A Battle That Never Ends

Films about big political issues rarely find a big audience, but Battle in Seattle is different. Featuring powerful performances from Hollywood A-listers, it’s a hard-hitting action movie that pulls you in on a personal level from its opening frame. CAHIR O’DOHERTY talks to Irish actor and director Stuart Townsend about his all-star cast (including his Oscar winning girlfriend Charlize Theron).

HOW do you get the public to flock to a film about the effects of globalization when their eyes are already closing at the mention of the word?

Answer — you fill it with stars the public love and you make it a white-knuckle thrill ride. That way they’ll be hugely entertained, you’ll get your message across — and that’s before you even get to the part about Oscar level supporting role performances.

Irish actor/director/ screenwriter Stuart Townsend, 36, has no illusions about the fate of most well-meaning films – they usually end up somewhere near the bottom of the cut price DVD bin. But not this time.

Battle in Seattle, which opened last Friday in select cities across the U.S., is a big emotional gut punch of an action movie that along the way features some of the best film work seen in years by actors like Woody Harrelson, Ray Liotta and Charlize Theron and for that reason alone the film will find a wider audience.

Battle in Seattle’s real-life plot could be outlined on a napkin. When a peaceful protest at the World Trade Organization (WTO) summit in 1999 turns into a full-scale riot, the lives of 11 characters are changed forever.

“Fill it full of Hollywood stars that people love going to the movies to watch. But I don’t see it as a political movie, I see it more as a film to inspire and whack you in the stomach a little bit.”

There’s no question Townsend has succeeded in his action movie goal, but he’s also succeeded in throwing light on the WTO Itself. The massive global organization that affects how we live, what we earn, what we eat, and how we’re governed has rarely been so effectively criticized on film.

But as always in America, a film with a political message this potent can expect a bumpy ride from conservative talking heads. Is Townsend bracing himself for heated reactions of stalwarts like Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity?

Says Townsend, “I’m prepared but I’m not sure they will. I don’t see this as a left or right wing film. This is a film about Americans from all walks of life who stood up to fight a global corporate agenda. I’m going to be surprised if they have issues with it.”

Perhaps the most well-known criticism of the WTO is that the vast majority of developing countries have very little real say in the WTO’s massive system. For this reason alone its critics often refer to the WTO as an exploitive 21 century colonial power. For Townsend, taking it on headfirst was a matter of creativity and conscience.

“In 1999 I sat at home in Dublin (Townsend, like Colin Farrell, is a graduate of the Gaiety School of Acting and like Farrell his Dublin accent is unchanged) watching the riots in Seattle, when 40,000 protestors caused the collapse of the WTO talks. I had no idea what the protests were really about, other than that so much violence had occurred on the streets. The WTO was still an unknown institution in my mind.”

It was only a few years later when Townsend read Body Shop founder Anita Roddick’s book Take It Personally on the profoundly negative effects of globalization that it all started to sink in.

The tens of thousands of protestors Townsend had seen on TV in Seattle in 1999 weren’t just a bunch of crusty tree huggers and old hippies turned violent; they were students, environmentalists, labor unions, consumer advocates, anarchists and pacifists, and ordinary moms and dads, and they had all converged to bring global attention to how the WTO’s policies affect democracy around the world.

Says Townsend, “The name of Roddick’s book was Take It Personally and I did. I was living in America after 9/11 — living through that dissent free time — and I was kind of shocked that the media had unquestioningly gone along with that war, they were even embedded in it. All the while I was also studying globalization and its effects, and I was realizing just how much it was impacting the world.”

The protests in Seattle in 1999 were colorful to begin with, and then the riots attracted the world’s attention. As a filmmaker, Townsend knew that the visuals and the issues behind them would make for a powerful film.

Right away he decided to write a screenplay about it. He researched the film for a year and a half and then wrote the script in six months.

“I think we Irish people have some social justice issues hardwired into us. I definitely want to be a part of that,” he says.

“In Ireland we’re westerners, but we were also colonized and we know what comes of that. It’s a curious blend. The anti-WTO demonstrations are a part of the global justice movement, and I definitely want to be a part of that.”

Townsend is both complimentary and critical of how the Celtic Tiger era changed — and in some ways revealed — the face of Irish society. Opening your economy to the worldwide market, giving it complete and unfettered access, has changed the Irish, he says.

“Look at Ireland. It’s been great but it hasn’t been sustainable, and I think our heritage has gone, by the way. While it’s created a lot of great things, many other things have suffered.

“A lot of our human values have suffered. Housings down, unemployment’s up and no one gave a s*** about the environment or anything else. They’re building a motorway through Tara and where’s the outrage? We letting a private company dig right through ancient Ireland? We fought for our land for 800 years for this?

“That’s symbolic of where are priorities are. But it’s a great country and I think there’s a lot of good stuff going on too.”

Financing a film as hard-hitting as Battle in Seattle is always a gamble, because large movie corporations rarely bite the hand of their paymasters.

“We were actually a day away from shutting the whole project down because we couldn’t get a cast. But then suddenly we got Woody and Charlize and it flew from there. We cast all 11 roles in a week,” Townsend recalls.