Review of Carlos (2010) by Anonymous User — 06 Nov 2011

My opinion will be refuted by all the world's intellects lol. It is a worthless piece of shit that amounts to propaganda for the terrorist who magically shows up in the news again just as this movie is released on criterion.

By refusing the bourgeoise affect of dramatic filmmaking with suspense and psychological insight (it just has lots of empty blather, shaky cam violence, and hipster-bait nihilist sex scenes), the director pretends significance in portraying cold 'facts' about a psychopath funded and supported by the left wing states of the communist block in applying terror to make change on the world grid.

By refusing insight or as Assayas says "moralizing," the movie is left with bad actors pretending to be bland cause freaks who just want to blow shit up but have grand 'revolutionary' justifications.

The movie might have something to say if it intended to show how banal the face and actions of terrorism really are but it also wants to show how History is made by these acts, yet refuses to investigate how and why- in other words it's stuck at the level of Newsweek clippings in depicting official events, not digging deeper in to behind the scenes forces.

So it is the usual belief in a random universe ideology of the wannabe intelligentsia, covertly and maybe unknowingly creating PR for the things it is portraying. "History as it really is." But we can know how and why up to a point, but that would mean uncovering the lies of the left wing, which the filmmakers most likely do not want to do.

Instead they let the Carlos character's blather about imperialists stand unchallenged just as he says the same schtick in real life on Reuters in 2011. One can envisage a way of dramatically examining the lies and contradictions of left and right- Spielberg's Munich did that brilliantly.

Refusing to look at motives and human choices for negativity and relying on the social dynamic and 'history choosing itself' all sounds like Marxist bullshit to me. Whenever a work claims to be apolitical it rarely is.

For a better film about similar topics see The Baader Meinhoff Complex or Munich.