by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
When news of the death of former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger broke late the other night, I happened to the about two-birds of the way through the 2016 television mini-series, "The Night Manager," which is based on John LeCarre's novel of the same title. "The Night Manager" is a six-episode film experience currently streaming on Amazon Prime that features a stellar cast headed by three superb British actors: Hugh Laurie as the bad guy, Tom Hiddleston as the good guy, and Academy Award winner Olivia Colman as the good guy's handler.
The subject the film explores is the global arms trade and how it plays out in terms of capitalism versus humanity, and somehow that just seemed to fold perfectly into Kissinger's life of representing the interests of the world's corporate elite over those of the of the workers and underclass who actually create the wealth that the powerful amass and hoard.
However, "The Night Manager"goes beyond just promoting the manufacture and trafficking of arms as one of the thousands of tentacles of capitalism, the endless variety of things which are bought and sold daily, and shows international arms' sales more in the light of a necessary function of capitalism. The massive production and distribution of guns and armaments increases chaos and destabilizes governments and even civilizations - and the instability and destruction brought on by war increases the need for goods and services, and certainly the need for more and better armaments. War is about destruction and replacement more than it is winning and losing.
The film's "fictional" premise (one which does not feel very fictional at all) is that governments, like those of Britain and the United States, may choose official sides in a conflict while also being complicit in arming other elements in the conflict through the covert protection of arms smugglers.
"The Night Manager" already had me thinking of Henry Kissinger even before his death.
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