A devoted wife and mother leads a secret life as a CIA agent until her husband’s article exposes a scandal, putting her identity and loved ones at risk. As her world crumbles, she must navigate the fallout of her double life.
22 Mar Fair Game (2010)
Choices
The big parts of life are about choosing.
That is why, I believe, that we are so drawn to fiction. When we enter a work of fiction, we are entering an entire world where every single element is chosen. Characters may seem to grab control but everything is constrained by that thin wire that connects our choice mechanisms as connected to the author's. Fiction is a shared adventure in what we allow and desire, with each of the choices in our lives and those of the world of the creator interacting. It is as intimate as things get.
This is why projects like this one are so complex. It is a story, and one that is the result of very deliberate sculpting by the writer and filmmaker. But it is chosen from the open world of real life, that crazy weave of pre-stories.
Which stories do you tell of the ones that want to appear? In this particular case, I know many of those a bit well. And they are compelling stories:
• we leave out the deliberate scheme to trick Colin Powell into lying to the UN.
• we leave out the reasons why Cheney was desperate for more insulation from exposure: illegal torture, illegal wiretaps, illegal death squads, all run from his office, motivated by what he thought to be existential threat.
• we completely ignore the role of the president in all this, and we only briefly see our comically titled ‘National Security Adviser’ Rice.
• though we see some of the workings of the CIA, the FBI and NSA played larger and much more interesting roles.
So which watching this, and engaging in my dialog with the storytellers (who in this case includes Penn), all of these other narratives leak in. As I watch the Vice President imposing an iron fist on his narrative of interest, I feel a similar angst over Liman’s flows, and what he chooses to omit. The fact that I deplore the former and applaud the latter doesn’t matter, not at all. In fact, we expect our storytellers to be more sensual with truths.
So participating in this is less controlled, more chaotic, more dangerous than I wish it were. That is because the choices made in telling this story ignore the choices made by the military, intelligence and politically affected legal institutions about the choices I and my kids have in shaping our lives. That real story changes my real story outside the film.
Unfortunately, the story that has been pulled out has some problems. One of them is that of all the attractive real things to choose from, the first half exaggerates the intrigue and excitement of her job before the crisis. We will never know her particulars for sure, but field work is generally not cinematically well manicured. Why colour reality?
But more problematic is that the story isn’t strong. Is it a love story? Not sure, though it seems to attempt that. Is it a ‘President’s Men/Insider’ expose? Well, that doesn’t live up to the promise either. Is it a character study of how two besieged souls deal with the noir darkness that falls on them? This also is attempted in half measures.
Posted in 2012
Ted’s Evaluation — 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.
No Comments