The Manchurian candidate

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Movie
German title The Manchurian candidate
Original title The Manchurian Candidate
Themanchuriancandidate-logo.svg
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2004
length 125 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Jonathan Demme
script Daniel Pyne
Dean Georgaris
production Jonathan Demme
Ilona Herzberg
Scott Rudin
Tina Sinatra
music Rachel Portman
camera Tak Fujimoto
cut Carol Littleton
Craig McKay
occupation

The Manchurian Candidate (original title: The Manchurian Candidate ) is a political thriller from 2004 by Jonathan Demme with Denzel Washington in the lead role.

It is a remake of the 1962 feature film Ambassador of Fear and is based on the then script by George Axelrod and the 1959 novel The Manchurian Candidate (German book title: Ambassador of Fear ) by Richard Condon .

action

Kuwait during the Gulf War 1991: The convoy around Captain Bennett Marco is ambushed and the American troops appear to be doomed. But Sergeant Raymond Shaw manages in a heroic solo effort to eliminate the enemy and save most of his comrades. For this, Raymond is later awarded the Medal of Honor .

The USA in the present: The country is characterized by fear of terrorism and the resulting restriction of civil rights . Thanks to his power-obsessed mother, Senator Eleanor Prentiss Shaw, and his illustrious past in the military, Raymond is in a promising position for the future Vice President of the United States .

Marco, on the other hand, is plagued by nightmares at night. Doctors diagnose Gulf War Syndrome , but Marco does not believe in a psychological cause. His dreams seem too real to him and he doubts his memories of the incident in Kuwait as he remembers it but doesn't feel he did it. Al Melvin from his former troupe also plagues similar nightmares. Marco wants to find out what actually happened in 1991. The only one who believes him is the scientist Delp.

Through an electroshock therapy carried out at Delp , Marco finds out that his convoy was brainwashed during the Gulf War , during which Marco and Raymond killed two comrades on orders, among other things. Everyone was persuaded that Raymond Shaw had saved the survivors from the ambush. Anyone manipulated by the brainwashing can be made mindless by a certain phrase and made to carry out commands.

Eleanor Shaw has teamed up with the international private equity company Manchurian Global , which has invested billions in control of numerous high-tech companies, weapons manufacturers and army outfitters and makes financial profit out of fear, chaos and war. Eleanor and the group now want to bring a president they control into the White House through Raymond and thus secure political power in the country.

Marco discovers an implant under his skin and removes it. He also tries to convince Raymond that they have been manipulated. But he doesn't believe him. Only when Marco can convince Senator Jordan does Raymond have doubts. Eleanor Shaw then orders her son to murder the senator. He drowns Jordan sitting in a canoe and his daughter to cover up the crime. Marco finds out that his seemingly accidental acquaintance, Rosie, is actually from the FBI and is supposed to be monitoring him. The FBI has also been on the trail since they discovered an implant in the body of the late Al Melvin.

Marco and Raymond can meet briefly on election day. Raymond gives Marco his Medal of Honor , since he is now of the opinion that he does not deserve it, and says Marco farewell: "I am the enemy." Raymond's mother controls not only her son, but also Marco. He is supposed to assassinate the newly elected president so that Raymond can take over his post as vice president, and then kill himself. Although under the influence of the brainwashing, both can briefly deviate from their orders: Raymond does not stand in the place intended for him and also brings his mother to him, whom he hugs tightly. He winks in the direction of Marco, who is hidden with a sniper rifle, who seems to understand, and with one shot shoots Raymond and Eleanor Shaw in place of the President.

Immediately afterwards, Rosie Marcos is able to prevent an ordered suicide by shooting at him. Marco's involvement in the crime is kept secret by the FBI, which instead puts forward a Klaus Bachmann as the assassin. He was an employee of a subsidiary of Manchurian Global , as was Laurent Tokar, who as a civil employee with the US troops in Kuwait led the soldiers into an ambush and has since been considered missing. In the end, you can also locate the remote island with the now destroyed buildings where Marco and the others were brainwashed. There Marco places the Medal of Honor on a photo of Raymond .

background

  • In the original version, the brainwashing was carried out by communists from Manchuria . The English name for the area in northeast China is Manchuria - hence the title.
  • In an interview, director Jonathan Demme justified the fundamental change in the remake with the words: “The starting point was: Who is a threat to the world today? In the fifties, when Richard Condon's novel was written, it was perhaps communism; today it is large corporations that stir up international conflicts ”. Regarding possible allusions to real politicians, he said: "A sentence like" You are the first Vice President of the United States who belongs entirely to a different interest group. " fits Dick Cheney exactly . "
  • According to author Daniel Pyne , the script with the civil companies profiting from the war was written long before companies like Halliburton or the Carlyle Group hit the headlines and the topic reached the public.
  • Co-producer Tina Sinatra is the daughter of Frank Sinatra , who also played the lead role of Bennett Marco in the 1962 film. She inherited the production rights to the film from her father, which he owned together with United Artists .
  • Wyclef Jean recorded a new version of the title Fortunate Son , which John Fogerty wrote in 1969 as a protest against the Vietnam War , for the soundtrack .
  • The shooting took place from September to December 2003 in the USA. Production costs were estimated at around $ 80 million. The film grossed around 96 million US dollars in cinemas worldwide, including around 66 million US dollars in the USA and around 2.5 million US dollars in Germany.
  • It was released in the US on July 30, 2004, and in Germany on November 11, 2004.

Differences to the film version from 1962

  • The Gulf War is now taking the place of the Korean War .
  • The once foreign communist enemies are now locals from the establishment associated with a capitalist corporation.
  • Manchurian Global emerged from the enemy territory of Manchuria, from which it was named .
  • Senator Jordan and his daughter are drowned in the lake by Raymond and are not shot in their home.
  • The vice-presidential candidate was Shaw's mother Eleanor's new husband, in the 2004 version it's Raymond Shaw himself.
  • The trigger for obeying the commands was a playing card (queen of diamonds) in the film of that time, here it is a sequence of words.

Reviews

  • "An excitingly constructed thriller, whose explosive political allegories put it in its own way in the neighborhood [...] of similar films critical of the regime."
  • “ Manchurian Global is the name of the investment fund that wants to bring Shaw to power, a vice president who only represents corporate interests. [..] This plot is expanded to include a vague feeling of threat, which is unmistakably a post- 9/11 syndrome. Without putting the terrorist threat directly into the picture, Demme creates an atmosphere of a virtual state of emergency. Radio voices from the off, inserts from newspaper headlines, running lines in television news tell of a media culture of fear. It is the other side of a control society in which everything is suspect and everyone has to be monitored. "
  • “Demme turns the terrorist motive into a criticism of capitalism: It is the global players who destroy democracy with money. But this can only be achieved through the moral rigorism of a political class that uses every means in the struggle for the "right" values. " I will do everything I can to protect America from its enemies, " says Senator Hanson, and it is this interlocking of ideology and economy, of business, politics and morality that makes the Manchurian candidate so threatening. "
  • "The Silence of the Lambs - Director Demme finds the lightness of his early films again, with which he conjures up a paranoia thrill from the smallest gesture. The mask-like android smile of the future Vice President of the USA and, even more frighteningly, the raised index finger of his career-hungry mother (great: Meryl Streep ), who insists that the Oedipus complex should keep its effectiveness in the brave new world, is enough . A film that some consider more subversive and politically more exciting than Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 . "

Awards

literature

  • Richard Condon : Ambassador of Fear. Roman (Original title: The Manchurian Candidate ). German by Werner Barzel. Pavillon-Verlag, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-453-77051-X , 364 pp.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Interview with Jonathan Demme on sueddeutsche.de
  2. ↑ Bonus material on the DVD
  3. ↑ http://www.imdb.de/title/tt0368008/business
  4. ↑ http://www.imdb.de/title/tt0368008/releaseinfo
  5. ↑ Film Service
  6. ↑ Dominik Kamalzadeh in the daily newspaper
  7. ↑ Daniel Haas on Spiegel-Online
  8. ^ Rainer Gansera in the Süddeutsche Zeitung