We Are Many (film)

We Are Many is a 2014 film directed by Amir Amirani. It is a documentary chronicalling the activities of the anti-war movement in the UK and US in particular, along with several other nations, as it mobilised with the aim of preventing the so-called “coalition of the willing”, led principally by the US, and followed by the UK, from launching a war in Iraq. As we know, this movement failed in their principal aims. The film’s title is an allusion to the Percy Bysshe Shelley poem “The Masque of Anarchy”, which features the verse: “Rise like lions after slumber, in unvanquishable number – shake your chains to the earth like dew/Which sleep had fallen on you, ye are many – they are few”. We Are Many interviews several subjects involved in the anti-war movement of that period, including Ken Loach, Noam Chomsky, CODEPINK’s Medea Benjamin, Donald Glover, and Tony Benn – in what would be his final appearance on film.

We Are Many emphasizes that the opposition to the war in Iraq, due to the valiant efforts of organisations such as Stop The War Campaign, CODEPINK, Veterans For Peace, and several others – became a worldwide statement from the global masses. It posits that by bringing voices from activists, active politicians, educators, voices within the military community, and the scientific community – who together joined in a global protest on 15th February 2003 involving 30 million people across 72 countries, that the peace movement had become “a new global superpower”, and while it had not been successful in preventing the Iraq War, it had inspired the Arab Spring and Black Lives Matter. When I watched this film, I was annoyed by its conclusions. While I could emphasize with the director finding inspiration in the movement for the anti-government protests in Egypt, I couldn’t ignore that the film highlights the limitations of that movement and every movement said to be inspired by it.

The decision was made to make resistance into a war into a giant march. It’s true that it mobilised a lot of people that wouldn’t be expected to attend a protest, much less an anti-war one (eg. political conservatives, war veterans, etc.). But it only served to highlight that the organisations that worked to bring it together relied on a framework that presupposed liberal democratic assumptions i.e. if the respective governments of those planning the war saw how many people were opposed to the war, they would reconsider the course of action that they took. We saw that public perception was a risk that they found acceptable and went with the war anyway. Bush and Blair were brought back to power the following term. No seat holder representing a political district who voted for the war lost the seat specifically due to the war, which turns the “global superpower” declaration of the peace movement into a farce. The organisations themselves who set it up were convinced that the benificiaries of the war were the arms industries of the respective nations and the oil multinationals. Instead of direct action, which implied a much smaller yet more dedicated groups willing to risk personal safety or freedom, they went for a mass movement drawing a cross-section of people to invoke the “democratic will of people” – unfiltered, unrefined, and full of contradictions. CODEPINK would later rely on the direct action approach to disrupting events attended by Cabinet members of the Bush administration. Andrew Murray himself suggests that had they managed to generate massive strikes, then the war would not have gone ahead. In a lot of respects, it only highlights the significant decline in the strength of organised labour in the advanced capitalist nations since the neoliberal turn.

The film’s assertion that the conditions for a similar mass protest was what stopped the British Parliament from another Middle Eastern war in Syria is suspect when you consider that Both the British and Americans supplied arms to the anti-Assad forces, and the usages of airstrikes by the Trump administration as well as the May government in the UK in Syria. The film unfortunately unintentionally highlights the profound impotence of the anti-war movement – especially in comparison to its relative strength a generation before. I tried explaining this my position on this immediately after viewing it to others, and was met with – at best, an ambiguous reaction. The clips that they used however, were incredibly moving, if nothing else.

We Are Many is a portrait of the passions which fuelled protest in the 2000s, specifically that around the Global North, which led to demonstrations and opposition to the Iraq War. Both the optimism around the strength ofopposition to the war in Iraq, expressed though mass protest, and the severe disappointment as its limitations became apparent.

Colonel Kilgore

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Lieutenant Colonel William “Bill” Kilgore is a fictional character from the 1979 movie Apocalypse Now! (dir. Francis Ford Coppola), portrayed by Robert Duvall.

Col. Kilgore’s appearance in the film is relatively brief in comparison to the length of the film (which is true even in the Redux edition), but it is memorable. The protagonist Capn. Benjamin L. Willard (portrayed by Martin Sheen) a special operations officer serving in the Vietnam War, is tasked with the secret mission to assassinate the renegade Col. Walter E. Kurtz (portrayed by Marlon Brando) by his superiors. Col. Kilgore is among the first people Willard encounters to help him, if indirectly in this mission, although not without some reluctance.

Kurtz came to be a problem for his military commanders apparently for the increasingly brutal methods he deployed without regard for restraint or more importantly – discretion. He ordered assassinations of perceived traitors and double agents – mainly local Vietnamese who were useful to the Americans, and even set up an outpost in Cambodia, with his followers viewing him as a demigod.

If Kurtz is a monster that needed to be destroyed, then Kilgore is another monster designed by the American war machine – only that it turns a blind eye to his own independent ideas of rules of engagement. Kilgore is the ideal soldier that the American military likes.

He deploys death cards for the Vietcong soldiers he kills. He projects an aura of personal invincibility even as the soldiers under his command flinch at the explosions around them. He’s the kind of soldier who would give his water canteen to a downed opponent who clings to life while suffering disembowelment. He even readily orders the quick deployment of bombing of a mountain range with napalm to deal with the persistent Vietcong soldiers. And he enjoys every last minute of it.

Kilgore has his own brutal methods and only decides to help Willard for the most arbitrary and ludicrous of reasons: The Nung river Willard needed to travel through had a river mouth and produced very good waves – Kilgore loves surfing, and would surf even during a Vietcong attack. Kilgore seems to be just as insane as Kurtz, which does not escape Willard. However, his insanity does not embarrass or inconvenience the American war effort. Rather, he almost perfectly embodies how the American military would like to project itself to the world – completely unflappable and implacable.

“Charlie doesn’t surf!”

– Kilgore, after a soldier in his command points out that assisting in Willard’s mission involves flying towards a Viet Cong outpost.

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After ordering a napalm strike over a Viet Cong outpost, Col. Kilgore goes on to say of the film’s most memorable lines:

I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn’t find one of ’em, not one stinkin’ dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell? The whole hill. Smelled like… victory. Someday this war’s gonna end…

Kilgore enjoys war so much that briefly musing over the thought of America’s war with Vietnam ending elicits mild disappointment. This is contrasted by Willard, who is stunned and completely taken aback by the colonel’s approach to war. This is also contrasted by Kurtz himself, whose brutal methods are deployed (in his mind) to bring as thorough and a immediate to the war as possible. The contradictions in the reaction from the American military command in their assessment of both approaches does not escape Willard, and he comes to view it as hypocrisy.

Coppola seems to have intended for the example of Col. Kilgore to be a disturbing mirror of military commanders in the Vietnam War (particularly Col. David Hackworth) to audiences. He’s certainly disturbing to me. However, if the film Jarhead is anything to go by (based on the memoir of Anthony Swofford of the same name), American soldiers generally do not have this reaction from Kilgore. They think that he is cool, and especially like the infamous “Ride of the Valkyries” scene – a scene which Coppola intended to show the unremitting brutality in which the war was fought, not how awesome he or the American side was. This only goes to serve Francois Truffaut’s maxim: “There’s no such thing as an anti-war film”.

Additional notes:

Even a year before I first saw Apocalypse Now!, I learned from a supply teacher who was a Gulf War veteran at my time in secondary school, that the real reason that the US stopped using napalm in the Vietnam War, is not because it was unethical – but because the usage of phosphorus was more effective. I will not share this person’s identity.

Black Panther Review & Analysis

“So you saw Black Panther?”

“Yeah”

(does flying motion) “WHOOSH!”

Conversation with a wino* after leaving Vue cinema

I get it. I’m black. So of course I saw Black Panther. But let me ask you this question: Why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I support Lupita Nyong’o? Why shouldn’t I watch a film with a majority black cast from a movie franchise that has had a contentious relationship with representation prior to this film? And why shouldn’t I see how Marvel Studios presents the first African superhero – created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby themselves, no less – is presented on cinema for the second time, with this one been his own independent film? Isn’t that what Marvel wants? Isn’t that why it spent millions of dollars on promos of the Black Panther doing something awesome to Vince Staples’ “Bagbak”? Absolutely I’ll watch Black Panther. I’ll play ball to give Marvel and Disney money. But I’ll also support the actors, directors and writers involved. Only they could have brought the film and made it what it was – with us telling the stories that mean the most to us.

So yes, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the story of a somewhat reluctant heir stepping into his role as king of an Afrofuturistic society. This wasn’t a origin film of the Black Panther much like most superhero films in general, let alone the Marvel ones. But this is an exploration film of the nation that the Black Panther is from and its place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I particularly liked the fact that most of the plot is in Wakanda, and the only times that they step outside to another nation, it’s to Nigeria or South Korea. In other words, it isn’t a superhero “Coming to America” plot.

So where do we start? I guess we start with the (re)introduction to the titular hero also known publicly as T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) who after his father’s assassination a week prior by Helmut Zemo, is to now be crowned king. He, at that point is, already the Black Panther – as his father before him. And as shown during an extraction mission in Nigeria, accompanied by Okoye (Danai Gurira) – The leader of his praetorian guard – Dora Milaje, and his personal advisor, he is a very effective inheritor of the superheroic mantle, capable of dropping off an aircraft and stopping a group of militants involved in the kidnapping of women and girls (implied to be Boko Haram or at least based on them) almost singlehandedly, armed with a handful of small gadgets. I say almost singlehandedly, because a single moment of being distracted by love interest and Wakandan secret agent Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) pointing out that one of the soldier is a mere child, Okoye takes out the remaining soldier, chastising T’Challa for ‘freezing’.

T’Challa is a serious, confident (perhaps overconfident) and proud young man, with a sense of honour and dignity about him. He spent nearly thirty years building up that persona as the firstborn son with all the burdens that requires. However, he has a hidden uncertainty in terms to living up to the legacy of his father, T’Chaka (John Kani) as king of Wakanda. It’s possibly also the fact that he didn’t get a chance to grieve the loss of his father that makes him even more uncertain. This is perhaps, yet another reason why he asks Nakia to return with him for his coronation – to remind him of the friends & allies that he has that would support him in this role and help him ease into it. He also notably asks her to stay in Wakanda knowing that her heart is in helping the world, notably the oppressed people of the world, instead of ordering her to – because he respects her and her work.

This is how the character of Nakia – who respects Wakanda’s traditions but feels more with the power it has, it has the responsibility to do more, is contrasted with Okoye – who is loyal to the throne of Wakanda no matter the person on it, even if the person threatens to radically change Wakandan governance, but has that loyalty conflicted with her devotion to T’Challa personally – and his immediate family. Also interesting to note that these conflicting philosophies between two these two very strong women was resolved in a healthier (to say the least) way than the men who were Wakandan royalty arguing about it, that serves as the basis of the antagonist’s backstory. But we’ll get back to that in a moment.

Next is the family of T’Challa: The Queen Mother, Ramonda (Angela Bassett) is a figure of quiet strength and warmth: While he has experienced the loss of her husband, she is prouder that his son is at the stage where he can step into his role as the leader of the country. She is joined by her youngest child and T’Challa’s teenage sister – the impish, sarcastic tech genius , Shuri (Letitia Wright). She ribs T’Challa as siblings tend to, but it’s out of love. She also made two Black Panther suit designs that were better than T’Challa’s out of nanotechnology that are activated by a traditional necklace rather than T’Challa’s full body suit, which she boasts about (“Ah! They are shooting me! Let me put on my helmet(!))”. Her sunny personality balances well with T’Challa’s serious, often contemplative demeanor. If anything, she brings out his self-effacing side. And of course, T’Chaka himself – who had left the earthly plane, but in the afterlife is still able to give sagely advice to his son, understands his confusion about his new role – but knows that it is because he is a good man that he wants to be a good king.

W’Kabi (Daniel Kaluuya), T’Challa’s best friend and Okoye’s beloved, is a brother-in-arms, and the head of the Border Tribe – essentially Wakanda’s security. He is soft-spoken, yet his pride is strong and his feelings of bitterness are very apparent when the subject of Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis), who killed his father in an explosion while stealing vibranium deposits, which eventually brings him into conflict with T’Challa.

And last, but definitely not least, there is the bombastic leader of the Jafari mountain tribe, M’Baku (Winston Duke), who makes an unwelcome entrance to T’Challa’s coronation to challenge him for the throne. One gets the feeling that he constantly raises his voice not merely out of anger towards the coronation or an expression of his arrogance (though those are factors), but as a mountain tribe leader, he is using his voice to let all of Wakanda know how he views things (“I will not have it! I will not have it, O!”), and challenges T’Challa’s pride and title in ritual combat – Which the latter accepts. Befitting the massive mountain man, M’Baku is a powerful and formidable opponent for a T’Challa deprived of the superhuman physical prowess and senses the Heart-Shaped Herb would give him. However, T’Challa’s endurance and skill is enough to best him over a waterfall. As T’Challa is within the customary laws of this combat to kill M’Baku, he opts to force him the proud M’Baku to yield instead – a testament to his respect and mercy. M’Baku is humbled, perhaps even humiliated – but he lives to continue as the tribe’s leader – something he doesn’t forget.

And now – the bad guys: We are introduced to the main antagonist, whose government name is Erik Stevens, birth name N’Jdaka, yet now prefers to go by the nickname – Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) in the Museum of Great Britain in London (They couldn’t use the real-life British Museum as you’re not allowed to film there) observing ancient African artefacts. I have to say two things when he first appeared: First – I love his clothing. Very Africa-chic. Second. He’s a very appealing antagonist to get wrapped into – We can see that he’s highly intelligent and observant when he interrogates the curator on how well-versed she is African culture, while framing it in innocent questions (his tone gives it away). He’s a crook. He flatly says as much, but he also throws in the curator’s face how the items arrived in the museum in the first place (“Do you think that when your ancestors came to Africa that they asked, or did they just take it?”) It’s powerful lines like this that made him so relatable, he’s conscious of himself as an African, and the wealth of his heritage – which is a primary motivator of his actions. He’s not merely a Black American or a Wakandan, but an African. However, Killmonger’s (and by extension, his father’s) pro-Blackness drives him to take interestingly contradictory actions: he collaborates with Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis) – a highly eccentric but no less dangerous black market dealer, who is an exploiter in every sense of the word. He even refers to the Wakandans as ‘savages’ undeserving of their vibranium. The man was a racist, yet he still worked with him, if only to get closer to his goal. Even years prior to their collaboration, he enlists and takes part in wetwork operations which destabilise the countries (almost certainly all in the Global South) that America has a problem with, as part of ‘regime change’. He openly states that many of his personal victims during these missions (which to stress, he ritually scars himself for every kill he makes) were black themselves and it was all of the purpose of revenge against T’Chaka’s line, with T’Challa as the principal target. The revenge itself was because his father was killed by T’Chaka when he discovered that the former leaked information about Wakanda to Klaue, as part of his plan for global black liberation led by Wakanda. As if that massive betrayal excused the goal.

This is how I came to the (seemingly isolating) view that Killmonger’s pan-Africanism was self-serving. Oh, don’t get me wrong: Killmonger brings up valid points about the problems of an African super-state that chose isolationism as its stance, doing nothing to prevent the suffering that mother Africa had endured: from slavery and colonialism, and even the violent reverberating effects that the end of these injustices produced (“Where was Wakanda?”). But my main problem with Killmonger is that these points are undermined by the aforementioned killing of fellow blacks to which was less important to him than seizing the Wakandan throne, his casual killing of his lover – also Black. His blatant disrespect for Wakandan cultural heritage and of the elder who preserved it as he consolidates his power. He also orders around the Wakanda Council, instead of…well, taking counsel from them in his decision-making. Even his dickish boast to T’Challa in the film’s penultimate act that Shuri will be next after he’s done with him. Of course, a lot this stuff is part of what happens when you exist in a film based off of a comic book, and you’re the antagonist – you say and do asshole things. Before getting the chance to complete this, have noticed some reviews from those of the pro-Black stance (mostly African-Americans) who felt that the movie made this guy the bad guy as some sort of heavy-handed way of policing them on how they’re supposed to feel about 400 years of oppression, and felt that his plan would’ve been a good thing. Maybe I’m too liberal in my thinking, but I don’t think that misogynoir, destruction of (your own) cultural heritage and the killing of those who disagree with you make for an ideal pan-African leader – especially one who uses imperialism as tool for black liberation. It literally makes no sense once you think about it. And to be fair, I had to watch it twice for it to sink in.

I’ve missed out Everett K. Ross (Martin Freeman) who previously appeared as part of a counter terrorism unit in Captain America: Civil War, but is now in this film working for the CIA. He is intensely patronising to most of the Wakandans he meets, and T’Challa in particular – who is a head of state. But underneath that is good man who put his life on the line to save Nakia. Because of this act, he received treatment in Wakanda – one of the very few outsiders to do so, and presented something of a conundrum since Ross works for the CIA, and Wakanda is….well, wealthier than they made themselves out to be. The US Government doesn’t have a good track record in the Global South. With resources coming in the midst, it can be tricky, sticky and ugly. Anyway, Ross played a vital part in T’Challa getting his kingdom back from Killmonger, and so he became the US State Department’s liaison to Wakanda (as in the comics). I kinda wonder the amount of BSing he has to do on Wakanda’s behalf.

There are a lot of themes within the movie: Most obvious of which is those of legacy and change. T’Challa initially fears that he will never live up to the greatness of his father. But he is confronted with a number of major problems that his father either couldn’t resolve, or was not willing to. The relationship with the Jafari tribe changed because T’Challa spared M’Baku’s life, and was willing to ask for their help, instead of leaving them isolated. Now M’Baku has a place in the council. Because T’Chaka couldn’t resolve his disagreements with his brother N’Jobu on Wakanda’s responsibilities, he tipped off Klaue to attack Wakanda, which killed W’Kabi’s father. And because T’Chaka was too concerned about the welfare of Wakanda and only Wakanda – N’Jobu’s son ended up abandoned, continued experiencing the oppression that comes with being black in America – knowing of the people that rejected him, became Killmonger, and sought revenge.

T’Challa decides that if adherence Wakanda’s traditional isolationism led to Killmonger, then Wakanda needs to change, and denounces his ancestors for not holding their responsibility to the world.

There’s also the subtle theme of the disconnect between Africa and the diaspora, played out between T’Challa and Killmonger. For me, it’s not merely enough to acknowledge your heritage but to learn to appreciate it – which Killmonger couldn’t completely do, because of his anger and lust for power. It’s only when he was fatally wounded that he recounted on hearing from his father on Wakanda’s splendour, T’Challa had enough pity to grant him a view of a sunset over Wakanda, so that he could spend his last moments appreciating for what it is.

T’Challa himself had learned something from Killmonger’s example – and set up a science & cultural exchange centre in Oakland in place of the blocks where N’Jdaka grew up. It’s…a start, but I just hope that T’Challa involves himself more with the urban communities in the US and elsewhere if this is what he’s going for. I’m an idealist, though – so I’m sure T’Challa ‘s heart is now connected to the disadvantaged peoples around the world. At least that’s how I interpreted his UN declaration speech.

Verdict: I enjoyed this film, and it shows by how much I’m willing to write about it. As a Marvel film, I thought it was refreshing that most of the events took place outside of America and Britain, with a small exception of Killmonger and Klaue’s heist in London. I’m also appreciative of the fact that for once, a place in Africa isn’t presented as impoverished or fragile enough for a superhero battle to be a serious problem. For once, the richness and beauty of Africa was the spectacle, if only in a fictional country. Black Panther is the first (non-Fox) black superhero that isn’t a sidekick to another, and is his own independent agent. The cinematography was absolutely fantastic. I love the wash of colours marking the five tribes of Wakanda, especially during the ritual combat by the waterfall.

The action was incredible, and I’m not just talking about from T’Challa, who was a mix of Batman and Iron Man with his nanotech panther suit which absorbs and releases the kinetic energy it receives. Most of the female characters in that film were downright fearsome, even Shuri (panther gauntlets), and especially Okoye (any woman who can make a wig snatch into an attack deserves her own movie). Hell, given how the Dora Milaje performed against Killmonger in the Black Panther suit, he’d have been in trouble if he did what he did in Civil War. The musical score was beautiful, going from bouncy in the action scenes, a triumphant introduction to Wakanda to sombre melodies.

8/10.