Monday, November 21, 2005


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TRAFFIC
O

It's not just a movie.
It's not just a documentary.
It's not an art film.
It's a masterpiece.

I don't understand how an epic like that can appear in our nation without it having changed the entire focus of the war on drugs. It's so brilliantly made, I couldn't walk away from it for even a moment. No fashionable, flickering, camera-tricks........no overwhelming soundtrack.........no seductive women..........no ill-conceived sexual encounters.........no cardboard figures engaging in unreal dialogue.

The New York Times -- erroneously as usual -- called Traffic a ".......gloomy meditation on greed, violence, and contemporary ennui."

W-R-O-N-G-!

Steven Soderbergh painted a true-to-life canvas on which the US//Mexico drugtrade is displayed as a void-of-glamour reality of which the very last sentence is simply,
"How can you wage war against your own family....."
Which is the only political statement ever being made, during almost 3 hours of such ruthless honesty, that you wonder why these things just continue to continue in spite of being exposed for what they really are. Just like the illegal border crossings. Just like so many other things that no one seems to have the courage to change or fight or even try to understand. So then along comes a filmmaker who does understand, who takes a chunk of time out of his own life in an attempt to communicate his underestanding, yet still..........nothing changes and his voice falls on ears so deaf, they have totally forgotten what hearing is all about.

One can only come to the conclusion that we are in dire need of a whole new kind of leadership. That those who are in charge of things now, are so profoundly incompetent, that we'll collapse before we improve, if they're allowed to retain their positions of power.

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