Review: CARLOS
rating: 3.5
One of the highlights of Cannes last year was the six hour screening of Oliver Assayas' 'Carlos' - a three part mini-series that was run together into one gargantuan, bladder-busting 5 and a half hour long epic (albeit with intervals) - though the experience was far more appealing in itself than the films initially.
Impeccably researched, 'Carlos' is a triumph of recent historical drama, with the original near six hour running time providing the invaluable luxury of sufficient time to develop and over-develop characters and sub-plots. The writing and research Olivier Assayas and Dan Franck conducted lasted around two years, with 'Carlos' playing out over some two decades across ten countries, with several dozen characters speaking many different languages. To say the scope here is massive is to under-appreciate it somewhat.
And now, 'Carlos' is being shown in cinemas - or at least a shortened theatrical cut is - which has raised the question of how a production so grand could survive a cut of half of its run-time and still be a success?
'Carlos' is in cinemas for a limited time only from today, and on Blu-ray and DVD soon afterwards. This is my review of the shortened version.
'Carlos' is the biopic of Illich Ramirez Sanchez, also known by his nomme de guerre Carlos (after Carlos Peron) and by his Guardian-appointed headline friendly nickname 'Carlos the Jackal', taking us through his rise to prominence to his eventual arrest in the early 90s. There is definitely a hint of 'Scarface' and 'The Godfather' in this real-life story, though Carlos is presented initially as a far more idealistic figure than the hedonist, money and power-hungry villains of those two works, but there remains an intriguing parallel.
A myth in his own lifetime, Carlos is a central figure in the history of international terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s, from pro-Palestinian activism to the Japanese Red Army. He was at once both a figure of the extreme left and an opportunistic mercenary in the pay of powerful Middle Eastern secret services, forming his own terrorist organization, basing it behind the Iron Curtain, which was active during the final years of the Cold War.
This film is the story of a revolutionary internationalist, both manipulator and manipulated, carried along by the currents of contemporary history and his own folly. We follow him to the end of his road, relegated to Sudan where the Islamic dictatorship, after having protected him, handed him over to French authorities.
On the whole, Edgar Ramirez is great as the titular antihero, with his performance of Carlos self-belief and idealism very believable - a success perhaps rooted in Ramirezs own politically motivated background (he is actively involved in charity work). Ramirez also gives the role an assured emotional undertone, and an abundance of explosive emotional energy when required, giving Carlos the requisite balance of intellect, charm and fire. It seems the actor is becoming well-versed in terrorism roles, having taken part in the other epic terrorist biopic 'Che' for Steven Soderbergh, as well as 'Vantage Point' the same year, and the experience shows as he imparts his version of Carlos with the contradiction that marks his real history.
He also admirably managed to put on more weight for the finale of the film than Robert De Niro did for 'Raging Bull', which is incredible, and it is an on-screen metamorphosis that is far more affecting in this abridged version as there are no developmental scenes that show him slowly changing.
The rest of the cast are good for the most part, with fine performances in particular from Nora von Waldstatten as Carlos wife and fellow activist Magdalena Kopp, and Alexander Scheer as co-conspirator Johannes Weinrich, though it is no coincidence that both are two of the only other characters with a sustained presence on screen. Due to the grandness of the project, and the huge amount of detail that has gone into it, a great deal of characters flit in and out of the narrative as Carlos encounters them, a fact that is even more obvious in the newly shortened film and it becomes almost impossible for them to be memorable. They don't exactly compete for audience attention, so the more memorable of the peripheral figures tend to be the most explosive characters who etch themselves more readily on the mind, which is often a symptom of the TV series to feature film meld (the same is true of the excellent 'Red Riding Trilogy' in extended film form).
The original problem for the six hour 'Carlos' was that the sheer amount of detail that the biopic needs to properly furnish Carlos own life simply cannot translate on screen well enough to keep the attention for that huge chunk of time, and thankfully that problem doesn't translate across to the shortened version. It was always going to be the edit that I was most concerned with, and how Oliver Assayas and his editing team would deal with cutting three hours from the film. I have to say the approach they have taken is probably the best of all options. The short version cuts out the whole period in the early Eighties (essentially the entire second part of the trilogy), when he committed his well-publicised terror attacks in France, instead moving immediately to focus on his downfall when he took refuge in Sudan after the Middle East cut ties with him. The finale is his arrest, which is as good a place to end as any, especially as it sticks with the film's moral manifesto not to glamorise Carlos and his "work" but to humanise him and dispel the self-serving myth of his legend.
Overall, 'Carlos' is a very good film, huge in scope and the attention to detail scores it very high points. It has already been accused of glamorising terrorism, but dig a little deeper and it is a far more scathing look at Carlos' life albeit perhaps without offering enough of a damnation of the man for some people. I would personally hold out for the Blu-ray version of the trilogy which includes both the theatrical cut and the extended original, and offers the possibility of comparing both side by side.
'Carlos', the shortened version, is on limited release now.