Not a Dinner Party

FEW MEDIA OFFER a better opportunity for propaganda than that of the silver screen, and not only those in the Soviet Union or China. The best political movies of the last few years--China Syndrome or Missing, to name two--show how hard it is even for talented actors and directors to stray even slightly from the party line. Film demands the most elemental depiction of politics, boiled down to easy dogma, rather than to the essential ambiguity of most causes.

Given this proclivity of filmmakers, the thought of a movie today about revolution in the Third World can inspire distrust. Not that revolutionaries are inherently wrong-headed or their cause unjust. Political movies, hewing as they usually do to the most simplistic line, tend to sway only the true believers and leave the skeptical dead-set in their beliefs. This is why Under Fire, the latest of this genre, a film about the Nicaraguan revolution, has to be approached with skepticism.

And all the signs here point to easy moralism. Benevolent revolutionaries fighting fascism; idealistic rebels among the Sandinistas; U.S.-backed dictator pig Somoza; dreamy-eyed Western Press ready to report injustice and suffering--there's a lot it's hard to argue with. Except there's a catch. True, the filmmakers--led by director Roger Spottiswode--are sympathetic to the Left here, and with good cause. Even by the not-so-high standards of right-wing Latin American dictatorships, the government of Anastasio Somoza was a sorry lot, oozing corruption and brutality. And yet Under Fire is able to transcend a doctrinaire manifesto for the Revolution, and instead presents simply a reasoned appeal for common sense. In a word, the movie is believable, and the case made for the Sandinistas is more convincing than, say a heavy-handed Costa-Gavras would have us believe in his black and white world. It may not play to the rabid right-winger, but it probably would play in Pooria.

The avenue for this success is three journalist friends who travel down to Nicaragua as the Sandinista drive to oust Somoza in 1979 is gaining momentum. There is, to be sure, a certain degree of caricature on the surface. The portrayal of the reporters--Nick Nolte, Joanna Cassidy and Gene Hackman--does little to break the stereotype of the foreign correspondent, as we get a vicarious glimpse into the (improbable) world of tough-talking, globe-trotting journalists.

Likewise, the filmmakers offer up a stale love triangle between the three friends, whereby one (Hackman) is torn between a television career and a woman (Cassidy) who in the meantime is falling in love with a mutual photographer friend (Nolte). While the whole menage a trois sounds as though it has possibilities, it is not developed too deeply and in the end it gets rather tiresome.

Far more interesting are the broader moral questions the film asks throughout, the answers to which give some clue to how we are supposed to think about the Revolution. We are asked if it is impossible not to take sides in a struggle of this sort. The answer, the filmmakers imply, is yes--and not just for your dewy-eyed radicals.

Certainly Nick Nolte's Russell Price is no such ideologue. His pictures of battles all over the world have appeared in such places as Time magazine, and he harbors no-illusions about revolutionaries. As Price himself puts it early on, "I don't take sides, I take pictures."

OR DOES HE? The story unfolds with Price and a radio broadcaster, the beautiful Claire Stryder (Cassidy), off in search of Raphael, the charismatic Sandinista leader (who is fictionalized for the film to personality the spirit of the opposition). It becomes increasingly clear that things aren't so simple as Price thought--that just through the execution of his job (or the non-execution of it) Price will have an effect on the outcome of the struggle. Not to give too much away, but what if those pictures Price was taking casually one day in a Sandinista stronghold got into the hands of government sympathizers? What if they were used to help Somoza's death squads track down his opponents? And what if someone you thought was just a passing friend turned our to be the one who stole your prints? This is not a principal part of the plot, but these questions do illustrate the sort of dilemma faced by price--a regular guy just like us.

By framing the question in terms of ethical choices faced by normal people, the filmmakers avoid a lot of heavy-handed posturing. It helps that the cinematography graphically recounts the bloody street fighting of the last days of Somoza. The Sandinistas come off as every bit the under dogs they were. A good deal of camera time is spent on detailing the excesses of somoza's soldiers. This helps, too, in bringing the viewer over to the right side. But what finally brings us squarely behind the Sandinistas is the reality of the situation. Moral choices are limited and the correct once and self-evident for those seeing and be lieving common sense. Maybe you still won't like the direction of the Nicaraguan revolution. But you can't say Under Fire is propaganda.