Charlie Wilson's War
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Charlie Wilson's War |
| Original title | Charlie Wilson's War |
| Country of production |
USA , Germany |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2007 |
| length | 98 minutes |
| Age rating |
FSK 12 JMK 14 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Mike Nichols |
| script | Aaron Sorkin |
| production |
Gary Goetzman , Tom Hanks |
| music | James Newton Howard |
| camera | Stephen Goldblatt |
| cut |
John Bloom , Antonia Van Drimmelen |
| occupation | |
| |
Charlie Wilson's War (Original title: Charlie Wilson's War ) is a political satire from 2007, directed by Mike Nichols with Tom Hanks in the lead role. The screenplay for the film was written by Aaron Sorkin based on the book of the same name by author George Crile . The plot is based on the life of Charlie Wilson , a former member of the United States Congress . The film was the last directorial work by Nichols, who died in 2014.
action
Charlie Wilson is in his fifth term as Texas Congressman for the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives . He is considered a womanizer, consumes drugs, especially too much alcohol, and only young women work in his parliamentary office, whom he selects based on their appearance. Joanne Herring, who is friends with Wilson, comes from high society and is the sixth richest woman in Texas. She is conservative, Christian and a staunch anti-communist . Herring used to have a relationship with Wilson that has been renewed again and again over the years.
On April 6, 1980, Wilson saw a TV report by Dan Rather from Afghanistan and became aware of the fight of the mujahideen in the war against the Soviet occupation . Wilson learns from Jim Van Wagenen, a member of the United States House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense , that the budget for operations in Afghanistan is currently US $ 5 million annually, and then has the amount doubled.
In the meantime, the prosecutor has his fellow party member John Murtha in his sights, so Wilson should get a seat on the ethics committee at the request of the spokesman for the House of Representatives Tip O'Neill , in order to avoid possible trouble for Murtha.
Wilson is invited to a party at Joanne Herring's Houston home that shows a film about Afghanistan and right-wing anti-communists raise money to fight the Soviets. Herring urges Wilson to stand up for support for the Afghan mujahideen and arranges a meeting between him and Pakistani President Zia-ul-Haq . On arrival in Islamabad , the presidential advisers accuse the US of indecision and inaction. Allegations are also directed at the CIA , as it was apparently unable to notice early on that 130,000 Soviet soldiers had entered Afghanistan. Wilson learns that a fifth of the population of Afghanistan has already fled across the border into Pakistan . At the request of the President, he visits a refugee camp in Peshawar , where he sees mutilated children, hears reports of atrocities by the Soviet army and is deeply shocked. Immediately afterwards he meets with the CIA station manager Harold Holt at the US embassy in Islamabad and offers him financial support for arms deliveries. However, Holt is concerned that large flows of money and arms deliveries would attract attention and declines his offers of help.
Back home, Wilson is accused by a witness of having used cocaine in Las Vegas , which is why Federal Prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani is now investigating Wilson.
Still under the impression of the pictures from the refugee camp, Wilson immediately summons a sub-department head of the CIA to visit him. However, only the choleric and frustrated CIA executive officer Gust Avrakotos appears , who recently got into an argument with the CIA director of the European division Henry Cravely and insulted him for refusing him the promotion to section head promised by his predecessor Alan Wolfe. Avrakotos then joined the CIA department responsible for Afghanistan and now explains to Wilson that he is exactly the right contact for him. Avrakotos and Wilson seek advice from the CIA Strategic Weapons Expert, Michael G. Vickers, who assists them in weapon selection against Soviet Mi-24 attack helicopters.
In Jerusalem they meet Zvi Rafiah, who is supposed to get them Soviet weapons, including loot weapons from the Six Day War , in order to prevent US-made weapons from being found among the fighters. In Cairo , through a belly dancer friend, he gains access to the deputy minister of defense of Egypt and through this access to other Soviet weapons from Egyptian license production. In his negotiations with foreign governments, Wilson succeeds in getting Israel, Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to secretly cooperate with the CIA, which, however, violates the Logan Act . Although at that time Pakistan and Afghanistan did not recognize Israel's right to exist, Israel became the second largest arms supplier for the Afghan resistance fighters after the USA. The mujahideen are thus supplied with modern weapons of non-American origin, including one-man surface-to-air missiles , which are successfully used against the Soviet attack helicopters.
As a first step, the CIA decides to supply a rebel group called the United Front of the Northern Province under its leader Ahmad Shah Massoud with weapons worth around ten million US dollars and to send them military instructors.
To ensure the budget increases to 40 million, Wilson needs the vote of committee chairman Doc Long. But he is reluctant, especially since Afghanistan, Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are all totalitarian dictatorships and he does not think fundamentalists are better than communists. Wilson needs the help of Herring, who succeeds in persuading the church-goer Doc Long to travel with him to Pakistan to a refugee camp. There he is quickly convinced and is so moved that the Christian, together with the Muslims, exclaims Allahu akbar (“God is great”).
Thanks to his relationships, Wilson succeeds in gradually increasing the budget until it finally reaches 500 million US dollars, with Saudi Arabia doubling the US payments and thus making one billion US dollars available for the war of the Mujahedin.
When Doc Long loses re-election, John Murtha succeeds as committee chair. Since Wilson had voted for Murtha in the ethics committee at the time, he is on Wilson's side and the funding is still secured.
Because of the steadily increasing losses in the economically insignificant Afghanistan, the Soviet Army finally withdraws. On April 14, 1988, the Soviet Union signed an agreement in Geneva on the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan.
After 500 million US dollars have been approved for the war, Wilson tries after the war to get at least one million approved for the reconstruction in Afghanistan, but this is denied because nobody would be interested in schools in the distant country.
From the hand of James Woolsey , Charlie Wilson was the first and so far only civilian to receive the highest honor of the CIA, the award Honored Colleague ("honored colleague"). The film ends with the fade-in of a quote from Charlie Wilson as an allusion to the consequences in the future : “These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world ... and then we fucked up the end game. " ("These things happened. They were glorious and changed the world ... and then we screwed up the endgame.")
background
- The German voice of Tom Hanks did not speak the standard speaker Arne Elsholtz in the film due to health problems , but Joachim Tennstedt .
- The large painting in the house of Joanne Herring shown in the film is based on a work by John Singer Sargent from 1884 entitled Madame X , but here modified with the illustration by Julia Roberts.
- The title Turning the Tide played during the shooting sequence is an adaptation of Handel's And he shall purify ( And he will purify the Levi children ) from The Messiah .
- At the end of the film, when Avrakotos Wilson warned urgently to look after the people of Afghanistan after the war, the sound of an airplane that could be heard clearly was inserted, which is supposed to be a hint of September 11, 2001 .
- The film was shot in various locations in California and Morocco .
- Production costs were estimated at $ 75 million. The film grossed around 119 million US dollars in cinemas worldwide, including around 66.7 million US dollars in the USA and four million US dollars in Germany.
- The cinema release in the USA was on December 21, 2007, in Germany on February 7, 2008.
Reviews
“A millionaire, half lustful, half biblical, an unqualified agent and a notorious congress playboy defeat the Soviets because of a wrong pedigree and lack of a nursery, and that sounds so daring that one believes them History should be made up from cover to cover; or at least had been pepped up by the dry MP story to a comedy. But it is not. [...] You want to give Nichols and his screenwriter all the credit for how comprehensible and colorful they tell this story, but the dramaturgy of this madness is already given by Criles' book - a tome that researches with obsession with meticulousness that first had to be shortened properly. "
“The story is told in a swing and mood that comes close to waving a whiskey glass, with pointed dialogues, precise timing and three outstanding actors. […] So you could end up praising Charlie Wilson's War for its wit and its actors. […] But then one thinks of the pictures of Islamists shooting with rocket launchers that still exist today and who cheer when they hit American targets; of the scene in which Herring greets the Pakistani President Zia (Om Puri), who has just had Benazir Bhutto's father murdered, and of the fact that the film was released in America just before Benazir Bhutto himself was murdered. Even if the CIA agent warns, and even if Charlie Wilson has recognized the basic problem of American foreign policy, to march everywhere in order not to rebuild - the present of the past, which this film tells about, is too powerful to be so easily understood could put the file. [...] The rhetorical question that this film asks is: Can a tragedy be told as a pleasant heroic story? "
“'We didn't make that up,' ended the credits of a trailer, and the makers are right: Everything actually happened that way, back when the battle-whispering mujahideen in traditional costume weren't terrorists, but 'freedom fighters' with their funny' freedom hats'. […] But the real story contains even more: It is the parable of America's fascinating error of having understood 20 years ago how an imperiously invaded empire could be defeated in Afghanistan - only to repeat today the core mistake of the Soviets of that time . [...] Washington understood. And invaded Afghanistan almost 20 years later, only to find himself a little later in the same role as the Soviets. And not to understand why they can kill so many Taliban and still not win. Your friends from then are your mortal enemies today. Mujahideen commander Jalaludin Haqqani , once 'the good in human form' for Charlie Wilson, met the Americans again after 9/11/2001: as one of the Taliban's most important military commanders, it was in third place on their 'most wanted' list for Afghanistan. You haven't caught him until today. "
“The satirical is by no means the appropriate form for this story, which ultimately - on the realpolitik level - meant a debacle: The rocket launchers that Charlie Wilson had delivered to the mujahideen are still in circulation today . The CIA is desperately trying to secretly buy them back. Sorkin and director Mike Nichols postpone the aftermath of Charlie Wilson's doing as much as possible. You can't use breaks in your main character, but you create a break that goes through the film itself. [...] A man does his job well, even if he was not morally equipped for it. On the other hand, Charlie Wilson is the hero of a policy that today is largely viewed as short-sighted and inconsistent and, as a result, fatal. [...] The audience should simply laugh away at this contradiction. "
“We see the triumph of the three conspirators when the Russians withdrew from Afghanistan in 1988, humiliated. But the jubilation of the Cold Warriors sounds hollow because we already know that the asymmetrical form of warfare developed by the Mujahedin against the Russians is now directed against the West, especially in Afghanistan and Iraq. A young man named Osama Bin Laden was among those going through Charlie Wilson's school. Afghanistan, which was dropped by the West after the withdrawal of the Russians, became a haven for him. The great thing about this film is that it still doesn't indulge in backward-looking know-it-alls. The Cold Warriors pulling the strings here are not anti-American decals. Charlie, Joanne and Gust are anything but evil imperialists. They are not concerned with American power per se - as the neocons later , whom they inherit. The three actors belong to the lost species of the cold war liberals , the anti-communists from the camp of the democrats who, out of a genuine sense of freedom, were in favor of a tough stance against the Soviet empire. "
“In principle, the film tells a true story. He cites George Criles Wilson's biography as a source, from which the world first learned that it was not Republican President Reagan who won the 'last hot battle of the Cold War', but a Democratic MP from Texas, an avowed whiskey drinker and philanderer . In truth, it is this apparent antithesis between patriotism and loose morals that directors Mike Nichols and his screenwriter Aaron Sorkin are most interested in. Your film deals less with the fatal consequences of the Afghan war than it celebrates a political style that no longer exists today, in times of ubiquitous political correctness . "
Awards
The film was nominated in five categories at the 2008 Golden Globe Awards : Best Picture - Comedy or Musical , Best Actor - Comedy or Musical (Tom Hanks), Best Supporting Actress (Julia Roberts), Best Supporting Actor (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Best Screenplay ( Aaron Sorkin). Philip Seymour Hoffman also received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor ( 2008 ). Aaron Sorkin and Philip Seymour Hoffman were also nominated for the Broadcast Film Critics Association award in 2008. Hoffman was also nominated for the Chicago Film Critics Association Award in 2007. The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating particularly valuable.
Historical reality
The book and the film based on it are rated rather negatively in terms of their historical factual accuracy.
Charlie Wilson's War (2007) is amusing but has only an intermittent connection with historical reality.
" Charlie Wilson's War (2007) is amusing, but has only a sporadic connection to historical reality."
"George Crile's magnificent book Charlie Wilson's War , and the movie that was made from it, is an excellent account, but it is told from the perspective of one Texas congressman and tends to distort his importance."
"George Crile's brilliant book Charlie Wilson's War and the film based on it is a splendid tale, but it takes the Texas Congressman's perspective and tends to skew its meaning."
"The film adaptation of the novel of the same name Charlie Wilson's War by George Crile has the same proportions of fantasy and flight from reality as Rambo III , whose scene is also the Soviet war in Afghanistan."
See also
literature
- George Crile: Charlie Wilson's War. Seeliger, Wolfenbüttel 2008, ISBN 978-3-936281-32-3 (English: Charlie Wilson's War. The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Times. New York 2003. Translated by Michael Fischer).
Web links
- Charlie Wilson's War at the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Charlie Wilson's War in the online movie database
- Synchronization cast in the German Synchro File
- Only the naive vote . Spiegel Online , February 1, 2008; Conversation with Tom Hanks at the start of the film
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release Certificate for Charlie Wilson's War . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , January 2008 (PDF; test number: 112 703 K).
- Jump up ↑ Age rating for Charlie Wilson's War . Youth Media Commission .
- ^ Controversial Congressman is April 14 Distinguished Lecturer SHSU
- ↑ locations. Internet Movie Database , accessed May 22, 2015 .
- ↑ Financial data
- ↑ Film review If you wear a white suit
- ↑ Film review The easy-drinking tragedy ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Film review We didn't come up with that ( memento of the original from February 19, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Weapons for Afghanistan . In: Berliner Zeitung , February 5, 2008
- ↑ Jörg Lau : God stands on both sides of this battle . In: Die Zeit , No. 6/2008
- ^ Film criticism patriotism and loose morals
- ↑ Rodric Braithwaite: Afgantsy. The Russians in Afghanistan 1979–1989 . Oxford University Press, New York 2011, ISBN 978-0-19-983265-1 , pp. 384 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
- ↑ Bruce Riedel: What We Won. America's Secret War in Afghanistan, 1979-89 . Brookings Institution Press, Washington, DC 2014, ISBN 978-0-8157-2595-4 , pp. XVI (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
- ^ Rob Johnson: Counterrevolution or People's War? The Mujahideen uprising. In: Tanja Penter, Esther Meier (Ed.): Sovietnam. The USSR in Afghanistan 1979-1989 . Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2017, ISBN 978-3-506-77885-7 , p. 111 , doi : 10.30965 / 9783657778850_006 .
