Recently Matt Damon attended the premiere of "Bourne Ultimatum" at the Egyptian Theater in downtown Boise, Idaho. (That’s right; we had a movie premiere here!) While in Boise, he granted an interview to Dana Oland, a reporter from Boise’s local daily, the Idaho Statesman. Since I greatly enjoyed the first two movies of this series, "Bourne Identity" and "Borne Ultimatum", and have been an admirer of Matt Damon since "Goodwill Hunting" I pulled up this article based on those interests. Now after reading it I am even more of a fan of Matt Damon. I’m sure you’ll see why.
If you are not familiar with the "Bourne" series (based on the books by Robert Ludlum), I’ll give you a quick summary: Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) finds himself ‘awakened’ and unsure who he is. His memory is almost non-existent; he does, however, find he has all kinds of skills, such as subverting electronic systems and kicking ass. As the story progresses he finds out that he was trained by an American intelligence agency to be an assassin, but now that agency has labeled him a rogue and a liability, and is attempting to kill him. Bourne now must dodge the agencies assassins as he attempts to find out who he really his.
Although one could escape into these movies without thinking them to be much of an allegorical tale for today’s political landscape (after all, who has thought innocently of the US intelligence community since the Bay of Pigs), Matt Damon points out the morality play being projected onto the big screen:
MD: What I really like about it is that he's a guy who's done really horrible things, but he's got this integrity. By the end of the second film, he's trying to atone. By the end of the third, he's really trying to redeem himself. That's a nice journey for a character now in today's day and age.
There's something in all of us that wants to see that, that admires that quality. We're not getting enough of that in our leadership, or in our culture in general. It feels like everybody blames their faults on other people, or they don't own up to them all. Whether it's driving under the influence when you're out of rehab, arranging dog fights, or leading a country into a war, everybody seems pretty unrepentant. So to have a character that is really struggling to repent for the things he's done and trying to be a better person is something that's attractive to Americans right now.
He also points out how the evolution of the films reflects the moods of Americans, as seen in the Bourne character:
Each film is very specific to the year it was made. The first one ("The Bourne Identity" 2002) is very much a post 9/11 film. The wounds are still raw. By the second one ("The Bourne Supremacy," 2004), we're in Iraq. He's no longer desensitized to violence, he understands what it does. He's lost someone and knows what that's like
Damon points out that that by the Bourne Ultimatum, just as Bourne fights his own private war of being used by the government, we all feel that same anger at being lied to and used to further Bush’s agenda:
he's kind of an iconic American character now. You have him put the gun to the head of basically the Neocomm and say, "You lied to me. And I see that now. You misled me into a war. You told me it was one thing, and it wasn't and you knew that. I see you for what you are and I am no longer your instrument."
I have yet to see this film, but if appears from the interview that Jason Bourne, while fighting to stay alive and discover who he truly is, has the integrity and humility to accept that the actions he was programmed for and committed, were wrong. Although Bourne is fictional, the ideal that he represents in this instance is not too much to expect of our own political leaders, Democrat or Republican.
So what say you President Bush? Will you prove to us that your integrity is above that of a fictional character in a spy novel and allow justice to prevail, and the will of the public to be realized? Or will you continue to insist you are right in everything you do, and remain instead, a cartoon character pretending to be an ethical leader. The choice is yours...
Idaho Statesman story