The end of all our exploring: ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ and the New Frontier

Note: Set phasers to SPOILERS. Or something.

All decks, spoiler alert.

As T. S. Eliot wisely noted, “What we call the beginning is often the end / And to make an end is to make a beginning.” And at the end of 2009′s Star Trek, with the villain defeated and the day saved, the crew of the USS Enterprise, finally united as we know them from the original 1960s TV series, prepare to explore the galaxy. Leonard Nimoy intones the famous words which begin “Space: the final frontier …” and the ship races off to the accompaniment of Alexander Courage’s iconic theme.

As a sequence, it deliberately invokes the franchise’s past in a way that acts as almost a blessing for its future, and offers a new beginning. The ‘mission statement’ itself harkens back to the frontier spirit of the 1960s in which the original Star Trek was steeped, just as John F. Kennedy harkened back to the frontier spirit of the Old West in his “New Frontier” speech at the very beginning of that decade.[1] It is no coincidence that when Gene Rodenberry, the creator of Star Trek, was pitching the show to television producers in the mid-’60s, he described its premise in similar terms, as a “wagon train to the stars”.[2]

For I stand here tonight facing west on what was once the last frontier. From the lands that stretch three thousand miles behind us, the pioneers gave up their safety, their comfort and sometimes their lives to build our new West.

Star Trek Into Darkness attempts to further the intersection of past and future by re-imagining the conflict between Kirk’s crew and arguably their most famous foe, Khan, the genetically-engineered superhuman whose gave the Enterprise so much trouble in the 1967 episode “Space Seed” and its feature-movie sequel The Wrath of Khan.[3] That film was itself explicitly interested in ideas of history, legacy and the shadow of the past, viewed through the lens of Kirk’s age and his growing sense of mortality – an essential component of what raised it from being simply a good Star Trek movie to being a genuinely great sci-fi film.

Comparisons between Star Trek Into Darkness and Wrath of Khan are inevitable, not just because the latter is treated as an arbitrary benchmark for the franchise due to its practically legendary status (though that does, of course, happen), but because director JJ Abrams and his team of writers – Robert Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof – deliberately set themselves in conversation with it, referencing not only details of plot and characterisation, but also the most famous scenes from the earlier film.[5]

Here we go again.

Unfortunately, the gravity provided in the original scenes from Wrath of Khan is somewhat lost not just because of the sight of Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto parroting William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, something the new films have mostly stayed away from, but because these versions of the characters do not have the history of the originals by the time of Wrath of Khan. Instead, they borrow their history from the originals. Hence the awkwardness of the reveal of John Harrison as Khan, to which Kirk and his compatriots have almost no reaction because there’s nothing in their own pasts for them to react to, and the need for Leonard Nimoy to appear later in the film to affirm that, yes, Khan really is the threat the film needs him to be.

Most frustratingly of all, the focus on another genius-mastermind-terrorist-super-villain (or, rather, two, with Peter Weller’s Admiral Marcus and Benedict Cumberbatch’s Khan jockeying for the spot) means that the film ultimately runs through the same beats as its immediate predecessor.[6]  The villain(s) are defeated and the day saved, and the crew of the USS Enterprise, again reunited as we know them from the original 1960s TV series, prepare to explore the galaxy. Chris Pine recites the famous words which begin “Space: the final frontier …” and the ship races off to the accompaniment of Michael Giacchino’s new theme.

… we stand today on the edge of a New Frontier — the frontier of the 1960s, the frontier of unknown opportunities and perils, the frontier of unfilled hopes and unfilled threats.

The mirroring of the ending of the previous film – done, no doubt, to emphasise that the defeat of Khan by the ‘new’ crew means the torch has truly been passed on – nevertheless makes it feel as if the Enterprise is stuck in a holding pattern, perpetually held on the inner edge of the frontier. And that is the antithesis of what the ship, and the franchise, should stand for. More than any concerns over how intelligent or philosophical the reborn franchise is compared to previous incarnations, this is where Star Trek Into Darkness fails in capturing the spirit of the original series.[7]

True to Gene Rodenberry’s goals (and he was far from unilaterally successful in achieving them himself), there are attempts in the film to couch contemporary moral queries in the accessible form of the modern adventure story, just as Rodenberry & co. introduced allegories of the Cold War, Vietnam and Civil Rights along with William Shatner wrestling a giant lizard. Kirk’s deliberation over whether to, in essence, remotely assassinate a known threat to the Federation, and Spock acting as his moral centre in this decision, does successfully remodel that classic dynamic to address modern concerns.[8] But the film’s arguments ultimately get bogged down in a confused mixture of War on Terror analogues, 9/11 Truther conspiracies, and Star Trek lore.[9]

I say, do you have a flag?

At its best, the film strives to embody Kennedy’s idea of the New Frontier which “holds out the promise of more sacrifice instead of more security.” Kirk’s elegiac but hopeful speech towards the end of the film echoes, perhaps deliberately, this very point. Yet, at what should have been the film’s emotional core, it instead falls into mere imitation, content in a creative version of “the safe mediocrity of the past” which Kennedy decried. The film’s haphazard plot and intra-franchise borrowings betray its themes, and when Kirk argues that we should be explorers, not warriors, I was left with a question: why didn’t you make that film?

When Eliot wrote of “the end of all our exploring”, he was not just referring to its conclusion, but its purpose. Just as, from a quantum level upwards, the very act of observation can change the behaviour of what is observed, so too does the exploration of the world, of every world, change ourselves.[10] By directing our gaze towards the past, by focussing on familiar aspects, we lessen the possibility of new understandings which, yes, I believe even a Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster can occasionally provide. The new Star Trek has spent long enough at home. Let’s see what’s out there.

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Can a nation organized and governed such as ours endure?

That is the real question.

Have we the nerve and the will? Can we carry through in an age where we will witness not only breakthroughs in weapons of destruction, but also a race for mastery of the sky and the rain, the ocean and the tides, the far side of space, and the inside of men’s minds?

That is the question of the New Frontier.

- John F. Kennedy, DNC Nomination Acceptance Address ‘The New Frontier’, delivered 15 July 1960

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[1] The full text and video of the speech can be found here. It’s a fascinating slice of history, and a great piece of rhetoric delivered by one of the most notable orators of the modern era.

[2] Arguably, however, his other pitch, essentially “Horatio Hornblower in space”, became the more lasting influence on the franchise as a whole, especially as a result of the very naval style of Wrath of Khan.

[3] While, technically, The Wrath of Khan is a sequel to Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and is more properly titled Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, director Nicholas Meyer has admitted that during production they pretty much pretended The Motion Picture didn’t exist. Which is understandable.[4]

[4] It’s very boring.

[5] Some other clear references to previous installments of the franchise: a tribble (“The Trouble with Tribbles”, from the original series), Uhura attempting to speak Klingon (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country), Section 31 (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), a Starfleet admiral conspiring to start a war with the Klingons (The Undiscovered Country again), Scotty disabling a more powerful Starfleet vessel to help the Enterprise (Star Trek III: The Search for Spock), Sulu acting as captain (guess what? The Undiscovered Country). These are, on the whole, pretty inoffensive (apart from the tribble) and rather more subtle than the Wrath of Khan references.

[6] Even Kirk’s character arc feels like a repeat from the previous film, complete with the loss of another father figure and rapid changes of rank. It’s a waste of Bruce Greenwood’s Pike, and if Kirk’s brief demotion was supposed to counter complaints over Starfleet’s flexible hierarchy in the first film, it seriously misunderstood the nature of that complaint.

[7] Nor does it help that so much of the film takes place on Earth, even more so than the previous entry in the series. And just as in 2009′s Star Trek, travelling across the stars is just a little too easy, the voyages from our home planet to Vulcan or ‘Kronos’ seeming a matter of minutes, hours at most, rather than days or weeks. Yes, this a series in which the Enterprise has been to both the centre of the galaxy and its outermost limits, but in both those cases there was, at least, some amount of danger associated with the journey itself.

[8] Zachary Quinto’s Spock, it should be noted, is one of the strongest parts of the film. Whenever one of the story’s emotional beats do actually land, it’s because of him, and the chemistry of the cast. It’s just a shame that most of them didn’t get more to do. Scotty’s subplot was solid, however.

[9] I’m not making the comparison to the Truther movement just for the sake of it. Writer Robert Orci is a well-known proponent of the theory that the destruction of the World Trade Center was an ‘inside job’. Charmingly, he even implied on Twitter that the bombing of the Boston Marathon was orchestrated by the government, even before anyone knew the names Dzokhar or Tamerlan Tzarnaev.

[10] Disclaimer: a quantum physicist, I am not. This may be completely wrong. But it’s a good metaphor.

‘Iron Man 3′ and the Challenges of Franchise Filmmaking

Note: Contains weapon-grade spoilers for Iron Man 3. If you haven’t seen the movie yet and plan to, I recommend not reading this right now, etc.

You’ll be quite beside yourself.

When the first Iron Man arrived on cinema screens five years ago, it was often described as being a breath of fresh air by the standards of the Hollywood comic book action movie. The film’s freewheeling, improvisational style and Robert Downey Jr.’s career-redefining performance as the troubled, wealthy, but most of all brilliant Tony Stark, possessed a charm seemingly unique among the ranks of carefully calculated modern blockbusters. What’s more, Iron Man demonstrated that comic book movies didn’t need the grittiness of Bryan Singer’s X-Men films or Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy to be taken seriously, or the camp of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man in order to have sense of fun.

Since then, however, Tony Stark has made four other appearances in separate cinema outings, and spawned one of the most unexpectedly successful (not to mention astonishingly prolific, given its short lifespan so far) franchises in movie history. With 2010′s Iron Man 2 already feeling like a lesser retread, Marvel Studios were faced with the challenge of reinvigorating their most valuable individual property following the astronomical success of last year’s Avengers Assemble. Just as they selected geek icon Joss Whedon to carry the Avengers to the big screen, Marvel’s choice here was unconventional, bringing in Shane Black to direct their most high-profile film until Avengers 2 rolls around. Downey was very natural fit for Black’s wry, knowing style in 2005′s neo-noir comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang – and the same proves to be the case in Iron Man 3.[1]

Also present: Black’s witty buddy-cop repartee, courtesy of Downey and Don Cheadle.

Whereas Iron Man 2 was torn between trying to recapture the lightning in a bottle that was the first film and laying (ultimately unnecessary) groundwork for Avengers Assemble, Shane Black and screenwriter Drew Pearce have constructed a narrative which spins off from the main franchise in a pleasingly offbeat manner, while still emphasising the history of the character.[2] Even without any cameos from Stark’s fellow Avengers (save for the usual after-the-credits bonus scene), the events of Avengers Assemble loom large over the ongoing story of Tony Stark. His anxieties over “New York” (the mere mention of which is enough to trigger a panic attack) link the emotional sub-narrative of Iron Man 3 to the franchise’s “bigger universe” in a personal way. Nor is it likely an accident that this also echoes real-world events, given the the main plot of the film is actively engaged with the issues surrounding the war on terror.

The primary antagonist at the film’s outset, the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley), has been reimagined from the 20th century Yellow Peril caricature into the perfect 21st century bogeyman, a terrorist mastermind in the mold of Osama bin Laden, with bonus hacking skills he uses to subject the population of the United States to snappily edited propagandist videos. With his southern drawl emphasising his Otherness, rather than detracting from it, the Mandarin is clearly a delicately constructed amalgamation of contemporary fears. Which, as it turns out, is precisely the point. Kingsley’s threatening performance is revealed to be exactly that, a performance delivered by a washed-up British actor named Trevor Slattery.[3]

Trevor.

The real threat is Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), a fellow scientist and engineer who Tony subjects to a cruel prank in the film’s opening sequence in 1999.[4] Inspired by the public arrival of superhumans like Thor, Killian developed the character of the Mandarin to take credit for the rather explosive accidents caused by his experiments with Extremis (the latest in Marvel’s many super-soldier programs gone wrong) and in the process increase the demand for his innovations in military technology. With terrorism the most obvious successor to Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany in the annals of Hollywood stock villainy, having the nebulous reality of that threat acknowledged, even in the realm of entertainment, is a positive development.

It would, after all. be one thing if the film was content to reveal that a Caucasian American was the evil mastermind instead of a deliberately jumbled mix of threatening Orientalist clichés. So far, so Rush Hour.[5] But by making the majority of the Mandarin’s past “attacks” accidents, and those who carry them out sometimes involuntary or manipulated participants, Iron Man 3 contrives to give its major reveal import beyond the simple trick of pulling the rug out from beneath the audience. It actually attempts to make its audience aware of, and thereby question, certain narrative assumptions in a way that isn’t just a simplistic attempt at ‘politically correctness’.[6]

Guy Pearce, suitably slimy as Aldrich Killian.

‘We all create our own demons’, Tony narrates, and the film adopts the phrase for its central thesis. He is clearly talking about not only Killian, but also his personal demons, which are born not just out of his near-death experience in Avengers Assemble, but his inability to accept his own limits and capabilities within a new, more unstable universe.[7] His decision to destroy his computer-controlled army of Iron Man suits at the end of the film is a liberating one. It is also, in a way, an echo of his decision in the first film to shut down his company’s manufacture of weapons as a result of his experiences in Afghanistan. By creating a self-contained narrative that is nevertheless engaged in conversations with Tony’s past, Iron Man 3 turns a creative liability, its status as yet another Hollywood sequel, into a key strength, and a subtle but powerful thematic tool.

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[1] Primarily known as the writer behind the Lethal Weapon series, as well as other action films of the era such as The Last Boy Scout and Last Action Hero (yes, the ’90s are an era now), the somewhat postmodern Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was Black’s only previous directing credit.

[2] Much has been made of the fact that, following Disney’s takeover of LucasFilm (they already own Marvel), the plan is to have spin-off Star Wars films which aren’t part of the series’ main epic narrative. If they end up taking the kinds of risks Marvel Studios have done, and give higher profile to talents like Black, Whedon and company, and allow them the leeway to do their own thing with the IP, I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. This might be naïvely optimistic, but it could even be a way of getting more unconventional films (by contemporary Hollywood standards, anyway) under the mass-market radar.

[3] The moment of the reveal itself is nothing short of hilarious. Ben Kingsley is far from wasted in the role of Trevor Slattery, as he cheerfully negotiates dealing with superheroes and supervillains alike. Even his eventual arrest doesn’t faze him much, and Kingsley makes the most of Slattery’s pleased response to the size of the crowd watching him being taken into custody, a darkly humorous moment which is fleeting but memorable.

[4] Like the early scene in The Dark Knight Rises where Alfred reveals his fantasy of seeing Bruce Wayne living a life away from Gotham, free of the burden of his parents’ death, the introduction of Killian at the beginning of Iron Man 3 is a fairly obvious dose of foreshadowing for the film’s big twist. The identity games with the film’s villain also resemble those Christopher Nolan & co. played with Ra’s al Ghul and his daughter Talia in the Dark Knight trilogy, but if anything there is a greater purpose to it here.

[5] See Carter’s Theory of Criminal Investigation.

[6] If there’s a flaw in the film here, it’s that it largely leaves behind this nuance during the final sequence, which features all the Extremis candidates as disposable foot-soldiers. Just spitballing here, but this would actually have been a good place to introduce a subplot for Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts, with perhaps her meeting one of the other candidates and understanding how one could be drawn into such a scheme. Or something like that.

[7] As has been noted by both the production team and critics alike, Iron Man 3 is in many ways the two-hour-plus answer to Steve Roger’s question in Avengers Assemble: ‘Big man in a suit of armour. Take that away and what are you ?’ His separation from from his support system, both emotional and technological, is a central to making that idea work. It also means that the action scenes offer more variety than just men in CGI tin cans hitting each other, which is a nice change for the series.

A Brief Note on Boston

Note: This is outside the usual wheelhouse of this blog, but I’ve already posted this elsewhere, and it seemed important enough to reproduce here.

Like the London bombings eight years ago, what happened in Boston yesterday hit hard because it happened in a city that feels like an old friend, home or near to home of people I love. On both occasions, I had the good fortune to be away and no one I know was injured (so far as I’m currently aware). But there are many people across the world who are not so lucky, not just in Boston, Massachusetts, but in Baghdad and other cities throughout Iraq, or in Mogadishu, Somalia. I don’t think there’s any shame in feeling the force of something more acutely when we have a closer connection to the place in which it happened. But while what happened in Boston was a truly terrible shock, in some ways part of that shock, the feeling of “how could it happen HERE”, is perhaps a kind of tragic luxury. So, from a half-Brit half-American, here’s a thought for everyone affected by these kinds of attacks throughout the world, in places I do not know.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22149863

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22143503

American Mythologies: ‘Lincoln’ and ‘Django Unchained’

Note: Lincoln dies. Wait, no, I meant to say “Contains major spoilers.” Apologies for that.

Sorry, man.

At the beginning of Spielberg’s Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States is already a legend in his own lifetime. Union soldiers, both black and white, quote the Gettysburg Address back to him as if it were the greatest hit of a legendary rock star.[1] Daniel Day Lewis’s soft-spoken performance gives the mythic figure of Lincoln some relatable humanity, yes, but it also invests the president with the power to dominate a room with barely more than a whisper.

Tarantino’s Django Unchained, meanwhile, gives us a very different type of mythological hero, one born in a clash of modern sensibilities, the boiling point of nineteenth-century social ills, and a tradition going back to medieval storytelling. Jamie Foxx’s Django is a vengeance-fueled hero in the hot-blooded American mould of Rambo or John Matrix.[2] He’s a former slave fighting against oppression. He’s a knight in shining armor, saving his beloved from within the bowels of a fortress of evil.

There is, of course, no place for knights in Spielberg’s highly verbal, legalistic drama.[3] Yet there is an obvious comparison – to me, anyway – between Lincoln and Christoph Waltz’s Dr. King Schultz. Certainly, Schultz is a bounty hunter, a gunslinger and a killer, but with the exception of dealing with his targets themselves, he uses violence primarily as a last resort. His preferred tools are his words and his wits, and in this – perhaps just as much as in the coincidence of their roles as emancipators – he resembles Spielberg’s cerebral Lincoln. So too are both men tale-spinners, mythologists in their own right.

Also, they both have great beards.

One of the most memorable moments in Lincoln is when, on the eve of a decisive battle, the president recounts the story of Revolutionary War hero Ethan Allen’s visit to London, whose punchline I shall not spoil here.[4] The key is that the beating heart of the Union’s war effort stops to hear this man speak, and tell a story. It says something about the man, yes, with regard to both his eccentricity and his formidable presence.  But it also engages with the power of story, even if that power is only capable of offering a momentary reprieve from the overbearing pressure of the conflict engulfing the country. Intended or not, the implication is that the story of Lincoln still has something to offer us – here, today – just as Ethan Allen did before him.

A cultural resonance that crosses time and space; this is part of the fundamental appeal of mythology. The circumstances in which the story is told may change, the audience’s understanding may be altered beyond recognition, but the idea that there is some indivisible element which endures, some primordial monad of storytelling unchanged through all remembered time, remains a powerfully seductive one.

In Django Unchained, Schultz tells Django the story of Siegfried as an explanation of why he has chosen to help in Django’s quest to rescue his wife Broomhilda.[5] Siegfried (sometimes known as Sigurd) is one of the defining figures of Teutonic myth, from the Norse Völsunga saga to Wagner’s operatic Ring Cycle. More than just another hero, Siegfried is a cultural archetype of heroism, an Achilles or a Rama. That Tarantino chooses to link a black man, a freed slave, with such a heritage – a heritage famously used and abused in the racially supremacist ideology of the Nazi party – is, to me, a powerful statement of the ability of myth to cross boundaries, not just reinforce them.

He’s on a horse.

Part of Lincoln’s historical appeal is that he is, I think, something of a redemptive figure for America. The odd way his shooting is treated, off-screen and distant, an event belonging to another time and another place is, perhaps, because of his almost sanctified role in American history. Inadvertently, the film reinforces the notion that Lincoln’s death was an inexorable act of fate, not the bloody deed of an angry man. At the very end, Spielberg lets history get the better of him, and Lincoln the statue, the symbol, wins out over Lincoln the man.

The fate of the fictional Schultz, on the other hand, is evocatively similar in some senses to that of Lincoln, but these simply throw the important differences into sharper relief. His life is ultimately curtailed not by fate or the will of a rogue gunman, but by his own hatred of slave-owners like Leonardo DiCaprio’s Calvin Candie, by his guilt over not being able or willing to do more to help and, therefore, by an increasing self-hatred, too. The immediacy of his shooting of Candie, and his own death, is not merely gratuitous, but emphasises these events as human actions, not notes in a history textbook. Lincoln may be the historical figure but, in death, Schultz emerges as the more real.[6]

Despite Tarantino’s trademark predilection towards immoderate violence and controversial language, Django Unchained is a more nuanced film than Lincoln not only in addressing the fundamental social issues of slavery and race relations, but also with regard to the nature of storytelling itself, in part as a method of processing these issues culturally. Both, however, are fascinating examples of film-makers tackling one of the crucial moments in the development of American identity, and the way mythological tropes are used to help us understand and place historical events in relation to our own time.

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[1] This despite the fact that the speech didn’t gain its current reputation until the early 20th century. Artistic license, and all that.

[2] America may not have invented the revenge drama – it has, after all, been around since Aeschylus, and before – but this particular brand of it is, I think, a distinctly American construct. The fantasy of the lone man out for revenge fits nicely with America’s individualistic, liberalist ideals. For the neatest dovetailing of this, see The Patriot. Or, better yet, don’t.

[3] Not that a Tarantino script is ever short on dialogue.

[4] Daniel Day Lewis tells it better. I know when I’m outclassed.

[5] That Tarantino never mines the confusion between Brunhilde and Broomhilda for the purposes of comedy is one of the subtle things I liked about the film, and actually makes its world more believable, as letting these little discrepancies be is sometimes more effective than hanging the proverbial lampshade on them.

[6] Notably, whereas Schultz begins the film as a suave talker and Django as the shoot-first type, at the end it is Schultz who imperils Django and Broomhilda by opening fire on Candie, and Django who is able to talk his way out of his predicament, in another of Tarantino’s deliberate reversals.

Through a Camera, Darkly: Some Thoughts on ‘Zero Dark Thirty’

Note: Putting up a spoiler warning for Zero Dark Thirty feels particularly ridiculous, since we all know how the hunt for Osama bin Laden ended. Nevertheless, it is the kind of film that may benefit from coming to it fresh, so if you want to do that, go ahead and watch it first. I’ll still be here.

Go on, we’ll wait.

You see, it’s sometimes hard not to be fooled by preconceptions, even – or especially – if you’re aware of them. The more you know about a film (or tv show, or play, or book) in advance, the more likely it is you’ll end up comparing it to a mental image which doesn’t really exist. That Zero Dark Thirty is a realistic, fact-based narrative of the CIA’s search for bin Laden, this much I had right. But having followed the critical reception of the film and the ensuing controversy over the depiction of torture, a very particular mental image of it began to develop in my head.[1] With the phrase ‘journalistic filmmaking’ being frequently bandied about,  I expected to encounter something more in the faux-documentary style of the films of Paul Greengrass (United 93, The Bourne Ultimatum), or even director Kathryn Bigelow’s own down-to-earth war drama The Hurt Locker.

Instead, she focuses on putting the events of the story up on screen in as direct a manner as possible. Thus Bigelow and cinematographer Greig Fraser reject affectations like shaky hand-held camera footage and, rather, craft a film which, though not overtly aestheticised, is nevertheless cinematically striking.[2] The finale of the film, the event which everything else has been building up to – the raid on bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan – is shot with an almost shocking clarity for a chaotic nighttime set-piece. Yet it feels deeply real, not only because of the efforts of the filmmakers to depict believable military tactics and technology, but also by avoiding the use of obvious tricks such as, for example, tinting footage blue in order to make it appear that the action occurs at night. Rather, Bigelow and Fraser here work in a palette of browns, greys and blacks, making the intrusion of light and colour, the faded gold of electric lighting and the red splash of blood, all the more intrusive.

Navy SEALs prepare to storm the compound.

But more than one kind of darkness characterises the film.  There is the darkness of ignorance, the frustration of having access to an international intelligence network and yet still fumbling blindly in the miasma of a shadow war. And, of course, there is a moral darkness in the inhumanities both sides inflict upon each other, the torture and the suicide bombings. The film is unflinching in its reproduction of the so-called ‘Enhanced Interrogation Techniques’ used by the CIA in the early years of the hunt for bin Laden, the source of the greatest amount of controversy surrounding the film.

By my understanding, the use of these methods at this point in the CIA’s history are not so much in question as is the claim that, by torturing a detainee named Ammar (Reda Kateb), CIA operatives Maya (Jessica Chastain) and Dan (Jason Clarke) disorientated him enough that they were later able to convince him he had helped stop an attack in Saudi Arabia – which, in fact, they had been unable to prevent. This tactic, combined with the threat of further interrogation, results in Ammar giving up actual information, including clues to the identity of bin Laden’s courier which lead, ultimately, to bin Laden himself.

With the CIA’s failure to prevent the attack in Saudi Arabia (not to mention the 7/7 bombings in London) set against Dan’s subsequent failure to extract any information whatsoever from another al-Qaeda operative, Abu Faraj (Yoav Levi), the film is hardly a ringing endorsement for the effectiveness of torture as a means of extracting intelligence directly. If the details depicted are true, therefore, the film presents a remarkably nuanced view of the practical effectiveness of torture, while demonstrating both the humanity of the detainees and the psychological cost of carrying out such actions.[3]

George (Mark Strong), Maya’s supervisor at Langley, overseeing a CIA op.

Of course, a key feature of the way Zero Dark Thirty is constructed that the audience is required to bring some amount of knowledge of the events of the past ten or more years with them.[4] The black screen and ‘sound-montage’ from 9/11 which open the film might be an attempt to recreate the chaos and confusion of that day, but it is also an invitation for the audience to interpolate their own memories and knowledge with the action of the film from the very start. The ending echoes this minimalism, focusing purely on Maya’s emotional yet enigmatic reaction to the success of the operation, as she sits alone on a military transport plane and weeps. Meanwhile, the world-wide reaction to bin Laden’s death is left undocumented.

Yet, when it comes to actual details of events taking place on CIA Black Sites and during classified operations, any regular audience is surely at a loss to provide the knowledge and context to supplement their viewing. All we can bring is our sense of morality, our own personal view of where the line is drawn. But the relationship runs in both directions, and the film itself highlights the fragile divide between observation and complicity through the way Dan gradually involves Maya in the interrogation of Ammar, first asking her to fetch a bucket, then to fill it with water and bring it to him. Before long, she is conducting her own interrogations. Depending on the perspective of the audience, Maya’s journey could be a justification, or a warning.

We see her adapt to the harsh existence demanded by the work before her. She shuts out her own conscience; she shuts out her colleagues as she loses one too many friends; she shuts out the whole world after her life comes under threat, until the work is all that’s left for her. And then the work is gone, and when the pilot asks her where she wants to go, she does not speak, perhaps because she has no answer. She, too, has sacrificed her life for the cause.

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[1] I would, ideally, have liked to have gone into the film with a truly open mind, but as it came out on general release in the UK a fortnight later than it did in the US, and because I have no willpower when it comes to these things, I found it impossible to avoid reading about it at length before seeing it.

[2] By the way, the other film Fraser did the cinematography for last year? Snow White and the Huntsman. Yeah, I don’t get it either.

[3] The current acting director of the CIA denies that one of the agency’s greatest victories in the war on terror was ultimately the product of torture, but outgoing US defence secretary Leon Panetta, head of the CIA at the time of the raid, has recently praised the film, acknowledging that these interrogation methods did play a role.

[4] The first half of the film in particular is so heavy on jargon (perhaps to a fault) that some familiarity with the military and intelligence world is almost required to keep up with the most basic exchanges between characters.  The ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service, is mentioned frequently without ever being explained, and Leon Panetta (James Gandolfini), arguably the most high-profile character depicted save perhaps bin Laden himself, isn’t even named.

The Shadow of the Past: ‘The Hobbit’ and the Prequel Problem

Martin Freeman examines his contract with Warner Bros.

Now that the fuss over frame rates and 3D has died down somewhat, at least until the next time around, it seems like as good a moment as any to talk about some of the more fundamental, structural issues surrounding the narrative of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. It’ll be fun, I promise.[1]

The Choices of Master Jackson

At its heart, The Hobbit, as a project, is a compromise. This is not inherently a bad thing; all adaptations are compromises. Nevertheless, its status as a prequel necessarily complicates things. It is neither a pure adaptation of the spirit of the book, in all its light whimsy and almost entirely episodic structure, nor is it truly a full conversion of the story into the mode and tone of The Lord of the Rings films. Just compare the excising of Tom Bombadil with the inclusion of the Dwarves’s ‘That’s What Bilbo Baggins Hates’ song, or the depiction of the trolls and the Goblin King against their decidedly less loquacious counterparts in the original trilogy.

The effect is a noticeable tonal inconsistency, even within the province of Peter Jackson and company’s own additions – to give one example, it is somewhat incredible to me that Sylvester McCoy’s clownish Radagast the Brown and his amazing giant hares exist in the same film as the flashback sequence to the Battle of Azanulbizar. Here the decapitated head of Thrór, grandfather of Thorin (Richard Armitage), is prominently held aloft over the raging torrent of a battle which wouldn’t look out of place in a Zack Snyder film. A somewhat similar moment in The Two Towers featuring a slain orc is much less jarring, yet more effective, as the audience is allowed to respond to the image itself rather than the odd juxtaposition of moods.[2]

An odd juxtaposition of moods.

Moreover, the attempt to tie the beginning of the narrative directly in to the Lord of the Rings creates a stilted effect on the film’s pacing. Beginning in the ‘past’ (relative the film’s primary setting), jumping to the ‘future’, and the finally settling in the ‘present’, the framework of the film becomes needlessly disjointed.[3] Perhaps intended to add a sense of scope to match the epoch-spanning opening sequence to Fellowship of the Ring, instead these multiple beginnings create a sense that the film is constantly restarting itself.[4] It also fractures the audience’s perspective too early and too obviously.

Flotsam and Jetsam

Things brings us to the main problem: The Hobbit is no longer about a hobbit, and its perspective is not that of Bilbo’s half-reluctant, half-curious naiveté. By expanding the scope to include the experiences of Gandalf (Ian McKellen) and even Radagast, the audience is detached from the sense of adventure experienced by one small person. Now, Gandalf is unquestionably the best character in the entire Tolkien mythos.[5] However, that does not mean I consider him to be an effective co-protagonist. The introduction of Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) and Saruman (Christopher Lee) is a key example of this, for here they are introduced as characters familiar to the viewpoint of the audience, by way of Gandalf’s knowledge of them.

Some might argue that this is inevitable. Galadriel and Saruman are, given the popularity of The Lord of the Rings, no doubt familiar to the majority of people who went to see An Unexpected Journey. Reintroducing them as if they were new would be as redundant as, well, an origin story for the ‘No Admittance Except on Party Business‘ sign on the gate of Bag End. However, both the inclusion of a brief backstory for a simple sign and the exclusion of a proper introduction for two key characters are ultimately examples of the same problem: the world of The Hobbit is waiting for The Lord of the Rings to happen.

Saruman, waiting for The Lord of the Rings to happen.

The treatment of Saruman is a case in point. In Fellowship, Gandalf speaks of Saruman with reverence and respect before the sudden but inevitable betrayal. Yet in The Hobbit, Gandalf treats the mere appearance of the master of his Order as an obstacle, a bureaucratic hindrance. It is hard to see this Gandalf going to Isengard to seek counsel with this Saruman. The dynamic between them is undone, their relationship becomes more static, and Saruman’s betrayal means that much less to us. And Middle-earth feels that much less alive.

The Last Debate

Now, this is the bit where I say I don’t think the film was bad. So, here it goes. I don’t think the film was bad. The performances were almost all strong, and Martin Freeman brought his best everyman performance to his role as Bilbo. Debates over technical innovations aside, the cinematography was frequently beautiful, and the craftsmanship going into the film’s production seemed to me as high quality as the work put into Lord of the Rings. And most importantly, once it gets going, it’s fun. That’s what The Hobbit is supposed to be, and hopefully with these teething issues out of the way, parts two and three might be less flawed. It’s just a pity that, on this occasion, Jackson and his cohorts so frequently got in their own way, diluting the experience of a world they are so expertly capable of conjuring.

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[1] The writer of this post accepts no responsibility for time spent reading this which could have instead been used to a) derive a greater amount of fun from elsewhere, b) make profit, or c) take over the world.

[2] The transition from practical effects to CGI is probably also a factor, but that’s a whole other conversation.

[3] My pet theory is that Jackson is in competition with himself here, trying to match the infamous multiple endings to Return of the King.

[4] Not unlike my old laptop.

[5] This view probably says a lot about me.

Fritz Lang’s ‘Metropolis’ and the Dawn of the Science Fiction Movie

The “New Tower of Babel” at the centre of the city.

George Méliès’s Le voyage dans la Lune (1902) is, quite frequently, referred to as the first science fiction film.[1] If that is where the genre was conceived, however, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis is where it emerged, almost fully-formed, into the light.  The lunar travel of Le voyage dans la Lune occurs in a dreamlike, nonsensical space; the astronomers who take part in the expedition appearing more as wizards than scientists; the moon itself a fairytale wonderland with a face. While they may both be films of the silent era, the contrast with Metropolis, released a quarter of a century later, could not be more stark.

City of Tomorrow

From the beginning, Lang puts great effort into establishing a coherent sense of place in the film’s opening scenes, leaving the reveal of the city’s majestic yet oppressive towers aside for a good fifteen minutes into the film. Instead, he focuses on contrasting the underworld, through which the workers march in step like mindless robots, against the Arcadian paradise of the Son’s Club, where the offspring of the city’s aristocracy frolic (no, really, there is a great deal of frolicking going on). Here we are introduced to Freder (Gustav Fröhlich), son of the city’s ruler, Joh Fredersen (Alfred Abel). Freder becomes entranced by the saintly Maria (Brigitte Helm), a mysterious women from the world of workers below, who leads a group of workers’ children into the city’s pleasure gardens. Pursuing her, Freder finds himself in a hellish nightmare of voracious machinery and ceaseless human toil.

The machine which induces Freder’s vision.

This sequence establishes two concepts which are at the core of the world depicted in Metropolis. The first is Freder’s vision of one of the city’s great machines transforming into something between a sacrificial temple and the maw of some ancient, chthonic god.[2] A workplace accident becomes a ghastly ritual as Freder sees a column of robot-like workers marching to their doom, an image made all the more haunting by his return to reality, as victims of the accident are removed and replaced without a second thought. This ties directly into the second concept presented in this sequence, that of human beings as nothing more than components, their physical selves controlled by and subsumed into the machines at which they work.

Robot of Dawn

Lang returns to both ideas frequently throughout the film, but it is the latter which is more pervasive, and which taps into one of the central concerns of science fiction: the way technology reshapes and, potentially, controls our lives. The blurring of man and machine is, ultimately, literalised by the film’s most famous image, the machine woman created by the mad scientist Rotwang, which was originally designed to recreate Hel, wife of Joh Fredersen, with whom Rotwang was clearly infatuated.[3] Fredersen, however, uses the robot to impersonate Maria and subvert her influence over the workers while Rotwang, in turn, attempts to turn Fredersen’s plan against him to undermine his rule and, ultimately, destroy the city.

Rotwang’s machine woman as she begins transforming into Maria’s image.

Religious imagery heightens the difference between the real and false Marias. The true Maria is a prophet and a mother to the workers, with elements of both the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist. She predicts the arrival of a Messianic ‘Mediator’, who would reconcile the workers with their masters and save the city from violent revolution. The false Maria, the robot, the machine woman, is depicted as nothing less than the Whore of Babylon, the apocalyptic figure of Revelation, and is responsible for rousing the workers into acts of violent sabotage. In their hatred, the workers are still subordinate to the will of a machine, which proves to nearly be their own undoing. Only through peaceful reconciliation, in which Freder takes on the role of the Mediator, is the city saved.[5]

Tomorrow is Yesterday

The film’s resolution and message, “The mediator between the head and the hands must be the heart”, were criticised on release  - and later by Lang himself – as being hopelessly naïve. In truth, Thea von Harbou’s trite parable about class relations does seem to belong in a lesser film. The real strength of Metropolis is, instead, in the presentation of the city and its people, where cathedrals and catacombs exist alongside towers and sky-bridges, and the primal and the industrial are merged into one. There is a sense of history and myth to go along with the film’s famed futurism, an understanding that, in fact, the future is not new. It’s older than anything that’s ever been. Science fiction, at its heart, is not and cannot be about disconnecting from the present or the past.[6] It’s about the possibilities and ideas, the fears and hopes, which emanate from our time and before, and exploring them in new ways and contexts. Metropolis, in many ways, codifies this in film, and that is what gives it its fascination, and its enduring power.

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[1]  Recently and notably, the role which Le voyage dans le Lune and the films of George Méliès played in the early evolution of cinema was celebrated in last year’s Hugo by Martin Scorcese.

[2] Freder’s vision causes him to scream “Moloch”, the name of an ancient Ammonite deity worshipped by Canaanites and Phoenicians. Moloch is mentioned in Leviticus 18:21, where God forbids the Israelites from sacrificing their children to him.

[3] Hel is also the name of the ruler of the underworld in Norse mythology, a daughter of Loki and the giantess Angrboða. According to the Prose Edda, “Hel’s people” would join her father and her siblings, Fenrir the wolf and Jörmungandr the serpent, against the gods in the apocalyptic battle of Ragnarok.

[5] The film’s pacifism and anti-extremist message, however, did not prevent it becoming a favorite of Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels. Thea von Harbou, Fritz Lang’s wife and the film’s writer, ended up joining the Nazi Party in the early ’30s. Lang (who, despite his Catholic upbringing, would have been classified as a Jew under the Nuremberg Laws), eventually divorced her and left Germany for the United States.

[6] Just look at Dune, or Star Wars, with its famous opening line “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away …”

A Tale of Legacy and Hope: ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ Film Review

Batman (Christian Bale) faces off against Bane (Tom Hardy).

What is it about Batman? A super-rich, developmentally arrested man-child dresses up as a flying mammal and goes around beating up people in even sillier costumes, and we can’t get enough of him (I kid, I kid. Mostly). Of all the so-called ‘A-list’ superheroes, Batman seems to have the most frequently acclaimed graphic novels, movies, and even video games. For many, the jewels in the bat-crown are Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, which arguably legitimised the comic book film boom of the previous decade, bringing the genre to a new level of popularity and critical recognition.

This is the legacy with which Nolan and company were confronted when trying to bring the series to completion in The Dark Knight Rises, and it is, perhaps, no coincidence that themes of legacy and living up to the past are prominent in not only the character of Bruce Wayne, but in the arcs of both his enemies and his allies. Even the name of the film is, likely, a necessary acknowledgement of past success, as well as a nod to some of the original comic book stories which influenced the film, such as Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and, more circumspectly, Knightfall. Like in Returns, Bruce Wayne (played once again by Christian Bale) begins the story retired but dissatisfied, having never truly grown passed his need for Batman – though, thanks to his sacrifice at the end of The Dark Knight, the city of Gotham has not needed him for the past eight years.

Wayne is finally brought out of retirement by the appearance of cat burglar Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married) and mercenary Bane (Tom Hardy, Inception), ignoring the warnings of his faithful butler, Alfred (Michael Caine, Inception). However, he is aided by new allies, policeman John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Inception) and Wayne Enterprises board member Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard, Inception), as well as old friends Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman, Inception Invictus) and Comissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy). In truth, the film struggles somewhat to move all these different pieces into place, resulting in a meandering, somewhat disappointing first act, but things pick up with Batman’s first fateful encounter with Bane, and it’s from here the story really begins to take off.

Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) takes the Batpod out for a spin.

A trite observation: ‘hype’ is only one letter away from ‘hope’, and The Dark Knight Rises is easily one of the most hyped-up films of the year (the only other real contenders being The Avengers and The Hobbit). I certainly went into the cinema hoping it would live up to the heights of The Dark Knight, and in that first hour, I felt doubt slowly creep in. And yet, to a certain extent, I think that was part of the point. I’m not suggesting that Christopher Nolan made an deliberately underwhelming opening in order to make a statement about the impossible expectations the industry and the audience place on these kinds of films – that would be ridiculous. But I do think that the frustrating nature of opening first act is, at least partially, a calculated gamble, as our hopes for Batman’s triumphant return are left deliberately unfulfilled.

It’s a gamble which leaves the film on an uncertain footing to start, but which pays dividends once everything begins to fall into place (which does take just a little too long to happen). The lengthy establishment of the film’s many characters helps create an emotional core for the massive scale of the spectacle which follows, and provides a reason to care about the fate of Gotham beyond the involvement of Bruce Wayne. As for Wayne himself, it’s often said that he (together with his alter ego) is the least interesting thing about the stories he appears in, with Tim Burton’s Batman Returns and The Dark Knight often cited as examples, but Rises clearly breaks with that supposed pattern by allowing him to grow beyond being simply the man behind the mask, by giving him a past that weighs down on him and a future that seems tragically out of reach.

Appropriately, for a film so concerned with legacy, the events of the previous entries in the series are central to the events of this one, with the personal and public legacies of Rachel Dawes, Harvey Dent and Ra’s al Ghul, not to mention the Batman himself, playing key roles in the motivations of many characters. As a result, Rises serves much better as a conclusion to an on-going narrative than it does as a story in its own right. This is particularly remarkable in that, even though The Dark Knight felt substantially distinct from Batman Begins, the attempt to tie them together here doesn’t feel overly strained or artificial.

Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) dwells on Harvey Dent’s legacy.

Nevertheless, there are flaws beyond the risky structure of the opening hour. While most of the large cast of characters earn their place, there are those which seem extraneous at times, most notably Deputy Commissioner Foley (Matthew Modine, Full Metal Jacket), as additional the emphasis on Gotham’s police department over the ordinary citizen makes it feel as if an important perspective is missing. Furthermore, while Tom Hardy’s Bane is quite a unique screen presence as a villain, the different elements of his character don’t always cohere too well, and perhaps more light should have been shed on his motivations earlier, though the moment in which his true history is revealed was nonetheless effective.

Indeed, the ending is easily the best part of the film, something which couldn’t necessarily be said for either Batman Begins or The Dark Knight. Even based around a surprisingly overt gimmick with a prop that doesn’t look entirely convincing, the final act of The Dark Knight Rises manages to combine thrilling, if strangely old-fashioned, action sequences with the most emotional moments of the entire series. It’s a catharsis which comes not through the defeat of the villain, but the journey of the heroes. For despite the epic disaster-movie scale of the thing, it’s the characters which make it work, make the cumbersome plotting interesting, provide the stakes with meaning, and give voice to the themes.

Hope alone is not that interesting a concept artistically, no more than ‘good vs. evil’ is, really. It’s such a repeated element of these kind of stories that it’s hard to say anything new on the subject. But legacy and hope together, the burden of the past and the promise of the future, form a dichotomy right at home in the imagery and symbolism of the Batman mythos, where there are always two sides to every coin. For Bane, hope is an instrument of torture, and legacies are weapons. For Batman and his allies, legacies might sometimes be terrible weights to carry, but hope provides them with the strength to endure.

Arbitrary critic rating: 4 out of 5 mysterious symbols in the sky

Afterthoughts

• Always good seeing Scarecrow crop up (Cillian Murphy, Inception).
• An observation I didn’t manage to fit in above: Selina Kyle’s initial motivation is nothing less than to be free of her past, which strikes me as particularly significant in the context of the film’s themes. Also, in a typically Nolan-esque move, she is never once referred to as ‘Catwoman’.
• I haven’t really talked about the politics of the film, mainly because Bane’s assault on the rich and powerful of Gotham owes much, much more to the depiction of the French Revolution in A Tale of Two Cities than it does to the Occupy movement.
• Attached to the front of the film was a teaser for Zack Snyder’s upcoming Superman reboot Man of Steel. There wasn’t much to go on, though I was intrigued by what I saw, which seemed more reminiscent of Nolan’s aesthetic than Snyder’s (Nolan is serving as producer and has a story credit). Nevertheless, while trailers regularly reuse music, the choice of one of the most distinctive soundtracks from one of the most successful films of the previous decade (The Fellowship of the Ring) was overly distracting.

East End Film Festival 2012: ‘Fray’ and ‘Strawberry Fields’

Last week, the 11th East End Film Festival was held in London. Founded in 2001 by the borough of Tower Hamlets, the festival’s goal was initially to provide an outlet for local film-makers to display their work, but since then it has grown in scope, becoming one of the biggest film festivals in the city. It now showcases films not only from the UK but across the world. Here, then, are mini-reviews of but two films of the many films that were being show this year.

Fray (2012)

Bryan Kaplan as Justin Williams. Photograph: Jarin Blaschke

Justin Williams is a war veteran. Discharged following a combat injury and suffering from PTSD, he is unable to find peace, unable to leave his past behind him or realise a future for himself. All of this Fray manages to convey in its opening few minutes with barely any dialogue and even less exposition. There is no introductory voice-over, no convenient introduction between characters to explain everything in precise, writerly detail. Instead there is noise: the rushing of water, the whine and thump of a treadmill, the low rumbling of an internal combustion engine and tyres on tarmac.

Of all the films I’ve seen in the last year or so, the use of ambient sound reminds me most of We Need to Talk About Kevin, but where that film used sound effects to help conjure a dreamlike – or, perhaps, nightmarish – mood, Fray remains firmly grounded and realistic. The intrusiveness of everyday noise instead offers insight into Justin’s state of mind on an innate, human level, creating the all-important link between his character and the audience, but without compromising the sense of authenticity invoked by the film’s overall approach.

The sparse opening sequence sets the tone for the rest of the film, with its minimalist script and limited cast. Much of the film’s runtime simply follows Justin as he struggles to live in recession-hit Oregon, working at a wood mill for less than he needs to live on while trying to take a business ethics course to secure himself a brighter future. He receives support from his boss, Paul (Wes Harris) and his teacher Cheri (Marisa Costa), but finds himself torn between accepting and rejecting their help, even as he is increasingly unable to cope with the consequences of his wartime experience and injury. As a result, pretty much the entire film rests on Kaplan’s shoulders, and it’s to his credit that Justin remains a completely convincing figure.

Fray was both written and directed by Geoff Ryan, his first feature-length production, and was clearly something of a personal project for him. As Ryan revealed at the film’s screening, Fray was inspired by his cousin’s experience returning home from Iraq and that of many other veterans he met while researching the concept. Justin may not be based on any single individual, but his story is the story of many veterans who have returned home from Iraq and Afghanistan. So, yes, Fray is a message movie, with a commitment to telling a fictional story that is nevertheless true to life, but it is also a gripping character piece, and that is what gives its message power.

Arbitrary critic rating: Hmm, I don’t know. It’s one of those films that’s hard to assess comparatively, as it’s so itself. Let’s say five stars. Sound good? Good.

Strawberry Fields (2012)

Anna Madeley as Gillian and Emun Elliot as Kev. Photograph: Spring Pictures

So from the drizzled forests of Oregon to the sunny Kentish countryside, Strawberry Fields is a psychological drama which follows Gillian (Anna Madeley, In Bruges) as she attempts to assert her own identity while trying to escape the shadow of her overbearing and manipulative sister, Emily (Christine Bottomley, The Arbor). Taking up work as a strawberry picker, Gillian meets Kev (Emun Elliot, Prometheus), and their relationship becomes the catalyst for a final confrontation between the two sisters, and Gillian’s own self-realisation.

The film draws clear influences from A Streetcar Named Desire, with Emily coming across as a particularly malicious re-imagining of Blanche DuBois, at one point openly hissing to Kev that he’ll never be good enough for her or Gillian, because they’ve got class. With the role of psychological puppet-master taken over by Emily, Kev himself comes off somewhat more sympathetic than his literary forbear Stanley Kowalski, and though Emun Elliot may not be Marlon Brando, he nevertheless invests Kev with a convincingly earthy charisma.

However, like Fray, it is in the mental state of the main character that film-makers are primarily interested, and Anna Madeley is fascinating in an unconventional lead role.  Virtually the first thing we learn about Gillian (who initially goes by Tammy until Emily calls her out on her harmless subterfuge) is that her identity, her sense of self, is in flux. Initially, she seems to try out different elements of other people’s personalities, just as she adopts the cast away clothes found on the side of the road. It’s a deliberately alienating introduction to a film’s lead character, and the fact it works at all is a testament to Madeley’s ability to play an unformed Gillian’s unique brand of likeable weirdness.

After its intriguing opening, however, the film does occasionally veer into melodrama, as it tries to investigate the disparity between the bucolic ideal with the darkness at the heart of the characters’ relationships, the result coming out as muddled, rather than a pointed contrast. The childlike whisperings which haunt Gillian particularly lack a certain subtlety, and seem out of place alongside the script’s oblique approach to the characters’ back-story. Visually, though, Strawberry Fields (made for under £100,000 through Film Londom Microwave) is certainly stunning, providing Kent’s coast and countryside with a verdant summer beauty always on the verge of mouldering. It’s a flawed film, but a charming one, with strong themes and character-work emerging despite its imperfections.

Arbitrary critic rating: Bermondsey

Well, it’s certainly better than having your liver torn out by an eagle every day: ‘Prometheus’ Film Review

A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.

- Frank Herbert, ‘Dune’

It is always curious to me how a film-maker begins their film (or, indeed, how any storyteller chooses to begin their story), because beginnings are a deliberate choice, and often a clear statement of intent. Consider the original Star Wars, with its bold yellow type, followed by the massive, seemingly endless bulk of an Imperial Star Destroyer as its pursues the rebel ship. Or Fellowship of the Ring, with Cate Blanchett’s voice pealing out over vast swathes of Tolkien’s legendarium, over staggering mountain ranges and great battles. Both are, of course, exciting beginnings which draw the viewer into their worlds. But they are also statements, announcements of what the films are and what they intend to depict.

The beginning of Prometheus, Ridley Scott’s first science fiction in thirty years, is almost more ambitious than its cinematic predecessors, at least in narrative terms. It starts with no less than the beginning, the dawn of life on Earth. It’s certainly a beautiful sequence, the camera soaring over primeval landscapes and roaring waterfalls. This statement is quite clear: Prometheus is not just another sci-fi thriller, it is an epic. Yet, despite this grand opening statement, as well as Scott’s own public protestations during production, it is also clearly a prequel – an origin story, another kind of beginning – for the Alien franchise, and the original Alien in particular. And that is a very different kind of story from the one Prometheus wants to tell.

So Prometheus is a film divided against itself. It follows the tropes of the horror/thriller side of science fiction – a group of people encounter a mysterious and alien threat, become separated, and are slowly picked off by something terrible. But the scope of the film is too elaborate, too unwieldy, for the tension to build in a satisfying way. There are many brilliantly constructed sequences throughout the course of the narrative,  but they seem curiously isolated from each other, making what is trying to be a sweeping epic instead feel bizarrely episodic.

The incorporation of one of the most famous and acclaimed cinematic epics, David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, into the establishing scenes of the film adds to the sensation of cognitive dissonance. Here we are introduced to the android David, played with fascinating poise and ambiguity by Michael Fassbender (X-Men: First Class, Inglourious Basterds), who nearly accomplishes the herculean task of pulling the disparate elements of the film together through David’s quest for understanding of his own creators, even as they struggle to comprehend theirs. Fassbender is let down, however, by a script which leaves David’s relationship with his ‘father’, Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce, The King’s Speech, The Hurt Locker) curiously unexplored for the weight which is placed on it.

The other character who almost, but not quite, centres the film is archaeologist Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace, Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows,  2009′s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), whose arc has clear parallels with Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley from Alien. However, the mere spectre of Ripley hovering over the film means that Shaw could never possess the emergent quality of her predecessor’s heroism, nor can the film recreate the sheer brutality of Ripley’s original battle for survival. The attempts to give Shaw’s character more colour – her relationship with fellow archeologist Charlie (Logan Marshall-Green, Devil, Brooklyn’s Finest), her questioning of her religious faith – feel somewhat superficial, though the former does briefly touch on the central theme of what it means to create life, while also setting up one of the more effective and personal moments of horror in the film.

However, the dialogue used to ground Shaw’s experience in her character is rather bluntly on-the-nose, a further issue plaguing Damon Lindelof’s script. The interactions between the Prometheus‘s crew lack both the naturalism of Alien‘s ‘blue-collar workers in space’ and the charismatic bombast of the Colonial Marines in Aliens. Lindelof is something of an easy target these days, thanks mostly to the mixed reputation of Lost, on which he served as showrunner. However, I don’t think that the questions Prometheus leaves unresolved are really the main problem with the script (though there is enough to say on that subject to fill another blog post). It’s the plot structure and the character dynamics that really could have used improvement.

Icy company representative Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron, Young Adult, Hancock) is the worst afflicted by the latter, perhaps because either Theron or Scott decided to accentuate the character’s cold professionalism by having her over-emphasise even the most disposable of lines. Nevertheless, her connection with Janek (Idris Elba, The Wire, Thor), captain of the Prometheus, is one of the film’s better character moments, if only because the characters themselves don’t seem to take it too seriously. In comparison, Vickers’ far more ‘significant’ and complex relationship with her boss (Weyland again) is far less adroitly handled.

Prometheus is an admirably ambitious film, though one which isn’t quite as profound as its posturing makes out. Except for the occasional clunky line reading, the direction and performances are as good as you’re likely to see in a blockbuster film this year, or any year. It’s simply a shame that such effort and craftsmanship are forced to hang on such a flawed, unbalanced skeleton.

Arbitrary critic rating: 3 out of 5 distant lights spearing through space

Afterthoughts

• Apparently Prometheus, whose name Plato believed meant ‘Forethinker’, had a brother named Epimetheus – ‘Afterthinker’ – and was known for his foolishness and dull wit. Whoops.
• Ridley Scott has actually claimed in an interview that the planet at the beginning of the film “doesn’t have to be” Earth. I agree with Roger Ebert that Scott is obfuscating here, probably in order to make a larger point about the mythology of the universe he’s constructed.
• Elizabeth Shaw was also the name of a character in 70′s Doctor Who,  a brilliant scientist who served as the Doctor’s companion during the show’s brief flirtation with a more cerebral but gritty tone at the start of Jon Pertwee’s tenure. This may be a coincidence but, knowing Ridley Scott’s attention to detail, likely not.
• Spoiler: the film’s final human death is rather silly, really, and does seem to indicate that they did indeed have too many characters than they knew what to do with. Oh well.