The Hollywood Reporter announced that Jon Stewart’s new film “Rosewater” debuted at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado. Their headline was “'Rosewater' Director Jon Stewart Receives Hero's Welcome.”
Apparently, Stewart is a hero when he shows up at film festivals where liberals cluster. Or he’s a hero for regularly banging away at Fox News on “The Daily Show.” Or he’s a hero for having a sense of nuance about the “greatly differing worldviews” in Iran. Writer Scott Feinberg does proclaim he’s a “fan of @BarackObama” on his Twitter bio.
Feinberg reported Stewart wrote and directed “Rosewater” to tell the story of abducted Newsweek reporter Maziar Bahiri. “I had one goal and that was to honor Maziar's story and to tell it with integrity.” That’s where the praise for handling Iran’s “complexities” kicked in:
There is no question that the film, which reportedly had a $5 million budget and was produced by Scott Rudin and Gigi Pritzker, does that. And, at a time when the drums are constantly beating for military action against Iran, it is a helpful thing to be reminded about the history and complexities of that nation (some of which were recently dealt with in Argo, as well), where much of the leadership and much of the population have greatly differing worldviews.
But Feinberg really graded the Jon Stewart film on a liberal curve by saying in essence “It’s not Oscar bait, but we do love his Obama-friendly TV show.”
Is Rosewater, which derives its name from the nickname that Bahari assigned to his interrogator (Kim Bodnia), a flawless film? And is it a slam-dunk for awards consideration? The answer to both questions is most certainly not -- but few first films are. Instead, it is, like virtually every episode of The Daily Show that has made Stewart one of the most trusted men in America, an attempt to get people to eat their vegetables (to learn and care more about the world around them) by hiding them in their ice cream (laughs). And, for his efforts, Stewart deserves to be commended.
