Here it takes on different shapes, such as a black dress. The color black, which has the effect of darkening a room if lit only by what is projected on the screen. It is becoming an object for Tak Fujimoto.
The film opens with a pop music mixtape whose break in song coincide with gradual jumps in time. This lends the air of 'remix' throughout giving the film and its subject matter an odd uneasiness and dare I say freshness. I appreciated that.
What if all this is your dream and you are really still back in Kuwait?
Somewhere near the middle of the film it is off-handedly remarked to Denzel Washington's character that maybe he is still in Kuwait and everything that followed after, the paranoia, the political convention, the movie itself were the dream. The audience is not meant to take this seriously. It is just an off-handed remark. Certainly this theory is never specifically mentioned again but it firmly places the film in "sequel to Jacob's Ladder" territory and enriches my understanding of it. Manchurian Candidate is the sequel to Jacob's Ladder, which is also about experimental gunea pigs of war and their gradual slip into dementia.
Charlie Wilson's War, dir. by Mike Nichols, 2007
All of this made me think of Charlie Wilson's War and how it is in some ways a sequel to Dr. Strangelove and it's irreverent and somewhat craven attitude toward modern day politics.
Dr. Stranglove, dir. by Stanley Kubrick, 1964
Manchurian Candidate, 2004
1 comments:
nice entry. i remember seeing the manchurian candidate in little rock. the first shots in the back of the military trucks were framed with black objects, allowing the darkness of the theatre to seep into the film. it was visually soothing after 25 minutes of garish previews and reminded me of your previous tak fujimoto critiques where extreme close-ups (silence of the lambs) rendered his films par for the big screen.
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