The LA Times’ Patrick Goldstein goes digging into the Conspirator – and why all of the lack of excitement and/or buzz around the film. His solution? Tie it in with 9/11:
It is definitely a sign of the times that this¬†Hollywood icon,¬†who once had studios at his beck and call, is now feeling the need to beat the drums to get some attention for his new film, “The Conspirator.”¬†The movie, which stars Robin Wright and James McAvoy, is a¬†historical drama set in the wake of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, when¬†seven men and one woman (played by Wright) are charged with conspiring to murder the president. The film was financed with independent money because it’s virtually impossible to persuade a major studio to back a real-life historical drama today, at least unless you jump through a thousand hoops — like keeping the budget under $20 million or providing your own financing and then¬†loading the film up with a couple of big stars (working for peanuts, of course).
But for me, the¬†most fascinating aspect of Redford’s new film, which I saw recently, isn’t its uphill struggle to find a distributor. It is¬†the historical resonance of¬†the story it tells, which makes it a perfect film to have its Toronto debut on Sept. 11. After Lincoln was shot and killed, America was traumatized, much as it was¬†after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And as the film makes clear, the War Department, run by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (played in the film by Kevin Kline), is determined to quench the country’s thirst for vengeance, even if that means bending the law and¬†sending¬†a seemingly innocent woman to the gallows. It’s not a pretty picture, certainly no prettier a picture than the one showing¬†terrorist suspects in Guantanamo Bay prisons,¬†some held under the flimsiest of pretexts, many without access to proper legal protections.
When Sharkey asked Redford about the historical parallels to today, he backpedaled, saying it was “up to the audience” to decide how to interpret the story. But I think he’s being way too cautious. What makes the film stick in your mind isn’t so much its depiction of Civil War-era strife as its unsettling relationship to many of the events in modern-day America, which has struggled to retain its ideals while battling the scourge of terrorism. If anyone is going to¬†want to¬†buy¬†this film and put it into multiplexes, it won’t just be because they’re impressed by Wright’s performance as Mary Surratt, the first woman ever executed by the United States government. It will be because they see a film¬†whose story is¬†loaded with reminders that if we cannot remember the past, we are condemned to repeat it.
For me the big problem with that comparison (and I haven’t yet seen the film) is that the Lincoln assassination might be more akin to other shootings of Presidents – JFK, Reagan. But if that is the direction Goldstein thinks it should go, who am I to argue? At least the topic gets people talking. Twitter is alight with retweets of Goldstein’s column, partly because it’s semi-provocative, but also because it’s one of the few posts about the elusive and mysterious Redford film which seems to have zero buzz whatsoever.
It’s worth mentioning, again, that the majority of the loudest voices covering Toronto tend to be in a specific demographic, not necessarily Oscar’s demographic. The older, established critics gives us a better idea of how the reaction might be. But they won’t just shoot out their opinion in 140 characters. They will write more thoughtful reviews. Those will matter a lot more than the chatter. We’ll have to wait and see.
Meanwhile, let’s see if a distributor picks up the film.