You May Tell Yourself...This is Not My Beautiful Island!
The new Oliver Stone movie will be out tomorrow and I'm very excited about it. For better or for worse, Oliver Stone movies were one of my first very concrete experiences of being masumai or dunked into a historical context, and not hating or loathing it. Despite the creative liberties taken in the films, there is something often more real about them then actual real life, as if through fiction you can actually reach what "really" happened in a way that if you simply video taped the world you couldn't. Films such as JFK, Platoon, Nixon and Born on the Fourth of July, all brought me into American history in such a way that I was both entranced and disgusted. For me, and you may disagree, but JFK and Platoon were riveting stories, and Nixon was a film I thought I would detest or find boring, but like most Oliver Stone films I found myself wrapped up in it, and embodying what was probably the base intent of the film, that more people both understand Nixon and hate him.