Battle In Seattle – The Geekscape Review
November 30th 1999.
I was a student in my Sophmore year at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. Life was pretty good. I had just gotten an apartment with a few friends in the Capitol Hill area where our college was based. I had a job at the Paramount Theater as an usher. All the world was my oyster. There had been mumblings amongst my hippie activist friends that this global conference was going to be happening that week. Something called the WTO (or World Trade Organization). My friends were going to take off class early so they could go downtown to support other activists in protest of this Global Threat – to listen to them talk you would think that Galactus himself had set up shop in the Conference Center. About 2pm we got a call from the head of the school saying that classes were cancelled for the day as what started off as peaceful protests had scaled into a full blown riot on Pine St. As we were going home you could see down the hill to downtown and see the clouds of tear gas and the distant pops of canisters and “non-leathal” rubber bullets and beanbag guns. The most haunting though was the sounds of yelling. It wasn’t just the screams of the scared and hurt. It was the chants that drowned even those out. A cerfew was enforced for downtown and the National Guard was called in. A state of emergency was put into place. The first one of a non-weather related kind in recent U.S. history. Did we care though? Not really. It meant a night of partying at our place since there was no school the next day.
December 1st 1999.
As we had the day off most of my friends spent time watching the protests or going to join the sit down at Westlake Center. I spent the day nursing a really bad hang over. Things were still really bad downtown. All the major stores on Pike and Pine (the two largest streets for shopping) were either closed or boarded up to protect from the Anarchists who had spent most of the night smashing windows and spray painting their feelings onto the sides of the buildings. That night was when it all caught up to me.
I was going to the grocery store at around 6pm (curfew started at 7pm) when I heard shouting coming from down the street toward the store. As I neared the store I saw that there was a large group gathered at the end of the intersection. When I got close enough I saw that on the other side was a group of riot police blocking off the road. Everyone has seen cops in riot gear on TV or in movies, but there is something completely different about seeing them face to face and knowing that you are on the WRONG side of their shield. Add to it that they were all wearing gasmasks and had their batons drawn. You could almost feel what was going to happen next before it occurred. There was a voice over a bullhorn telling the crowd to disperse and there was a cry from the crowd telling the cops to leave our neighborhood. My friend and I turned around at this point since we wanted nothing to do with this, but it was too late. We heard it before we smelled it, this sickening pop followed by at least a few more. Then the smoke started pouring over us. We had been teargased. There is no way to describe what I felt next. It’s like you’re breathing in acid and pepper, but you can’t move away from it because it is everywhere. You can’t see because you can’t open your eyes. You get completely disoriented. Luckily my friend had covered his face before it hit so he guided me off of Broadway and back to our building. We flushed our eyes and got out of our clothes; which we latered burned at a ceremony a few days later. We holed up in our apartment for the rest of the night listening to the pops and screams, the sound of the garbage cans hitting cop cars, at one point I swear I heard a baton crack open a skull. Our power was cut at around 11pm and was turned back on at 2am. I had thoughts that this was the end of the world. The night was later called The Battle for Capitol Hill by the news, but really it was just a pissed off neighborhood fighting back against a police force that was out of control.
The protests lasted a few more days, but we rode them out inside. We had heard that a few of our friends had been arrested along with 600 others. One of my good friends had joined up with the Anarchists from Eugene and were holed up in an abandoned building for the weekend, surrounded by the police and National Guard. He somehow made it out without even getting arrested.) It took a few weeks for the storefronts to all be fixed, but by Christmas everything was back to normal.
I write all this to give you an account of the WTO Riots (or the news dubbed “Battle In Seattle”) from someone who was there that was neither a protestor, anarchist, policeman or diplomat. Someone who was just living their life during this crazy time.
“Battle In Seattle” is the directorial and writing debut from actor Stewart Townsend (mostly known as the Not Tom Cruise Lastat from “Queen of the Damned”, and Dorian Grey from “League Of Extrodinary Gentlemen”). When I first heard about it, I was a bit leary, since I was pretty sure that they were going to make it way too Hollywood and demonize one set and glorify another. I have to say that I was pleasently surprised. Not only are all sides given a voice, protestors, police, government, WTO delegates and to a certain extent, the media, anarchists and civilians; but it is done very democratically. No one side is made to look like the wrong doers (except for the WTO as a group, but for good reason. If you don’t know the WTO, look them up. Shady shadow governments, but this isn’t the medium for that conversation.) and I think that is what’s key to this. Granted the main story is about the protests, so there is a great deal of focus on them. The main players in this group are Jay (Martin Henderson), Lou (Michelle Rodriguez), Sam (Jennifer Carpenter) and Django (Andre Benjamin). Jay is the leader of this section of peaceful protestors, who are only wanting to stop the procedings of the WTO through sit ins and marches. Jay has a past with protesting and is on his 2nd strike, one more arrest and he is going to prison for life. This doesn’t stop him though as he is devoted to this cause after a family tragedy strikes. Django is the animal rights protestor of the group. He is played with some much needed humor by Benjamin. This guy is really watchable and I don’t know why he isn’t in more things. Jennifer Carpenter plays Sam, who is new to the action but not to protesting. She is a lawyer who is assigned to help the group if things go bad. Rounding out the group is Lou. Lou is the same character that Rodriguez always plays and feels like her only purpose in the movie is to be the hardass with the heart of gold.
On the opposing team (the police and government) you have cops Dale (Woody Harleson), Johnson (Channing Tatum) and Mayor Jim Tobin (Ray Leota). It was interesting to see the view of the events from the Mayor’s perspective. He is in a losing situation, he just wants what’s best for the city, but he also wants to keep freedom of speech. It’s really this conflict of interests that causes things to spiral out of control so fast. It’s the cops though that are some of the best parts of this movie. Like I expressed in the beginning of this piece, it’s hard to humanize these figures of force, but Townsend does a great job with it. You really get to see the transformation between these two characters. On a sidenote, it’s really interesting that Woody Harleson was cast as a riot cop against protestors, since he is a very outspoken protestor himself. That being said, he plays Dale with so much passion that you can’t help but side with him.
The rest of the ensemble is rounded out by a News Reporter (Connie Nielsen) who learns that there is more to news then just spouting disinformation (a fact that I wish was actually played out by real newspeople.); Dale’s wife (Charlize Theron) who represents the normal citizen caught up in a situation out of control; the Anarchist (Joshua Jackson); and the WTO Delegate (Rade Sherbedzija) who doesn’t want anything other then helping the Third World.
As stated earlier, I believe that the strength of this movie is the fact that it succeeds in telling the story from all the different angles. Townsend has mixed in images from the actual news reports and coverage of the riots to give the movie a more realistic feel, and it works. I also like the fact that it makes a point in showing that not all of the protestors were commiting violence (in fact it was a very small delegation of anarchists that were responsible for the majority of it), unlike what the media was spinning during that time. It is this blend of excellent storytelling and intense images that brings out the best in the film. There are some hiccups in the way though. At times it can be a little heavy handed, one scene in particular involving Charlize Theron is a major offender, and some of the content seems just thrown in there without any sort of backing. All said and done though I think that “Battle In Seattle” is definitely a movie worth checking out. It shows that just a few thousand people with the right spirit can set out to change the world.
For more information check out: www.battleinseattle.com
