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By
WAYNE KLEIN
You're not paranoid if they
are out to get you. Remakes are programmed to
succeed. Give the audience something familiar and
they're more likely to go to it. It's like comfort
food for the eyes. But remakes are a tricky
business. Change the plot too much and you risk
alienating fans of the original film. Don't change
the plot enough and fans will be bored.
Jonathan Demme's failed remake of "Charade" was a
case in point of everything that can go wrong with
a remake. Luckily, "The Manchurian Candidate"
succeeds where that remake failed by touching on
the themes of the original film, updating the
story for a post-9/11 world and through careful
casting. Although it's flawed, it's still a
powerful film that will leave an impression with
audiences. Hitchcock liked to point out that
suspense thrillers aren't really designed to
connect with common sense or answer all the
questions we expect. That would be true of
"Silence Of The Lambs" and also the remake of "The
Manchurian Candidate."
In the midst of the Gulf War a platoon of soldiers
fight off an enemy advance with their Sgt. Raymond
Shaw (Liev Schreiber) fighting off the enemy
single handedly while his commanding officer Ben
Marco (Denzel Washington) is incapacitated. Or did
he? It seems that members of Marco's platoon are
having nightmares about what happened and these
nightmares, which seem vividly real, suggest that
something else entirely happened and that, in
fact, Shaw killed one of their own and that this
is some sort of weird plot to deceive the American
public. Since Marco and others members of his
troop appear to be suffering from Gulf War
Syndrome and symptoms of paranoia, their
observations are discounted until Marco discovers
some troubling information. Now Shaw is running
for political office pushed into the limelight by
his smothering mother Senator Shaw (Meryl Streep
in a delicious turn). Marco feels compelled to
discover the truth about Raymond Shaw and the
night he became a hero.
Demme's film isn't perfect. Most of the political
satire of the novel and first film are buried in
the background but, perhaps, that's for the best.
We live in a time drenched in irony and satire so,
in a sense, Demme's film is a refreshing change.
The narrative holes are a bit distracting but as
Hitchcock was so fond of pointing out suspense
thrillers don't need to make sense -- they just
need to keep you in your seat. It's unnecessary to
have the grinding gears of logic that drive a
mystery story. Demme makes an interesting use of
an ill-defined McGuffin as well in the film,
driving the action forward without explaining too
much.
A number of interesting extras include the usual
making-of featurette, but the best feature is the
one on the cast of the film. We get to hear the
cast discuss their characters, their reasons for
interest in a remake of a paranoid thriller and
political satire. There are also deleted scenes
(which help to clarify a couple of plot points but
aren't essential) as well as the screen test that
actor Liev Schreiber did with Meryl Streep for
Demme prior to production. Schreiber clearly was
the perfect candidate for the movie, with his
boyish good looks and undercurrent of
vulnerability. Demme's commentary with co-writer
Daniel Pyne provides the nuts and bolts on making
the film as well as a pretty convincing
justification for the changes he made from the
original Richard Condon novel and John
Frankenheimer's classic.
An exceptionally good remake that updates this
classic paranoid satire for contemporary
audiences, "The Manchurian Candidate" allows Demme
to bring his own style to a classic story. Demme's
sure hand and the script by Pyne and Gregarious
provide the perfect canvas for the cast to express
themselves. While a deeply flawed thriller, "The
Manchurian Candidate" still packs a wallop
examining our media saturated paranoid culture. |
