This is a review of the new documentary by film-maker Gilbert Hurricane of his documentary "North of the Border".
Here are the first two paragraphs of the review. The complete review will be found in the diary body text.
"North of the Border" is at once an engaging, provocative, revealing and amusing documentary and a searing indictment of North American anti-war and social justice activists, journalists and film-makers for their failure to break with President Obama.
Written and directed by the first-time documentary film-maker Gilbert Hurricane, the film uses Oliver Stone’s recent documentary "South of the Border" as its inspiration and tactical departure point, beginning with a brief recap of the advances made by socialist leaders in South America and asking "What about North of the border?"
North of the Border"
A Review of the Gilbert Hurricane documentary
By Gary Gordon
"North of the Border" is at once an engaging, provocative, revealing and amusing documentary and a searing indictment of North American anti-war and social justice activists, journalists and film-makers for their failure to break with President Obama.
Written and directed by the first-time documentary film-maker Gilbert Hurricane, the film uses Oliver Stone’s recent documentary "South of the Border" as its inspiration and tactical departure point, beginning with a brief recap of the advances made by socialist leaders in South America and asking "What about North of the border?"
The center of the film is Hurricane’s visits with and one-on-one interviews with Oliver Stone, Tom Hayden, Michael Moore, Naomi Klein, Medea Benjamin, Robert Greenwald, Cindy Sheehan, Jodie Evans, Robert Scheer, and other anti-war activists, writers and film-makers, and anti-war politician and U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich.
"These are people of intelligence, talent and influence, many of whom I’ve admired or still admire, or try to, who have chosen, unlike their counterparts in South America, to invest their time outside of a unified effort of opposition and instead to work within Obama’s political party, despite its rejection and betrayal of the anti-war and anti-corporate agenda these people espouse," Hurricane says at the outset.
His mission, to find out why they put up with rejection and betrayal, why they don’t work to organize opposition to Democrats as well as Republicans, why they don’t work to build a socialist United States.
Hurricane is an affable interviewer who cannot always hide his anger with some of the responses he gets from his questions, but is also talented enough to play to the camera and let the audience do the thinking when he does choose to keep his mouth shut. Usually polite, he is tenacious in that he always has a follow-up question and will not be steered away from seeking answers as he will not be beguiled by celebrity.
His opening question to Stone, after telling the director of his admiration of ‘South of the Border’: "You included a clip of Michael Moore in your documentary ‘South of the Border’, Tom Hayden was in the audience when I saw the film in Santa Monica; why haven’t you, after producing this documentary about the socialist leaders in South America, broken with Obama? Why do you and many others remain Democrats and hold out hope that his pro-corporate, pro-war actions are meant to produce a revival of human rights at home and abroad?"
Stone’s answer, that he is a "market capitalist because he engages in the marketplace" provoked Hurricane to turn straight to the camera and issue a look that clearly asked the audience "Do you believe this?"
Stone’s follow-up, that Obama is as trapped by the system as Nixon was, as Stone portrayed Nixon in his film, triggers this response from Hurricane: "Didn’t Chavez and Morales and the others face even greater systemic corruption and power, not only from internal ruling class forces but also from the United States and IMF? Obama, as president, must be more powerful than Morales was as a union leader or Chavez was as a military officer."
Stone replies that he still hopes Obama will do the right thing.
His interviews with Hayden and Klein were similar, with Hurricane repeatedly asking what the logic was of embracing socialist revolutions and electoral victories around the world but failing to engage in or support socialist efforts in the United States.
Jodie Evans, of Code Pink, declares she is proud of having given money to Obama’s campaign, even though she has since protested his war policies. Medea Benjamin, once a Green Party candidate for Senate says her more recent activity on behalf of the Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) and her efforts on behalf of the citizens of Gaza take precedence over previous efforts to work on third-party politics.
Scheer, once long ago a Peace & Freedom Party candidate for Senate, says that despite the evidence, he still has hopes for Obama, and Greenwald says overt participation in a political party might jeopardize the independence he needs to have credibility for the documentaries he produces. Sheehan insisted the system is so corrupt she can do more good by organizing demonstrations than she can running for office.
"You don’t think challenging Nancy Pelosi would have been an important move for the cause of peace and change, to reveal the moral bankruptcy of the Democrats, to help build a true opposition party?" Hurricane asks.
"I’m not a politician," Sheehan declares proudly.
"I guess not," Hurricane says, shaking his head with pointed disappointment.
Interestingly, shortly after the film premiered, Sheehan registered in the Peace & Freedom Party. Whether or not her action was in response to the film, whether or not she’d seen the film is not known by this reviewer. Clearly Hurricane wishes Sheehan would use her name recognition and skills and run for office.
One theme emerged throughout the interviews: when convenient, those interviewed fell back on their artistic and journalistic activities, down-playing or denying their former or potential roles as political leaders. Hayden insisted he is now "just a journalist and columnist, not a political leader", Klein declared she is just a writer and there should be no pressure on her to be a leader in a socialist party. Stone, never a political leader, pointed that out several times and rejected the notion that as a wealthy film-maker he should contribute to a socialist party.
At one point Hurricane returns to his attendance in Santa Monica of the premiere of Stone’s documentary, wondering aloud "What if everyone Stone had gone to interview in South America had a reason to not get involved? What if Chavez, after being jailed and tortured, had given up? What if Morales had decided that Bolivar’s revolution was then, and this is now, and it could just not be done?"
He is clearly unsatisfied with the answers he is getting.
Three of the most intriguing interviews in the film are with Michael Moore and two lesser known figures, Ron Daniels and Herbert Mulchman.
Daniels is a former Rainbow Coalition organizer and one-time presidential candidate of the California Peace & Freedom Party. Mulchman is a current member of the State Central Committee of the Peace & Freedom Party.
Hurricane holds back nothing in his interview with Moore, and it is clear he holds Moore to a higher standard, actually accusing Moore of betraying his own alleged principles. Concentrating on his central question– "Why haven’t you broken with Barrack Obama, why aren’t you actively contributing to building a third party?"—Hurricane attacks the award-winning documentary-maker for his failure to take on Hillary Clinton in "Sicko" and his failure to endorse socialism in his "Capitalism, A Love Story".
In the most chilling moment in the documentary, Hurricane asks Moore what he probably knew was a rhetorical question: "Don’t you think, if this was 1776 or 1850 or 1920, you and Hayden and Klein and Oliver Stone and countless others in leadership or influential positions would be rejecting the status quo parties and organizing for a real change, breaking away and not hanging onto shredded coat-tails and fanciful hopes? Wouldn’t you have been a revolutionary against the Crown? Wouldn’t you have been an abolitionist helping to create the Republican Party? Wouldn’t you have been a Wobbly or a writer for The Masses, working with Reed and Goldman and Big Bill Heywood, Mother Jones and Joe Hill? What is this Obama crap?"
Moore’s complaints that he was ambushed by the question, his petulant tossing of his clip-on mic, and walking away—similar to Charlton Heston’s dismissal of him in "Bowling for Columbine" succeeded in amplifying Hurricane’s charge such that Hurricane said nothing because nothing needed to be said.
In moments almost equally chilling, Hurricane’s interview with Kucinich leaves the viewer, if inclined to agree with Hurricane’s premise, frustrated, angry or bewildered as the articulate anti-war and anti-corporate politician fervently defends his participation in a party that has repeatedly rejected him.
"Aren’t your efforts to reach a compromise with your fellow Democrats who fundamentally disagree with you essentially the same as Obama’s efforts to repeatedly reach out to Republicans who do not and never will agree with him?" Hurricane asks, clearly near agony, visibly desperate. And while many may earnestly want Kucinich at this point to blurt "Oh my gosh, yes, you’re right," the Congressman instead explains that "change is difficult and requires hard work."
The searing indictment concludes with the Daniels interview, with Daniels explaining in sonorous political science terms that supporting Obama was "the right move to make, given the alternatives", and with Mulchmann, not a climax so much as a reality check that produces a whimper.
Mulchmann, an unknown as measured against the others, represents to Hurricane the depressing reality American Leftists face, with the capable people who have name recognition rejecting involvement in even the most mild of political efforts outside the Democratic Party, and with those who are members of a socialist party displaying their inability to focus on the acquisition of political power to address economic and social justice problems, to bring fundamental change to both the military-industrial-complex and the prison-industrial complex.
As Hurricane presses Mulchmann about efforts to grow the Peace & Freedom Party, Mulchmann answers repeatedly that the most pressing concern is the party’s efforts to organize labor to oppose Israel in protest of Israel’s actions against the Palestinians.
Although Hurricane must be aware that the American Left are pro-Palestinian and opposed to Israel’s military and settlement actions, and that some are opposed to its existence, he clearly appears thrown for a moment, not expecting this answer from a the socialist party’s State Central Committee member.
"How many union members have joined your party because of your work against Israel?" Hurricane asks.
"None yet. Maybe a few. I don’t know," Mulchmann answers.
"And what will your success, if it occurs, against Israel, mean for the working and poor and disabled people of California, in the face of the collapsing economy and the budget cuts?"
"It’s important," Mulchmann answers, and again Hurricane turns to the camera with his "Are you buying this?" look. Later he mutters, "I might as well’ve been talking to Kucinich."
At the end of the documentary, huge demonstrations in South America and clips of Hugo Chavez’s and Evo Morales’ election victory celebrations are juxtaposed with clips of paltry anti-war demonstrations in Los Angeles as Hurricane, in voice over, says "South Americans were attacked from without and subjugated and have responded with the fury of the abused, the wrongly imprisoned, the unjustly governed. They organized and won power. North Americans have rarely been attacked from without, and instead have acquiesced to subjugating themselves to the corporate interests and their employees. It will take a reaction similar to that of those in South America, but who will do it, who will lead, who will follow, is unclear. Todd Gitlin once said of who won the Sixties, the Left won the Culture and the Right won the politics. If there is a lesson to be learned from South America, it is that it’s the politics that must be won.
"North of the Border" is in limited release, screening in Waxhaw, North Carolina; Thomas, Kansas; Frank, Kansas; Orangeburg, South Carolina; Ludlow, Colorado; Flint, Michigan; Kent, Ohio; Zenith, Winnemac; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, and Rosewood, Florida in the coming weeks, and will reportedly be available on Netflicks in October.