Released internationally as California Dreamin', this turns out as no great surprise to be a political pill on what the US means to other countries and what delusions those countries themselves harbour.
The basic set-up, a train of US military hardware bound for Kosovo being held up for days en route in a Romanian village by botched paperwork, is cursory enough and the timeframe strains credulity. This, however, is of little relevance since it's clear from the outset that here there be metaphors. Big ones.
What Nemescu finally has to say about the bludgeoning and blundering approach of the US to problems elsewhere, and the local repercussions of that approach, comes as no great revelation but the pleasure here is all in picking apart how the point is delivered. The obligatory American C-lister, Armand Assante, as the increasingly shirty captain of the marine detachment, a big teaky ham of an actor, is actually ideally cast here, and the run-of-the-mill plot elements - schoolgirls swooning over the visitors, corrupt officials, the conniving town mayor - all serve a higher purpose. It takes two and a half hours and makes full use of every minute, occasionally inserting magical realist ingredients (for instance, two budding lovers who have no common language give each other static shocks when they try to express something) as visual metaphors so inobtrusively they make perfect sense in the context.
7/10
No comments:
Post a Comment