I wasn't a huge fan of Firefly, but I did enjoy it and thought it really stood out from the crowd. This feels like a lost extended episode, which isn't a bad thing at all. It isn't quite as grand in scope as it could have been -- maybe I should have seen it in the theater -- but that doesn't mean I enjoyed it any less.
So, too bad it's probably gone for good. We'll just have to wait and see what Joss Wheadon does with Wonder Woman...
So, imagine they made the Matrix, and then they made Matrix Reloaded, and then Matrix Revolutions was a re-telling of the Matrix and the Matrix Reloaded shot all in Russian.
That's kind of what is happening here--Night Watch was the highest grossing film in Russia until Day Watch, the sequel, was released. The final film in the trilogy is a retelling of the first two shot in English. I'm not sure how that's a trilogy, exactly, unless by trilogy you mean three films that are loosely related.
This here film is actually two films itself: an incredibly awesome one, if you just look at the visuals, and an incredibly stupid one, if you actually attempt to pay attention to the plot. Of which, it seems, it mostly exists just to hang a few cliched artificial tensions on.
It really can't be stated enough how gorgeous it is. I would pay to see it again just to drink it all in.
But it's an interesting study in cultural differences that Russian audiences certainly didn't care about the plot. This from the homeland of some of the greatest writers of all time? I would guess that there was some home town rooting going on here--I'm sure there are parts of the story that can only be understood by growing up in Russian culture. Maybe I'll go read some Gogol and watch it again to see what happens...
No, not an obscure Hitchcock remix of a DeMille epic. It's a small documentary. It suffers from its smallness, and it's smallness of scope. I think the filmmaker should watch Fast, Cheap and Out of Control 20 times, purge self of Michael Moore schtick and re-edit.
Mostly, my complaints are about the preaching to the converted. The film could have been much more dramatic and compelling just interviewing more talking heads and mixing them together, but instead we have some funny pseudo-high quality flying graphics, and some quippy attitude from our narrator / filmmaker.
If this sounds harsh, it's only because some of the interviews he did get were quite good an could have been longer. But, like any good self-serving atheist, his dogmatism is against the theism and quite pro the "a" part.
I was raised in a quite liberal church, and saw what could happen when you get a bunch of reasonable people together who agree to not judge each other for their levels of faith. The ground work was laid by saying "Okay, we're all here and all believe some level on the continuum, let's not focus on the differences and instead group our collective power to do some good." And by good I mean, charities without conversion goals, supporting people in times of crises without judgement, and those kinda things.
But, I'm not a believer, and can't say I ever really was. I've witnessed first hand how religion does some good things, but then I think that this one small group of churches is vastly outnumbered today by people I have no sympathy for. Their ignorance is incomprehensible, as witnessed not in this documentary but one that recently aired in Britain by Richard Dawkins titled The Root of All Evil? Dawkins interviewed the pastor of a mega-church after a service, and Dawkins compared it to the Nuremberg Rallies, and that Goebbels would be proud. The pastor ignorantly laughs, and said "Well, I don't know anything about these Nuremberg rallies, but a lot of people compare it to a rock concert."
When you're dealing with ignorance that complete--and this, mind you, the leader of thousands of the devout--then we're only talking about brainwashing, mind control and the devastation of independent thought for the simple goal of unification.
I'm with the author interviewed who asked that if everything was true, and he was in an awful hell experiencing the worst predictions of the devout, would he have a moment of doubt and wishing he had just believed? He answered that he wouldn't change his mind, because the alternative would be living in a heaven and knowing that millions of souls were in hell suffering greatly for an eternity. No matter how great the harps and wings, it could never outweigh the awfulness and exclusionary beliefs of the people who surrounded you--those who would sell you out to hell in a second as long as they get to live like kings.
It would be irresponsible here if we didn't talk about the sex scene first. No, not the first one. If you know which sex scene I'm talking about, then read on. If not, then read the signs that spoilers riddle these waters. Ye been warned, matey.
So, the sex scene. My companion, who majored in film in undergraduate school, and was taught criticism from a feminist perspective, had a different take on it then I did. Her experience was that it took her out of the film. She saw Bruce Banner working out all of his angst and frustration on this woman who was being used by Spielberg as a vessel, not a character.
I took it a bit differently, and had a more visceral reaction to it--I think I saw it as the Spielberg intended: a cathartic event for our main character who worked through these issues in the safety of his home, and was brought back to reality by the unselfish caring of his partner. That said, I think the scene is flawed. I know it didn't work for a lot of people--it was absurd, and it was a bold move, bordering on comical, pairing up the violence in his head with violence in bed.
So, could I defend it? I mean, I did react to it, even though I see the flaws and hear the people critiquing it. I totally understand why it took Christine out of the movie, and think her point is totally valid. But, here we are in the end of the film and we need a cathartic event for our character to become himself again--to regain what he's lost. His paranoia was growing, his uncertainty palpable. I see it as his wife speaking to him in the only way she was able to--using a shared language more tangible and that communicates more than words do.
But, granted, a flawed scene. Could it have been done perfectly? I dunno, but I think it was so risky to attempt it that I have to give them the props in the first place.
The fact is, we get the luxury of hemming and hawing over these things because it's a Spielberg film. If this were the first film by an up-and-comer, we'd be full of praise and rushing to try to find their first indie features on DVD. Instead, we get a work by the master--one of the best visual filmmakers of all time--whose message gets diluted too often by his own popularity on one hand, and his moments of saccharine on the other.
Well, I know my buddy Kent has my back on this, but goddamn Spielberg is a master. This film was endlessly complex, shot with a fascinating intimacy and confidence that could only come from such an experienced filmmaker. It is a story told visually, the opening mixing archival footage with live footage with frenetic, energetic storytelling. You always knew where you were and what was happening, but the energy was palpable. I don't know a single filmmaker that can pull those complex storylines off, and have us learn everything we did without once being lost. The man deserves the props.
He's also learning from his past. Nothing in this film was inevitable or terribly obvious. It didn't feel staged--and the only moment that leaned on being emotionally manipulative was the last shot, but even as I would defend the flawed sex scene, I would say that he was so restrained through the whole thing, we need to give him his props and just let him have it. I suspect for that moment, I'm not the audience.
Interesting, and ironic, too that here we are looking at the twin towers, and the text tells us that 9 out of 11 of the original terrorists were killed?
Well, I'm not going to go into the politics of it, or the righteousness of it. I will go back to that sex scene one more time, and talk about what our secret agent was seeing: the killing of olympic team at the airport. And, I'll ask one question: did anybody else notice that the only time we see any acts of violence perpetrated by the Black September members is in the memory and flashbacks and imaginings of a man who wasn't there?
That message, Mr. Spielberg, I can get behind. It's our own demons we are fighting as we fight against those who would do violence against us, whether we be Palestinian, Jew, American, or--this week--Dutch cartoonists. Next week? Who knows. Ourselves are the only constant.
It's not that we don't trust Werner Herzog, it's that we trust him a little too much. This persona that he has carefully articulated through his documentaries--often with him as a starring character--may indeed be the real Werner, but we just don't know. That he's believable may give us a clue to authenticity, but we still don't know. Maybe those who have met him can vouch for his real personality, and if it turns out to be this one great. But why even question it? Because Herzog's motivation for making the films he does might be based on the character Werner that we know, or it could be based on Herzog, that iconoclastic and difficult filmmaker. If they're one and the same, fine, but if not it changes the intention, and thus the story, of the film.
As for Timothy Treadwell--he also is an unreliable narrator. A self-described protector of the bears, who appears to have done nothing to actually protect their environment. More of a wistful hippie dancing his spirit animal than a biologist making studies. He is the self-assigned crocodile hunter of North America, the man who wanted to be Johnny BearSeed, spreading the word of the Grizzly through whatever school would have him.
The only problem for Treadwell is that he didn't get to edit his documentary. Instead, at the hands of a master, we see all the footage that Treadwell himself would very likely have left on the cutting room floor. His obviously deeply felt, but out of control, outbursts on camera towards random authority figures--god, the government, parks service show a man not in control of his emotions. In order to quiet his personal demons, he needed to move to a place where few other humans go.
In the hands of a Tim Treadwell production, we would have seen the slightly-wacky but very caring creature, as he appeared in public. And, it's no surprise, this former failed actor created his own reality show in which he was the star. There's no way that the bears were the stars of his show. If that was the case, he would set up the cameras and observe, not put himself into the shot. That he did--often obscuring the bears--is obviously an extension of his desires to simply be a bear. Name me one other naturalist who puts themselves above the nature that they're shooting.
Let's not mince words, here--Treadwell was no naturalist. He was all ego in the wild. Taming foxes and baby-talking kodiak bears that stood to nearly twice his height were just some of his offenses. It was best summed up by the Native guy in the museum who said that his people had respected the invisible line between bears and people for 7000 years. Treadwell not only ignored what might be right for the bears (to encounter as few humans as possible), but he ignored the historical understanding bears and humans have held--come to close, get mauled or worse.
So Treadwell is a product of a pop-culture age, raised with Yogi bear and stuffed bears. He anthropomorphized them with cute names and human intentions. He fashioned himself into his picture of what they needed, as if his very presence would somehow save them. From what? Imagined poachers and parks service rangers who were out to do some imaginary harm. What was his real intention, there? He stopped no poachers. Other than vaguely threatening an annoying nature photographer just by videotaping him throw a rock at a cub (a word of advice: where there are cubs there are mother bears, and they get kind of pissed about things like that) he did nothing proactive at all.
But Treadwell, for all his desire to escape and leave the human world, couldn't just go sit and hang out with the grizzlies. He needed to be known as the guy that did that. So, his protestations of independence were really somewhat of a charade for his need for attention. I'm sure he was fun, as a kid, to watch this crazy guy come into your class and talk to you about stuff--but was he educational? Who knows. The watchers of this movie will never know.
See, but there is the rub--Herzog manipulated us. He first made us like Treadwell, and think he knew his shit--and then he carefully undid that view over course of the movie. By the end, we think Treadwell is a bit of a lunatic. So, is my review just playing right into his hands? Is this exactly what he wanted me to feel?
Any objective view is that Treadwell must have done something right, because he managed to survive up there for so long. Maybe it was luck, maybe it was more--but we'll never know Herzog told us the story he wanted us to see, and had us feel the things he wanted us to feel. As for the rest? Well. I'm satisfied. I'll buy in. I like this Herzog, be he real or a figment of his own talent.
Raises the specter of racism for me, but not in the context of the movie but in the context of the actors. As predominantly white westerners, we are told that we wouldn't accept a movie starring Africans about something as tragic as African slums and disadvantaged people. Hotel Rwanda aside, the people releasing those films are probably right, but shame on us for needing overly beautiful white people as our shepherd into this world of abject and total poverty, illness and corruption. Shame on us for not being able to feel as compassionately for an all black cast. Maybe that's racism, and maybe that is desensitization, a way of keeping ourselves sane after being presented with infomercial after infomercial of some christian origination or heartfelt actresses pleading for our help while holding naked pot-bellied starving children. And there may be some valid xenophobia there too--after all, don't we have enough poverty in America that we should worry about our poor first? As seen on tv, our poor were washed away and shunted like cattle into erstwhile happy arenas, while confused, mobbish and racist comments flooded our channels. Taken as fact these reports of roving gangs shooting at police officers and aid works were proved mostly untrue. The response at the time was always something about "those people."
But, we are dealing with fiction here. This is not a documentary, and it is not a retelling of truth fictionalized for book and screen. Or is it? It certainly reads as true, and the situations sound realistic enough. But the movie is about the argument of privilege, in so many ways, and so without the wealthy white people to counter the poor Africans, the idea of privilege could not have been established. This is, in a nutshell, colonialism 3.0. The corporations taking place of the monarchies in their interest in Africa. What makes the events more despicable is that the end goal isn't natural resources, it's human guinea pigs.
Why, then, this overlay of a love story? I think that to love this movie, you have to believe in some of the romantic ideas of Victorian England and African adventures, and you also have to believe that there is no way that these Africans can help themselves. Maybe it's true that with white people creating the problems, white people need to sweep them up. The romance was a key into the situation which was a key into the deeper story.
But, aside from those things, the film was well made. It looked like a skip-bleach process on the stock, which gave that lovely over-saturated, bright-hot colors. As a political thriller its fascinating, and if I was ignorant of many things that happened in Africa, and went to this movie purely as a thriller, I may have learned a bit. Which, of course, raises the issue that maybe my protesting is ignorant in of itself. Maybe I'm not the audience for the film. Imagine if James Bond told you something about the world--something you didn't know before. I can see the argument in that. Maybe that should sate me, and I should just take it at face value. But then, accepting things at face value is exactly what this film argues against. Back and forth, back and forth. At least, it seems, the film sparks us to think and talk about these issues.
Only about 15 minutes of the crashing, the rest of the trying to win love's true heart in a bizarre wealthy American setting. Love Christopher Walken, but this was a pretty stupid movie. Standard predictable personality comedy. Not as hostile as some, not as doe-eyed as others, but still not funny enough to really rise above the fray. If you saw the trailer, you saw all the good jokes. Bonus points for having a female character be a sexual deviant and not have the requisite punishing that such characters usually end up with.