The Trials of Henry Kissinger
The answer has nearly always been Yes?but that might be changing. Jarecki and Gibney's movie is based on Christopher Hitchens' book The Trial of Henry Kissinger, which sprang from a two-part article in Harper's, where Hitchens argued that the former secretary of state and architect of American foreign policy under Nixon and Ford should be considered a war criminal. Hitchens maintains that Kissinger's profound influence over his bosses made him into sort of an unelected dictator of U.S. foreign policy, and that his realpolitik approach?which favored expediency over moral consistency?led to the death, imprisonment and torture of hundreds of thousands of citizens in countries whose interests ran counter to ours. Hitchens dredged up nasty details of Kissinger and Nixon's bombing of Cambodia in 1969 and 1970, which was designed to destroy Communist bases in that supposedly neutral country, but ended up widening the U.S.-Vietnam war, killing additional U.S. servicemen and countless Cambodian and Vietnamese civilians. Hitchens also folded in the outrages of East Timor, which moved toward independence in the mid-70s and was invaded by Indonesia in 1975 with U.S. approval and weapons; and Chile, whose leftist president, Salvador Allende, was assassinated in 1973 by U.S.-backed foes and replaced with Pinochet.
Kissinger is a feature-film elaboration of Hitchens' prosecutorial screed. It will never be mistaken for a supposedly "neutral" documentary (as if there could ever be such a thing). It definitely errs on the side of excess, painting Kissinger as an amoral nerd who connived his way into power and sacrificed millions on the altar of anticommunism. It's a hair's breadth away from character assassination, like a better-researched Michael Moore documentary minus the self-congratulatory populist clowning. But what's really interesting about Kissinger isn't its many digs at Kissinger the man, but its examination of how Kissinger's actions were rubber-stamped by his elected bosses, and how their effects continue to be felt even though Kissinger has long since retired from public life to become a wealthy private consultant. Henry K. has moved on, but the families of people killed in the Cambodian bombings, maimed by Indonesian shock troops or raped by Pinochet's goons can't do the same.
It might not be possible to separate the moral and legal lessons of Kissinger from its political stance, but I'll try, because I think the film has great value apart from (or in spite of) its failings as a character study and a prosecutorial brief. Like The Pinochet Case, Kissinger is built around the concept of international justice?a notion encoded in a 1987 agreement signed by dozens of nations that holds that certain crimes by politicians are so heinous that they transcend the question of who was in power, and when.
In the past decade, a body of law has taken shape that lets any country committed to international justice detain and even try politicians whose policies encouraged crimes against humanity?mass slaughter of civilians, rape, torture. Pinochet ran afoul of this new movement when he was arrested in London in 1998 and detained for trial on charges of encouraging torture during the last two years of his regime; he escaped punishment, but a precedent had been set. It is a precedent that is influencing courts across the globe, as borders disappear everywhere except on maps, and the longtime pipe dream of a "global village" slowly becomes an Internet-age reality. In print and now on film, Hitchens argues that international law can and should be applied even to unelected figures, provided they exert a profound enough influence over their underlings to make their darkest wishes a reality. During his years with Nixon and Ford, Kissinger fit the bill; in the Pentagon, the State Dept., the White House and Congress, everyone deferred to his wisdom, and accepted any foreign policy measure (even bloody ones carried out in secret and uncovered years later) as the hidden cost of freedom.
Unsurprisingly, Kissinger has come out in print against the notion of letting any country try individuals for crimes against humanity. And there are those who argue?persuasively?that no matter how horrific Chile, East Timor and Cambodia became after Kissinger's handiwork, they might have fared just as badly under Communist control?and been hostile to America besides.
Yet the case against Kissinger laid out by Hitchens transcends easy notions of left and right, Commie and capitalist. It insists that foreign policy should be guided by consistent moral and political principles rather than the impulsive strategic desires of the moment (what Kissinger calls the lesser of two evils). And it suggests that no matter who runs a country, politicians should (and now, can) be held responsible for what they do?if not immediately, in their own nation, then later, in another country, at another time.
These arguments remain abstract in Kissinger; The Pinochet Case recounts the first moment when they became real. Taken together, these two gutsy documentaries do more than reveal the world as it once was; they suggest what the world might become. The future looks good.
Groin-kick: Remember when Jackie Chan was fun? The Tuxedo will help you forget. From the amazingly witless title sequence, this headache-inducing spy spoof showcases the acrobatic Chinese star at his lamest. The problem isn't the star, who's pushing 50 but still agile (I'd like to see fat-assed critics who make wheelchair jokes about Chan attend a yoga class with him). The problem is the concept and the filmmaking. The script and the direction are so astonishingly inept that the cast (including buxom, charming costar Jennifer Love Hewitt) is reduced to shouting exposition throughout, even during the final, supposedly action-packed showdown. Worse still is the rotor-blade editing, which deep-sixes Chan's great talent?his ability to cut up negative space with his body?and replaces it with music video nonsense.
Like the inexplicably popular Rush Hour movies, which were just as badly edited, The Tuxedo treats the greatest physical actor since Burt Lancaster as a stale import that can't be sold in America until it's "spruced up." Chan wouldn't do this dreck unless he wanted to, so maybe he deserves to be irrelevant.