palewire

Last weekend I ran through James Mann’s new book, The China Fantasy.

His point is pretty simple. China is ruled by a repressive, single-party system. And, despite what George Bush or Thomas Friedman might tell you, there’s a pretty good chance that may not change anytime soon.

The bulk of the book walks through Mann’s arguments against past and present American accommodation of the current Chinese regime. His main villain is the common theory that China’s boom in economic development is almost certain to act as the catalyst for democratic reforms. Mann says maybe, but maybe not.

I won’t go any further unpacking his argument. (If you’re interested in learning more, you can borrow my copy of the book. It’s short enough that you can burn through it on a bus ride from DC to New York City, as I did last Saturday. Or you can get a taste of Mann’s argument by reading an Op-Ed he wrote for the Washington Post last month.) But one interesting thing I would like to share is this prediction Mann throws out near the book’s ending. I’m curious to watch this play out in the media next year in the run up to the Beijing Olympics.

Before the summer Olympics, as visitors are preparing to come to Beijing, Chinese leaders will undoubtedly tell the world that change is coming, that their political system is opening up. They will, in fact, probably take some tantalizing actions, ones that hold out the prospect for far-reaching change. In the spring of 2008, China’s newspapers and other news media may, for a time, be permitted unprecedented freedom. At Chinese universities and think tanks, intellectuals will launch new explorations of the concept of checks and restraints on the power of the ruling Chinese Communist Party — for example, by increasing the power of the National People’s Congress, China’s toothless legislature. In general, as the Olympics approach, there will probably be a period of greater tolerance for dissent and for political opposition.

This is the China that will be on display for tens of thousands of visitors who come to Beijing for the Olympics. China’s leaders will want the visitors to see a country that is enlightened, open-minded, and on the verge of far-reaching political change. The first test for the regime, as mentioned previously, will be whether it can protect its image during the games by keeping its citizenry under control. If things work out right, the foreign guests will never see or know how hard China’s Miinistry of State Security is working to prevent anything untoward — a large-scale political demonstration, for example — from disrupting the games.

The real test, however, will come not in the summer of 2008, but in the year or two after all the visitors go home. How many of the changes in China’s political system hinted at on the eve of the Olympics will actually be implemented? How much of the predictable Beijing spring of 2008 will last until 2009 or 2010?

Good news. E Street Cinema has decided to hold over their run of the restoration of Killer of Sheep, Charles Burnett’s beautiful 1977 film about the Los Angeles slum Watts.

Part French New Wave, part verite documentary, it’s a long way from your normal movie. It’s a bleak and slow-paced. The budget was next to nothing. There isn’t much of a plot. The main subject is poverty. Many of the actors were amateurs.

But at several moments its dream-like passages capture feelings of longing, tragedy and frustration with a power I’ve rarely seen in an American film.

They don’t come in the emotional showdowns or tissy-fit histrionics required to draw attention in Hollywood today. Instead, this is a movie that sneaks up on you, its moments of clarity and beauty leaping up out of the gravel to catch your eye.

In its own silent way, the scene where our protagonists, a husband (Henry Sanders) and his lonely wife (Kaycee Sanders), ebb to and fro with Dinah Washington’s “This Bitter Earth” is a quiet, romantic tour de force with more movement and punch than eight hours of opera.

And you’ll probably never have a chance to see it on the big screen again.

Am I nuts, or are there some deep shades of Woody Allen in Sam Raimi’s Spiderman 3?

I’m serious. Let me lay it out.

The new Spiderman movie features:

• The sunrise over Manhattan.
• Our anxious, self-conscious hero struggling to sort out his life and love from a shabby New York apartment.
• Romantic bonding during a playful, exuberant adventure in the kitchen (think: Annie Hall).
• A date set in an urban jazz club brightened by 1930s-style crooning.
• A lovers’ rendezvous on location in Central Park;
• Quick, cutting quips targeting religion (I’m not kidding. A vengeful Peter Parker actually says “Want forgiveness? Get religion.”)

Okay, of course, it isn’t a Woody Allen movie.

For one, bullet points aside, a large portion of the movie is made up of fast-paced, computer-generated violence.

But, perhaps more significantly, the moral of this movie isn’t something you can spot in Woody’s pictures. By the end of Spiderman 3, both hero and villain alike have learned a lesson: Happiness and satisfaction come from mutual bonds of sacrifice and concern between lovers and friends.

When the characters become too wrapped up in themselves, they range from self-absorbed to homicidal. When each learns to listen and forgive, they find inner peace (and outer peace, too, since they’ve stopped trying to kill each other.)

That’s hardly like any Woody Allen movie I can remember. You might disagree, but to me it seems almost the opposite. For Allen’s protagonists, resolution is found by rejecting the traditions of your fellow man and attuning yourself to an inner compass. Worry about you, then the rest will follow.

While it may work for Woody, it’s hard to imagine a superhero movie where saving the girl didn’t come first.