Political activism in the twenty-first century has been reduced to buying a book by somebody with whom you agree. Outraged by injustice? Go to Barnes and Noble. Grab the latest tome by Franken or Coulter and sashay around the store, making sure that the guy hunched over the magazines and the gals huddled in Self-Help pick up on your angry vibe. At the register, ignore the gift cards and Mannheim Steamroller CDs and proudly plop your chosen diatribe in front of the cashier, who will duly note your umbrage with the opposing party's high jinks. You shuttle the book home, fully intent on reading it, though certainly not tonight -- not with a new episode of Desperate Housewives set to begin.
Enter The Weather Man, director Gore Verbinski's sublime look at a man willing to take real action against a vain and dishonest world. Nicolas Cage stars as David Spritz, a bond underwriter who, in the course of a single day, realizes that Big Business exploits, Big Government coerces, and Big Labor corrupts. Further, he discovers an absence of opposition to this triad of evil. To remedy this, he sets out to reconstitute a long dormant revolutionary group from the 1960's, The Weather Underground.
Spritz begins by calling on one of the few surviving members of the original Weathermen, Terry Bingham (Michael Caine, in his most nuanced performance since Blame It On Rio). Bingham is thrilled by the prospect of a neo-radical movement in America, and he tutors Spritz on the ways of civil unrest. He then sends the young idealist on a quest to enlist like-minded revolutionaries to overthrow the status quo.
Spritz encounters potholes on the road to social justice. He goes to Berkeley, where Bingham has charged him with finding campus Maoists, a task he mistakenly assumes will be easy given the plurality of Asian students. What he discovers instead is a highly educated group of mercantilists, kids unaware of the precepts of Chairman Mao, yet highly versed in the thoughts of Chairman Greenspan. The only way this group marches on the Administration building, Spritz concludes, is if the Dean is giving out iMacs.
On a similarly ill-conceived trip to East L.A., Spritz seeks out disciples of Che Guevara and comes up empty, finding students whose desire for change is limited to wanting new mufflers for their Civics. Ask them about Tumpamaros and they'll imagine a new lunch item at Baja Fresh.
Ultimately Spritz discovers that this is a country that loves manifestos but hates movements, a people willing to debate but loathe to demand, marching in extreme lockstep against all things extreme. The Weather Man is a brilliant piece of social commentary, a profound explanation of why idealism in America is in full retreat. Forty years ago it was understood that if you weren't part of the solution you were part of the problem. In the parlance of today, solutions are the problem.
Subscribe to Feed
