I know the personal is political, but...

So I saw The Interpreter this weekend. [Warning: spoiler to follow.] It didn't totally suck. But here's the thing that bugs me. Whenever H-wood tries to make a movie about politics--at least in this era--everything seems to come back to the nuclear family. I'm not naive; I understand that a big film demands a love interest. Paths of Glory just couldn't get made right now. I get that. But The Interpreter wasn't just marred by that (in fact, I credit them with making a film where none of the loaded guns go off, so to speak).

There was a way in which the movie said: Your country has been subject to revolutions and bloodshed, upheaval, betrayal of all that is precious--and we understand your passion because your family died. And the male lead really understands your passion because his wife died. Revolution...car accident. You see the difficulty here, yes? I don't want to be too much of a jerk. I mean, it wasn't a horror show like the remake of Manchurian Candidate; it was just disappointing. I get that the personal is political. I really do. But there are ways in which the political--and in particular, a sense of duty and justice--should be greater than the personal. This is why I dislike "victims' rights" statements in the courtroom, for instance. I believe the law should be something entirely different and apart from a personal plea of anger and grief. I think it's right that it be so.

For many of us, our role or actions in the political sphere are linked to our relationships with our families. I understand that, and in that way, I should probably cut the film more of a break. I think it was trying to say that about Kidman's character--that her politics and her family history were inextricably intertwined but that she recognized a deeper duty than family love. (Of course, if the Penn character had just been fucked up in some other way, it would have been much easier to buy that reading for me.) The fact that my grandfather came here to escape the pogroms, the fact that my dad was blacklisted, these things have much to do with who I am in many ways. But...if I had a relative killed in the towers on 9/11, that wouldn't make me any more in favor of the "war on terror."

And on the note of political duty and the role of family--crazy stuff with Deep Throat, huh? Vanity Fair [.pdf] has the full story. Within the same week, Deep Throat comes forward and Newsweek says it will toughen its policy on the use of anonymous sources. Funny world, huh?