I went with some misgivings, but I really wanted to see 48-frame 3D at Imax, and I can report that it’s a blast. Sharp images, smooth movement, excellent depth. But a disappointing movie; what looked so good still left me cold.
Start with the action sequences. Jackson has developed an irritating habit of drawing them out with spectacular but ultimately boring CGI, so that what starts out quite exciting overstays its welcome to the point of tedium. He did this in King Kong with a protracted tumble down a ravine that looked as if it had been interpolated solely to provide a template for a video game. In Fellowship of the Ring, the chase through Khazad-dûm begins with a stirring fight, but degenerates into a Mario Bros race across crumbling staircases and collapsing bridges. The chase through the goblin caves in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is just more of the same. There’s a bit more variety in the action sequences this time, but the feel of video games set on Beginners’ Level remains – the outcome is never in doubt, the good guys are invulnerable, and the mindless CGI hurls onward until a proper share of screen time is occupied in a narrative that has already been stretched beyond bearing on the corporate rack. As Jackson’s figure has trimmed, his movies have run irretrievably to fat.
The movie opens with a shot of Jackson emerging from a building in Bree, munching on a carrot – reminiscent of Hitchcock’s signature cameos. All resemblance to Hitch ends there. The narrative plods, the attempts to introduce human – or elvish – interest are painfully calculated. Legolas (Orlando Bloom) is dragged in for a bit of quiet jealousy about a foxy female elf, Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly), who looks like a pointy-eared Robin Hood and can fight as well as any man (of course) – unlike that soppy Arwen Evenstar. And the dwarves never really break out of the Snow White mould – Grumpy, Stingy, Bossy, Boyish, Fatty, Aggro and so on.
Lilly and Bloom phone it in, as does McKellen as Gandalf. Never mind, he’s a great actor, and this is his superannuation. Stephen Fry boosts his super, too, in a silly performance as the Master of Laketown. At least Martin Lawrence gives a strong, engaging performance as Bilbo and Benedict Cumberbatch voices the vain, cruel Smaug with some conviction, although Smaug is no Gollum.
Lee Pace gives real presence to Thranduil, the elf king. In this clip Thranduil meets Thorin Oakenshield in an elvenhall that is a classic of Tolkienish production design:
For a sense of the action sequences, look at this piece of Middle Earth wuxia as Legolas and Tauriel slaughter hordes of hapless orcs in the alleys of Laketown:
Caveat lector. I first came across Dave van Ronk in the mid-60s, when I borrowed van Ronk LP from an acquaintance and roughly transferred it to reel-to-reel tape. I just about wore out the tape. Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is an early-1960s Greenwich Village folksinger whose circumstances are very loosely inspired by aspects of van Ronk’s life, although Davis bears almost no resemblance to the real van Ronk. Still, this history may have coloured my response to the movie – not that “colour” is a the word for a production in grey, brown and slate-blue.
Llewyn is first seen singing in a Village folk club, the Gaslight Café. He is a good singer, if lugubrious, and the audience applauds. The owner tells him that someone wants to see him outside; Llewyn goes out, and when he speaks to the man waiting for him, he gets knocked down and kicked. Much later we learn that the beating was well-deserved.
Inside Llewyn Davis is a melancholy comedy drama with an unlikeable protagonist. Llewyn is a schlimazel – unlucky, inept, an habitual failure, as are the protagonists of other Coen Brothers movies, Barton Fink and A Serious Man. Unlike those other anti-heroes, Llewyn evokes little sympathy; his sense of entitlement leads him to lash out unpredictably and disastrously, and he possesses that peculiar form of narcissism for which failure is a vindication. The Coens add to this by having him pass up opportunities for success. He does session work with two friends but passes up on royalties to take a flat fee – and the recording becomes a hit. He is offered a chance to go to Chicago and decides to try his luck at the Gate of Horn. The owner, Bud Grossman (F. Murray Abraham) is less impressed than Llewyn requires. When Grossman offers him the chance to join a new trio, Llewyn declines – and misses out on what will obviously become Peter, Paul and Mary. And we say “Of course!”, because this guy can’t do anything right.
Early on, Llewyn is visiting the Gorfeins, who have another couple to dinner. They ask Llewyn to sing. This is a pure Coen moment; Llewwyn is the folksinger friend, who sings “reluctantly”- the deal is clear, perform and you can crash here, but don’t acknowledge the deal. Llewyn begins Dink’s Song (a beautiful blues and a signature tune of van Ronk’s) and Lillian Gorfein attempts to sing harmony:
Gorfein is singing the part of Llewyn’s former partner, who has suicided. Is his angry outburst due to a painful memory, or because she’s trying to get into his act, or is it part of enacting the temperamental folk-singer? In any case, he crashes there and when he leaves in the morning the Gorfein’s ginger cat beaks out too. The door is locked, and Llewyn has acquired a cat that provides a long narrative arc in a film otherwise under constant threat of stasis.
The next misadventure involves his friends Jim and Jean. Jean (Carey Mulligan) informs him that she’s pregnant, and is unsure if the child is his or Jim’s; she asks him to pay for an abortion. Later he tries unsuccessfully to borrow the money from Jim without explaining the purpose. He raise the money by session work and goes to the gynaecologist, who informs him that he still has credit from a previous incident in which he put up the money for a girlfriend’s abortion; The woman decide to have the child, and Llewyn learns he has a two-year old toddler living in Akron.
On his trip to Chicago he gets a ride with an elderly jazz-player (John Goodman) and his driver. Goodman is a Coen regular, playing grotesques, and provides a cranky beginning to Llewyn’s entire Chicago misadventure:
After the debacle at the Gate of Horn, Llewyn scores a ride back to NY on condition that he share the driving. On the way, through the dark and the sleet, he sees the lights of Akron. Will he turn and try to take up the role of father? Naturally not, but as with so many of his opportunities and moral dilemmas, there is a long pause before he makes the wrong choice.
After capturing, losing and nearly killing a series of ginger cats he can’t tell apart, he returns a cat to yet another Gorfein dinner party, with guests. and is throwing another tantrum when Lillian furiously points out that he’s returned the wrong cat. Eventually he’s forgiven, the original cat returns, and he’s permitted to crash there, as before. Nothing has changed, except that this time when he leaves he contrives to stop the cat from escaping.
The movie is soaked in a sense of absence. The New York folk scene is strong on music, but the atmosphere is dire – the interior of the Gaslight is dark and smoky, like a gathering of the undead, waiting for life to appear. It’s no accident that the lively, humorous van Ronk has been replaced by the dank, self-centred Llewyn. Indeed, the film has been criticised for its distortion of the Greenwich Village folk scene, which was reportedly much livelier, warmer and more cooperative than the movie portrays. Another significant absence in the film is the political dimension – After WWII the folk movement was always consistently with radical politics, under the influence of people like Woody Guthrie, Alan Lomax and Pete Seeger. The Coen’s Village is a whole different place – they revise the life out of it, the better to prepare for the coming of the messiah. Some street shots of Llewyn recall the famous cover of “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan”, the album that turned folk into something new, old melodies as vehicles for contemporary concerns. The film ends with a reprise of the opening sequence, and as Llewyn goes out to face his comeuppance Bob Dylan takes the Gaslight stage.
Oscar Lewis gives a fine performance as the unlovely Llewyn, Corey Mulligan and Robin Bartlett (Lillian) are notable, and the music selection is pretty good, although not quite O Brother. As always, the Coens command respect, although, on this occasion, not affection.
This is a war movie of historical interest; the fact that it exists, the time it was made, the messages it delivers and the ones it withholds, all overshadow its status as a run-of-the-mill flag-waver. It concerns the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a WWII unit of Japanese-Americans (Nisei) from Hawaii and the mainland; they fought with outstanding courage in Italy, France and Germany, becoming the most decorated regiment in the history of the US Army. Many of the actors were actually veterans of the 442nd.
At the time of the formation of the 442nd, Nisei were the objects of extreme prejudice; the Pacific War was marked by deep racial hatred on both sides, nearly all of mainland Nisei were interned, although this was impossible in Hawaii because 30% of the population were of Japanese ancestry. Anti-Japanese feeling in America continued at a high level after the war, amplified by knowledge of Japanese war crimes.
Pirosh also wrote the screenplay – he was in fact an accomplished screenwriter, specialising in war movies. In films like Battleground (1947) and Hell is for Heroes (1962) he took a reflective stance on the behaviour of soldiers under fire. In contrast, combat in Go For Broke is unproblematic, deaths are clean and quick and quickly passed over. The obvious “message” of the movie is an anti-racist one, and it can be placed in the context of Hollywood films on anti-semitism like Crossfire (1947) and Gentlemen’s Agreement (1947), or Jim Crow, e.g Pinky (1949). There was a growing progressivist political agenda in America post-war, aimed particularly at racial segregation. There were marches and demonstrations, and President Truman desegregated the US military in 1948. The Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954 desegregated public schools, and the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 was a landmark in the developing civil rights movement.
Go For Broke was produced by Dore Schary, noted for his production of message films and his vocal criticism of the activities of the House Un-American Activities Committee. HUAC never went after him, and in fact he became head of MGM in 1951, the year he produced Go For Broke, which might be interpreted as a progressivist attempt to defuse anti-Japanese prejudice.
There is another strand to this story. The American government and in particular the military had their own reasons for wanting to see a reduction in the virulent anti-Japanese feeling at the time. The Korean War broke out in 1950, and Japanese cooperation with the United Nations forces was vital. The filthy militaristic Japs of 1945 were now a freedom-loving democracy and a crucial ally against the communist North Koreans and their Chinese allies.. Schary may have been pursuing his own agenda, but he was also advancing the government’s propaganda purposes which sought to transform the nisei from untrustworthy aliens to a model minority.
The movie is well-served by Pirosh’s efficient, intelligent script, and also by the casting of members of the 442nd, but the movie itself serves two masters and carefully avoids offending either. It’s cheerful, lively and ultimately bland.
The whole movie is available at several sites on YouTube, or you can watch it right here:
Before special effects became so ubiquitous and spectacular that CGI could consume whole movies like an aggressive tumour, real thought and creativity had to be employed to excite and astonish audiences. Consider the climax of Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood (1957), in which the Macbeth-like Taketoki Washizu (Toshiro Mifune) is assassinated by his own soldiers in a storm of arrows.
Here Koichi Hamamura explains how the scene was shot and Mifune’s apprehensions about standing in the way of so many arrows. He even gives a close imitation of Mifune’s characteristic growling grunt.
Washizu is finally killed when an arrow goes straight through his neck. Here is how it is done:
The second in a planned series of four films based on Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire begins a year after the end of its predecessor. Sensibly, there is no recap of the previous film – at 146 minutes, it’s still a dense narrative with no room for padding. Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), as victors in the 74th Hunger Games are required to make a victory tour of the twelve districts of Panem. There is unrest in the districts, but no open revolt against the Capitol; President Snow (Donald Sutherland) requires Katniss and Peter to play the role of young lovers on the tour, to ensure that they do not become a focus for revolt. This plan goes wildly wrong, and the mood in the districts becomes even uglier. To distract and intimidate the people of the districts, Snow announces a new Hunger Games in which the participants are all former winners of the Games. Katniss and Peeta are to compete against twenty-two successful killers.
Phillip Messina has been retained from the first film as production designer, and his lavish hand provides full value from what must be a large budget. The grunginess of the districts and the opulent, tasteless excess of the Capitol give visible shape to the dynamic of revolt. Francis Lawrence replaces Gary Ross as director, and has been named to direct the rest of the series. The action sequences are less choppy than in the first movie, although the rating is still
PG-13. Lawrence still over-uses closeups, but his camera movement is less off-putting.
Lawrence, Hutcherson and Woody Harrelson as their mentor Haymitch all give superb performances. Elizabeth Banks as the ridiculous Effie Trinket is allowed a little more character development, and Stanley Tucci is again perfect as Caesar Flickerman, the host of the Hunger Games telecast. Philip Seymour Hoffman is efficient in the minor role of the Gamesmaster, a part likely to be enlarged in subsequent chapters.
There’s a familiar three-act structure – the district, the Capitol, the arena – but there is strong thematic development within the formula, and in the next two instalments which are based on Mockingjay, the third volume, the structure will necessarily be different. Hunger Games = Star Wars, and in Catching Fire the Empire certainly strikes back; expect the Return of the Mockingjay.
Collins is a fine story teller, though not a gifted writer, and if some of her story arcs seem a little obvious, it’s as well to remember that her target audience is young and relatively unsophisticated. Rowlings is likewise a gifted story-teller, and though the first Harry Potter volumes are clearly aimed at children, her style and plots become more complex as the series progresses, so it doesn’t do to be too snobbish about her writing. Even Tolkien, another great story-teller, is sometimes too arch, sometimes eye-rollingly twee. Essentially, the authors provide a story structure, a set of characters and a viewpoint. The moviemakers take this and turn it into something related, but different. Critics have hammered the film of Markus Zuzak’s fine novel, The Book Thief – Zuzak himself remaining politely non-committal. In contrast, Catching Fire is stronger as a movie than as a book, partly because it is not constrained by the book’s first person narrative. As a narrator, Katniss is too often and too obviously unreliable and obtuse. What is annoying in print is quite untroubling in Lawrence’s characterisation.
Catching Fire delivers far more in interest and excitement than any of the tedious CGI superhero blockbusters currently infesting the multiplexes. A reminder that the big movie machine can sometimes surprise.
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