In his new "film essay," PoliWood, Barry Levinson uses his keen powers of cultural and political observation and his sense of humor to lead us into a cinematic stream of consciousness, nodding to Michael Moore and Marshall McLuhan on his way through the Democratic and Republican conventions of 2008.
Levinson wades along, microphone in hand, wondering about the effects of television on the American political process, and he scratches his head over the power of celebrity in our culture. He points to the rise of talking-head infotainment, the contrivance of partisan political conflict to make 24/7 cable programming livelier, and the nutty proliferation of uninformed opinion.
Levinson's pursuit of actors and actresses in politics is less interesting than the larger questions he raises about the authenticity of candidates and the power of television to affect the outcomes of elections.
Toward the end of the 90-minute essay, screened Sunday at the Maryland Film Festival, I wondered just how many genies Levinson wanted to put back in the bottle - television, after all, has been a fact of American life for 50 years - and I was concerned that the Baltimore-born director was about to slip into nostalgia for a time when informed citizens read newspapers and listened to the radio and America did not seem to be at such cultural and political extremes.
That didn't happen.
Levinson asked more questions than he answered, but sometimes that's a useful and amusing exercise.
I hope the rest of the nation gets to see PoliWood. I also hope Levinson will bring his sizable talents to another "film essay," perhaps on his old hometown of Baltimore and the efforts being made here to make it a better city. There's a great story in that, so far untold by Hollywood and television.
Overseas, the troops' moving farewell to fallen comrades
Phillip Jurus of Hampstead has a son-in-law in Afghanistan, a major in the Army named Glenn Dean. In a letter home recently, he described for Jurus something few journalists have been able to see and record - the troops' ceremony for comrades killed in the line of duty, before their remains are placed on aircraft for the flight home.
"We have our own ceremony here," Dean wrote home recently. "There have been five since I've been here - an Air Force EOD [Explosive Ordnance Disposal] technician, a pair of Navy officers shot by an Afghan guard, a Romanian soldier, an infantryman killed in an [Improvised Explosive Device] event.
