The truth is out there

Rating: Null/10 (7 November 1999)

The title alone promised an exciting espionage thriller. When Marie Brenner wrote her Vanity Fair - article on a Kentuckan teacher whose brave court testimony forced the tobacco industry into an expensive law suit settlement the true story was already old news. "The Man who knew too much" neither had the resemblance of James Stewart, nor was ever rescued by Doris Day singing "C'e serra, serra". Still, writer/director Michael Mann found the incidents described so intriguing that he decided to make an epic tale out of it. To adapt the real life to the big screen he followed his "heat"-formula and created thereby the most powerful movie on modern-day journalism since "All the President" s Men". Unlike Costa-Gavras questionable approach to the world of television news with the 1997 thriller "Mad City" Mann focuses much more on the behind-the-scenes settings than the obvious thriller elements. As with "Heat" he centers the whole story around two men who - this time - fight for the same good cause, but still are confronted with completely different living situations. While Dr. Jeffrey Wigand is fired from his job as a head researcher of the third biggest U.S. tobacco company TV-news producer Lowell Bergman negotiates an exclusive interview with one of the sheiks who possibly initiated the U.N.-bombings. Bergman is a small, energetic king of his little Reich which is the famous CBS news show "60 minutes". His goal in life is to provide the U.S. public with the whole truth behind the headline news stories. Wigand, however, just wants to continue making his living. He has two little daughters - one has really bad asthma - and a wife who is really not very supportive. In an ingenious opening montage we see these premises to the real drama intermingle. While Bergman and his interviewer Mike Wallace sit in an anonymous room in Teheran and talk to a fundamentalist terrorist, Wigand comes home and very quietly tells his wife about his sudden unemployment. Russell Crowe impresses down playing the humiliation and anger of Dr. Wigand who stands only at the threshold of a family life which is slowly about to break in pieces. The contact between these different characters is made almost in secrecy, by exchanging faxes. This initiates an awkward communication between Bergman and Wigand. It takes them nearly the whole movie to finally establish something like relationship, although they will never have the chance to become real friends. Bergman acknowledges Wigands struggle and he secretly admires him for his stoic sense of justice. Whereas media icon Mike Wallace has never better to say as: "Where are these people?" the second the Wigands may decide not to go public. In the meantime, Wigand loses his house, his medical insurance, his dignity, his trust, his wife and almost his two kids he cares the most for. He is willing to put all that at stake to help justice succeed, and it is the frantically realistic helpless way he fights his lonely fight against his former employers for which the viewer respects him the most. Of course, this is just a movie with a lot of alterations to the true facts, but still it is the most intimate depiction of an almost Don Quixotian media war we' ve ever seen on the big screen. The camera stays very close to the actors, almost always observing their faces and painfully revealing the well hidden frustration behind their faces when they are confronted with the fact that CBS won' t broadcast the explosive interview. As the corporate lawyers tell Bergman: "The bigger the truth, the bigger the damage." Meaning the TV network does not want to risk a law suit by the tobacco company Wigand worked for. Memorable dialogue lines like these are not presented with larger-than-life gestures as in Costa-Gavras "Mad City", but evolve almost naturally from the ever changing situations and problems the TV producer and his dependent news source are confronted with. Bergman does not hesitate to stay true to his promise and by playing out his connections he finally get their interview on the small screen. Again, Mann does it the new way in presenting the audience the fact that the written journalistic word is still more powerful than any TV picture, because it is the "New York Post"-Editorial which decides over Wigands future and leads to his rehabilitation after weeks and weeks of dirty campaigning against him. Still, at the time his face is shown on TV another story already catched the headlines - the arresting of the devilish Utah bomber. In that way, Mann concludes drawing his news cycle and points out that Wigands personal story - as life changing as it was for him - is only one small part of a media world which is stuck between journalistic truth and corporate decisions. That' s why the "real" Bergman resigned his job and went on making "Frontline" for PBS and teaching at UC Berkeley. Still, in the very last scene with Wigand we see him and his two daughters eating spaghetti in his own new apartment. "The Kentuckan teacher of the year" and his story finally resigns with a happy ending. It is Mann' s ability to build up suspense without any unnecessary violence which keeps this drama going and is best symbolized in one scene when Wigand glimpses at a burned down car wreck on the side of the road. Small, almost unrecognizable moments like this make this movie a treasure chest of great performances and powerful pictures. There are only few scenes where we really don' t trust the authenticy of what we see. Underlined with a hauntingly quiet soundtrack, composed by "Dead Can Dance"-performer Lisa Gerrard and an uncredited Graeme Revell this is the best drama of the year so far, and a sure candidate for the upcoming Oscar-nominations.