Swordfish Reviews

Summer Movie Overview/ General Rant With a Thematic Tie

The best movie of the summer was Wall-E, hands-down. Conversely, despite (actually, because of) its gargantuan box office rake AND rave reviews, The Dark Knight was a considerable disappointment. The two films pair up nicely as a paradigm for trends within popular cinema, and serve as a jumping point for my little rant about the soulless, cynical nature of what passes as “entertainment” these days; my thesis: the sad loss of Humanist cinema in the postmodern/ post-Tarantino film world.

Prelude: I netflixed, and got to see for the first time, Kurosawa’s Ikiru earlier this summer. The plot, simply enough, deals with a middle-aged man’s existential crisis-- his sense of futility, and self-doubt about the value of his life-- upon discovering he is dying of an incurable disease. The man was a city bureaucrat for many years (the films’ opening montage demonstrating the labyrinthine, self-perpetuating nature of the System with savage wit akin to Kafka, Conrad’s “flabby devil”, The Wire, and, oh yeah, let’s not forget “Dilbert”), and now, faced with the vapidity of his existence, he strives to put meaning in his life, and perhaps impart a legacy worth being proud of. What most impresses me about Kurosawa’s oeuvre is the vast range of works, from grand-scale epics like Ran or The Seven Samurai to cynical, gritty genre pieces like Yojimbo or Straw Dogs, to, finally, works like this or, perhaps his best work, Rashoman- films of pulsing, vibrant, complex humanism. When Rashoman concludes with an image of a man cradling an orphan baby in the rain, Kurosawa offers unvarnished hope for humanity, despite reflecting a considerable understanding of the fabric of man’s cruelty within the first 100 minutes. And, when the desperate, schlumpy old protagonist of Ikiru hangs from a child’s swing in the rain, cherishing his meager accomplishment, humming a maudlin tune, Kurosawa is not embarrassed by the naked emotions of his characters, and neither should we as viewers (or as human beings!). It’s this type of open, sentimental expression, that we see in the works of the grand master Kurosawa, or Douglas Sirk, or Ozu, or Mike Leigh, that, to me, seems to be lacking in so much moviemaking these days; this such void left me feeling hollow sitting in theatres movie after movie this summer.

Which brings us back to Wall-E. Imagine my surprise when, after viewing half a dozen summer movies, the first time I am genuinely moved (to tears, even!) is through the melancholy exploits of a stupid, cute, mass-toy-produced Disney robot. What does that say about American movies when there’s ten times more heart in a fucking ET descendent than any other piece of celluloid out there? Most of the critical buzz (everyone from the NY Times to the New Republic) centers around the films’ biting social commentary—the second half of the movie, in particular, is as cruelly satiric of the vices of human society as anything since “A Modest Proposal” or Brave New World (a critique of consumerist culture, in a children’s cartoon? And a fucking Disney cartoon at that?!?!), and I certainly cackled-- self-congratulatory, like most viewers, I’m sure-- at the tubby future humans floating around in hover-wheelchairs, guzzling fizzy drinks, ignoring their spouses for the flash of constant video phones, tvs, and gizmo distractions in their faces-- but after meditating upon it for awhile, I decided that the real power of the film lay in the first 20 to 30 minutes, in which a buoyant, misguided little creature busies his day with pointless, programmed activities (yes, like the protagonist of Ikiru), abandoned by his creators (i.e., abandoned by God, like so much Beckett) to live out a stumbling, lonely, desultory life. Much has been made of the silent-film quality of the opening vignette, and indeed there are striking similarities to Chaplin’s tragically misunderstood tramp, or Keaton’s lovelorn train conductor, the melancholy tone of these pieces and the underlying existential despair of their comedy perhaps being the first true forms of Humanist Cinema. And goofy ol’WALL-E somehow reminded me that existence is a sad and beautiful thing, worth embracing.

And now, in contrast, let's examine the parade of soulless tripe bombarding our theatres called “summer entertainment”. First of all, Wanted was the worst piece of crap I’ve seen since Baseketball. It’s basically a frat-boy fantasy, where Dilbert (yes, him again), rather than swallowing a little bit of pride to appease his lame-brained boss every day of his drudgerous life (which he normally does, for our amusement and catharsis every Sunday), suddenly “asserts his individuality”, gouges out the bosses’ eyes with a toothpick, blasts the whole office to smithereens with an UZI, and, oh by the way, gets to ditch the roach-ridden apartment and the nagging girlfriend to instead drive fast cars and hang out with a scantily-clad super-hottie. I only slight embellished the actual plot of the movie. Even more disturbing to me is that the original graphic novel (comics—a trend here--stay with me), is apparently even more nihilistic. Sure, I can swallow mindless shoot-em-up entertainment-- Neanderthal orgies of violence-- but when you try and squeeze out some half-assed social commentary of “breaking out of your mundane existence”, you are insulting me. The movie actually challenges you, the audience, to grow a bigger set of balls (that’s not an embellishment at all), at least twice. What we have here is basically Ikiru in the form of a big, waggling cock in your face instead of an actual, honest-to-goodness heart on its sleeves. Or, as I kept saying to Corky, this is Fight Club for total idiots (and thanks to this shit, in retrospect, it really makes me have to further consider, and loathe, the testosterone-praising, fascist elements of Fight Club, and all of Pahuniak’s works).

And so, The Dark Knight, in its haunting imagery and complex psychological tropes, is certainly a smarter movie than Wanted , but in the end, to me, felt like just as much of a cop-out. OK, the fair and balanced TM assessment of The Dark Knight is that Nolan has certainly fashioned a world as brooding, as darkly angular, as Nietzschian as the comic world from which it is spawned—and I applaud him for that, in the same way I acknowledge that if you like your gritty B-movies, than Tarantino’s your guy (but then, why?). There’s something revealing about these movies turning to “graphic arts” for their inspiration. Is the comic book genre the new noir? Well, that was the excuse for Sin City, but the simple fact is, most superhero/ pulp comics are written for teenagers, and truly, there is something sad about some of our best contemporary directors (Nolan, Bryan Singer, Ang Lee) getting wrapped up in their own fanboy geekdome nostalgia.

Now truly, it had sort of intrigued me that more and more “popular” movies were, in their own way, offering a popcorny/ Philosophy for Dummies sort of twist on the great existential questions—when Brad Pitt in Fight Club puts a gun to the head of the convenience-store guy and challenges him to actually live the life he wants for himself (“his cereal the next morning will taste better than it’s ever tasted before”), when Keanu and the Wachowskis turn Plato’s “The Myth of the Cave” into a slo-mo action epic, when the Jigsaw guy in Saw explains to his victims that he’s teaching them to truly appreciate every breath, every waking moment in life, by making them face their own mortality; I’ve actually implemented these examples in my lessons to help my students get the gist of Sartre, Camus, Dostoevsky, and the like. But Wanted, and The Dark Knight (which basically re-packages the Jigsaw character into a “mesmerizing”/ “crowd-pleasing”/ “Oscar-worthy” (you can probably scrounge up about 58 more plaudits of your own by going to stupid rottentomatoes) paint-besmeared supervillain) are both so nihilistic, so patently nasty and sadistic that I felt somehow deprogrammed, less human as I absorbed the spectacle (like Alex in A Clockwork Orange).

Believe you me, it frightens me to think I am somehow becoming an arch-conservative, a protector of hegemonic “values”, essentially an OLD FOGEY, in the reactionary wake of this shit. Sure, it could it be that I am blowing this out of proportion. Viewers have flocked to violent action flicks and amoral anti-heroes since Jimmy Cagney, after all, and Nolan’s work certainly delivers as frenetic, stylish, armrest-clutching suspense action flick. But movies like these casually offer so much sadism, it has skewed the way any kind of emotional issues are addressed within the film medium in general.

It reminds me of a great line Richard Corliss had about Doug Liman’s “domestic comedy” Mr. and Mrs. Smith (paraphrased, because I don;’t get paid to do research): When foreign audiences see this satiric take on marital strife, Pitt and Jolie blasting heavy-artillery weapons at each other in lieu of, well, perhaps resolving their romantic misunderstandings through communication, they must be really wondering: what the fuck is wrong with Americans?”

And it reminds me of an interview I saw with the great Iranian Humanist auteur Abbas Kiarostami, who, in regards to the question of why a Tarantino-led Cannes panel chose the video-game violent Korean flick Oldboy over Kiarostami’s own sober, ruminative The Taste of Cherry, could only offer vague, conciliatory pleasantries as to the “aesthetic differences” of Western filmmakers. Somehow, Oldboy’s post-Tarantino ADHD splatter flick was supposed to symbolize the inner works of man’s soul, the barbarism within us all. Or something. And then you have Kiarostami’s modest little meditation on primal social and spiritual issues, set within a culture that is DEEPLY wounded, that could really teach us about human frailty, but you know what, it’s just a fucking guy driving around the desert wasteland talking to people, WAY TOO FUCKING BORING for us Americans! Christ, there’s not even an eyeball getting pried out of a head, or anything.

Yeah yeah yeah. I grew up. But it’s not that, exactly. Many comics are better written than your typical schlocky Hollywood screenplay. And again, I’ve got no gripes with violent film in general (I still dig me some Tom Savini). I’m just tired of the fatalistic and escapist elements of these particular kinds of macho-male genre pieces, and moreso, these movies justifying themselves based on shallow motifs. (Maybe it’s the filmic equivelant of a goth kid offering some pseudo-philosophical, narcissistic justification for the fake scar on his cheek, instead of just gleefully asserting it looks fucking rad.) I suppose I’m at a stage in my existence where I need a little bit more warmth, a little more hope, if not in my life, at least in my artistic indulgences.

Put it this way: in retrospect, The Dark Knight made me appreciate the knightly hero of Superman Returns over the gothic, grim-visaged Caped Crusader (as Commissioner Gordon puts it, a man to harbour the ugliness of society-- not the hero we need, but the hero we deserve). Not that Bryan Singer’s ode to 80’s camp-comic was a better film, mind you, but in its tone, its unabashedly geeky Humanism, an innocent farm-boy, a modest, aw’shucks, Boy Scout Superhero is the one I need in my life at this point (isn’t it the one we all need?). A canvas of moral clarity, inspiration, even spirituality (which the film not-so-subtly symbolizes), not a grim moral conundrum, the slippery slope that Man, in its basest instincts, seems doomed to slide (as the Joker believes). In fact, my favorite part of The Dark Knight was the absolute corniest- when the burly convict (of all people!) proves wrong the Joker’s pessimism towards humanity.

Yes, to put it simply, I’ve sold out. Switched sides. We’ve known this since we were little kids: Batman, Wolverine, Spawn-- those are the cool comic protagonists. Not the blue-tighted, square-jawed SuperSquare. It’s finally happened— I’ve dorked out in my old age. I’ve gone from the cool, hip anti-hero to the All-American goody-goody. Or, in assessment of my summer viewing, I’ve gone with Wall-E over The Dark Knight.

I guess the next step is to sell my Joy Division records (Don’t worry, New Order still works).