NYT. Fall preview.

As an American in Berlin, the piece in the New York Times fall preview package that immediately draws my attention is Manohla Dargis's: "In their new films, directors like Wim Wenders, Lars von Trier and David Cronenberg are holding up fun-house mirrors to America, creating reflections that are alternately quixotic and grotesque, and at times wincingly true." She notes (fittingly, in an edition of the paper dated September 11) that the "reticence to take on America, post-Sept 11, seems to be fading."

Before Katrina (bear with me a moment), one could only reasonably expect that reticence to carry on fading. While the level of anti-Americanism varies from country to country (and it is only European and Canadian filmmakers Dargis writes about here), the roots run deep. The catalyst for its eventually gaining the upper hand among much of the populace and most of the cultural elite was, as Dargis points out, the war in Vietnam. Immediately after 9/11, Europeans in particular were more than willing, even eager to let bygones be bygones. But the Bush administration botched the opportunity to strengthen old alliances (and probably more importantly, forge new ones in the Arab world) by confirming the world's worst suspicions of the American character: When in doubt, start a war. As a measure of the current climate in Germany, for example, Chancellor Schröder, campaigning in the run-up to elections a little over a week away and down in the polls for implementing neoliberalish economic reforms, gains points when he bashes Bush (and the president's most recent threat, aimed at Iran, was a talking point delivered on a silver platter), while his conservative challenger, Angela Merkel, loses points each time she expresses an urge to cuddle up to Washington.

One theme running through Manohla Dargis's readings of all the films in this particular batch is that each director punctures his own unique hole in the "myths" America exports about itself. If the myths are just that - myths, not truths - then where is America's justification for bullying everybody else? Far more than puncture them, Katrina has blown a barn-sized hole through these myths, all but literally turning America upside down to expose an underbelly of poverty and the fatal consequences of two decades of governmental downsizing. But: "Americans are always so shocked when they turn out not to be exceptions to the universe," wrote the New Republic a couple of days ago. Thing is, so, too, is much of the rest of the world. "Ambivalent" doesn't begin to describe Europeans' feelings about the US now. More to the point, when there are no myths left to puncture, how do you "take on America"? And if Americans turn out to be just like everybody else after all, and what's more, actually start acting like it (I'm not holding my breath), would you really want to anymore?

AO Scott's piece is not at all unrelated. What's "largely missing from American cinema," he writes, is "an engagement with the realities of American life." Instead, he argues, the movies hitting screens over the next weeks and months "devote themselves, with increasing energy and expense, to fantasy, regression, nostalgia and wishful thinking." But wait, you may be thinking: Surely Capote, Good Night, and Good Luck and The New World speak to contemporary America? Scott leaps to agree: "Indeed, their relevance is often as much a selling point as their authenticity." But, he argues, "A movie gives reassurance that we have overcome the bad stuff, along with a chance to enjoy the good times all over again."

What else is in the package:

• Dave Kehr's annotated schedule of releases through the end of the year is really the heart of the thing, in a way: September, October, November and December.

• By Christmas, which'll be pulling in more cash: the crop in theaters or the DVDs under the tree? Stephanie Zacharek and Charles Taylor mark the highlights of the home video season.

• Karen Durbin's "Five Performances to Watch": Tom Hollander in Pride and Prejudice, Damian Lewis in Keane, Robert Patrick in Walk the Line, Emily Mortimer in Match Point and Dina Korzun in Forty Shades of Blue.

• Choreographers are dancing back into the director's chair; Charles Isherwood checks in with Rob Marshall, who's following Chicago with Memoirs of a Geisha, and Susan Stroman, making her debut with The Producers, the film of the play based on the film.

• Reese Witherspoon tells Margy Rochlin how terrified both she and Joaquin Phoenix were of doing the actual singing themselves in Walk the Line.

• "'This business amazes me,' he said, not quite managing a smile." And the business is finally allowing Jeff Daniels to show his darker side; even David Edelstein seems surprised.

• Proof has a lot going for it, Sylviane Gold argues with a bullet-pointed list. We'll see.

• Ross Johnson: "By the time King Kong" is released on Dec 14, only the dead are likely to be unaware of it. Yet the marketing mavens at Universal say, without blushing, that their biggest challenge is to avoid hype."

• Stuart Klawans actually seems to be having fun as he tells the story behind Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

• Stephen Holden: Match Point "might be described as a British Crimes and Misdemeanors."

Posted by dwhudson at September 10, 2005 2:29 PM