Film Review: Anti-Capitalist Melodrama Grounds ‘The Flight of the Swan’
by Dan GiffordHaving seen the preview director’s cut of this Greek film by auteur Nikos Tzimas twice now in hopes that it wasn’t as overplayed and trite as I first thought, I now feel better about saying that it is. My advice if you must see it when released: go for the scenery shots like the one below, stay for the popcorn — or the unintended storyline illustration of the reason Greece had to be bailed out of its Euro threatening financial crisis by Germany and why Greeks apparently still love Marxism and still hate the military Junta that prevented them from having it. If your mind numbs, take a nap in what will surely be a nearly deserted theater. Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z …
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No, that was Z, the film by Costa-Gavras, about the revolutionary romance and righteousness of communists fighting the Greek Junta that was suppressing the human rights of communist radicals who wanted to turn Greece into a Marxist dictatorship so they could suppress the human rights of all Greeks. Different movie, but as I think of worshipping this stunning view with some Retsina, that’s where this film’s cliched, anti-capitalist story line begins, according to the Tzimas description which I have slightly enhanced for effect.
The drive for success transforms Alexis (James D’Arcy, “Master and Commander,” “Nicholas Nickleby”) from a young, Greek Bolshevik idealist into the capitalist pig embodiment of everything he hates. But when his company causes a Biblical scale (that’s how the film describes it) ecological tragedy, he is shaken to his senses. To reclaim his lost soul in this gazillionth riff on Goethe’s Faust (which is essentially an assortment of Greek mythology themes about the mortal road to the Hellenistic hell of Tarturus), Alexis must expose the Mephistophelian beast he serves. Bemoans Alexis about the bill he’s run-up with Beelzebub: “I ended up serving the system I fought so hard to change. Yes, it gave me riches, but the price was my soul.”
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Arrrrrrrrrghhhhhhh!!!!! – the angst of Faust is thrust upon us by D’Arcy as a Medea mimic — it is a Greek film, ya know!
Unlike the play, however, he gets no winged dragon drawn chariot to lift him away to Heliopolis before the audience can retaliate for his excessive melodrama. Then again, maybe the flying swan scenes which are the source of the movie’s title are really dragon metaphors. Whatever they were, I couldn’t figure them out and Tzimas’ answers to my questions were all Greek to me.
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But no wonder Alexis is pained, his hippy-dippy 60s sensibilities wife, Maria (Alicia Witt, “Mr. Holland’s Opus” “88 Minutes”), thinks they can have the money that pays for their expensive home with that great view of the anchored cruise ship without paying the price in stress and time away from family that practically everybody else finds necessary to earn that kind of money: “I’m sleeping with a fucking robot. You’ve lost yourself at that stupid firm. Where’s the tender poet I fell in love with?”
Wellll, Maria, ya think that tender poet realized nobody pays for prose and started working his butt off to afford your Mercedes, designer clothes and all the other expensive stuff you obviously can’t live without? And does it occur to you or Tzimas that if all Greeks worked as hard as the Alexis character, the Germans wouldn’t have to tell his countrymen they could fix a lot of their own financial woes by getting up earlier and napping less?
Not a chance.
Tzimas’ intent is to cast corporations, especially American ones, in the worst possible light as wanton destroyers of the environment and worse. Speaking as one who used to expose corporate crime (check my bio), that’s a ridiculously broad brush smear of an institution that has provided the highest standard of living the human race has ever known, but it is the operative leftist stereotype being sold here in order to make a case for replacing it with authoritarian government power. So to that end, Tzimas portrays Alexis’ company as one that routinely lies, cheats, steals and hires murderers to kill anyone who gets in the way of an obscene profit. “Ethics are really no concern of ours. The rules of the game are set by the system,” the company chairman explains to Alexis.
And who did Tzimas cast to play that amoral corporate master philosopher of crime in the suites? Why none other than Larry Hagman in a repetition of his ethically challenged J.R. Ewing role.
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That should be enough for any ordinary director to pound home this anti-capitalist message. But just in case somebody missed the Dallas association, Tzimas also cast Linda Gray, J.R. Ewing’s long suffering wife Sue Ellen, as Alexis’ mother.
Speaking of Alexis, the last time I saw James D’Arcy in a movie he was a suicidal midshipman holding a cannonball while jumping into Davey Jones’ locker. That may not be a bad place for this film, because I cannot imagine any amount of re-editing that will make The Flight of the Swan worth paying money to see. On the other hand, letting people into the theater free and then charging them to get out would be worth the exit price.
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21 Comments
One of my dearest friends is a Greek archaeologist working in Athens. The horror stories she tells me of the corruption there is just hair raising. One example: her department has 30 people employed in it but only 4 of them show up for work. The others aren't workers at all but are the wives, daughters and girlfriends of the professors, MP's and the dean's. These 26 phantom workers draw a full salary and spend it shopping and doing their nails. And, to rub salt in the wound, nearly all of them earn higher salaries than my hard-working friend who's one of the top archaeologists in the business and has lectured at Cambridge.
I don't blame Germany for being furious at having to bail out Greece. What the hell good is it to bail out someone who not only kicked the hole in the planking of their own ship, but is still swinging the pick axe as we speak?
(Btw, Mr. Gifford – I can't access any of your movie links. Now that I've read your review, I thank you for that.)
Sounds fairly heavy-handed. No, strike that. It sounds unbelievably heavy-handed.
Greece is the modern world in a nutshell: A government, with much prodding from the well connected part of the population, spends the country into ruin and we are told free markets are the problem. Pro-big government, pro-union protestors burn a bank – with three people in it – and we are told to worry about "speculators". And so on, you know the drill.
But why is America still seen as the home of "unbridled" capitalism? The Obama-Pelosi clique has pushed America to the left even of the more successful European countries. We even have their permanent low employment now. When Obama recently asked them to spend like he does to "stimulate" demand, the governments of France, Germany and Britain told him to pound sand. They were more interested in keeping what is left of their fiscal credibilty.
The EU has pumped billions into these countries for decades. Their agricultural policy alone is a giant multi-billion scam, designed to buy off whole populations (on a smaller scale, we are seeing the same thing in the US). The whole European unification project depends on German gravy. And that is just as icky as it sounds.
The only Socialist/ Communist I know and he was not always that way is my childhood's best friend. He can't quite figuire it out that in order for him to be able to do all the junk he dose, he works for the State, That you need and ever expanding private sector. Its the private sector that provides the jobs and the taxes for him to spend and waste. He is also one of the most unhappy people I know, his side is getting every thing they want and its still not enough. I been unemployed for some time now, Business cycles come and go. I know that. So I am doing what I need to do no more or less, and I sleep well at night, better than in years. I get plenty of fresh air, and the Camping has grown on me. Yep been camping out after all I can't write checks for money I don't have. Greece is a mess, and I can't blame the Germans one bit about not wanting to bale them out, they will and the rest of Europe too, Ghosts of 65 years ago. Germany should have never joined the EU. What a circle jerk.
Socialism and communism leaves you at the mercy of the government to come up with a good idea.
Some countries are just messes. Denmark, Germany, Austria, and Finland are fairly socialist (particularly compared to the US pre-Obama) and yet function well, in safe-orderly societies where most people work. Absent immigrants of course, most of them Muslim, who don't for the most part work or become integrated into society. Italy is a tale of two nations, the mostly functional, prosperous North, and the chaotic and corrupt South (in Roman times the South was more prosperous and settled). The same is true for France. The UK formerly functional, has the largest budget deficit in Europe and intractable social problems — the OECD report blasted it for having the highest teen birth rate, teen drinking rate, illegitimacy rate, and illiteracy rate. The Netherlands is prosperous but cannot deal with their immigrants who have not integrated and retain separate Islamist identities.
Greece socially cannot function, because everyone exists in a family-nepotistic way, seeking to game the system. Had the Junta succeeded, Greece would still look the same. The problem IMHO is the legacy of centuries of Ottoman occupation, lack of a nuclear family orientation, a low-trust society, and cultural isolation from the Catholic-Protestant West on how to best order a society culturally, from which economics and productivity flow. This is not a new problem — when the Persians conquered the Ionians, for ever after their cultural contribution to Greek society even after the destruction of the Persian Empire was nil.
"On the other hand, letting people into the theater free and then charging them to get out would be worth the exit price."
It would be kind of like the New Jersey of films then: All roads going in are free; all roads going out have tolls.
But when his company causes a Biblical scale (that’s how the film describes it) ecological tragedy, he is shaken to his senses. To reclaim his lost soul in this gazillionth riff on Goethe’s Faust (which is essentially an assortment of Greek mythology themes about the mortal road to the Hellenistic hell of Tarturus), Alexis must expose the Mephistophelian beast he serves. Bemoans Alexis about the bill he’s run-up with Beelzebub: “I ended up serving the system I fought so hard to change. Yes, it75yt3b45e6tvh7n4kdhdg43we7g
Dammit, sorry. Went facedown into my keyboard there.
I have to laugh. I almost came to blows with a Greek telephone guy because he couldn't give me correct change, so he decided to keep the higher amount (about a penny, for cryin' out loud). I let him know that this was no way to run a railroad (or a Greek telephone exchange) and he grudgingly relinquished his penny, muttering something ugly under his breath that would probably translate as, "Choke on our baklava, capitalist American pig."
For a lefty-leaning country, they sure do love them pennies.
Doesn't anybody else find it a tad ironic that a Greek film is trashing capitalism when they bankrupted themselves because of socialism? On second thought, maybe "ironic" isn't the right word.
A Biblical catastrophe? So we're talking cats and dogs living together?
Especially now that Germany is getting over it's well deserved WWII guilt. Der Bild a German newspaper had a recent headline that the Germans are the biggest schmucks in europe. Just as an aside the Brits despise the EU and see it for what it is and grieve for their loss of sovereignty..
Fun fact: Z isn't about the oppression of communists, just liberal politicians. The real life man the assassinated politician in Z is based on, Gregoris Lambrakis, was not a communist. Further evidence of this: he was a member of the only liberal political party that was legal in Greece at the time (1963), while the communists were outlawed.
Next time, try to get your facts right before besmirching the name of a man who was killed for trying to democratically change his country.
you had me at "greek film", just give me a heads up when hollywood attempts the American remake. Factoring in work ethic and daily strikes, I'm guessing it took 20 years and $500 million euros to make this film.
Agreed, I'll take unbridled capitalism any time.
It means I at least have a shot at success.
If Gregoris Lambrakis and the other members of his party were really just liberal politicians and not communists, why were the policies Lambrakis and the others advocated the same as those demanded of Greece by the Kremlin? Just as the "republicans" who battled Franco were actually communists led by the Soviet military and The People's Republic of China is actually a totalitarian communist dictatorship, calling oneself a political liberal doesn't make it so. Communists use words as a way of disguising who they are in order to beguile and gain acceptability as they push toward goals that lead to outright communism. It was a way to use the freedoms of a democratic society to destroy that society during the Cold War and it still is. The communist government of Yugoslavia funded the communists during the Greek civil war following W.W.II and the Kremlin funded the only legal leftist Greek political party — the one Lambrakis belonged to — afterwards. The Soviet goal was to gain control of Greece and the Dardanelles and have a warm water port, among other things. Lamkrakis' demand that Greece disarm played right into that objective. Fact is, if Lambraskis' and his party had prevailed, Greece would never have joined NATO and would have become a totalitarian Soviet client state that aided the Soviet military to spread hegemonic communism. Preventing that from happening was a vital American interest at the time.
Yes, but I have never seen unbridled capitalism, nor has anyone else. I have seen unbridled statism, though.
Excellent.
"….Greece would never have joined NATO and would have become a totalitarian Soviet client state…"
And afterwards the West STILL would have been asked to pay for the whole mess.
Agreed, big business and big government (not the Breitbart site) have done a wonderful job of convincing people over the decades that heavy government regulation is actually free markets, and free markets are anarchy.
But also remember, you have seen unbridled capitalism. Ever buy something second hand, with out government interference? That's it. By a couple of books at a flea market, pay what you think is a fair price, you've just experienced free markets.
Its that simple.
Mass hysteria.
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