Tell Me Lies

This is a fine film. A drama-documentary, which takes a telling if narrow snapshot of London at the height of the Vietnam war. This is fascinating and useful insight into one section of British thinking. Coming as it does from the perspective of noted theatre director Peter Brooke and his band of Royal Shakespeare Company players, the views expressed here are authentically vexed, complex and multi-layered.

Many scenarios are authored and staged by Brooke and the cast which illustrate the diversity of anti-war opinion that existed among London's artistic and intellectual communities. However, this is no Swinging London post-card fantasy. The opinions expressed here are raw, heartfelt and honestly confused - much like the war itself.

One is left with the impression that those who occupied London's and indeed Britain's cultural high ground were feeling a sense of moral impotence and torment in the face of war's terrible realities. At the end of 'Tell Me Lies', the question of what price should be paid to fight a 'moral' conflict is left unanswered. Instead, we are left with a reminder that art and politics can offer no easy solutions to the legacy of war with its landscapes of broken bodies and destroyed lives.

Finally saw this after decades of curiosity--it hasn't been easy to find. Well, curiosity sated, though I'd hoped for more than that. The original stage show/revue seems to be represented here mostly by songs that are either heard only on the soundtrack, or are sung to the camera in tight closeup by poker-faced performers. So their presentation is not engaging, and despite the fairly clever/provocative lyrics, the music itself is more Brecht/Weill with a hint of jazz (than, say, rock or pop), which was OK for "Marat/Sade" but feels wrong for a movie about an issue as then-current as the Vietnam War.

As is often the case with Brit progressive politics, there is a great deal of intellectualized hand-wringing and America-critiquing, as opposed to head-on confrontation with the issue of the war itself. So the film represents a particularly removed kind of activism, despite glimpses of actual protests--a great deal of time is taken up by people having dully earnest arguments with one another. Even the fact that occasionally these people are significant outsiders like Stokely Carmichael, or that the monotony is broken up by things like an appearance by the Open Theater, doesn't keep "Tell Me Lies" from being a very didactic, navel-gazing, emotionally unmoving sort of anti-war statement. It's not much more exciting than if one attended an academic seminar entitled "Is This A Just War?," and sampled a few speeches/discussion groups.

Some of the actors are intriguing enough that I wish I'd seen them play other roles onstage. Glenda Jackson is not very prepossessing here (certainly not a fraction so much as she'd already been in "Marat"), though she does get to briefly demonstrate a nice singing voice.

In sum, this is a supposedly "radical" yet oddly middle-class theater experiment made into a not very successful movie that is irksomely self-conscious about all the above, as well as being a "semi-documentary," with people more or less playing themselves. Taken as a statement of anti-war solidarity, it's an admirable effort, but that's about the most you can say in its favor. Among the many, many more-effective cinematic commentaries about Vietnam in the era, a European perspective is articulated with much more vigor and variety by the multi-director omnibus "Far From Vietnam," which also got restored in recent years. A qualifier: The version I saw seemed to be about 20 minutes shorter than the official maximum runtime, though it's hard to imagine a LONGER "Tell Me Lies" would be less tedious.

The best film about war I've seen. This is not a film about 'a war' like the countless others I've seen, but something that truly addresses the issue of war itself. What is war? Is it a necessary part of human nature? Can one be a pacifist? Do I really care that people are being killed (in my name) in far-away lands?

Needless to say this film is as vibrant and shockingly relevant to the year 2010 as it was to 1968. Vietnam? Iraq? Afghanistan......?

Peter merges his 'fiction' seamlessly with stock footage, real people speaking, 'dramatic reconstructions'... even musical numbers. Again and again during the film I as the viewer am placed in front of myself. If you are open to the experience, you cannot watch this film passively. Peter has created a film which places myself and my 'opinions' in question.

I saw this film for the 1st time recently despite being a long-time admirer of Brook's work. It was screened at the Barbican in London. In order to reach the wide audience it richly deserves, this film should be re-released on DVD.