Oliver Stone’s new movie, Snowden, comes out in a week and I’m jittery with anticipation. I’m a Stone buff. I first saw JFK at 13 and was bedazzled. It was a kaleidoscope of paranoia, a three hour college of Americana, mystery, fantasy, and grim reality. Rather than dryly present history, stone collided it like a symphony, playing with different hues and notes in each frame. JFK truly dramatizes a national obsession. Stone had turned history, or rather historical speculation, into art, a rare feat, actually.
Of course, by unequivocally endorsing the conspiracy theory, JFK was very controversial, as is most of Stone’s work. Despite three oscars and more than a few top grossers, Stone is a hollywood black sheep. Even many who support or tolerate his political bents, blast him for replacing subtlety with flare.
Yet, just as many of the most sedate movies feign subtlety, Stone’s operatic form and political will disguise a career that has faced head on our touchstone cultural traumas, from Vietnam (which he fought in) to the Kennedy Assassination, to the media’s fetishizing of serial killers. Just because he does it with brio and a healthy bit of editorializing, doesn't mean he gives pat or easy answers. If a thesis destroys subtlety, than every essay, no matter how artistic, is unsubtle.
And in this seemingly especially bizarre political age, we need mainstream renegades like Oliver Stone. Edward Snowden, spying, 9/11, the internet, these are to our generation what JFK, The Cold War, rock, drugs, and Vietnam were to Stone’s. No emerging director has confronted them with Stone’s verve and force, so Stone, at 70, will have to do.
The corporate masters were willing to tolerate Stone’s controversy and dissent when he made them tons of money, but he hasn’t had a bona fide hit since JFK. Snowden was rejected by every major studio and is basically a foreign independent project. But, with the “radical fringes” (Trump, Bernie) on the rise, Snowden could signal his comeback. Let’s hope so, if only to piss off the right people.
