David Postman covered the World Trade Organization protests for The Seattle Times in 1999, chasing after demonstrators and running from tear gas. So he brings his own perspective to “The Battle in Seattle,” a fictionalized film account of those days, which opens Friday.
When I went to the premiere of “The Battle in Seattle” at the Seattle International Film Festival earlier this year, I did not expect to see a historically accurate depiction of the street protests that shut down the 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organization.
It wasn’t a documentary. I went to the premiere figuring there’d be a geographic faux pas or something Seattleites would laugh at.
But mainly I wondered whether the film would accomplish what writer-director Stuart Townsend hoped it would. When he began the project several years ago, he said he wanted to make something that would show “the meaning and limits of democracy.”
I think “Battle in Seattle” does that. It is an ensemble movie featuring Charlize Theron, Andre Benjamin and other stars. But the WTO unfolds as the major character. Townsend does a nice job of creating scenes evocative – though this isn’t photo-realism – of those days at the end of the last century that changed the politics of international trade.
The meetings were billed as an important step in the World Trade Organization’s efforts to create a new set of international rules for global commerce. Massive protests broke out from the start, lasted five days and shut down the city. More than 500 protesters were arrested.