Reviewed By
Chris Dovichak

Analysis
When a film like Jonathan Demme’s remake of The Manchurian Candidate is slated for an opening weekend release against M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, it says some interesting things about demographic research on the part of the major studios and distributors. Namely, that they believe there are two distinct target markets for these films, and they do not overlap. Now, I’m willing to wager that many of us fall into the invisible overlap (that is, people inclined by a love of great film and a desire to see the fulfillment of the auteur theory at every possible opportunity), who will see BOTH of these films during their theatrical release. However, on an opening weekend, the studios are dead right.

Maybe it’s because it’s an election year, maybe it’s because I have enough problems with sleeping properly
as it is, or maybe it’s something far more unsettling, that I am maturing in some generic fashion, but I could only see one of these films this weekend, and I chose The Manchurian Candidate. Almost always, when I see a film on opening weekend, I enjoy the communal reception/interaction of/with “art” that occurs in a sold-out pitch-black room for 2+ hours. And normally I feel I represent a demographic that is fairly well-represented on a whole in that particular venue. Not this time. I was one of maybe 6 to 10 people under the age of 35 in the theater. The last time I felt this out of place was watching a weekday matinee of Soderbergh’s Solaris with half a room of senior citizens on parole for the afternoon from a retirement  home. That experience was more about being a film geek than in the wrong demographic. In the presence of so many older “intellectuals” seeing this film in the first days of its release, eliciting looks of surprise and occasional approval from this crowd, I have to a admit a facile sense of pride. We were among the few young beacons of light, interested in politics and world affairs more than horror movies. It was a warm sensation that would not survive beyond the Coca-Cola commercials and attached trailers.

Throughout much of Demme’s film, the pacing and tension made any awareness of your actual environment uncomfortable, almost punishing you for looking away from the screen. In two hours and ten minutes, there were only two moments in which I was able to breathe: a quick jab to the nose of an obnoxious FBI agent thrown by Maj. Ben Marco (Denzel Washington in a superbly nuanced performance) that breaks up the scene and the film for just a brief moment of levity; and a scene between vice presidential candidate Raymond Shaw (a career-making role for Liev Schreiber) and the mother that has scripted his life for him (Meryl Streep, who, like these other two major players, will be receiving an Oscar nomination - the Academy has been begging for Washington to provide them with another performance which would allow them to give an African-American actor the highest honor a record-making second time, and he has done just that).

Demme’s film is relentlessly self-assured and unforgiving. It is to the director’s credit that these are not the film’s hindrances, but instead its greatest virtues. Despite loose threads and the occasional hole, the plot is intriguing enough in its disturbing implications, and the greater ideas it conjures regarding our ability to ever really know what is going on in a world where everything has to be told to us by a severely flawed media-industrial complex. But in truth, the story itself is B-movie material. Demme seems to be almost saying as much every time the maligned Ben Marco, in his quest to find the truth about himself and his fellow manipulated soldiers, must attempt to explain this conspiracy to yet another temporary ally. By virtue of repeating the details so many times to so many different characters, we begin to see the line blurring between an understanding of that untrusting gaze aroused by a madman using the word “implant”, and the fierce commitment to our own senses. We never really question what will happen next, where the twists and turns will come, but the film’s real strengths, acting and direction, make the movement from one set piece to the next strangely sufficient. In this case, it’s not where we’re going so much as how we get there.

Extreme close-ups, overexposures, and the representation of media are the real standout characteristics of a cinematic approach that approximates an aesthetic somewhere between Jacob’s Ladder, Natural Born Killers, and that great cultural touchstone of our time: Starship Troopers. A friend described the representation of cable television news coverage in The Manchurian Candidate to the media in Paul Verhoeven’s wonderfully subversive over sexed sci-fi gore-fest. It is the best comparison I have heard, and tells me that Demme has accomplished something remarkable enough in this film to deserve an award of some sort. Throughout the film, there is almost constant background “chatter” from televisions and radios about a war on terrorism being waged by an America with unchecked power, referring to multiple “incursions” around the globe, and generally enveloping the world of this film in a nightmarish culture of constant fear and paranoia, where terror alerts are a daily reality and all news is bad news. In the aftermath of the climactic events of this film, one is compelled to wonder how such momentous and tragic events would affect the psyche of a nation already so fragile and fractured.

Key Area	Rating (out of 5)	Comment
Action		This is not an action film. Any moments of violence are used for suspenseful or disturbing effect rather than a visceral joyride.
Tension		The reason this film works so well is because of Demme's ability to sustain a high level of tension for long periods of time. By the end of the film, your nerves are frayed and your mind has been engaged by real ideas rather than merely entertained by colors and lights.
Violence/ Gore		This movie gets a very high rating in this regard because some of the homicides on display are made more unsettling by the assumption that the murderer has no control over their own actions. The graphic nature of the acts is amplified by this plot device, and as such some of these scenes are very disturbing.
Bare Flesh		While the film has no nudity and the "love interest" for Washington's protagonist is unfulfilled on-screen, there is a moment between two characters which is overyl sexual and unsettling on multiple levels.
Plot		Too many unresolved or unexplained issues and predictability make this the weakest aspect of the overal film.

Verdict Too flawed by weak supporting character arcs and plot fallacies to be considered a masterpiece, Demme’s Candidate is nonetheless an important work of art that reflects a perspective on postmodern America that is effective because it finds an overlap between its sub-literary conspiracy theories and Orwellian overtones and our current political and cultural climate.

Movie Pictures (Click picture to enlarge)