Carlos, directed by Olivier Assayas and written by Dan Franck and Assayas, is a very long and beautiful film. It follows the life of Carlos the Jackal, a 1970s-era super terrorist whose life story is almost a high crimes and espionage version of Forrest Gump. He was directly involved in or very closely connected to some of the major terrorist crimes of the late 1960s and 1970s. Born in Caracas, he was educated in Moscow and ultimately in London. He ultimately got involved with the group called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was trained in their camps in the Middle East and ultimately rose up their ranks through a series of violent crimes.
The first part of the film follows Carlos as he beings his work with the PFLP and gains traction with an assorted band of Leftists (from the Japanese Red Army to the German Revolutionary Cells). They are basically the gang that can't shoot straight and despite their devotion to the liberation of Palestinians and anti-Zionist rhetoric, they mostly screw up their attacks, rather than executing them well. This doesn't stop Carlos who is wildly self-impressed and sees himself as one of the most significant people in the political world of the era.
The second part of the film shows the gang's highest profile job, taking over and kidnapping the 1975 OPEC meeting. This was a job paid for by Saddam Hussein in an effort to wrest control of the organization away from the Saudis and bring it closer to Baghdad. After the get-away was bungled by Carlos, he was demoted by PFLP head Wadie Haddad. It was because of this demotion that Carlos was not involved in the PFLP hijacking of a plane that ended in Entebbe, Uganda (an operation that was also screwed up).
The third part of the film focuses on Carlos trying re-group and operate is organization from Budapest. He was becoming more and more a mercenary-for-hire, once taking a meeting with the KGB and top officials from the Iraqi regime to organize the assassination of Anwar Sadat of Egypt. Ultimately Carlos found no safe harbor and after he was booted from Hungary (who had previously turned their back on the fellow communist comrade) and then Syria, he moved to Sudan, where he was ultimately captured by French officials.
Assayas' story here is really about a wild psychopathic narcissist. The film opens with Carlos (played beautifully by Edgar Ramirez) posing naked in the mirror and marveling over his beautiful body. He continues this self-love throughout the film (despite his ever-growing and shrinking waistline), never catching on to the outside world's feelings about him, never self-aware enough to know how his friends and allies fear or hate him. Sadly, there is not a lot of depth to the character development throughout the film. Carlos is in the end exactly what he was at the beginning, a self-diluted maniac with a strong self-righteous streak of violence.
Technically the film is beautiful. The photography by Yorick Le Saux and Denis Lenoir is beautiful and moves beautifully from the slightly richer palette of the late 1960s (somewhat reminiscent of New Wave films of the era) to the more washed out colors of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Assayas also uses a rock 'n' roll soundtrack throughout the film, frequently employing punk rock to convey an emotion and not just a time marker. When we hear The Dead Boys' "Sonic Reducer" played over a montage of Carlos' gang getting ready for an attack, it's more an aesthetic connection to wildness, freedom and youth (Carlos was only in his mid-20s at the time) than it is a time marker of the late 1970s.
Somewhere in the moments between part 2 and part 3, Carlos' tone changes a bit and he becomes a bit darker than he had been before. This is a bit of a shock and makes this guy who is previously very charismatic and compelling into a supreme self-centered asshole. He speaks nonstop of himself in glowing terms, not realizing that by this point, in the late 1970s, he has already become almost totally forgotten.
There is an interesting scene that takes place in Damascus in the early 1990s where Carlos goes on a diatribe about how George H.W. Bush is out to ruin him, to which one of his friends explains that they are dinosaurs and have been entirely relegated to history books. This scene is particularly reminiscent of the scene in Oliver Hirschbiegel's Downfall, where Hitler is planning on his final attack against the allies, to which his generals and associates have to tell him that the war is lost. Carlos is so wrapped up in his own cult of personality (to which he is the only subscriber), that he has lost track of the fact that he is no longer a political radical, but merely a former thug who won't throw in the towel.
Throughout the film I was struck by the similarities in how Assayas dealt with Carlos' psychopathology and how David Fincher dealt with Mark Zuckerberg's sociopathology in The Social Network (whether he is or is not a sociopath, I think Fincher presents him as one). Both directors gave us fully formed psyches in their lead characters right out of the gate. These are characters who never totally grow or change much throughout their stories. Clearly Zuckerberg was not as dark and violent as Carlos, but both of them are diluted by their own strong feelings of themselves. In both cases we see the characters at the end almost exactly as they were when the films began. I think this is a bit of a disappointment in both cases. I would have preferred to see some growth or development in each one. Perhaps this is the nature of such character disorders, that they don't change much, but it doesn't make for the most interesting film.
What this film did very well, though, was to tell a very long and complex story in a very straightforward, beautiful way. We are never confused about who different characters are and what their motives are. Considering the grand scope of the picture, it is impressive that everything makes perfect sense.
Stars: 3 of 4
There is an interesting scene that takes place in Damascus in the early 1990s where Carlos goes on a diatribe about how George H.W. Bush is out to ruin him, to which one of his friends explains that they are dinosaurs and have been entirely relegated to history books. This scene is particularly reminiscent of the scene in Oliver Hirschbiegel's Downfall, where Hitler is planning on his final attack against the allies, to which his generals and associates have to tell him that the war is lost. Carlos is so wrapped up in his own cult of personality (to which he is the only subscriber), that he has lost track of the fact that he is no longer a political radical, but merely a former thug who won't throw in the towel.
Throughout the film I was struck by the similarities in how Assayas dealt with Carlos' psychopathology and how David Fincher dealt with Mark Zuckerberg's sociopathology in The Social Network (whether he is or is not a sociopath, I think Fincher presents him as one). Both directors gave us fully formed psyches in their lead characters right out of the gate. These are characters who never totally grow or change much throughout their stories. Clearly Zuckerberg was not as dark and violent as Carlos, but both of them are diluted by their own strong feelings of themselves. In both cases we see the characters at the end almost exactly as they were when the films began. I think this is a bit of a disappointment in both cases. I would have preferred to see some growth or development in each one. Perhaps this is the nature of such character disorders, that they don't change much, but it doesn't make for the most interesting film.
What this film did very well, though, was to tell a very long and complex story in a very straightforward, beautiful way. We are never confused about who different characters are and what their motives are. Considering the grand scope of the picture, it is impressive that everything makes perfect sense.
Stars: 3 of 4
