October 27, 2010: Carlos
Living in a big city affords me certain filmgoing opportunities. Carlos is a sprawling 5.5-hour epic examination of the life of the terrorist popularly known as Carlos the Jackal. It was created as a European three-part miniseries and will be trimmed down to feature length for North American distribution. I got to see the full presentation (though admittedly with two intermissions) digitally projected at the new Bell Lightbox facility in Toronto which is the new home of the Toronto International Film Festival. The facility will run special presentations and retrospectives year-round.
With a cast mostly unknown to me, I was able to immerse myself in this story without distractions, and for the most part it was riveting. The technical details of this meticulous period piece are breathtaking, and I can’t imagine the enormity of the task of production design for this film which spans over a decade in cities all over Europe and the middle east. Just the task of wrangling the hundreds of classic and not so classic cars would have been mind-blowing. Speaking of which, I lost count of the number of times people got into and out of cars in this film. It must have been over 100 times. The lives of globetrotting terrorists seem to involve a lot of driving or being driven to places for meetings.
A couple of big set-piece sequences define the pacing of this film, including a big hostage-taking incident which happens early and establishes the range of emotions and the capabilities of the central character. However, there are plenty of scenes which unfold slowly and take their time, which is quite appropriate since a lot of the group’s time is spent waiting for action, preparing and going over details. These were the most eye-opening parts of Carlos for me, since I was struck by the fact that this man, who mingled with political royalty, was really not much more than a bumbling petty criminal who just happened to be willing to take the risks involved with doing other people’s dirty work. Important international weapons smuggling jobs were done by three guys moving stuff from one truck to another in a garage. Assassinations were based on rough information and brazen actions. Carlos felt he was important and well-liked since he was able to operate under the cover of intelligence departments which tolerated his presence in return for his services, but once things started to go bad, doors slammed shut and he went through a large-scale version of finding out that you have no more friends – he couldn’t find a country in the world which would accept his presence. It’s good to see that criminal activities like these don’t go unpunished, and I think the film does a good job of keeping the viewer from getting swept up in the romantic notions of the freewheeling above-the-law lifestyle, emphasizing that it’s really mostly scuzzy and boring work, and will almost invariably implode at some point. Carlos is a visceral cinematic experience, but with such an actively repulsive central character, it’s hard to “like” it.
Not the usual kind of movie.
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