Lions for Lambs

During the first few minutes into "Lions for Lambs" I thought I was watching U.S. government propaganda justifying the "War on Terror" and presenting the official 9/11 fairy-tale as truth. For one thing, I have never met any U.S. troops in real life as educated, well behaved and civilized as in any of those movies (and God knows I've played for a lot!), nor could I imagine an American politician in real life as whitty as the Senator Tom Cruise played in this movie.

Another 15 minutes into the movie I figured this must have been the smartest piece of U.S. propaganda I had ever watched.

Thankfully, it turned out to be no Neocon propaganda, after all, just a pretty good screen monument to the times we're living in, some sort of "golden finger" on the pulse of our times. The type that carries a message, which, sadly, will require a miracle for any significant amount of people to grasp, but part of the message was that it doesn't matter if it's just a single person who gets it, as long as that person does something about it for a change.

As someone who grew up on the '71 album "Who's Next" by "The Who," THE album by that band that's worth listening to, I was particularly thrilled about the little historic gem woven into this film when Meryl Streep (posing as awakening journalist Janine Roth) quotes one of my favorite songs from the album. A line that has come to my mind repeatedly in my life, whenever I see one regime or administration replaced by another, only to change absolutely nothing, especially not for the better: "Meet the new boss; the same as the old boss!" - Taken from the classical piece of rock music "Won't Get Fooled Again."

Except that the title couldn't be further from the truth. If there's anything that hits you about the general public per se, it's that they've been fooled over and over and over again since the song came out.

The bad guys in the movie are the politicians, sharing the blame with the news media, and the ray of hope is supposedly the beacon of education. What American producers like Robert Redford lack the guts to realize, of course, is that the sacred golden cow of education is just as much a hoax as politics and the media, and what's worse, movie makers who paint a reality a far cry from what's really happening. As long as people around the world can keep their Hollywood scope of things, the world isn't desperate enough yet for anyone to actually do something else besides watch movies and talk, even though this one was at least an effort to be a voice for the truth, even if the trumpet is sounding a signal that won't be understood by many, much less spur more than a handful to action, or even more than that special, chosen one...