Battle in Seattle.

"Flapping like a scarecrow in the wind, Battle in Seattle is too frantic to make more than a transitory impression, yet too responsibly hackneyed in its characterizations to achieve pure tabloid hysteria," writes J Hoberman in the Voice. "In that sense, it's true to the actual event. The impression that the movie leaves is less what the French activist Yves Frémion termed an 'orgasm of history' than a hiccup. The world held its breath and moved on."

"[F]or all its good intentions and its inspirational advocacy for freedom of speech and assembly, Battle in Seattle remains a difficult film to get up and shout about," writes Leo Goldsmith at indieWIRE. "Approaching its subject with a neat idealism and packaging its political fervor in the most facile of forms, the film boasts a cast loaded with Hollywoods both new and old and wraps its message up with eye-rolling naivete."

Updated through 9/20.

Director Stuart Townsend's "refusal to frankly portray who the lead protesters were - namely, anti-government, anti-globalization, anti-capitalism activists - [leaves] the proceedings feeling whitewashed of any prickly elements that might interfere with the film's larger point that the WTO hurts more than helps the planet," writes Nick Schager in Slant. "Even more than this lack of candor, however, Battle in Seattle is undone by unsubtle storytelling, its characters (earnestly embodied by the cast) devoid of dimension, and its creaky melodrama epitomized by a cheap attempt to manipulate through horrible tragedy."

In the Huffington Post, Brad Listi brings up an array of issues with Townsend.

Earlier: Sean Axmaker; and Andrew Hedden's interview with Townsend for Cineaste.

Updates, 9/18: As noted below, Jen Rogue with Andrew Hedden at Anarkismo: "Battle in Seattle lacks an awareness of a major theme of the protests, perhaps their most successful element: solidarity." Still, "For all its errors, Battle in Seattle provides a fun opportunity to return to the question of why the WTO protests represented such a massive victory, and what we as anarchists should focus on in our political work nearly ten years later."

Sean Axmaker talks with Townsend at the Parallax View.

Updates, 9/19: "Stylistically and polemically Battle in Seattle is a descendant of Haskell Wexler's much more complex 1969 movie, Medium Cool," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "But a drama is only as convincing as its characters. The people awkwardly forced together in Battle in Seattle are rhetorical mouthpieces tied to the sketchy plotlines of a so-so Hollywood ensemble movie. As in the much better written but equally schematic Crash, you can hear the machinery grind and squeak as the scales are balanced."

For Andrew Stuttaford, writing in, well, the New York Sun, this is "a ham-fisted, sanctimonious blend of leftist agitprop, by-the-numbers melodrama, and excruciating self-righteousness... If you are currently taking orders from Rage Against the Machine, Michael Moore or Naomi Klein, go and see it; for anyone else, this is one Battle you're going to lose." For the antidote to this take, see the Stranger.

Sara Cardace chats with Townsend for Vulture.

"Though his film is not a documentary, Townsend does a good job outlining the consequences of the labor, environmental, agricultural and patent-law issues at stake in the WTO negotiations," notes Brian Cook in In These Times. On the other hand, Townsend also creates characters "who are impossibly good: intelligent, kind, committed, moral and eminently reasonable. The problem isn't that such characterizations are untrue; the above adjectives would certainly fit the direct-action activists I've met. But, at various times, so might a few others: neurotic, intense, immature, petty, self righteous.... Worse than a crime against verisimilitude, this one-dimensional characterization is a dramatic mistake."

Update, 9/20: "What does it take to create real and meaningful change in the 21st century?" asks Townsend himself at Alternet.

Posted by dwhudson at September 17, 2008 5:50 AM