In ‘Superpower’, the commitment and passion towards the Ukrainian people that the actor and filmmaker strives to champion through the film may be genuine -although, from what we have seen, it is at least questionable-, but in any case they would not be enough to give your footage artistic or news value.
Narcissism is a personality disorder that manifests itself through delusions of grandeur and the constant need for recognition, among other symptoms, and the evidence that Sean penn suffers a rampant version of that evil occupies the very center of ‘super power‘, the documentary about the war in Ukraine presented today at the Berlinale. According to him, few of the other events that have taken place in that country in the last year are as important as the presence within its borders of both Penn and Aaron Kaufmannwho has co-directed it with him.
Maybe the commitment and passion towards the Ukrainian people that the actor and filmmaker strives to champion throughout the film are genuine – although, seen as seen, is at least questionable-, but in any case they would not be enough to give your footage artistic or news value. Not only does it not explain anything that many media outlets have not reflected on in a deep and up-to-date way, but it also filters the facts at all times through personal experience and the gaze of the most famous of its co-directors. In one of its sequences, for example, ‘Superpower’ tries to generate suspense while contemplating the Hollywood star and his henchmen return to their 5-star hotel in kyiv as the rest of the city begins to burn in the background.
He Penn’s activist zeal, let us remember, has often generated controversy; It happened when, in 2002 and 2003, he decided to work as a reporter since the Iraq war and also when, in 2015, he interviewed the ‘narco’ Joaquín “El Chapo & rdquor; Guzmán for ‘Rolling Stone’ magazine; his respective visits to the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina and the earthquake in Haiti earned him posturing accusations, to which he responded by wishing his detractors “to die of rectal cancer amidst howling & rdquor ;. In fact, he and Kaufman they began filming in kyiv at the end of 2021, weeks before the Russian invasionin order to document the unlikely rise to power of the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelensky. Current events forced them to reformulate their project.
No doubt thanks to his public profile, Penn gained access to numerous interviewees of interest, from politicians to ordinary citizens, including reporters, activists, soldiers and lawyers, but despite this, the vast majority of ‘Superpower’ shots are dedicated to himself; we see him walking or sitting, in cars or around tables, wearing his Ray-Bans or not, almost always frowning and bulging his biceps alarmingly lined with veins the size of worms; in some scenes, he is dedicated to listening gratefully -and letting us listen- how some key participants in the conflict thank him or praise him; in another he travels to the front, in the Donbassand intends to risk his life to inform the West of the Ukrainian drama despite the fact that the only behavior in the film that poses a health risk is his continuous consumption of tobacco and ‘Vodka Tonic’.
Of course, the stellar moments of ‘Superpower’ are those carried out by the three interviews -the first of them, extremely brief, hours after the start of the invasion on February 24, 2022- that Penn kept with Zelensky. Throughout the film, the actor makes clear the profound effect that those encounters had on him, pronouncing phrases such as “today I looked pure courage in the eye& rdquor; or defining the Ukrainian leader as “the most beautiful person in the world”. Today, during his meeting with the press, he has continued with this type of praise. “Since I saw my children when they were born, I had never met a human being as great as him & rdquor ;, he has come to affirm. Of course, he has never tried to disguise the bias of the film’s gaze. “If making propaganda is showing the unity that Ukrainians are showing in their defense of the things that make life worth living, I am happy to be considered a propagandist & rdquor ;, he added.
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If the bias adopted by ‘Superpower’ is relatively easy to understand, much more The forcefulness of the film is disconcerting. It insists on the need to provide weapons to Ukraine -”the most significant humanitarian response to war that can be given now is the delivery of long-range missiles& rdquor;, Penn added today in this regard-, especially since that militarism does not appear nuanced through or by the opinions of those experts who promote other means of solving the conflict or a single memory to the victims that the armed conflict has caused on both sides.
Lastly, another thing that is missing from the film is any mention of the display of generosity that Penn displayed a few months ago when, during one of his visits to Ukraine, he presented one of his Oscars to Zelensky in front of the puzzled look from the president. “You can melt it, if you want & rdquor ;, the actor commented today at a time during his press conference. In another, he has compared the Ukrainians to the Beatles.