Yesterday, after attending a friend’s mother’s memorial service we returned to the house where I took apart the first half of Sunday’s sermon and feeling a bit desperate completely rewrote it.
After dinner Jan & I took off to the movies where we saw Charlie Wilson’s War about the Texas congressman Charlie Wilson’s epic struggle to fund the Afghan resistance to Soviet occupation in the 1980s. As the story unfolds it remains shadowed by the knowledge of what would follow. The film is based on a book of the same name.
As Jan observed as we walked back to our car, it’s good to see a movie made by adults for adults.
I gather many on our American political right have serious problems with the movie. I suspect many on our American political left must feel very ambivalent about it, as well.
It certainly pushes buttons for me with all my complex feelings about the value of pacifism. I guess at this moment I’d have to describe myself as not a pacifist but how I wish I were. I’m caught astride the two horns of firmly believing in self-defense and very much aware of the terrible cascade of unintended consequences following all actions, but particularly flowing like blood from violence. This movie is about those horns and how deeply they stab.
Tom Hanks is great, as is Julia Roberts, as is Amy Adams. And as anyone who has read any review knows the whole thing is stolen by Philip Seymour Hoffman. The script is everything I would hope for from Aaron Sorkin’s pen. Mike Nichols’ direction holds it all together. At least as I experienced it (and I should add this is in complete agreement with the view of Jan, by general agreement of those who know us the smart one in our family…). This is a movie worth seeing.
And worth thinking about.
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