The filmgoer and the real world

Since I maintain that my festival attendance is not an escape but an effort to better experience and understand the real world, I have a confession to make. I have approached a couple of timely films recently but shied away before committing to a ticket. One was a fictionalized rendition of Marine Le Pen’s rise to power in France, This Is Our Land, showing how a popular community figure can be tempted to take on a populist persona with a “crypto-fascist” hue for political power. The other, Backpack Full of Cash, documents the disastrous effects of the charter school voucher system on public education. No doubt about it, I steered away from these because I felt not inclined to let my emotions get riled up. I do not want to sit thinking for a movie’s length–yet, at any rate–about the nature of Donald Trump’s election nor my consequent fears about Betsy DeVos. So instead, I went to see Kati Kati, an effort from Africa to imagine the afterlife. If you read about that on my siff 2017 page you’ll know that it was really escapist, but still….

I’m not shirking current reality completely, of course. That would be impossible at any thorough film festival. On Tuesday I saw the film (mentioned in an earlier post) depicting the friendship-producing encounter between arch foes Ian Paisely and Martin McGuiness. I went curious for clues about confronting the kind of polarization we find in our own country at present. And now I want more. The Journey interprets how the friendship began. I’d like to learn about the fruit of that friendship beyond the St. Andrew Agreement (not to sneeze at that). When they shake hands neither has budged an inch, policy or opinion-wise. The film allows one of the people “who knew him best” to describe Paisely as “filled with hate.” We can see that on his face. It’s still there at the end of the day. But while it had prevented him from ever speaking to the Sinn Fein leader let alone learning anything genuine about him, the confines of their close company lead him, after the major step of facing his direction, to eventually joke, yes, joke with his enemy. I can’t help but believe that the hate soon began to dissipate (the photos of the actual leaders together shown during the credits bolsters that belief). But the first step must have been a humanization of McGuiness just like the film helped humanize Paisely for me. Now, how am I going to humanize Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos?