This is a tale of two movie reviews. One sane. The other…well not so much.
After reading snippets of both you’ll hardly believe they’re talking about the same movie. Steven Greydanus writes in the National Catholic Register that Secretariat is:
an uplifting Disney movie about a horse that happens to be the greatest thoroughbred of the 20th century. Rich and Wallace, both Christians, serve up the big emotions and sincere sentiment that they’re known for — with a generous dollop of Golden Age Hollywood piety, from the epigram from Job to the strains of “Oh Happy Day” playing during Secretariat’s runaway triumph at the Belmont Stakes. Those who say Hollywood doesn’t make them like this anymore shouldn’t miss Secretariat.
That’s enough to make me want to see it right there. Yup. I’m that simple.
But then you have to get a load of this reviewer from Salon.com named Andrew O’Hehir who goes ballistic on the movie even though he even admits he liked it. He compares this feel good Disney movie to the works of Nazi sympathizer Leni Riefenstahl and even worse (gasp!)…Glenn Beck!!
Searching for metaphors in his handy “Writing Insanely Liberal Movie Reviews for Dummies” he invoked the Tea Party, Nietzsche and Sarah Palin!!!
This is awesome reviewing where you just know the reviewer’s meds ran out and his therapist is on vacation and not answering his phone even though he’s called him nineteen times every hour.
You’ve got to check this out:
“Secretariat” is a work of creepy, half-hilarious master-race propaganda almost worthy of Leni Riefenstahl, and all the more effective because it presents as a family-friendly yarn about a nice lady and her horse….
Although the troubling racial subtext is more deeply buried here than in “The Blind Side” (where it’s more like text, period), “Secretariat” actually goes much further, presenting a honey-dipped fantasy vision of the American past as the Tea Party would like to imagine it, loaded with uplift and glory and scrubbed clean of multiculturalism and social discord. In the world of this movie, strong-willed and independent-minded women like Chenery are ladies first (she’s like a classed-up version of Sarah Palin feminism), left-wing activism is an endearing cute phase your kids go through (until they learn the hard truth about inheritance taxes), and all right-thinking Americans are united in their adoration of a Nietzschean Überhorse, a hero so superhuman he isn’t human at all.
Now, the fact that director Randall Wallace and screenwriter Mike Rich locate this golden age between 1969 and 1973 might seem at first like a ludicrous joke, if you are old enough (as I am) to halfway remember those years. I’ll say that again: The year Secretariat won the Triple Crown was the year the Vietnam War ended and the Watergate hearings began. You could hardly pick a period in post-Civil War American history more plagued by chaos and division and general insanity (well, OK — you could pick right now). Wallace references that social context in the most glancing and dismissive manner possible — Penny’s eldest daughter is depicted as a teen antiwar activist, in scenes that resemble lost episodes of “The Brady Bunch” — but our heroine’s double life as a Denver housewife and Virginia horse-farm owner proceeds pretty much as if the 1950s had gone on forever. (The words “Vietnam” and “Nixon” are never uttered.)
One shouldn’t impute too much diabolical intention to the filmmakers; for all I know, Penny Chenery really did live in an insulated, lily-white bubble of horsey exurban privilege, and took no notice of the country ripping itself apart. But today, in the real world, we find ourselves once again in an enraged and dangerously bifurcated society, and I can’t help thinking that “Secretariat” is meant as a comforting allegory, like Glenn Beck’s sentimental Christmas yarn: The real America has been here all along, and we can get it back. If we just believe in — well, in something unspecified but probably pretty scary.
Wow. Look Greydanus’ review made me want to see the movie but I’ve got to admit Salon.com’s review made me want to see it even more. Maybe twice.
October 7, 2010 at 8:01 pm
I would encourage people actually read the review for themselves, as it is rather more balanced and well-reasoned than Mr. Archibold makes out. The reviewer's thesis is not that this is a bad movie, just a dishonest one, bristling with steriotyped characters reading leaden dialogue in a perfect American that never existed. If, like Mr. Archibold, I were to cherry-pick a quotation to sum up the review, I believe this one would be more characteristic:
"This long-suffering female Job overcomes such tremendous obstacles as having been born white and Southern and possessed of impressive wealth and property, and who then lucks into owning a genetic freak who turned out to be faster and stronger than any racehorse ever foaled. And guess what? She triumphs anyway!"
October 7, 2010 at 8:27 pm
Well, if it is true as the Salon reviewer writes that "The words "Vietnam" and "Nixon" are never uttered" in this film, then I have got to see it! I was a youngster during these godforsaken times, and now at 50 years of age, if I NEVER hear the words "Nixon" or "Vietnam" again it will be too soon. I loved Secretariat. He was magnificent, and a magnificent distraction from the incessant whining of the crazy hippies and other anti-war, anti-American types. If the human protagonist of the film acted as though she were oblivious to all the lefty lunacy of the time, who can blame her? I wish I could have shut it out and ignored it, too. It was like the thing that wouldn't shut up…come to think of it, it's STILL the thing that won't shut up. Secretariat thundering down the tracks was the perfect antidote to the dismal world the hippies made.
October 7, 2010 at 9:03 pm
I once asked my mmother about Vietnam. She told me to my very great surprise that it had litlte to do with daily life. The college kids in the city were raging but she and my father lived their normal lives. Until I was born they didn't even have a TV.
October 7, 2010 at 9:13 pm
Oh, yeah — that wonderful vanished America where Negroes were happy being second class citizens, young men volunteered to die in senseless wars of imperialism, we slept much better at night knowing that the President would break the law just to get re-elected, and anybody who thought that racial discrimination, imperialism, and Presidential criminality weren't okay was just crazy and anti-American…
October 7, 2010 at 9:26 pm
My goodness, Matt, you really shook the tree and the nuts are falling out.
October 7, 2010 at 9:50 pm
I know. The trolls have come out from under the bridge.
As far as the accusation of cherry picking quotes from the story, I lifted three paragraphs. How could that possibly be cherry picking?
October 7, 2010 at 9:52 pm
After reading the comments here, Matt, I think I'll see it three times.
October 7, 2010 at 9:56 pm
From the Wikipedia article on 1972 (chosen at random because it was a year in the span of time covered by the movie), I quote merely the events of January 1972, to illustrate a point:
* January 1
o Kurt Waldheim becomes Secretary General of the United Nations.
o Pierre Hotel Robbery: Six men rob the safety deposit boxes of The Pierre Hotel in New York City of at least $4 million.
* January 4
o The first scientific hand-held calculator (HP-35) is introduced (price $395).
o Rose Heilbron becomes the first woman judge at the Old Bailey in London.
An HP-35 calculator
* January 5 – U.S. President Richard Nixon orders the development of a space shuttle program.
* January 7
o An Iberian Airlines passenger plane crashes into a 250-meter peak on the island of Ibiza; 104 are killed.
o Howard Hughes speaks by telephone to denounce Clifford Irving's supposed biography of him.
* January 9 – The RMS Queen Elizabeth is destroyed by fire in Hong Kong harbor.
Wreck of Queen Elizabeth in Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong in 1972.
* January 10 – Father of The Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman returns Bangladesh from Pakistan
* January 13 – Prime Minister of Ghana Kofi Abrefa Busia is overthrown in a military coup.
* January 14 – Queen Margaret II of Denmark succeeds her father, King Frederick IX, on the throne of Denmark.
* January 16 – Super Bowl VI: The Dallas Cowboys defeat the Miami Dolphins 24–3.
* January 19 – The Libertarian enclave Minerva on a platform in the South Pacific, sponsored by the Phoenix Foundation, declares independence. Soon neighboring Tonga annexes the area and dismantles the platform.
* January 21 – A New Delhi bootlegger sells wood alcohol to a wedding party; 100 die.
* January 24 – Japanese soldier Shoichi Yokoi is discovered in Guam; he had spent 28 years in the jungle.
* January 25 – Shirley Chisholm, the first African American Congresswoman, announces her candidacy for President.
* January 26
o Yugoslavian air stewardess Vesna Vulović is the only survivor when her plane crashes in Czechoslovakia. She survives after falling 10,160 meters in the tail section of the aircraft.
o The Aboriginal Tent Embassy is set up on the lawn of Parliament House in Canberra.
* January 28 – Richard Chanfray claims he is the Count of St Germain on French television.
* January 30
o Bloody Sunday: The British Army kills 14 unarmed nationalist civil rights marchers in Derry, Northern Ireland.
o Pakistan withdraws from the Commonwealth of Nations.
* January 31 – King Birendra succeeds his father as King of Nepal.
My guess is the movie doesn't mention any of these items, either…BECAUSE IT'S A MOVIE ABOUT A HORSE, FOR GOODNESS SAKE!
Off to prepurchase my tickets for opening night!
October 7, 2010 at 10:01 pm
It is a terrible shame that a family movie about a famous race horse does not delve deeply into Vietnam, Nixon, racial tensions, etc.
WAIT! WHAT?
Liberals won't be happy unless everyone is as unhappy as they are.
October 7, 2010 at 11:38 pm
yay! I am taking my big girls (young enough to be horse-crazy)
October 7, 2010 at 11:40 pm
I saw a pre-release showing of "Secretariat", and I'm going to buy the movie when it comes out on DVD. It was fantastic. Even though I knew the outcome, the movie still managed to maintain the excitement of the events of 1973. And there aren't any scenes my 14 year old son can't see. In fact, I think my granddaughters could watch this movie without being scared. I wondered if it could be as good as "Seabiscuit", but it's better because the language and visuals are cleaner. I hope it does well at the box office. It certainly deserves to.
October 8, 2010 at 1:01 am
Whaaaaaaa, I don't like movies that make people feel good or makes American seem to be a good place, America is bad, evil, and RACIST, All successful Americans are RACIST, I hate a movie that makes people feel good. Gad I hate whiny liberals, so how do I know he's a Liberal?
Quote "(she's like a classed-up version of Sarah Palin feminism)" That's how
October 8, 2010 at 3:48 am
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October 8, 2010 at 3:50 am
Dear lord, EVERYTHING is overly politicized and/or about race with these people.
It's ludicrous to suggest that you can't make a heartwarming family story set in an earlier time period without dragging every public sin committed by the "American Empire" into it.
October 8, 2010 at 4:24 am
Wow. That was a trip ! Whatever that dude was smoking ? I want some !
Hey Man, this movie is really just about the greatest racehorse who ever lived and his female owner, who had to go thru some serious sh%t during that time….and that's it 🙂
Again…wow. That boy is out there !
October 8, 2010 at 1:44 pm
Just a thought – I hope (and I do mean, hope) that when the shoe is on the other foot, and our beliefs are being threatened and attacked (as his currently are in the political climate, even though our Catholic, Christian values are attacked every single moment), that we will not allow the bitterness that he spews to take root in our hearts. Bitterness is easy. Forgiveness and truth are hard.
October 8, 2010 at 5:40 pm
I select a movie for ENTERTAINMENT–not to judge its politically correctectness. Leaving issues at the door is a sound policy. I read that people in depressed times (1930's and 1940's sought out movies to day dream and escape (temporarily)from their worries. It sounds like
the movie is up my alley and I need to buy some tickets.. I remember this big beautiful horse and the excitiment he caused.
October 9, 2010 at 8:11 am
"…our Catholic, Christian values are attacked every single moment" — oh it must be tough for the overwhelmingly dominant religion in America to survive! Talk about whining… reminds me of my favorite quote from the review: "This long-suffering female Job overcomes such tremendous obstacles as having been born white and Southern and possessed of impressive wealth and property, and who then lucks into owning a genetic freak who turned out to be faster and stronger than any racehorse ever foaled. And guess what? She triumphs anyway!" Andrew O'Hehir's review was indeed over the top, but still interesting to read. I believe it was meant to be thought-provoking, folks. Consider yourselves provoked! ;- ) I don't see how it would have detracted from the movie to add a teensy bit of historical context, but regardless, I am definitely going to see the movie. It's Secretariat!
October 9, 2010 at 2:01 pm
I love movies about a boy and his dog, movies that take place on submarines, movies about sports teams, and above all movies about horse races. I was bitterly disappointed by Seabiscuit. And I'm still trying to recover from the Smarty Jones debachle. So I for one can't wait to see Secretariat.
October 10, 2010 at 2:06 am
I believe it was meant to be thought-provoking, folks.
The only thought it provoked in me was, "this idiot actually gets paid to write this drek?"