A Sunny, Nightmare Vision

By Frank Rich

CANAL ZONE. PBS, Oct. 7

For the past decade, Frederick Wiseman has been examining American institutions in a series of documentaries (High School, Welfare) that are both provocative political statements and innovative works of film. In Canal Zone, one of his best efforts, the director travels to an American realm that is far removed from most of our lives. The results are unexpectedly harrowing. In the sunny landscape of a distant Army enclave in Panama, Wiseman finds a nightmare vision of America itself.

The film, shot in 1976, is not specifically concerned with the treaty that Jimmy Carter is now selling to Congress. Wiseman wishes instead to show how the zone functions. In a progression of characteristically deadpan scenes, he records the mundane activities that define a typical day in the zone: freighters pass through its harbor; Army wives shop at supermarkets; the Governor meets with the press. Wiseman is especially fascinated by the community's many patriotic ceremonies. Whether the Zonians are at church or on the tennis court or out for a banquet, they are forever pledging and singing their allegiance to the flag with the fervor of high school students at a pep rally.

Canal Zone is three hours long and somewhat repetitive, but its temperature rises steadily as it proceeds. At first it seems that Wiseman has made this film only to poke obvious fun at colonialism: he includes some all too pointed shots of the downtrodden Panamanians who perform the Americans' menial labor. By the time Canal Zone reaches its Memorial Day climax, however, it becomes as bitter as Sinclair Lewis' Main Street.

Wiseman reveals that the Zonians, for all their manic patriotic ardor, are a rootless and unhappy lot; their crime and child-abuse rates are well above the mainland rates. Canal Zone thus becomes a study in how Americanism when isolated and left to feed on itself can become a desperate form of mass escapism--and, as such, it is an ingenious cautionary tale. --Frank Rich

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