SIFF: The Fourth State
In the wake of a divorce, journalist Paul Jensen (Moritz Bleibtreu, whom I thought was terrific in Young Goethe! last year) moves from Berlin to Moscow to join Moscow Match magazine as a reporter and editor. He moves into his deceased journalist father's apartment, which includes an office full of papers, books, and photographs he's unready to plumb. Instead, he immerses himself in the Moscow party scene (all in the name of celebrity journalism), falls for a beautiful activist, and witnesses a politically motivated murder. He then publishes a tribute to the murder victim, who turns out to have been a journalist with controversial ideas. Jensen suddenly finds himself in the midst of volatile political machinations the likes of which hadn't even occurred to him when he came to a Moscow still underpinned by Cold War suspicion and tactics, and a culture of which he was completely ignorant. That office full of papers holds some interesting secrets.
I saw The Fourth State with davidlevine whose initial take was that Jensen made stupid choices. My position was that he was naive, not necessarily stupid: he'd made a life-altering decision to move to a city he knew nothing about without speaking the language or understanding the culture, and got himself into trouble as a result. But the more I think about it, the more I agree about Jensen not being too bright, especially given that this movie is based on a true story. For a reporter, his lack of curiosity and preparation about where he was going or what he was getting into is remarkable and a source of much of the action and conflict in the film. At the same time, I think he made the mistake of approaching a former Cold-War society with the arrogance and innocence only a Westerner could, which is to assume that what you see is what you get--and to not bother looking too hard. When he does finally twig to what's going on (after being bludgeoned with it, frankly), he grabs at it with both hands and goes looking for the truth at last.
The film we get as a result is a taut, well-made thriller with enough twists and action to keep it interesting and exciting. Bleibtreu was as good as I remembered, and even sexy in a way I couldn't have anticipated from seeing Young Goethe!. A great film? No. But a pretty good one nevertheless.
I saw The Fourth State with davidlevine whose initial take was that Jensen made stupid choices. My position was that he was naive, not necessarily stupid: he'd made a life-altering decision to move to a city he knew nothing about without speaking the language or understanding the culture, and got himself into trouble as a result. But the more I think about it, the more I agree about Jensen not being too bright, especially given that this movie is based on a true story. For a reporter, his lack of curiosity and preparation about where he was going or what he was getting into is remarkable and a source of much of the action and conflict in the film. At the same time, I think he made the mistake of approaching a former Cold-War society with the arrogance and innocence only a Westerner could, which is to assume that what you see is what you get--and to not bother looking too hard. When he does finally twig to what's going on (after being bludgeoned with it, frankly), he grabs at it with both hands and goes looking for the truth at last.
The film we get as a result is a taut, well-made thriller with enough twists and action to keep it interesting and exciting. Bleibtreu was as good as I remembered, and even sexy in a way I couldn't have anticipated from seeing Young Goethe!. A great film? No. But a pretty good one nevertheless.