Michael Manns The Insider - History Redefined :: Movie Film Essays

Michael Manns The Insider - taradiddle Redefined1 Growing up, I had always been a fleeceable child. If someone had told me the sky was falling, I would inevitably look up. As my naivety led me to be the butt of many jokes, I grew slight and less trusting. I learned that if something looks too good to be true, then it probably is. I learned not to buy products from infomercials. I even had to deplorably face the reality that the WWF wrestling matches I so faithfully watched from each one weekend were fake. My eyes had been forced open and made to look at the light. But when I looked back down at the world shut up to me, my vision was blurred. I had become cynical. 2 In retrospect, this change was a reasonably positive one. I began questioning everything, taking nothing for granted. I watched movies and tv set shows with a look of disgust, knowing that the unlikely scenarios portrayed on the cover charge could never happen in real life. When the Reel American History project came my way, I knew it was the perfect playground for my inquisitive mind and suspicious nature. I thought about how I would be a detective, stripping the real facts about what happened. Nothing would get by me I imagined myself woof apart the film, moving picture by scene, and raking the filmmaker over the coals for daring to pull strings history. 3 After choosing to study The Insider, I sat down to watch it. For close to three hours I was riveted by the drama unfolding on the screen. I was completely swept up in the story. As the last scene faded away, I sat silently with my emotions sadness for Jeffrey Wigands losses, an utter abuse for the entire tobacco labor (at that point, synonymous with evil in my mind), and a deep sense of admiration for my new hero, Lowell Bergman. But then a new frame came up on the screen and interrupted my thoughts. I squinted to see what the small print said Subsequent to the events dramatized here, the tobacco industry in 1998 settled the lawsuits filed against it by Mississippi and 49 other states for $246 billion.