October 8, 2006
Political Thrillers Posted by Joshua Zeitz at 04:15 PM EST Last evening I watched the 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate and was reminded of how superior John Frankenheimer’s original production was to the 2004 remake. In light of the recent chatter on American Heritage.com regarding the new remake of All The King’s Men, I’m drawn to the sad conclusion that American filmmakers have lost their knack for political intrigue. From a cinema standpoint, the original Manchurian Candidate has much to offer: a haunting score, brilliant camera work, superior acting (Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury give striking performances). But it also contains an important twist that is lacking in the 2004 remake. In the original film, Angela Lansbury’s character, the wife of a demagogic United States senator clearly patterned after Joseph McCarthy, is an ardent anticommunist activist. At a critical juncture we learn that she is really a Soviet agent and is using hard-line anticommunism to bore at America from within. In the 2004 remake, Lansbury’s character, played by Meryl Streep, is a conservative and staunchly anti-civil libertarian U.S. senator with deep, sinister ties to a Halliburtonesque defense contractor. Unlike the original film, which acknowledged both the treachery of Soviet totalitarianism and the perils (and moral bankruptcy) of McCarthyism, the remake is entirely linear. There is no credible terrorist threat against America in Jonathan Demme’s interpretation of The Manchurian Candidate. There is only a right-wing corporate cabal to subvert the Constitution. Whereas the original film is shockingly cynical, the remake is strikingly naive. Where the original film is as complex as real life, the remake is as simple as a Michael Moore script. The Cold War era was in many ways a golden era for the political thriller, from All the King’s Men and The Manchurian Candidate to Seven Days in May and High Noon. It’s little wonder that American filmmakers lost their interest in or talent for this genre as the Cold War ended. But in today’s sustained war on terror, with so many contradictory motives and truths lurking beneath the surface, surely there is fertile ground for a resurgence of good political intrigue on the silver screen. With The Manchurian Candidate (2004) and All the King’s Men (2006), Hollywood has missed the mark.
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