The Interpreter (Movie Review)

[alcibiades_mystery]

"The lowest whisper," the script of Sidney Pollack's The Interpreter tells us, can be "louder than an army." When?, we want to know. When it tells the truth. There is something painfully idealistic, even utopian, about The Interpreter, but perhaps its the dream of utopia we need to regain right now. Oh, and it keeps up its pace, too.

The story is deceptively simple. An interpreter at the UN (Kidman) overhears a plot to kill a former idealist turned dictator of a fictionalized African country. The Secret Service foreign dignitary arm is called in to assist, since the dictator is about to give a speech to the UN in order to avoid an ICC indictment (courtesy of the French, mind you). Much plotting and counterplotting ensues, and we learn that Kidman's character is much more intricately connected with the African liberator turned dictator than initially thought, and the main Secret Service Agent (played by Sean Penn), also has - as Rilke would say - his dead, though whether he has "let them go" (like the pained narrator of Rilke's Requiem) is another question altogether.

As a political statement, the film contemplates the age old conflict between pen and sword: is it guns that will save us, or "words and compassion." No doubt, we're supposed to believe the latter, but the film consistently undercuts both perspectives, and its lists of names of the dead seems powerful, but they only really seem powerful next to the cause of death, which is usually violence. The very reading of the names tells us that words know what to do with guns, but that guns also know what to do with words.

That said, there is something compelling about the idea that the human voice drowns out even gunfire, even artillery fire (perhaps even the sonic catastrophe of the nuclear explosion), that the human voice, even as the whisper, manages to outlast and outcompete what Wilfred Owen once called "the stuttering rifle's rapid rattle," that it trumps the steady buzzing of the world, with all its casual bloodletting. Even the lowest whisper, we're told, drowns out the sound of an army, if that whisper is the whisper of truth. But we know now, that for truth we may need an interpreter, andf for truth now, we may need something like The Interpreter.

[alcibiades_mystery]

1. One kick

a_m

[Huckebein the Raven]

2. I want to see that film

[Jade Fox]

3. Interesting. Thanks n/t

[PopSixSquish]

4. Thanks for the Review

I'm looking forward to seeing this film. Nicole Kidman has made some suprisingly good choices of scripts in the past couple of years and I think her acting has improved. Sean Penn is always interesting to watch for me as well.