Battle in Seattle

[Pamela Troy]

On Monday night my husband and I went to a screening of Battle in Seattle at the Embarcadero. It's a narrative film, i.e., not a documentary, about the WTO Seattle protests in 1999. The inane media reaction to what happened there was best summed up by Chris Matthews' indignant editorial about how broken Starbucks windows proved that the protesters weren't hip and had no real mission except to smash things.

I like well-made films about major events, "well-made" in my opinion being films that keep the fictional characters and melodrama to a minimum and emphasize the drama of the actual events. I dislike Titanic and remained effortlessly dry-eyed when I saw it. I love A Night to Remember and always choke up when, in black and white, with almost no special effects other than a slanted deck and the sound of people praying, the ship upends and sinks after its two-hour agony. I consider Paul Greengrass' low-keyed, documentary approach in both Bloody Sunday (about the 1972 Derry massacre in Northern Ireland) and United 93 the best method. Few close-ups and recognizable stars, and no schmaltzy music to comfort the audience and remind us that we're seeing Nicholas Cage trapped by bitchin' special effects, rather than an honest-to-God fireman buried beneath the rubble of the World Trade Center.

Stuart Townsend's Battle in Seattle is not as good as Bloody Sunday, but it's good. It opens with a quick, damning overview of the history of the WTO, which initially annoyed me because I thought the segment was heavy handed. Once that’s out of the way, though, the scene shifts to Seattle in 1999. Several tiny figures are clambering about on a massive tower crane that looms over the city. One of the figures drops down on a rope, shown in a long shot like a spider dropping on a line of web and “turns turtle”, dangling upside down in a dizzying, terrifying shot. Another climber slides down on separate line alongside her to help her right herself, and the two of them succeed in unfurling an enormous banner. The WTO protests are beginning. It’s a wonderfully done moment that establishes one of the most consistent themes of the film -- the sheer physical courage required for that level of activism.

This is a point that Townsend makes repeatedly and deftly in the film. The popularly held notion of protesters as effete, flower bearing lay-a-bouts who get hurt because they're stupid about the police response is beautifully refuted in shot after shot. On in particular shows the frightened and resigned faces of demonstrators blocking an intersection and waiting for the police to come. These people may be young, but they are not weak or naive and they know what their civil disobedience is going to demand of them.

Footage of the havoc in Seattle is seamlessly edited into the film, and no, the police don't come across real well -- just as they don't come across real well in the actual 1999 news footage of Seattle cops pummeling demonstrators and dousing them with tear gas and pepper spray. But there are no real villains in this movie except for the WTO itself. Woody Harrelson and Channing Tatum both play cops who are almost as powerless in the rush of events as everyone else in the streets of Seattle. Even Mayor Tobin, played by Ray Liotta, is portrayed with sympathy as a well-intentioned man who has taken on more than he bargained for when his city is "honored" with the WTO conference.

What comes through in this movie is the infuriating, conscienceless, imperviousness of financial power, something that two characters attempting to work within the conference learn in the course of the movie. Rade Zerbedzia plays a physician who seeks to convince the WTO to work for more affordable medicines, Issach de Bankole a representative from the Third World hoping to negotiate fair treatment of smaller countries. Both seem initially impatient with the demonstrations that appear to be interfering with their message. By the end of the film, both have been so marginalized and humiliated by their treatment within the conference that the angry shouting they're hearing outside no longer sounds like mere theater.

This 2007 movie, which has been screened mainly at film festivals and was released last spring in France, is not just worth seeing. This movie should be seen, and not merely as an exemplary lesson about the politics of the WTO. Townsend's cinematography captures the exhilaration of taking part in a large demonstration, and the helpless terror of finding oneself suddenly caught up in a riot. The performances are all good, the storytelling is gripping, there are moments of both poignance and comedy, and the soundtrack is terrific.

It's opening this Friday in a very limited engagement here in the Bay Area, at the Embarcadero in San Francisco and in San Rafael at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Center. It is also opening this Friday:

Washington DC, E Street Cinema
Minneapolis MN, Uptown Theatre
New York NY Angelika Film Center and Lincoln Plaza Cinemas
Seattle WA Neptune Theatre, and AMC Loew's Uptown

If you can, see it.

[Annces]

1. Yes, I was greatly inspired by the WTO protests

It showed that there is a branch of people that are moving forward in raising consciousness and being informed, and in your face. Hooray for Seattle.

[Annces]

2. kick

[ConsAreLiars]

3. Great review of the film and the facts. (K&R}

The wide alliance of Labor, environmentalists, peace and justice activists, anti-imperialists and just decent people, and so on, posed a great threat to the powers that be and they used their control over the mass media to totally distort the record of what actually happened. There's another very revealing documentary with a lot of real footage called "This is What Democracy Looks Like" that I would strongly recommend. Go here: http://www.bignoisefilms.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13&Itemid=27