J. Edgar

My friend, Tim Brooks, and I went to Maryland to get an interview for a video project that we were working on. I've known Tim for 7 years, and a fun fact about us is that we were born on the same day in the same year! We didn't have enough time to do anything fun on our birthday, so we saw a movie, after the interview in Columbia. We looked up trailers, and this seemed to be the best one.

Unfortunately for us, the trailer didn't ruin the story, as most trailers do these days. It seemed, to us, like it may have to do with the assassination of JFK, and some other epic events in history with more insight into what created the events.

The movie started by giving a lot of information about J. Edgar Hoover, and I felt like I was actually enjoying something that was teaching me about history. The movie kind of portrayed Hoover as a hollow shell of a person, which started to get depressing after awhile. Then, about half way through, the movie's focus shifted almost entirely from the historical and event-based story to a fictional story about being lovers with his male assistant. Seeing Leonardo Dicaprio made up like an old man rubbing hands with another younger actor made up like an old man was very awkward for me. It got even more awkward during a scene where they got into a fight, were bleeding from the mouths, and one forcibly made out with the other until it was mutual. It was interesting that at the end of the movie, they had a short disclaimer letting the audience know that they basically didn't have much information to base a lot of the story on (so they took extreme creative liberties).

I tend to like stories that have a lot of believability mixed with what if scenarios. Like, what if WWI was actually started this way, and everything could have happened that way, but with this new twist. I really enjoy movies like that. I didn't really get that from this movie, though. I liked the movie more, before it focused on how shallow and empty of a person he may have been and before the focus shifted entirely to his gay relationship.

It's interesting how, as communicators, we can alter audience's view of the past. This happens all of the time with movies and books (even history books). It really shows how important first impressions are. If a person's first exposure to a story of the past is told one way, and then the person hears of another version of the story, the person will most likely stick with the first story that they heard. This reminds me of Inception. Did I just get incepted?