Not Coming to a Theater Near You

In Smog and Thunder / The Great War of the Californias / USA / 2003

Over a painting of a ravaged Golden Gate Bridge we hear Jessica Summers, a civilian, say, “I was on my way to work and had just gotten on the bridge when I heard the first explosion. It was too late to turn around without spilling my coffee, so all I could do was keep going. The second explosion shook the road, and through the smoke I saw a car go off the side. Then I spilled my coffee. My lawyer says I’ve got a case.”

Like many of the characters in Sean Meredith’s In Smog and Thunder, Summers is too self-obsessed to understand the war around her. Dubbed “Smogtown versus Fogtown,” the war between Los Angeles and San Francisco has been brewing for some time. But Meredith’s war is a critique of everything we’ve come to associate with history. Based on 120 paintings by Sandow Birk—paintings that transform San Francisco and Los Angeles into the sketchy, monochromatic Gettysburgs and Antietams we all know from civics textbooks—Meredith takes clever jabs at Ken Burns by replicating his style. Slowly, the camera pans over smoldering skylines, tanks and ships with product placements, and commanders in the thick of battle.

The commander of the “southern” forces is Juan Gomez de los Angeles, a construction site manager whose hatred of San Francisco stems from an ill-fated Grateful Dead concert years ago; his name confounds even the film’s narrator. His adversary, Commander Rebecca Jordan, is a former game show letter-turner whose knowledge of the California terrain stems from a failed career as an actress. Employing racial and colloquial stereotypes, Meredith transforms both characters, as well as their soldiers and supporters, into charades that, more or less, serve as commentary on the over-glamorized absurdity of war. (For those looking to find a send-up of the War in Iraq, it should be noted that Birk finished “The Great War of the Californias” long before the election of 2000.)

Co-written by Birk and Paul Zaloom (Beakman of “Beakman’s World”), In Smog and Thunder is a great satire that goes on far too long. At 47 minutes, the in-jokes become tiresome and the visual humor of the paintings disappers. It will be interesting to see how Meredith and his crew, including Birk and Zaloom, take on their next project, a contemporized version of Dante’s Inferno starring Pope Nicholas III, a pimp, a FOX News reporter, and Strom Thurmond.

by Adam Balz | Source: Eclectic DVD
05 Dec 2006 8:13 PM | Submit Comment