BobHarris.com - How a 1987 Film Set In 1856 Nicaragua Helps Explain 2007 Iraq

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How a 1987 Film Set In 1856 Nicaragua Helps Explain 2007 Iraq

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Tuesday, 24 July 2007

Currently dubbing over some old VHS tapes onto DVD; if you've read Trebekistan, you know that I need to fit my life into far fewer boxes.

Walker, Nicaraguan Ranger

I was a fan of Walker when I first saw it about 15 years ago, and I couldn't help but stop and watch it again while it was dubbing tonight. I like it even better now. It's British director Alex Cox (the same guy who did the classic Repo Man) allegorically making a point about modern US foreign policy by retelling the true story of a brilliant American nutjob named William Walker, who 150 years ago was financed by shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt to "stabilize" Nicaragua -- which is to say, protect Vanderbilt's profitable pre-Panama Canal land/sea transport route through the country.

Walker not only "stabilized" things, he took over completely, declaring himself President of Nicaragua; the US government shortly recognized him as such. In the process, however, Walker betrayed everything his expedition claimed to stand for -- democracy, liberation, freedom, etc. -- eventually even instituting slavery and aspiring to subjugate all of Central America. Walker betrayed Vanderbilt, too, however; that was his undoing. The master cut the puppet's strings, and Walker's regime quickly ended.

Unhip to the game and more desperate than ever to believe that he still had a special god-chosen purpose, Walker kept trying to invade the region until he was finally executed by the Honduran government in 1860. He was famous across the US by this time, popular among the same crowd who would today learn their decency, history, and reasoning skills from talk radio. Now long-forgotten in the US (where his story is embarrassing at best), he's still fairly and bitterly well-remembered in Central America.

Cox's film was made in Nicaragua in 1987, while the Contra war was still raging. It's an angry film, obviously, but what strikes me on a midlife viewing is the surprising degree of compassion that Walker actually shows to its subject, despite using him as an occasionally heavy-handed object lesson. Walker is never once seen as less than sincere in his madness, and it's precisely that appearance of honesty amid utter self-delusion that attracts a cult of followers who can never allow themselves to see the grotesque horrors which result.

The parallels are so clear -- not just to one side in one war, but to damn near any rationalization of violence as part of a better, higher good, anywhere -- and the brilliant black comedy of it all is so relentlessly drawn, that I'm surprised the film hasn't become more of a cult favorite among the current antiwar crowd. Ed Harris is a joy to watch (and occasionally presages his Oscar-nominated turn in Pollock) as the inspired madman, Cox's intentional anachronisms (Walker, for example, is named Time magazine's Man of the Year) are somehow both over-the-top and perfect, and Joe Strummer's haunting soundtrack may still be the best work he has ever done.

It's a hard find on DVD; I'm not sure it was ever even released in the US in that format. Amazon only carries the European DVD, which won't work on most North American players, but they still have the VHS here. Meanwhile, Alex Cox's website has more info if you're curious.

Other stuff I'm dubbing today: a reel of Nixon campaign TV ads from 1968, when the Vietnam war was about as old as the Iraq war is now. The level of sophistication (which is to say, sheer facile nonsense) of Nixon's claim that he could do a better job than LBJ, without being clear on details at the time, and without any basis in retrospect, would be depressingly familiar to most of us, I think.

But Walker moves that depressing realization back over 150 years, with moments of some of the darkest humor you will ever see.

PS -- I should add that there's also a little more about the historic Walker in the next book, about which you will soon hear much. Stay tuned.