A Dark Truth: Suddenly Damian Lee’s Amazing
By Pam Glazier · January 7, 2013
Thank goodness I was assigned to review A Dark Truth this week. I would have avoided or never heard of it otherwise. You see, not only has this film been sadly under publicized, but it has a few key elements that would have triggered my “stay away” response despite its excellence. For years I have wondered why the hell Andy Garcia has had a career. That’s not to say that I ever saw him deliver any sub par performances, he’s been fine the whole time. There’s just something about his work that I cannot connect with. And for some reason I have similar feelings towards Forrest Whittaker, but with less acerbity. Both of these actors star in this film. That would have been my first turn off.
The second would have been the subject matter. It seems that there are more and more politically motivated films out there, which is fine, but these new political films seem to assume that putting story in the back seat is acceptable because the serious subject matter is more important. I can’t stand that, and so I tend to avoid movies that attempt to highlight little known political issues. Of course there are exceptions, such as Jolie’s recent drama In the Land of Blood and Honey or Friedkin’s satirical Deal of the Century, where the story drives the film and the moralistic lesson occurs naturally within the audience as opposed to having it forcefully spoon fed; but more often than not, a slow and painful lesson is the only thing that films in this genre contain.
But these fears were all unfounded when it came to A Dark Truth. In viewing this film, I learned that Andy Garcia can move me, I learned that Forrest Whitaker has a really good knack for difficult accents, and I learned that writer/director Damian Lee is excellent…
WAIT! Hold the freaking phone… DAMIAN LEE!?!? The same Damian Lee who wrote and directed that crapfest
Sacrifice with Christian Slater and Cuba Gooding Jr.!?!? What the hell is going on here!? If you’ve been keeping abreast of my reviews, you will know that I submitted quite the
scorcher in response to Damian Lee’s
Sacrifice. I believe I even titled it “Avoid This Crap-Fest at All Costs.”
Well, whatever happened in the last year, it did wonders for Damian Lee. He coaxed out the first Andy Garcia performance that I could actually connect with. Usually Garcia feels like he’s playing the character, this time he was the character. Along with Garcia was a cast of well known actors delivering understated, yet powerful performances. Even though Garcia stars, this film almost comes off as more of an ensemble piece because of the very solid performances delivered all around. I recognized quite a number of actors from other movies who usually play things over the top, or somehow don‘t quite sync up with their characters, but it seems Lee has somehow transformed himself into the Actor Whisperer.
And beyond this, Lee has also turned in some pretty solid writing. The issue that he brings up with this film is complex, little known, and steeped in red tape. These kinds of things require a lot of exposition, and Lee handles it expertly. Many, many scenes from this movie are doing multiple things at once, but the pacing doesn’t seem frenetic. Quite the opposite, in fact. It’s like looking at a hurricane in a meditative bottle of calm.
This is effected because Lee takes the time to introduce us to the people we will be spending time with. We learn who they are and what they care about, and then Lee ensures that those things are exactly the things that we the audience also care about. Lee does well to ground this film around Garcia’s character of Jack Begosian. Begosian, an ex-CIA operative turned talk radio host in search of the truth, approaches the rough-shod violence required of him with a slow persistence that is inevitable and undeniable. It’s great.
Lee also uses “borderline illegal” screenwriting techniques to great effect. There is a scene where Begosian is hiking up a remote trail in order to get to the leader of the rebels. The scenes are necessary as the audience must understand how rough and wild the journey is. But during scenes like this, where there is nothing but nature and silence and climbing, Lee includes the audio from Begosian’s radio show. This audio works both as exposition and as a building of Begosian’s character, and it works perfectly. It doesn’t feel forced. It’s simply a superimposed audio-only flashback that introduces character subtleties. It’s a very effective method at providing the audience with a glimpse below the surface of the Begosian character’s “iceberg.” [editor’s note: if you have no idea what a “character iceberg” is, click
here.]
In a world where voice-overs and flashback’s are no-no’s, Damian Lee has proven his mettle. In further researching Lee, it seems that he is actually quite prolific. Damian Lee has directed 20 films, written 26 films, and produced 37 films. It just goes to show that an artist is a constant work in progress. Sometimes you forget that (like after watching Sacrifice).
This film is not a bombastic visual experience. I found it riveting because it so thoroughly utilized the art of good storytelling. It avoided being trite, it avoided being boring, it avoided being overly alarmist when dealing with a subject matter that is nothing but alarmist in nature. This film drew me in, and it is increasingly difficult for that to happen these days (after you’ve seen upwards of 5-10 thousand movies, that can be one of the unfortunate side effects). I commend Damian Lee for deftly telling a compelling story about the difficult subject of corporate atrocity.
