“Words get us nowhere. It’s time for action.”
The H-Bomb: Is that right, Carlos? Time for action? That’s why your life story offers so many words and so little action? Oh, but I’m jumping ahead of myself, aren’t I? “Carlos” tells the true story of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, or, as the world would come to know him, Carlos the Jackal (though he’s never actually called the Jackal in the film).
Kicking off with a disclaimer saying that it should be regarded as “historical fiction”, the film covers Carlos’ entire career as a political terrorist for the Palestinian cause, from his early days fighting for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Red Army Faction in Europe, to his rise to fame/infamy, to later in his life, when he’s living in hiding and struggling, in vain, to stay relevant.
Of all the killings, bombings, and kidnappings that he orchestrated, the most notable, and the one that the film spends a great deal of time on, is when Carlos and his crew take hostages at the OPEC headquarters in 1975, though the real mission is to assassinate a certain official. It all goes pretty wrong, leaving three dead, but Carlos, through careful maneuvering, is able to elude capture.
That single episode shows entirely who Carlos the Jackal was. They could’ve made the movie solely about that incident, and they would have had a pretty taut thriller. A kind of “Dog Day Afternoon” on a global political scale. But instead they just made it one part in the larger story of Carlos. They went for a full blown epic, one that was set in many countries and spoken in just as many languages. They went for huge, and huge is what they got. Too huge, as the end result is bloated, drawn out, and, at times, a tad flat.
“Carlos”, directed by Olivier Assayas, exists in two forms: as a nearly six hour long, three part mini-series, and as a two hour long theatrical film. I watched the mini-series, and it’s worth mentioning that it should be viewed as a mini-series, meaning it should be taken in one segment at a time. By trying to watch the whole thing in one shebang, you would only be dooming yourself to hate it.
The film that “Carlos” immediately reminded me of was Steven Soderbergh’s two-parter “Che”, not just in its sheer length, but in it’s style (documentary style), and it’s tone (understated). There is also, of course, the connection of the subject matter, since Che and Carlos both considered themselves “revolutionaries.” In fact, portraits of Che Guevera hang on the walls of the many safe houses and flats that Carlos stays in throughout the film. Like “Che”, I found “Carlos” interesting to a point, but also tedious in spots and overall just lacking any true insight into who its protagonist was.
That is my real problem, I didn’t feel like I knew any more about Carlos the Jackal after the film than before it. As played by Edgar Ramirez, Carlos was a calculating, strategic thinker who was perhaps a glory hound, but sincerely committed to his cause. But why? Why did a Venezuelan care so much about Palestine, so much as to dedicate his entire life as a terrorist to it? Why was violence the only solution for him? We never get answers to any of these questions.
Instead, we only see his actions. Carlos shooting people. Carlos tossing bombs into storefronts. And Carlos talking. Oh, we get a lot of him talking. Talk, talk, talk. Of his grandiose ideas. Of how deeply committed he is to the cause. Of how he dreams of uniting revolutionaries to the world over. We get to hear over and over again about his philosophies, but not about what drove him.
And he talks about these ideas of his with so, so many people. “Carlos” is a film with a cast of millions. There are so many players, in fact, that when they come on screen, we’re shown little subtitles to tell us who the hell they are. It’s all for naught, as trying to keep all these people straight is utterly futile. And that new characters keep on being introduced, right up until the very end, really doesn’t help matters either.
As a polemic, director Assayas keeps it objective and doesn’t judge Carlos. He’s neither a good guy or a bad guy. Neither romanticized nor demonized. Instead, his words and actions are depicted in a clinical, matter-of-fact fashion, leaving it up to us to decide whether he was a terrorist or a freedom fighter. I lean towards terrorist, myself, but that’s just me. He certainly was cold blooded, with zero remorse. I did laugh out loud when he claims to have “a great respect for human life,” though I don’t think I was supposed to.
“Carlos” does benefit significantly from a powerful performance by Ramirez. He really put all of himself into the role, and is indeed terrific. He pulls a De Niro in “Raging Bull” in how his figure morphs over time. The youthful Carlos dons many looks and disguises as he bounces around Europe and the Middle East, while the older incarnation, who was a drinker, is puffier and sports the requisite beer belly. The film’s faults aside, he is riveting to watch, and manages to hold the film together when nothing else does.
Overall, “Carlos” is not a bad film, as the subject matter is inherently interesting and it was never really boring, per se, just monotonous and long winded in places. I would expect a biopic that’s six hours long to have a fully developed lead character. But the Carlos we get here is underwritten, and, as a result, the entire film, while striving for greatness and importance (much like Carlos himself), is under-whelming.
