2004
Silver City
Director: John Sayles
Anarchists' Convention, New Market Films and Columbia Pictures
124 mins.
Take "Chinatown" and revamp it for the 21st century. Instead of water rights, director John Sayles uses mining, arguably one of the most environmentally toxic processes of industrialized society, as a backdrop to expose the multiple and often hidden layers of profit-driven power. Its victims tell the story – from fearless journalists to migrant workers to the wealthy daughter with a conscience, and to the poisoned fish.
I rented Silver City expecting a movie about election fraud. The film jacket said, "Vote early. Vote often." Instead, the film is about the fraud of elections – that candidates serve big business rather than the American people.
Shocked by the 2000 Bush-Gore election, Sayles explains: "That story wasn't about chads. It was about how many African Americans didn't get to vote." His outrage is parlayed through Maddie Pilager (Darryl Hannah), the candidate's sister. She rejects hope that exposing the truth will change anything. "They catch one president getting a BJ in the Oval Office. The next one rigs the election and gets away with it. People have lost the ability to be scandalized."
In "Silver City," John Sayles artfully exposes the marriage of government and business, to the detriment of the common good, and the planet. The film admits that those who fight the good fight will suffer losses. Investigative journalist Danny O'Brien (Danny Huston) suffers losses in his personal relationships, his self esteem and his career. Huston's journalist, tho, is more upbeat and comedic than Jack Nicholson's character in "Chinatown."
The parallels between George W. Bush and Dickie Pilager provide amusement - actor Chris Cooper nails W's elocution. At the end, candidate Pilager's speechmaking rises to the level of JFK's style. Sayles can be applauded for the visually dramatic backdrop to this speech, even if it is scientifically nonsensical.
Post-production interviews capture the hopelessness of those seeking to assert public control of corporations gone mad [1]. Richard Dreyfuss, who plays Pilager's campaign manager in the film, asserts, "Until people are personally affected by it, they're not going to care about it." A recent folk song on National Public Radio begs to differ with this view: "It's not that we don't care; it's that we know the fight ain't fair."
But such pessimism and cynicism offer no solutions. We get what we accept: corporate assertions of absolute authority and ownership of our elections, as well as land, air and water itself. As long as we believe the fight isn't winnable, then we've already lost.
Truly, it's not that US citizens don't care or aren't scandalized. We all earn our food and shelter by working within the very system that pursues profits over the health of the planet and the rights of indigenous peoples. What "We the People" lack is an alternative vision of a sustainable society, and a winning strategy to implement it.
Like "Chinatown", John Sayles' "Silver City" exposes the truth of the matter. This is a film about what's wrong – and such plainspeak is helpful to overcome our indoctrination into the corporate vision of life on Planet Earth.
To offset these dark realities, we need a plethora of ideas leading us to sustainable living. Great Hollywood directors would find a willing audience craving hopeful solutions, along with the medicine of truth.
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[1] "The Corporation" Dir. Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbot and Joel Bakan. Zeitgeist Video, 2004.
