Based on message boards, websites, and Angela Lansbury quotes online, it seems people have been having this same dream. Remaking classic films for modern audiences feels like a nightmarish act. "I'm so unhappy," Lansbury said. "I'm so sorry they had to mess with something that was so perfect." Film buffs are irate. There is no reason to mess with perfection and try to improve upon the original film version of The Manchurian Candidate. Some cinephiles are asking for the heads of Jonathan Demme, Scott Rudin, and Tina Sinatra on a silver platter for committing such a blasphemous cinematic act.
Yet most of the reviews say that the new movie works on its own right and should not be compared to the original. It's more of a straightforward thriller, whereas the original was an intense psychological melodrama with elements of black comedy. Tina Sinatra released the rights to the film for a remake because she says, "(my father) believed, as we do, that premises can be brought into the future."
Jonathan Demme's take on The Manchurian Candidate really works on a new level by bringing the paranoid internal conflict of the Bennett Marco (Denzel Washington) character to the forefront and making it the foundation on which the entire film is built. Jonathan Demme creates a claustrophobic world where parental pressure, societal expectations of normalcy, media bombardment, corporate puppetmasters, and bad science impact the characters. Even people in the film who do not have brain implants inside them seem to show subtle signs of brainwashing. Take for instance the opening scene at the Boy Scout meeting where everyone says all the right things and asks all the right questions of Bennett Marco, a man who served his country in Desert Storm. Or look at the Democratic Convention and celebration party where revelers are frothing at the mouth like Pavlovian dogs willing to believe everything they see. It is all staged much like current TV -- an invasive presence that runs throughout the film. Even the visual style supports this internal paranoia with a dearth of tight close-ups and actors talking directly into the camera. Director of Photography Tak Fujimoto explains, "(Jonathan Demme) wanted to give audiences a visual connection between Melvin's room and Marco's mind. In that way, the cinematography is almost documentary-like, with the camera sort of poking around, probing to find something in the center of the frame that's not there."
On an emotional level, The Manchurian Candidate succeeds, but the film fails when it gets caught up in typical thriller trappings. All good thrillers have mad scientists, and there is no lack of them in this one. My personal favorite is the crazy monkey doctor, an Albanian refugee (played by German actor Bruno Ganz) that has some unexplained relationship to Bennett Marco, who knows everything about implanted chips in people and delivers shock therapy as needed. Unfortunately, the emotional tautness of the film goes slack when it focuses on plot rather than the characters' inner turmoil. All of this creates severe credibility problems when men being tracked by the FBI can walk into a political rally, be detected on camera, be followed the ENTIRE movie around every corner of New York City, and then be left alone to commit an assassination. The original version of Candidate works much better on this level, building to a much more disturbing climax.
To say that Jonathan Demme's 2004 version of The Manchurian Candidate lacks merit, however, would be unjust. It's just frustrating to see a potentially great and disturbing political satire sacrificing compelling character development in favor of convoluted plot twists.
Now I am starting to have more nightmares. These garden party attendees are discussing a remake of another classic thriller, North by Northwest. Wait, this is just a bad dream. Hollywood would never do something that horrifying.
by Tom Cappello
