nora von
Waldsatten), who refused to be manhandled the way Ilich liked to treat his
women.
His world view is a frightening one -- a volatile landscape in which heads of
state negotiate with terrorists, the same way the CIA has been known to
cooperate with revolutionaries.
When the head of the KGB meets with Ilich and other members of his group and
promises "unlimited financial support" to whoever can assassinate Egyptian
president Anwar El Sadat, you see these criminals for what they really are:
Pawns used by forces that could squash them in an instant, but instead employ
them to shovel their dirt.
Ilich either doesn't realize he's being used or intentionally takes a half-full
approach, using the offer as a validation of his own righteousness.
Working alongside German terrorist cells and the Japanese Red Army, he spouts
ideology that eventually begins to sound like anti-Semitism. He uses his
political stance to mask his hatred, yet remains a charismatic and fascinating
figure -- a seductive hypocrite.
Originally made as a French TV miniseries to be shown in three parts, Carlos is
being released theatrically in the United States as one long film, a la Che, a
man whose ethics and image Ilich aspires to, right down to the iconic beret.
But Ilich lacked the Argentine revolutionary's conviction: Guevara would have
never whined "I'm a soldier! I'm not a martyr!" when backed into a corner in
which the only options were suicide or defeat.
A shorter cut of the movie, running 2 hours and 45 minutes, is also being
distributed, but part of the accomplishment of Carlos is the sheer accumulation
of detail the movie amasses, and the longer running time gives you a deeper
sense of the terrorist lifestyle, and when and why Ilich gradually succumbed to
ego and self-glorification without realizing it.
By the end of Carlos, the once-proud and vain warrior who stood naked in front
of a mirror, admiring himself, has been reduced to a fat nobody, persona non
grata the world over, crippled by a testicular condition and treated like a
common thug -- which is, for all his pomposity, exactly what he was, really. He
just got lucky a few times.
Original Page:
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20110304/WIRE/103041022?Title=Assayas-Carlos-is-a-true-epic%3E
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