With so many films of struggle and hardship, the light comedy, “The Interview”, was going to be a welcome respite this holiday season. Sadly, this film has taken on the dimensions of an international coup…
The irony from my perspective, is that the satire focuses on the CIA’s notion that one should or could “take out” the leader of a foreign country! The joke may have been intended to cast a satiric light on the American system…but instead the attention has been misdirected. If the filmmakers had decided to change the name of the dictator, or used a fictitious country, as in the excellent fifties film, ‘The Mouse that Roared”, which poiked fun at the Cold War era and America’s nuclear policy, then the film could have been released.
Political satire, as in the classic “Dr. Strangelove”, is often aimed squarely and rightly so, on the (at times) dubious and questionable practices used by our own government. We live in an open society which allows us to use free speech to question the authority of our government and encourages dissent. But in the world of cyber terrorism, and of terrorist regimes in general who are determined to bring down and destroy our way of life as a free and open society, it’s a pity we must pull this film from circulation.
One can only hope that lessons are learned and that we may be able to see this film, however innocent and light it is, as the filmmakers intended. Preferably sooner rather than later.
Six Degrees of Film 