Assayas’ Carlos an Epic, Exhilarating Journey
Has there been a more audacious and challenging motion picture in 2010 than Summer Hours and Boarding Gate director Olivier Assayas’ five-plus hour Carlos? Split into three parts, this exhilarating biography of Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, also known as “Carlos,” also known by his carnivorous moniker “The Jackal,” is the stuff of legend. Freewheeling, paced as if it were shot out of a canon, running through about a decade of history with the man proclaiming his intention to be a radical force for Palestine throughout France and England, the movie is a take-no-prisoners kinetic rollercoaster running the gamut of human emotion.
Édgar Ramírez in Carlos © IFC Films
I’ll admit I knew nothing of Carlos before sitting down to watch this movie. His run through the 1970’s and early 80’s wasn’t one I was remotely familiar with, the things that made him both legendary and notorious not exactly on my Elementary School radar.
That made watching Assayas’ latest all the more astonishing. Not only is his massive opus a document examining a time and place that still has resonance for much of the world, but it also shows profound insight into the mechanics and the mechanisms that brought us to where we are today. While the film doesn’t pass judgment, it also doesn’t condone, and as such makes for a fascinating journey that’s as bumpy, raucous, horrific and energetic as the man right at its very core.
What is most amazing was how at even more than five hours I never once felt bored by the epic. As soon as the first part came to its cliffhanger finale all I wanted to do was immediately get a look at the next chapter, the same going for the third the moment the second ended. By the time it was over I wasn’t tired, I wasn’t stiff and I certainly wasn’t ready for a nap. But I was exhausted, physically and mentally drained by all that has just come to pass. Yet the exhilaration I felt at the climax simply would not dissipate, and in all honesty all I really wanted to do was spend another half-a-day watching the darn thing again.
I think what’s most compelling here is that Assayas finds away to show Carlos as the multidimensional enigma for which he was. While his terrorist acts cannot be condoned there were more sides to him than the man who coordinated an attack on the French Embassy in The Hague by militants of the Japanese Red Army or who himself planned and executed a spectacular assault on a meeting of OPEC ministers. This was also a master manipulator who himself could be manipulated by those he thought shared his ideology but who only hungered for power, his narcissistic failings and at times massive ego keeping him from seeing a bigger picture where his status was diminished and his desires demeaned.
If a person looks at Carlos and only sees a visceral, procedural-like action flick celebrating a terrorist than they’re just as bad at looking at the broader spectrum of things as the main character oftentimes is. This movie has action, it has suspense, and there are numerous times where Carlos acts a bit like James Bond sweeping women into his bed and using his wits and his smarts to escape from authorities. But it is also a diagram of a time in history that cannot be forgotten and a look at the quagmire that continues to broaden, one that now effects virtually every person on the planet.
The sheer scope of this is awe-inspiring and, as such, it isn’t always perfect. Assayas and his screenwriting partner Dan Franck (La Séparation) have done an incredible amount of research and there isn’t an ounce of the film that doesn’t feel authentic. But because the size is so massive and reach is so long there are times they do resort to forms of cinematic shorthand that doesn’t quite have the zest or the zeal that other portions do, and especially during the almost funereal final chapter I kind of got the feeling the pair didn’t always know exactly what it was that they wanted to say.
Not that this is much of a problem. Anchored by a performance by Édgar Ramírez (Che, The Bourne Ultimatum) as the titles character that easily ranks as the greatest he has ever given (and, in a just world, would earn him Oscar consideration), and fueled by an attention to detail and an eye for nuance that is stunningly intimate, this is one of those “Holy Cow!” moments in cinema history you hear a lot about but very seldom get to see for yourself. Carlos isn’t just the best movie of the year, it is arguably one of the single greatest motion picture I have ever seen.
A quick side note. While IFC is touring a roadshow version of the entire three-part, five-and-a-half hour opus (much like they did with Che), there is also a 150 or so minute version assembled by Assayas that is out there as well. While I have not seen that latter cut, I can’t imagine for the life of me that it will work near as well as the complete version of the picture does. There is just too much story to be easily condensed into such a short running time, and I can’t urge people enough to seek the full film out in order to get a look at it in all its epic majesty.
Film Rating: êêêê (out of 4)
Additional Links
