King Kong
Well I finally saw it today, and it was truly excellent. Not only a wonderful, gripping adventure in itself, but a truly encouraging piece of work. I did have some doubts about Naomi Watts at times, but in the end I think she pulled off an extraordinarily difficult role extremely well (the vague bewilderment she displays throughout Mulholland Drive was quite fitting to play a woman who has a giant gorilla gradually falling in love with her). Jack Black was an inspired piece of casting, and as has been repeated ad nauseam, Andy Serkis is simply magnificent as Kong.
Jackson had few qualms about piling on the CGI in the central hour of the film, but the results were truly breathtaking, and although it is too often over-done these days, in this case it was definitely money well spent. These sequences would have been impressive in isolation, but what really give them their power is the effort that had been put in to the rest of the film. Jackson has the power to tell an epic adventure story in a way puts many blockbuster directors of recent years to shame. King Kong lasts 187 minutes, but feels more like 100. The first part of the film is not simply 'setting up' the action sequences that follow, it is engaging the audience, giving the action meaning, and thus enhancing the visual spectacle. This is what the lazy, unimaginitive 'blockbusters' of the 1990s simply never achieved - the boring, ludicrous premise of Jurassic Park; the convoluted, unengaging love-story of Titanic; the culmination of all this with Saving Private Ryan which simply does away with an introduction and jumps straight in to the action, with the 'story' presented for what it is - an empty afterthought. Jackson's recognition of the importance of properly engaging the audience probably comes from his love of horror - what seperates truly gripping horror from dull, flat slasher films is the emotional attatchment formed with the characters before the action begins. Jackson realises that truly great action adventure epics needn't be merely expensive exploitation films (and this is what Spielberg has been doing at least since circa Jurassic park) but can be truly great cinematic stories.
It seems to me that King Kong represents an attempt to return to what cinema was really always supposed to be about: great stories that everyone can enjoy. It is a massive challenge to those who claim that blockbusters are necessarily an unintelligent, uninteresting, over-commercialised waste of money that carry no meaning and appeal to the lowest common denominator of violence and tension. It also disproves the argument that large audiences can only be gained with sex and unnecessary violence, of which there is almost none here. Most importantly I think, it is a challenge to directors and producers who are content to spend their huge budgets producing lazy, unimaginative, CGI-saturated films with no meaningful plot. There is plainly no excuse when you're working with a decent story (if you don't have a decent story, you should find one before carrying on with the film).
One reason cinema was important and interesting in its initial development was that it was a cultural medium which could transcend the elitism that plagued (most) theatre at that time. It provided the possibility of a cultural experience which just about everyone could enjoy. There is an extent to which this importance is diminished with the ubiquity of television, but it is not total - the best things shown on TV are still films anyway. This is why it is such an insult, as well as a disappointment, when the films that enjoy the greatest publicity and are given the biggest budgets are so lazy, so insulting to their audience by failing to make an imaginitive effort to tell a story, or make an interesting statement.
This, incidentally, is why the fawning over 'Crash' (2004) is such a disappointment to me. This self-important morality-tale that fails even to hint at the complexities it claims to explore is lauded universally merely because 'making a statement' of any kind is such a rarity in Hollywood these days. (To clarify, I am not suggesting that racial tension in Los Angeles is not an important or interesting question, or that cinema should not deal with it; I am saying that this issue is of such importance, such interest and such complexity that this arrogant over-simplification
of the issues cannot be taken seriously.) It looks more like a sick form of cinematic 'therapy' designed to make aspirational middle-class viewers (of any ethnic background) feel as though they have 'dealt with' these issues merely by sitting through this two hour film. This is similar to the widespread notion that one +must+ watch Schindler's List, and those who do not are irresponsibly failing to confront the horror of, and disrespecting the memory of The Holocaust. In reality, it is very rare to find that those who are so desperate for people to respect The Holocaust in this manner have bothered to interrogate the history at all - try asking them about the people who wrote (what nearly everyone agrees is) the best work on the subject, Raul Hilberg and Christopher Browning, and you will nearly always be confronted with blank stares. Of course, Schindler's List is a substitute (albeit an embarrassingly weak one) for confronting the industrial, inhuman horror of that period of history. In the same way, Crash is a weak substitute for confronting the intertwined issues of racial tension, urban decay and social alienation that make Los Angeles such a tragic and fascinating example of the (post?) modern city.
Films of the year then...
King Kong
A History of Violence
The Beat that My Heart Skipped (De battre mon coeur s'est arrete)
Wolf Creek
Sin City
There are probably some I have forgotten too. But those five were all very good in their own particular ways. Batman Begins is the other very good film of the year, but narrowly misses out on the top 5.
Jackson had few qualms about piling on the CGI in the central hour of the film, but the results were truly breathtaking, and although it is too often over-done these days, in this case it was definitely money well spent. These sequences would have been impressive in isolation, but what really give them their power is the effort that had been put in to the rest of the film. Jackson has the power to tell an epic adventure story in a way puts many blockbuster directors of recent years to shame. King Kong lasts 187 minutes, but feels more like 100. The first part of the film is not simply 'setting up' the action sequences that follow, it is engaging the audience, giving the action meaning, and thus enhancing the visual spectacle. This is what the lazy, unimaginitive 'blockbusters' of the 1990s simply never achieved - the boring, ludicrous premise of Jurassic Park; the convoluted, unengaging love-story of Titanic; the culmination of all this with Saving Private Ryan which simply does away with an introduction and jumps straight in to the action, with the 'story' presented for what it is - an empty afterthought. Jackson's recognition of the importance of properly engaging the audience probably comes from his love of horror - what seperates truly gripping horror from dull, flat slasher films is the emotional attatchment formed with the characters before the action begins. Jackson realises that truly great action adventure epics needn't be merely expensive exploitation films (and this is what Spielberg has been doing at least since circa Jurassic park) but can be truly great cinematic stories.
It seems to me that King Kong represents an attempt to return to what cinema was really always supposed to be about: great stories that everyone can enjoy. It is a massive challenge to those who claim that blockbusters are necessarily an unintelligent, uninteresting, over-commercialised waste of money that carry no meaning and appeal to the lowest common denominator of violence and tension. It also disproves the argument that large audiences can only be gained with sex and unnecessary violence, of which there is almost none here. Most importantly I think, it is a challenge to directors and producers who are content to spend their huge budgets producing lazy, unimaginative, CGI-saturated films with no meaningful plot. There is plainly no excuse when you're working with a decent story (if you don't have a decent story, you should find one before carrying on with the film).
One reason cinema was important and interesting in its initial development was that it was a cultural medium which could transcend the elitism that plagued (most) theatre at that time. It provided the possibility of a cultural experience which just about everyone could enjoy. There is an extent to which this importance is diminished with the ubiquity of television, but it is not total - the best things shown on TV are still films anyway. This is why it is such an insult, as well as a disappointment, when the films that enjoy the greatest publicity and are given the biggest budgets are so lazy, so insulting to their audience by failing to make an imaginitive effort to tell a story, or make an interesting statement.
This, incidentally, is why the fawning over 'Crash' (2004) is such a disappointment to me. This self-important morality-tale that fails even to hint at the complexities it claims to explore is lauded universally merely because 'making a statement' of any kind is such a rarity in Hollywood these days. (To clarify, I am not suggesting that racial tension in Los Angeles is not an important or interesting question, or that cinema should not deal with it; I am saying that this issue is of such importance, such interest and such complexity that this arrogant over-simplification
of the issues cannot be taken seriously.) It looks more like a sick form of cinematic 'therapy' designed to make aspirational middle-class viewers (of any ethnic background) feel as though they have 'dealt with' these issues merely by sitting through this two hour film. This is similar to the widespread notion that one +must+ watch Schindler's List, and those who do not are irresponsibly failing to confront the horror of, and disrespecting the memory of The Holocaust. In reality, it is very rare to find that those who are so desperate for people to respect The Holocaust in this manner have bothered to interrogate the history at all - try asking them about the people who wrote (what nearly everyone agrees is) the best work on the subject, Raul Hilberg and Christopher Browning, and you will nearly always be confronted with blank stares. Of course, Schindler's List is a substitute (albeit an embarrassingly weak one) for confronting the industrial, inhuman horror of that period of history. In the same way, Crash is a weak substitute for confronting the intertwined issues of racial tension, urban decay and social alienation that make Los Angeles such a tragic and fascinating example of the (post?) modern city.
Films of the year then...
King Kong
A History of Violence
The Beat that My Heart Skipped (De battre mon coeur s'est arrete)
Wolf Creek
Sin City
There are probably some I have forgotten too. But those five were all very good in their own particular ways. Batman Begins is the other very good film of the year, but narrowly misses out on the top 5.
posted by UK plc at 10:55 PM
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