I’ve seen a few films recently: Ararat, Weather Underground, and Gangs of New York.

Ararat, directed by Atom Egoyan, is an excellent portrayal of the post-genocide experience of ethnic Armenians almost entirely eliminated from Eastern Turkey. Egoyan uses the device of a film-maker with family ties to an Armenian historian and lecturer to bring the film a dramatic sense both personal and community-oriented. The scenes with the retiring customs officer strain crebility a bit, although the excellent cinematography makes up for that.

I went to see Weather Underground at the Castro Theater with my friend Steve S. We both were shocked by the number of bombings undertaken by the radical activist group in the early to mid-70s. The film helped me to understand better the political context of the era with activists torn between non-violent action and what they for a brief historical moment deludedly thought would be a more effective violent action against all white Americans culpable for the system that produced the war. After three of their number died in Greenwich Village townhouse while trying to devise a bomb, the group continued the use of bombs for purposes of property destruction, but was extremely careful not to cause harm to persons in exploding the bombs at locations like police headquarters, the U.S. Capitol building, the White House, and other targets. I was surprised I hadn’t heard about more of the bombings. I recognized one of the Weather Underground as a lesbian or “bi” women released fairly recently from jail. One of the Weather Underground was still in jail on a life sentence for later actions with a Black Liberation Army group that resulted in two deaths. Most of the Weather Underground, who managed to stay underground, undetected by police or FBI for many years, eventually surrendered to the authorities and, ironically, had charges dropped against them due to the evidence of heavy-handed and illegal police intimidation tactics used against them in their criminal investigations. Some of them were ashamed to talk about parts of what they had done, yet nearly all of them still held on to a sense of revolutionary struggle for social and political change.

Finally, the Gangs of New York was a portrayal of gang rivalry between those native-born to the U.S. and the Irish immigrants of the Civil War period. It is a story of family, gang violence, and revenge, with a little love interest thrown in. Leonardo di Caprio plays the part of the Irish son following in his Da’s footsteps well, as does Daniel Day Lewis in the role of the native gang capo. Those who avoid violent films might want to give this one a miss: it has lots of bloody hand-to-hand combat.