Review of Silver City (1984) by Tom B — 03 Jan 2010

This came out pre-election. What does it look like post? Great. Chris Cooper delivers best-ever Bush interpretation. Dreyfus does Chaney long before "W". The story? Another genogram, this time cultural shame, where, as always, the casualty of truth leads to various deceptions and cover-ups that cause various degrees of problems.

The stakes at center? In general, real estate, Sayles's target in all his films. The valuing of property over people, in this case Mexican immigrants, and anyone else seeking the truth, in this case our Marlovian protagonist Danny O'Brien, played agreeably by Danny Huston.

In Sayles's films everyone is always articulate and real, and once in a while this kind of movie provides an antidote to American-style unrealism. As always, Sayles provokes the sore around the wound of politics and finds everyone lapsing in values: right, left, government, politician, investigators, lobbyists, business people.

As always, the top dogs require the underdogs in order to have their feeding frenzy over the land rights, while everyone but the little guy snags a piece of the pie. In the end we get an extended sequence recapping those who were used and misused in order to make the deal go through, and it's not according to political bent that we see these people in the closing shots.

We close on the same scene we opened on, Pilager (aka George Bush) speeching about protecting the land and developing it, and the fish pop up to the most ironic placing of the song "America, America" we've seen in a while.

Message clear. What's great is the use of neo-noir detective genre to tell the story. Film at its best is about expressing truth, and like Marlowe, Sayles isn't about taking sides as much as he is about seeing what is, and maybe getting the girl.

At least for Sayles it's about love. It's not that love conquers all, it's that at least there's love to choose as a value, a friendly companion to truth. One of many worthwhile Sayles films that do mean what they say and demonstrate a fierce commitment to the integrity of vision in the arts.

And Daryl Hannah simply rocks.