BEFORE: Of course, now too late I see the connections between "While We're Young", and another Noah Baumbach film on my list, I could have had Ben Stiller, Adam Driver and one other actor carrying over to that film. BUT, I need that film as a link between the post-July 4 chain and the film right before the Summer Rock Concert series starts, so maybe it's for the better that I didn't notice all those connections until now.
It's better to finish off the Naomi Watts chain, with her carrying over from "While We're Young" for her 4th film in a row. What's funny is that I could have watched these last three films in reverse order, and still ended up with a link to tomorrow's film. To me that's often a sign that I'm on the right track, organizationally speaking. It's all about getting to July 4 right now, in the correct number of steps, and that means putting the Baumbach film on hold for a couple of weeks.
THE PLOT: CIA operative Valerie Plame discovers her identity is leaked by the government as payback for an op-ed article her husband wrote criticizing the Bush administration.
AFTER: It's hard to believe, but way back in 2002 we thought that maybe we had the worst President in U.S. history. Bush Jr. or "Dubya" was not very articulate, he made a lot of gaffes during speeches (many are still available online) and he seemed bent on getting our country involved in a war - and what's worse was that he hadn't even won the popular vote in the 2000 election, he was made President due to the vagaries of the Electoral College, a huge debate in Florida over missing ballots and hanging chads (which was very suspicious due to the identity of Florida's governor at the time), and finally a Supreme Court decision (which, if you think about it, was very suspicious because of all the SCOTUS justices that were placed there by Reagan and Bush Sr.)
And now, of course, we look back on all that through our current lens, and we realize that it was a much simpler time compared to the situation we have now. The Cheney administration (sic), as evil as it was, almost seems like the glory days, a time you can now be nostalgic for. But we have to keep reminding ourselves that our country was dragged into an unjust war because there was NO PROOF of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. All the administration had was a few blurry satellite photos that could have been anything, really - could have been an amusement park being set up outside Bagdad. Or maybe a pipe organ. I didn't personally have a problem with the invasion because I felt the other way, just because we didn't find any WMD's doesn't mean that they weren't there and got moved somewhere else, because there was plenty of time to do so. But I guess a lack of evidence can't see seen as evidence, in that sense.
Still, there was opposition to the Iraq conflict, but it became the goal of the Cheney administration to squash it and proceed with the war. (Is any of this sounding familiar to you millennials? President who lost the popular vote, starting trouble around the world, claiming that everyone who doesn't agree with him is a damn liar? Leaks from the CIA, do I need to keep going?) In this case, one person who was asked to investigate Iraq's dealings with other countries (possibly to assemble nuclear components) was Joe C. Wilson, former ambassador to Gabon, basically a career diplomat who had served in many countries, including Iraq. And his wife happened to be a CIA agent, one who recommended him as someone who could check out the link between Iraq and Niger, to determine if Iraq had purchased a quantity of "Yellow Cake" uranium. Good thing they didn't ask me, because if someone from the CIA asked me what I knew about "yellow cake", the first thing I'd say would be "Well, I know that it's delicious!"
But Wilson couldn't find any evidence that Iraq had purchased this uranium. And further CIA investigation of certain aluminum tubes, the kind that COULD possibly be used to enrich said uranium, determined that these tubes probably had another function. The Cheney administration, however, apparently used bits and pieces of these CIA reports to justify the invasion that they wanted to happen. (By the way, it's worth mentioning that Cheney was also on the board of Halliburton, a company that profited BIG TIME from the war. Any of this also sounding familiar? An official not serving the public interest, but his own corporate investments? Anyone?)
When Wilson wrote an article about how his investigation in Niger was wrongly being used to justify the reasons for the Iraqi investigation, the Veep's office retaliated by mentioning the name of his wife, a covert agent, in the press. Which basically ended her spying career, blowing her cover rendered her useless, and also put a number of people in jeopardy around the world, who were part of her ongoing investigations. Oh, yeah, and knowingly revealing the identity of a covert agent just happens to be illegal, in addition to dangerous. The fall guy ended up being Scooter Libby, an aide to Cheney who got blamed for the leak - he was charged with obstruction of justice and perjury, but had his sentence commuted and pardoned by Presidents Dubya and Trump.
15 years later, we're just about all back where we started. Just replace Libby with Comey, Hussein with Putin and Iraq with Ukraine, and the word obstruction is on everyone's lips again, we're all just waiting to see if the Mueller investigation ever draws any conclusions about election meddling and Russian collusion. Once again, anyone who disagrees with the President's policies is either a damn liar or has their career ruined. (For that matter, it seems anyone who also works FOR the President now also gets their career ruined, so I guess we're maintaining a balance somehow.) But I don't think you can equate a few restaurant visits being ruined by the opposition with what happened to Valerie Plame, who lost her whole career, and apparently it seems she was pretty good at what she did.
However, finding out that one's close friend doesn't really work for an environmental law firm, but instead has held down a career as an undercover CIA agent probably leads to a lot of awkward conversations:
"So, I hear that you've been an undercover CIA agent for the 20 years that I've known you."
"Yes, that's correct."
"When did they recruit you, or did you volunteer?"
"Well, I can't really talk about that..."
"Right, CIA agent, of course. So how many people have you killed?"
"Again, I can't discuss that, it's a matter of national security."
"Right, CIA agent, of course. So, which countries have you been to?"
"Honestly, Sharon, what part of undercover CIA agent are you having trouble understanding?"
This film ended up feeling a little divided, however, because for a long while it couldn't seem to decide whether Joe Wilson going to the press to denounce the outing of his wife was a good thing, or a bad thing. It caused a great deal of tension between Wilson and Plame, and whether this was just due to Valerie being slow to accept that her CIA career was over, or just being mad at him for writing the article after she asked him not to, this point remains quite unclear. Ultimately she comes around to accepting what he did was the right thing, and she joins the resistance against the administration, and she goes public.
However, it's a futile attempt to get any Presidential administration to both admit its mistakes and make amends, which brings us right back to our current political situation. When does anyone ever apologize on social media, when it's so much easier to shout back even louder, and also include a comment about one's opponent's mother? And that's what we have, the first social media-created President/monster. But I still don't understand why the Cheney/Bush administration has not been prosecuted for war crimes, and yes, I mean that sincerely. We seriously need to take a look at our leaders' ability to pardon themselves. I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me how that serves the greater good.
I feel like Trump demonstrates the stupidity of George W. Bush with the evilness of Cheney, and that's a dangerous combination. I realize that leaves nothing for Pence, but he's a giant blank anyway, right? Except for his homophobia, which was a Cheney thing until Cheney's own daughter came out. What a hypocrite.
Also starring Sean Penn (last seen in "I'm Still Here"), Noah Emmerich (last seen in "Jane Got a Gun"), Ty Burrell (last seen in "Butter"), Sam Shepard (last seen in "Brothers"), Bruce McGill (last seen in "Vantage Point"), Brooke Smith (last seen in "Labor Day"), Michael Kelly (last seen in "Everest"), Liraz Charhi, Khaled El Nabawy, Anand Tiwari, David Andrews, David Denman (last seen in "The Gift"), Geoffrey Cantor (last seen in "Hail, Caesar!"), Adam LeFevre (last seen in "Music of the Heart"), Nassar, Satya Bhabha, Jessica Hecht (last seen in "Whatever Works"), Norbert Leo Butz (last seen in "Dan in Real Life"), Rebecca Rigg, Tom McCarthy, David Warshofsky (last seen in "Now You See Me 2"), Polly Holliday (last seen in "Gremlins"), Ashley Gerasimovich, and archive footage of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Hillary Clinton, Condoleeza Rice, John Ashcroft, Colin Powell, Peter King, Dan Rather, Chris Matthews, Joe Scarborough and the real Valerie Plame Wilson.
RATING: 5 out of 10 Senate hearings
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