One Weekend Only: Carlos at the Music Box
By Steven Pate in Arts & Entertainment on Nov 30, 2010 9:40PM
Olivier Assayas' Carlos was too big of a miniseries for the small screen and too long of a film for most of the big screens. Before offering the "feature-length" cut next week, the Music Box has the film showing in the Road Show Edition, meaning the entire epic in its original length and format. That's 332 minutes of one of the most-anticipated, best-reviewed films of the year on tap for one weekend only.
If you don't know, Carlos the Jackal was the alias of Venezualan-born Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, who became the most infamous terrorist of the 1970s. His high-profile crimes and brazen exploits, most notably an orchestration of the capture of 42 OPEC ministers in Vienna, earned him worldwide notoriety. Though a despised figure now justifiably rotting away in a French cell, the terrorist's audacity and operational success are inherently the stuff of quasi-action-movie legend. Even his nickname, "The Jackal," was derived from the Frederick Forsyth novel The Day of the Jackal, supposedly found among his belongings and later turned into a film. Although Carlos has been portrayed as a terrorist mastermind often enough (in Tom Clancy novels and Robert Ludlum's Bourne Trilogy, for starters), most of the books and documentaries on the man have focused more on the attempts to track him down than on his journey from ambitious radical to the most wanted man in the world to a post-Cold War pariah exiled to the Sudan. Until now.
We haven't seen this epic yet, but all accounts indicate that director Assayas walks a thin line to perfection: the terrorist himself is never a sympathetic character yet the audience remains invested in the story, and star Edgar Ramirez is supposed to be this year's Christoph Waltz. Count us in. We're hoping for Che meets Munich.
.
For those who can't brook a epic running time, the 165-minute diet version will screen Monday-Thursday next week as well.
The complete, full-length version of Carlos consists of TWO programs: Program 1 (parts 1 & 2, 208 minutes), and Program 2 (part 3, 124 minutes). There are three opportunities to see the whole thing in one day (with an intermission between the programs: on Saturday, December 4 at 11:20 a.m. and again at 5:40 p.m., or Sunday, December 5 at 2:30 p.m. The Music Box is at 3733 N. Southport Ave. For complete times visit the Music Box website.