Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

everything is illuminated

On the back cover of my copy of Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel, Everything Is Illuminated, it says that it is “a work of genius,” and for lengthy sections of this debut novel, it really is, but ultimately his lofty ambitions are not fully met by his pen.

Ambition is something this book has in spades. It is a complicated, heady novel whose narrative stretches, bends, and breaks. It is really three stories tied together by a small Ukranian village whose past is linked to several characters’ destinies.

The first story involves the history of that village as far back as 1791 and moving forward until it was horrendously destroyed by the Nazi party. The second story consists of a character named Jonathan Safran Foer, an American searching for a woman who lived in the village of Trachimbrod, and who may have information concerning his grandfather. This story is told by his Ukranian guide, Sasha, in hilarious broken English. What makes up the third story are letters from Sasha to Jonathan detailing bits of his own life and commenting on the other two stories. All three stories are intermingled with one another giving an odd sense of both being off-kilter and well balanced.

Adding to the ambitiousness of the three intermingled stories is a peculiar use of the typed page. The titles of chapters often swirl, curve, and dance off the page. There is a gratuitous use of ALL CAPS, pages that are indented well beyond the others, and even several pages consisting almost completely of ellipses (…). All of which is designed to give meaning and an emotional response. It is mostly effective in doing so, though at times, it seems a little too showy as if the author is jumping up and down waving his hands shouting Hey look….THIS IS ART.

The central story of the city is silly, hilarious, sometimes moving, and mostly an outlandish caricature of ancient Jewish life. It is also more standard in its narrative. It is a straight-told story, using the typical use of type setting. It creates several moving pictures of Nazi atrocities in the town, though anyone not being able to create emotion out of the holocaust is a poor writer indeed.

The remaining stories are also quite interesting, humorous, and moving. There is a lot being said about our concept of perceptions and truth. Several things that Sasha tells us in the beginning about himself, he later admits to be false. Just as he details that he will make changes to his story that Jonathan requests due to putting him in a negative light.

It is not a novel that I would consider to be enjoyable or an easy read. The narrative structure as well as the type structure is often difficult and confusing. While it is a novel showing a great deal of talent in its author, it never quite lives up to its hype or ambition. Though there is much to admire it is well worth the time to read.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

slaughterhouse five

On February 13 and 14, 1945 US and British troops firebombed the non-military German city of Dresden, killing somewhere between 35,000 and 135,000 civilians. In 1969 Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. wrote about his experience as a prisoner of war in Dresden during the bombings in Slaughterhouse Five. It is a beautiful, hilarious, bizarre, horrifying novel. Or your average Kurt Vonnegut book.

It is a true Vonnegut novel in that it isn’t straight fiction. Who else would write a novel about a firebombing that includes a time-traveling, alien abducted, hero that barely says a word about the actual firebombing? In his introduction, the author describes how it took him several years to be able to write his Dresden book. He visits fellow witnesses, drinks lots of booze, and generally has a rough time of it. Then he proceeds to tell us exactly how his story begins and the words that conclude the novel. It is as if the narrative itself isn’t important, but rather its underlying themes and ideas.

The narrative itself involves Billy Pilgrim, a bumbling, incompetent replacement soldier. He started the war as a priest’s assistant but finds himself being moved closer to the front. He doesn’t manage to get far before he is captured by the Germans, and sent to Dresden. Mixed in with this simple narrative is Pilgrim’s abduction by aliens and his ability to travel through time, albeit without any type of control. The novel weaves through periods of Pilgrim’s life. From the war, to what would be called the present, to the future where he spends his time in an alien zoo making love to a dirty movie star. This is dusted with a dry philosophy that time is meaningless and individual destiny is a myth. What happens happens, and so it goes.

It is a breezy, novel written in a seemingly stream-of-conscience style. But one shouldn’t let the novel’s ease of reading confuse it with a simple throw-away novel. No, Vonnegut obviously spent a great deal of time and skill crafting a novel that is deceptively simple, yet serves a thick plate of ideas. It is written in the third person from Vonnegut’s own point of view. Several times the author stops and lets us know that the character he has just described, or quoted is, in fact, himself.

The firebombing of Dresden itself is given but few details. We see the bombing as Vonnegut himself did, from underground in a shelter. The little we do see is the aftermath, the rubble and destruction. But the massacre is never far from the author’s lips. While detailing the adventures of Billy Pilgrim, whether marching with fellow soldiers, en route to Dresden via putrid trains or sitting naked on an alien planet, we see the end, we can almost smell the charred masses after the bombing.

It is an anti-war novel that doesn’t wear its position on its sleeve. There are many moments of laugh-out-loud hilarity. It is read so fluidly that it is hard to stop during the more poignant moments to feel the sting of emotion. There are no gung-ho moments of war bravado. There are no heroes to be found in the novel, and as Vonnegut says in the introduction, “There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick, and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters…” It does give us a moving portrait of your average soldier fighting a war he doesn’t understand, seeing atrocities he cannot comprehend. Yet somehow he (and we) are supposed to continue living our lives as atrocious massacres are somehow normal, acceptable things.

And so it goes.

The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999)

messenger the story of joan of arc poster

What happens when you take a talented French director, his model/singer/actress wife, and one of the greatest actors of the 70s, and make a movie about one of the most renowned saints of France? You get a giant mess is what. The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc is loaded with lots of talented people, is filmed gorgeously, and is mostly a lousy, muddled film.

The story of Joan of Arc (or Jeanne d’Arc as they call her in France) is well known just about everywhere. Joan is a poor peasant living in a small village in France during the Hundred Years’ War with England. She begins seeing heavenly visions that tell her she is God’s messenger to rid her country of the bloody English. Somehow she convinces Charles, the Dauphin with visions of being king, to give her an army to storm Orleans. Using unconventional methods she leads her army to victory. The Dauphin is crowned king and mostly forgets about Joan. She leads an unsuccessful siege on Paris is given over to the English, tried and burned at the stake, several hundred years later she is sainted by the Catholic church. The Messenger covers most of this relatively faithfully, and beautifully.

Luc Besson is a talented director filming such classics as Le Femme Nikita (1990) and The Professional (1994). His talent is presented here in his ability to create interesting and beautiful shots but is lost in creating a cohesive story. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with the story about the young saint. In parts, it seems earnest in its recreation of this revolutionary with heavenly visions, but then it sinks into a near parody of itself and in the end sinks towards a reinventing of the events themselves asking Joan herself whether or not her visions were real or mere psychosis.

Milla Jovovich is a pretty face who has mostly been in forgettable, silly comedies and the Resident Evil franchise which might as well be considered a silly comedy for all its worth. Here, she has two modes of acting, a strange amphetamine delivery of her lines as if she couldn’t spit them out fast enough, or a snarled scream as if acting was merely being the loudest person on the set. It is not a nuanced performance. For the entirety of the film, she seems completely out of place.

The battle of Orleans is tame at best. There are virtually no scenes of real ambitious spectacle. We are given nothing to inform us of her revolutionary forms of combat. Instead, her method seems to be screaming a lot and jumping a horse over the enemy’s fence. Later the storming of Paris is so humorous it is sad. Joan screams and screams that she needs backup while a few soldiers randomly knock on what must be the Paris gates. These soldiers are so bewildered a pathetic looking they seem more out of a Monty Python sketch than a serious film about war.

Beyond the visual elements, the only saving grace is Dustin Hoffman’s performance as the Grand Inquisitor or Conscience. It is a fine performance from a fine actor, but it is a peculiar character. He spends his time questioning Joan’s own sanity. Could her visions in fact be some form of psychosis or fantasy? Could crucial moments in her life like finding a sword in a field in fact be a simple coincidence? Good questions in the history of the real Joan of Arc, but they seem out of place here. Nowhere in the film are we led to believe Joan is nothing but the real thing. Why bring these questions into play during its climactic ending?

The film would have worked much better by believing wholeheartedly in Joan’s purpose and vision. Or questioning her visions from the beginning, a revisioning of the myth could be very interesting. Instead, it kicks its legs out from under itself by bringing her into question so late in the film.

What we get in this portrayal of Joan of Arc is some pretty visuals and a fine performance from Dustin Hoffman. Try renting one of Luc Besson’s earlier films and pick up anything from Hoffman’s heyday in the 70s, they will be worth your dollar and your time far more than anything thing to be found here.

The Village (2004)

the village poster

The problem with most thrillers is that once you’ve watched them one time, there is nothing left to thrill you. Too many of these films spend all of their creative energy trying to give the audience a scare. The best directors of the genre create truly great films, which just happened to give the audience a scare. While M. Night Shyamalan is an excellent craftsman, he tends to be unable to elevate his films into the realms of true cinema. The Village is no exception.

The story centers around a small village that seems to be set in the later part of the 1800s. The Villagers have worked out a complicated deal with strange creatures (“Those We Do Not Speak Of”) lurking in the near woods. Problems arise and the long-held pact begins to break down. This causes there to be a need for one of the villagers to venture through the woods into the larger towns.

The biggest problem with The Village and the last several of Shyamalan’s films is his surprise endings. I read somewhere several years ago that he didn’t want to be pigeonholed into doing the same supernatural-type stories with a twist ending. I wish he had kept to his word. Instead everyone goes into the theatre expecting, waiting on the surprise at the end. This is a distraction taken away from the whole of the film; it is a gimmick that has run thin. A truly surprising ending for the director now would be no surprise at all.

Where Shyamalan excels is his Hitchcockian use of suspense. He understands that some of the best thrills come not from something jumping straight out at the audience, but from what we don’t see. It is a long time in the Village before we see “The Things We Don’t Speak Of” and even then we only catch a glimpse. For Shyamalan understands that our imaginations are more powerful than any piece of costuming or CG effect. There were, in fact, several moments during my first viewing of the film that had my hair standing on end. These were tense, beautifully paced moments.

The film also creates a masterful sense of mood. The color scheme, set design, and costuming are all top-notch. They give the film a true sense of paranoia and suspense. The acting, for the most part, is quite good. This is not surprising considering the cast is made up of the likes of William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Joaquin Phoenix, and Adrian Brody amongst others. There are several interweaving human stories set amongst the supernatural tale, some of which are quite moving. Yet it is the supernatural aspect that shines brightest, and ultimately, falls flat upon subsequent viewings. Watching the film a second time, knowing the surprises, I felt a tinge of boredom. The story no longer captivated me as it did the first time. Knowing the truth, there were too many plot points and character actions that seemed false, or self-serving.

It is a film worth a first viewing. Shyalaman is a true talent, and I look forward to his next film. In a sense, The Village is really two stories. One is a suspenseful tale of creatures lurking in the dark, and the other of a quaint village dealing with extraordinary circumstances. I believe the fault lies in the merging of the two. The suspense doesn’t hold up under subsequent viewings. It does not serve the other aspect of its story. Likewise, the more human story is broken apart too much by the mystical aspects

Cape Fear (1962)

cape fear poster

Gregory Peck is so linked in my mind to the simplicity and grace of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, that it is always surprising to see him in anything else. To find him in the gritty, dirty piece of film noir that is the original Cape Fear is something of a shock. Yet, as always he does a marvelous job, and some of that grace manages to shine through the grime.

The story is a pretty basic noir plot. Max Cady (Robert Mitchum) is an ex-convict who just got out of prison. He has come back to town to haunt Sam Bowden (Gregory Peck) who testified against Cady for attacking a woman. Cady has spent his time in prison studying the law. He manages to terrify Bowden and his family and still remain within the confines of the law.

Though Peck gets top billing, this is truly Robert Mitchum’s film. He plays Cady with a swagger and menacing smile that is simply magnificent. We can see inside his swarthy confident charm and see the evil, menacing psychopath. The brilliance of the role is that we rarely see the violence that hides just behind the mask. Yet it seethes and oozes out, ready to strike at any time.

Director J. Lee Thompson keeps the tension pumping throughout the 105-minute film. There is hardly a moment to relax before something else occurs to tense us right back up. Yet the tension doesn’t come from boogie men jumping out from behind closets. It is a slow, boiling tension that tightens as we imagine just what might happen. When the climax finally does occur it is almost a letdown.

The censors wouldn’t allow the bloodbath one might expect at the end of such a film as this, and so what we do get feels less exciting that I wanted. Still, getting to the end is well worth the watching.

Funny Face (1957)

funny face poster

I hate to admit that it was a pop song that made me fall in love with Audrey Hepburn. It was the spring of 1996 and Deep Blue Something’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” was all over the radio. One dull afternoon in the life of a college student, a friend of mine admitted that she had actually never seen the film. I sheepishly admitted the same, and we went straight out and rented it. I immediately fell madly in love with the style, class, and beauty that is Audrey Hepburn. In the many years following, I have done my best to nurture that one-sided love, and try to watch any film with Ms. Hepburn when I get the chance. Recently I sat down and watched Audrey and Fred Astaire in Funny Face.

It is a film that is notable for being a musical in which Audrey actually sings. A feat she was famously not able to duplicate in My Fair Lady (1964). It is a soft, kind sort of voice a simple boy could fall in love with, but one can see why Mr. Cukor opted for another one to sing for Eliza Doolittle.

The Gershwins have once again created some wonderful songs. Mixed with exuberance, humor, and a sweetness that no other songwriter has ever matched, George and Ira created some of the world’s greatest songs. The stand out here is the simple sweet closer, “S’Wonderful,” but “How long has this been going on?” and the title number are just lovely. Ira’s silly, unbelievable rhymes are in full order here as well. In “Bonjour Paris” he manages to rhyme the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre with Montmartre.

Being not only an Audrey Hepburn picture, but also starring Fred Astaire, there are plenty of dance routines. Only one number is what I would consider exceptional and that is a number between Hepburn and Astaire while photographing a wedding scene outside a lovely French church. The setting is beautiful (though shot in soft lighting for some reason) and the routine flows beautifully and with much charm.

The plot as it is, centers around Hepburn playing a bookish, intellectual named Jo Stockton, and a women’s magazine photographer, Dick Avery (Astaire) trying to convince Stockton to pose for him. She agrees only as a ruse to go to Paris and meet the inventor of a new philosophy, empathicalism. Of course, they fall in love. There is nothing really new or all that interesting in the story, but it is set in Paris which gives it some very beautiful backgrounds in which to tell it.

Call me a heretic, but I’ve never been much of a fan of Fred Astaire. He has a fine singing voice, and his dancing is always excellent, but there is something about him as an actor and leading man that rubs me the wrong way. He does a decent job here, but ask me who I’d prefer to see play opposite Audrey and I’d choose Bogart, Cooper, Peck, or Grant any day of the week over Astaire. (Editors Note: I no longer share this opinion with my younger self, I love Fred Astaire (Mat, March 2023).

Funny Face is a fun, harmless musical. The Gershwin tunes are a pleasure, the story is…well, fodder for the songs and dance numbers, but fair enough for what it is. But the real reason to watch the picture is the one, Audrey Hepburn. While I am embarrassed that it took a silly pop song for me to see the light around that graceful woman, I am forever grateful for that three minutes of bubblegum, for it gave me the joy that is Audrey.

American Beauty (1999)

american beauty poster

The first time I saw American Beauty it was the last in a three consecutive weekend movie run. The other two films were Fight Club and Bringing Out the Dead. All three films are about men trying to come to terms with what it means to be a man in America in this day and age. Fight Club finds meaning in deconstructing everything down to basic needs, and feeling through pain. Bringing Out the Dead gives meaning to its character through drug use, (Editors note: that’s totally not what these films are about – I totally missed the points when I wrote this) but it was in American Beauty that I found some sense of hope.

In the film, Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) plays a middle-aged, middle-class suburbanite, with seemingly everything he could desire. He has a good, well-paying job, a beautiful wife (Annette Bening), a large luxurious house, and a lovely daughter (Thora Birch). Yet, with all of this, he is not happy. In fact, all of these things are not quite what they seem. His employer is facing cutbacks, and he may soon lose his job. His marriage is in shambles, and his daughter openly hates him. Early, we see him masturbating in the shower – in a voiceover he states this is the high point of his day. All is not well in the house of Burnham.

All of this changes when Lester meets Angela (Mena Suvari), his daughter Jane’s gorgeous, cheerleader friend. On first seeing Angela during a cheer routine, Lester feels a special, lustful connection. Later that night, Lester overhears Angela playfully telling Jane that if he would only work out, he would be sexy. His lust over this teenage vixen becomes the catalyst for the film and Lester’s very life.

Soon after Lester quits his job, in fact, he bilks the company for a year’s salary by threatening to disclose scandalous information that he has become privy to. He begins smoking pot, and buys a hot rod. He plays with remote control cars, takes a job at a fast food joint, and starts working out. In every way, he reverts back to his teenage years. Even the soundtrack begins blaring out classic rock tunes from the 1970s. Finally after years, decades even, of feeling low, miserable, and not alive, he feels great.

This reversion back to his glory days is only the beginning. It is a reversion back to the days when he had fun when he felt alive. But he is not a man who will stop there. This is just the beginning point to a lifelong conversion of living a full life, as opposed to a life full of the right things, but that is ultimately empty. Or it would be if he was not shortly dead (this is not nearly the spoiler you might think it is, for Lester announced his death within the first minutes of the film.) Toward the end of the film, we can see that Lester is already outgrowing his childish behavior. When he yells at his daughter, he immediately feels the sting of regret. When given the chance to indulge in his lusts, he backs away, understanding that it is not right. Just as the music changed to classic rock with the first change, here it has changed again, turning into the same classic rock being covered by newer, contemporary artists.

Many will probably say that using the lust for a teen, and illicit drug use as a catalyst for change, is not a change for the better. I can already hear my mother scolding me for having seen the movie, much less reviewed it from 2,000 miles away in Oklahoma. Yet, here it works and works well. I don’t believe the film is saying that these things should be the means to a change, these things only served as means for this character to break free from the rut that had become his life. There is a telling scene where Lester and his wife are overcome with sexual desire. As he dips his wife to kiss her, she stops the embrace because he is near to spilling his glass of wine on an expensive couch. An argument ensues with Lester proclaiming that “it’s just a couch,” while his wife is horrified at the thought of ruining said couch. There lies one of the central themes of the film. That these characters are so wrapped up in the material that they lose sight of the better pleasure of life, including lovemaking.

It is not a perfect film. The Burnham’s neighbor, Col. Fritts (Chris Cooper) seems a caricatured archetype. He plays a hateful, homophobe who really carries deep-rooted homosexual tendencies. It is too outlandish to be considered real. Though it must be said the part is played marvelously by Chris Cooper. Jane’s speech about being a freak too may move the young kids who consider themselves the nonconformist, shy type, but it is too after-school special for my tastes.

I’ve left out some of the best scenes and an important character, Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley). He plays the drug-dealing son of Col. Fritts, who likes to record everything on his video camera. There is a moving scene in which he and Jane watch an old tape he recorded of a plastic bag floating through the air. It is a moving, poetic scene that conjures up thoughts of the futility of life and its very beauty. It is that type of movie. It creates beautiful, moving, simple scenes that bring a sense of hope to live, while at the same time, showing the ultimate horror of living it.

The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler

the little sister

Raymond Chandler once wrote that Dashiell Hammett “Gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse.” In his essay “The Simple Art of Murder,” he continues to praise Hammett while berating Agatha Christie types who set murders at tea parties and ended them by bringing all the suspects into one room while the detective ran over all the clues before them, causing the killer to jump out and confess. Chandler set out to write Fiction, with a capital “ART”, that it happened to involve pimps, drug fiends, mobsters, and lots of murders is secondary.

It is difficult to review a single work of Chandlers, they all kind of fuse into a sort-of biography for his singular detective, Phillip Marlowe. His novels are very similar, in that they involve the seedier aspects of the city, are all told in the first person by Marlowe, always include various crimes, usually murder, and are filled with an assortment of double-crossing, corrupt folks. But, novels are not the same in the way novels by the likes of Dean Koontz or Mary Higgins Clark are the same. Where they seem to have a dozen storylines and can simply fill in different character names and settings. No, though Chandler’s stories are similar in many ways, they differ in the means by which they are told. Like the way snowflakes look the same in one drift, but upon observation are each different. Or the way in which dollar bills are the same aesthetically, but are spent in a million different ways. Chandler’s writing sparkles amidst the slums and degenerates he writes about. His dialogue sparkles as Marlowe’s sarcasm cracks your lips into a smile.

The Little Sister starts with a little nebbish girl, from nowhere-Kansas who asks Marlowe to help her find her brother. From there the plot involves Cincinnati mobsters, Hollywood agents, starlets, and a few ice picks sticking out of a few necks. As always, Chandler’s plot gets very complicated very fast. The joy of the novel is not in trying to figure out who is who, and who did what, but in the way Chandler lets the mystery unfold. The murders are always at the center of the story, but there is something else hanging near, something more akin to great literature, than dirty detective stories.

By the time he wrote The Little Sister, Chandler had written several screenplays for Hollywood pictures. He seemed to not like the experience one bit. There is plenty of cynicism directed toward Tinseltown here. The agents are like kings who will sell souls faster than Doctor Faustus and the starlets are empty, callous girls who sell sex like McDonalds sells French fries.

Reading The Little Sister was a little sad for me since it is the last Chandler novel that I had not read. There are still his short story collections to look forward to. It feels like the end of an era. His novels still swarm around in my head, and give me hope as a writer. Here is someone who wrote stories, not just to entertain, but to try to find something more-Literature or Art- and maybe, in doing so helped us to understand what it means to be a writer.

Band of Brothers (2001)

Band of Brothers

HBO’s ten-part mini-series on the “Easy” Company’s tribulations during the German invasion of World War II is a grand spectacle, filled with numerous moments of perfection, and begs one simple question. Why can’t the rest of television look like this?

Based on the book by Stephen Ambrose, and produced by Tom Hanks and Stephen Spielberg, the series gives a realistic, gut-wrenching portrayal of Easy Company’s activities from the final stages of their paratrooper training, to D-day, through their major battles up until the end of the war. It spans 10-hour-long episodes (the series opener “Currahee” clocks in at 1 hour, 30 minutes), with each episode focusing on a particular battlefront, and often specific characters. It gives a good portrait of what war must be like to those who actually fight it. It does not shy away from the brutal, ugly reality of combat. It is not just the Saving Private Ryan-like battlefield violence (though there is plenty of that here) but the cold-blooded murder of German prisoners, and the cowardice of boys trying to be soldiers. This is not John Wayne standing gruff and courageous against fascism. Band of Brothers does well to show that not all soldiers were courageous; all were scared, some so much to be rendered useless.

Each episode spotlights one or more of the men. In doing so it gives the audience a chance to view the soldiers on a more personal level, and not just their heroics. While doing so, the episodes also spotlight the types of struggles the soldiers dealt with day to day. While mainly this technique worked, there were a few missteps. Instead of using an entire episode to highlight the medics, I would have preferred those moments to be seen throughout the series. Medics were in constant need while on the battlefront, and to see this in detail, intertwined into every episode, would have served the purpose better. Instead, I would rather have seen another soldier highlighted (Nixon comes to mind.)

Likewise, the Normandy invasion seemed underwhelming. Easy company was part of a paratrooper division that flew over the beaches and fought their way back. Following the company, we miss much of what was the D-day invasion. Instead, we find the soldiers taking out a few machine gun nests. Though this may be historically accurate, it seems disappointing not to see more of what is one of the most significant battles of the 20th century. I suppose I’ll have to watch Saving Private Ryan for that.

These are minor complaints in what is ultimate, an excellent series. It is a joy to see such an excellent production come out of a television series. HBO proves once again that it is at the top of the television game. The networks need to take a long, hard look at their cable competitors and see how they can produce quality productions.

Omagh (2004)

omagh movie poster

On August 15, 1998, a car bomb exploded in Omagh, Northern Ireland killing 29 people and injuring some 220 others. It was the single worst incident in Northern Ireland in over 30 years. In 2004 director Pete Travis filmed a movie about the atrocity and the subsequent investigation. It is a relentless, brutal film that never allows the viewer an emotional sigh of fresh air. What strikes me most about the film, now, is not the quality of the film, which is quite good actually, but that I had never before heard of this event.

Admittedly, I am not the most knowledgeable lad when it comes to current events. When I had a television I would catch one of the morning news shows, and maybe a few minutes of CNN or Fox News just before bed. While in the car I tune into NPR, I receive e-mails from the Washington Post, and generally spend a few moments checking the various news websites. I’m not obsessive about the news, I try to stay mildly informed, but I certainly don’t spend every waking moment turning my thoughts to the state of the world. Yet, here was a huge terrorist attack, followed by a scandalous investigation with a potential cover-up behind it, and I’ve never heard a word about it.

I am sure the news channels mentioned something about it shortly after the bombing. It was probably a short little blurb with a death count. It’s got all the elements they love: terrorists, explosions, murder, and scandal. But, it didn’t happen in America, and European drama doesn’t have the ratings pull as say something stateside, say Michael Jackson’s latest shenanigans. Especially when these events happened in some obscure country like Northern Ireland. Who knew the North of Ireland was a separate country anyway?

In the US we have cable networks that run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. There is CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, not to mention specialty networks like CourtTV, and of course, nonnews-specific networks that still employ daily news shows. Yet with all of these outlets, American audiences are still inundated with the same stories over and over again.

It is a big world, with a lot of important events happening, but instead of covering these events, they rehash the current scandal of the week and trial of the century. How did Bill Clinton’s hummer overshadow the murder of 29 people? How did Mark McGuire’s record-breaking homerun sprint become more important than terrorist activity? Certainly, the network news shows give us what we want. Had we received a 3-hour special report on the Omagh bombing I’m sure many of us would have clicked over to Seinfeld reruns. In the end, I’m not scholar enough, nor have the time, to lay out why virtually no one I know has heard of Omagh before. This is a movie review after all. Yet, as I think about the film I can’t help but feel the sting of guilt. When I hear the chattering other others complaining that Americans are full of ego, and don’t have the slightest idea about the world, I must hold my head low and sigh.

The film itself is shot like a documentary, Dogme95 style. It uses handheld cameras, utilizes only natural lighting and there is nary a digital effect to be seen. For 106 minutes it never lets go of its punishing, merciless hold on your emotions. There is no comic relief, no juncture in which to catch your breath and get away from it all. The film brings you in close, lets you feel the tension, and suffocate in the terror. It doesn’t want you to enjoy what you see. This is not a film that allows the audience to distance themselves from the actions on the screen or their very lives. It is a film that cries out, carrying the voices of all humanity that suffers, and that feels injustice.

Though it takes a few moments to adjust to its visual style, the handheld camera work becomes an effective means to bring the audience right into the emotional impact of the film. It loses a little steam in the second half when the main character, Michael Gallagher (Gerard McSorley), a father of one of the victims, begins to lose his way in bringing the terrorist to justice. However, though some headway is lost, the film continues to pack a hard emotional punch.

I am glad that films like Omagh are being made. Though it is a film that will never see a theatre screen in America, it may find its way onto a shelf in the local movie rental house. It is here, that countless Americans may go looking for something a little different, something that they haven’t seen. And it is here that they might learn a little about the world around them.