She Slouches to Conquer

Eva Green burns it down in 300: Rise of an Empire.

«½ 300: Rise of an Empire. Written by Zack Snyder & Kurt Johnstad, based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller. Directed by Noam Murro. At area theaters.

          

History is much like a golf swing: it's harder to unlearn bad habits than it is to learn it right in the first place. So take pity, if you will, on the hapless adjunct professor of history, facing a class full of students whose only knowledge of antiquity is watching Noam Murro's wretched 300: Rise of an Empire. Unlike most scholarly issues treated by specialists, the epic clash between Greeks and Persians is one story everybody thinks they know something about. And yet, after watching this 300, the class would start out knowing less than nothing.

          And so…no, Jacob, the Persian King Xerxes did not attack Greece in 480 BC because he was "annoyed by the notion of Greek freedom." (He invaded to punish the Greeks for meddling in the empire's internal politics.) And no, Madison, Greek hoplites did not fight like Roman gladiators, flailing and hacking as individual "heroes". (They fought as tightly-knit phalanxes, with shields locked together.) And no, Tyler, the Spartans didn't swoop down at the last minute to save the Athenian fleet at the Battle of Salamis (Sparta sent a token few ships, but the Spartans had virtually no tradition of fighting at sea.) In fact, Lucas, the real "tyranny" in this story wasn't Persia—which had a fairly liberal organization that allowed individual states much freedom to run their own affairs. The tyranny was Sparta itself, a totalitarian state unique in Greece for its secret police and nasty habit of enslaving other Greeks. Nor was democratic Athens more than partially "free", in the sense that it was slave-owning society where only adult males governed in principle, and only wealthy adult males in practice.

          But let's back up. 300: Rise of an Empire follows in the style of 300, Zack Snyder's 2007 hit based on the Frank Miller graphic novel. I've had occasion to complain about that film's butchery of Herodotus' already "colorful" history elsewhere. Rise isn't so much of a sequel as a pendant piece, covering events that happened while Snyder's Spartans under King Gerard Butler held the line at Thermopylae. The out-numbered Athenian fleet, under the crafty Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton) prevented a massive enemy navy from doing a wet end-around the Spartans. Along with their knowledge of the terrain, the Athenians had to rely on their superior seamanship to frustrate the enemy. And indeed, there is a great story to be told of the sea battle off Artemisium—one too long in the shadow of Leonidas' legendary stand at Thermopylae.

          Murro's movie is far, far from the definitive telling. Even more than 300, Rise is preoccupied with conjuring turgid, busied-up visual spectacle that ups the ante on beheadings and lopped-off limbs. (And no, Ethan, the Greeks didn't lop off many limbs; in hoplite warfare the damage was usually puncture wounds.) The Persian soldiers pop nicely, like sacks full of stage-blood, and the Greek oared warships seem to motor as if pushed around by 300-hp outboards, and the whole point seems to achieve, as Themistocles says of the Spartans, "a beautiful death." It's all somehow pornographic, but in the sense of being repetitive and dull, not titillating.

          The eroticizing of combat is nothing new. Nor should historical accuracy ever be an object in itself when fiction is made out of history. The point should be to strike the larger themes, not dwell on niggling details. Trouble is, the larger themes here have nothing to do with the tragic values realized so brilliantly in the works of actual Greeks. Screenwriters Snyder and Johnstad take a perfunctory stab at grown-up tragedy by suggesting that Themistocles invited invasion by killing Xerxes' father, Darius, at the Battle of Marathon. In other words, Themistocles sinned by needlessly gilding his victory, Alas, the lesson becomes, in these writers' minds, that he should have killed the young Xerxes too, before the son could take revenge. Here, hubris is an even more foreign concept than accuracy.

          There is an inviting ambiguity of sorts in the title, Rise of an Empire. Which empire, actually? Persia's, or the one Athens built after the war, largely through Putin-esque bullying and forced "contributions" to a "self-defense" league run entirely by Athenians? Ironies abound in what, you know, actually happened. But instead, Snyder and Murro are content to deliver tired, mostly discarded themes about the triumph of the "free" West over decadent, slavish Orientals. The kind of stuff that was already old at the turn of the 20^th century, let alone the 21^st. Mussolini would have loved it.

          If there's anything to appreciate here, it's Eva Green (Casino Royale) as Artemisia, the dominatrix-admiral of the Persian fleet. What's not to like as she struts the deck in leather corset, fishnet stockings and gonzo eye-makeup, breathing lines like "You fight better than you fuck, Themistocles!" and "I know every man under my lash"? When seated on her throne, she insouciantly drapes a leg over the arm—all the better to display the source of her power. She's more like an animated villain than most animated villains.

          In her breakneck, WTF performance, Green cops the only attitude this material truly deserves: contempt.

© 2014 Nicholas Nicastro

Never Forget

Anwar Congo shows how it's done in The Act of Killing.

«««« The Act of Killing.  Directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, Anonymous, & Christine Cynn. Available on Netflix.

This time of year, around the Oscars, it's typical to hear the phrase "triumph of the human spirit". That's usually taken to mean some peoples' capacity to overcome suffering. But as Joshua Oppenheimer's fascinating documentary The Act of Killing shows, the human spirit can be irrepressible in another, darker way: in the power to rationalize, transform, or otherwise cope with suffering inflicted on others.

          Mid-1960's Indonesia was the scene of one of the biggest genocides of the 20^th century. After an abortive coup against the Indonesian military, nationalist elements in the country took revenge on the left-leaning government of President Sukarno, launching a nationwide purge. In the space of less than a year, one million people were murdered by right-wing death squads. The victims were supposed to be Communists, but the freelancers weren't scrupulous about whom they swept up. Urban intellectuals were targeted, and Christian missionaries, and rural people who benefited from agricultural subsidies, and anybody else on the receiving end of petty score-settling. Untold thousands of ethnic Chinese—presumably because of alleged kinship with the regime in Beijing—were exterminated.

          Disturbingly, the military-backed government has not covered up these crimes. Instead, the massacre is widely celebrated in Indonesia. None of the former paramilitaries who personally engaged in killings have been prosecuted. Some still throw their weight around in their local districts, enjoying the fruits of small-time racketeering. Others have ascended to seats in Parliament. In a real sense, it's as if thousands of former Nazis were still free in Germany, boasting of their acts in the beer-halls, gathering for reunions in their old uniforms as current political leaders fete them with toasts and keynote speeches.

          Oppenheimer cleverly exploits this pride to craft a memorable piece of self-incrimination: he asks several of the erstwhile killers to "educate" the rest of us by reenacting their exploits for the camera. Unabashed, these old guys really take up the challenge. Anwar Congo gets a dye job so he can look more like his younger self; Erman Koto, for some reason, spends most of the film in elaborate drag. Some of their enthusiasm stems from the influence of American movies on their misspent youths. They call themselves the "movie theater gangsters", dressing up in fedoras and pimp suits, like a fun-house version of a Bogart movie. In one reenacted scene, they torture a "communist" who dared propose banning American movies from the country.

          Watching The Act of Killing is to enter a Twilight Zone where basic norms of morality are roughed up, strangled, and dumped in a river. Congo cheerfully demonstrates the preferred method of dispatching victims without making too much of a mess (garroting with metal wire). "Always wear dark-colored pants for killing," he advises. In their make-up chairs, the killers muse over the semantic distinction between cruelty and sadism. They note that they proved that Communists weren't the only cruel ones—which is supposed to be a good thing. Instead of disowning their acts of sadism, they fret that the younger generation will never know of their exploits. "Never forget", they warn us.

          The legacy of the purges has varying effects on the "players". After personally strangling, bludgeoning, and beheading about a thousand people, the affable Congo integrated smoothly back into ordinary life. Adi Zulkadry claims he never had a single nightmare, never suffered a shred of guilt. If this were where Oppenheimer left it, the film would have been merely a clever, albeit appalling, exercise.

          The film's genius emerges when cracks appear in Congo's happy-go-lucky façade. As the reenactments go on, he grants there were bad dreams. Curious how his victims must have felt, he asks Oppenheimer to film him pretending to be garroted by Koto. The experience leaves him disturbed. "I could feel my dignity being stripped away," he complains. Duping these men into incriminating themselves is clever, but it's how it changes the outlooks of real killers that makes this film truly remarkable.

          The release of The Act of Killing is not the last act in this drama. The film is still largely unseen in Indonesia, and has barely been discussed in the press there. With many of the criminals and their enablers in positions of power, some of Oppenheimer's brave native collaborators had to credit themselves as "Anonymous". Though it was nominated for the Oscar for the Best Documentary Feature—and might have earned some attention in Indonesia if it had won, it didn't (losing—preposterously to my mind—to a piece of relative fluff, 20 Feet From Stardom).

          As Martin Luther King said, "The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." In this case, the bend is still too shallow to make out.

© 2014 Nicholas Nicastro

Don't Buy This For a Dollar

Joel Kinnaman is spam-in-the-can in Robocop.

«« RoboCop.  Written by Joshua Zetumer. Directed by José Padilha, based on the 1987 film. At area theaters.

         

Mitt Romney once declared that "Corporations are people, my friend." Deplorable as this legal fiction seems to many of us, our post-Citizen's United reality is worse: not only are corporations people, they're increasingly the only "people" who count. When it comes to electoral clout, political pull, legal muscle or any other measure of influence, the United States no longer comprises 320 million human beings. The real population is about 16,000—the number of businesses the Census Bureau defines as "large" because they have more than 500 employees.

          This was hardly news in 1987, when Paul Verhoeven's original Robocop wafted like a breath of fresh air into the summer silly season. The story of a slain cop (Peter Weller) reincarnated as a law-keeping cyborg not only delivered action, visual kicks, and terrific villains in Ronny Cox and Kurtwood Smith. It also served up a helping of smart, dead-accurate satire on corporate culture and the media. Subsequent boardroom malpractice and the dumbed-down content of our airwaves have shown the Edward Neumeier/Michael Miner script to be not only ridiculous, but prophetic. RoboCop's success at the box office ($110 million in 2014 dollars) also proved that popcorn movies don't have to be formulaic or pre-sold to find a big audience.

          In short, releasing a RoboCop remake without the wit makes about as much sense as remaking West Side Story without—you know—the sing-y parts. Yet this is what we've got in Brazilian director José Padilha's update. Apparently he didn't get the memo: the original was satire, not a superhero origin story.

          Virtually every choice the little-known Padilha (Elite Squad) makes represents a pulled punch. When hero cop Alex Murphy dies in the original, Verhoeven makes us expire with him, presenting his demise in the form of truly harrowing point-of-view shots; by contrast, Padilha and writer Joshua Zetumer have their Murphy die in a simple car-bombing, observed (not felt) as if through a security camera. Joel Kinnaman is a bland, Swedish meatball of an actor who feels like the second or third option after the director's first choice wasn't available. In place of Cox ("Who cares if it works?") and Smith ("Take a look at my face, Dick!"), the remake gives us Michael Keaton as one of those tech CEOs who, like Reed Hastings or Mark Zuckerberg, prefers casual-neat to suit-and-tie. Keaton may have started out as a stand-up comic, but there's nothing remotely witty—or scary—about his performance. And while Padilha had good sense in his casting of Abbie Cornish as Murphy's wife, Cornish goes wasted here, despite having one of the strongest onscreen presences in Hollywood.

          The best part of this RoboCop comes early, before RoboCop himself appears. In an ersatz "news" segment, the Pentagon's latest models of combat robots are presented winning hearts and minds in occupied Tehran. Things quickly go bad, but mouthy conservative pundit Samuel L. Jackson spins the mayhem as proving the drones are necessary. (Lack of mayhem would, of course, prove the same thing, that the drones are doing a heck of a job.)
          RoboCop's mediocrity is perhaps not all the filmmakers' fault. In 1987, the prospect of combat robots and cyborgs was far enough in the future to afford a certain freedom in satirizing them. Now that they're just over the horizon, there's an uncomfortable feeling that the joke may soon be on us.

© 2014 Nicholas Nicastro

Past Imperfect

Bejo and Mossafa go digging in The Past.

«««« The Past (Le passé). Written and directed by Asghar Farhadi. At select theaters.

Nothing is easy when it comes to the films of Asghar Farhadi. If their emotional power makes them sometimes hard to watch, and their persistent complexity hard to summarize, they're also hard to dismiss from one's mind. Many viewers in the West found this out when his last film, A Separation, earned wide attention (and the first Oscar for an Iranian film) in 2012. Farhadi is up to the same, brilliant tricks in his latest, The Past.

          This one is set in a suburb outside of Paris. Marie-Anne (The Artist's Bérénice Bejo)

welcomes her Iranian soon-to-be ex-husband Ahmad (Ali Mossafa) to town on the occasion of signing their final divorce papers. It's supposed to be a legal formality, maybe mixed with a little wistfulness, but matters soon become more complicated. Marie-Anne has conceived a child by her current boyfriend, Samir (Tahar Rahim) the French-Arab owner of a dry cleaning business. Samir, in turn, is still married to Céline (Aleksandra Klebanska). Céline lies in a coma after attempting suicide--an act that may or may not have been provoked by knowledge of Samir's infidelity. That, at least, is the assumption of Marie-Anne's teenage daughter (Pauline Burlet), who is determined to sabotage her mother's engagement.

          This may sound like the stuff of genuine soap-opera, but The Past feels like nothing of the kind. As Ahmad is drawn into the travails of the woman he once abandoned, the film becomes a kind of archaeological investigation of acts and feelings whose consequences are never what they seem. In Farhadi's script, no momentous revelation supplies the final word. Each leads only to new puzzles, new layers of significance, that will frustrate viewers seeking faster, more conventional drama.

          A social conservative, Iranian or otherwise, can find much to deplore in these characters' "European" disregard of traditional arrangements--the affairs, the out-of-wedlock pregnancies, the toll on the lovers' small children. Yet the modernist in Farhadi sees no easy solutions in the arbitrary strictures of the past, either. As in A Separation, there are only the inevitable passions that come with living with others, and the compromises we make to navigate them. In this, the melancholy and patient Ahmad, obliged to surrender his husbandly prerogatives, yet sift through his ex-wife's emotional wreckage, seems to stand in best for Farhadi himself.

          Following the silent-era antics she mastered for The Artist, Bejo shows mastery at a miniaturist's scale here. (She won the 2013 Best Actress Award at Cannes for this role). Farhadi likewise draws detailed, believable performances from the children in the cast (Burlet, Elyes Aguis, Jeanne Jestin). In a season of strong performances, you will not see a better acted/directed film this year, which makes its omission from the Best Foreign Language film Oscar nominees for 2013 especially puzzling.

          In snubbing Farhadi, the Academy at least has something in common with the mullahs in Iran, who forced his countrymen to cancel the Tehran celebration for his 2012 Oscar win. Whether they're wearing Rolexes or turbans, swine have trouble savoring pearls.

© 2014 Nicholas Nicastro

Labor of Love

Mignogna boldly goes where others have gone before.

««« Star Trek Continues. Executive producers Vic Mignogna, Michael Bednar, John Broughton & Steven Dengler. Available for streaming on YouTube.

Everybody knows the original Star Trek went off the air sometime during the first Nixon Administration. Or did it?
          You'd be excused for pondering this if you've gotten a look at Star Trek Continues(STC), a fan-produced reincarnation of fundamental Trek to end all fan-produced series. Initially funded via a Kickstarter campaign (or, more aptly, a "Kirkstarter" campaign), and licensed strictly on a "not for profit" basis, STC makes no pretension to update the show for the benefit of modern tastes. Unlike a certain other big-budget revival, there's no Baz Luhmann-style hypercutting, no Marvel-inspired action, no conspicuous lens flare. Instead, executive producer and star Vic Mignogna and crew have lovingly recreated the look of the original show, right down to the details of lighting, camera angles, and fight choreography. They resurrect the original incidental music, and insert "commercial breaks" in all the places you'd expect in 1966. Insofar as modern conveniences (such as computer-generated effects) are used, it's only to return to basics, to tell human-scaled stories as efficiently as possible. Watching it, it's as if no time has passed since Trek's early years as a low-budget stepchild of a begrudging network. Words like "uncanny" and "spooky" come to mind. 

          The original show was supposed to take place during a five-year mission of pure exploration. Unlike in the J.J. Abrams movies, Kirk, Spock and Co. never returned to earth in their own time. The goal was far out, but unfulfilled, as the show was cancelled after its third season. An entire fan literature was inspired by wondering, "what happened in the last two years?" STC aims to answer that question. 

          The point of all this isn't (just) pop idolatry. As Star Trek originalists, STC's creators plausibly demonstrate that the heart of franchise never lay in spectacle, but in putting compelling characters in service of grand humanistic themes. In the first full episode, Pilgrim of Eternity, an old adversary returns to show the appeal and pitfalls of religious belief. In Lolani, the Enterprise crew faces a "Dred Scott" dilemma as a seductive alien slave (Fiona Vroom) takes refuge aboard the ship. Number 3 is still in production, but will no doubt treat similarly broad themes.

          As a fan-made product, STC might be excused for the uneven quality of its writing and acting. But the shortcomings are not as short as you might expect. The humor often comes up as corny--but so did many of the yuks in the original show. As Kirk, Mignogna channels his inner Shatner, while giving the character a degree of gravitas wholly missing from Chris Pine's big screen version. (Mignoga is 51, Pine is 33). As Spock, Todd Haberkorn is less compelling than Zachary Quinto, but thankfully lacks Quinto's unaccountable, apparently permanent pissed-off sneer. Larry Nemecek's McCoy just reads as "crotchety older dude", but STC scored a coup in casting Chris Doohan, the son of original "Scotty" James Doohan, in his father's iconic role.

          No doubt, it takes affection for the original show to see any virtue in STC. Labors of love--like love itself--can entail blind devotion. But at least this love is true.

© 2014 Nicholas Nicastro

The Smell of the Psychosphere

Harrelson and McConaughey rock the bayou in True Detective.

«««« True Detective.  Written and created by Nic Pizzolato. Directed by Cary Fukunaga. On HBO Sundays at 9pm, and on demand.

          

It goes without saying that there are too many cop/detective shows on television (but there, I said it anyway). Thanks to that low signal-to-noise ratio, a show has to be pretty damn remarkable for viewers to take notice. For all the merely "pretty good" policiers out there, that's bad news.

          HBO has now given us something better than "pretty good" in Nic Pizzolatto's True Detective, which is now midway through its initial eight-episode run. There's a reason for the generic-sounding title: True Detective is an anthology series, with different casts tackling different cases each season. First time out, we have Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey as a pair of detectives investigating a bizarre ritual-murder case in rural Louisiana. And like a flathead catfish on a 3/4-ounce leadhead jig, this writer is hooked.

          Pizzolatto, a Louisiana native, was a novelist and academic before he got into television. The particular feel of Detective—its neo-noir sense of setting, its gumbo of literariness and ominous seediness—is no doubt traceable to that background. Perhaps equally important, Pizzolatto is the show's only writer, giving it a consistency of tone reminiscent of the best crime fiction. That consistency is bolstered by the fact that the show has but a single director, Cary Fukunaga (Sin Nombre, 2011's Jane Eyre). This is not creation-by-committee.

          McConaughey and Harrelson play a pair of seriously mismatched colleagues on the trail of the kind of killer/exhibitionist reminiscent of Se7en or Twin Peaks. McConaughey's Rust Cohle is a former narc who spent a little too long operating undercover. After losing his child—and then his marriage—to a freak accident, he's acquired a worldview so bleak he makes Schopenhauer look like Pollyanna. “I got a bad taste in my mouth out here,” he says as the two cops make their rounds. “Aluminum, ash, it’s like you can smell the psychosphere.” Confronting a tent-full of Christian revivalists, he diagnoses Christianity as a kind of memetic cancer, a communicable mental illness.         

          Harrelson's Martin Hart, by contrast, prides himself on being a regular guy's guy, a family man not likely to be carried away by Rust's neat forensic theories or philosophic chatter. As we get to know him, though, we see that his allergy against introspection makes a good defense against the fact he isn't such a good family man after all, as his tormented wife (played by the brilliant and lovely Michelle Monaghan) is coming to realize.

          Playing the haunted genius, McConaughey has perhaps the more obviously juicy role. But in fact they are both halves of a classic pairing of character types, the "man of action" partnered with the "man of the mind", that has a pedigree going back to Kirk + Spock, Aubrey + Maturin, and even (in a more satiric vein) Don Quixote + Sancho Panza. McConaughey is indeed terrific here—and with his performance in Dallas Buyer's Club, clearly the actor of the year. But together, he and Harrelson make this version of True Detective one of the most fascinating character studies to come along in a long time, big screen or small.

          As its inaugural season is only half-way done, it's impossible to say if the show will finish on as high a level as it started. No guarantees that subsequent seasons, with different stories and different casts, will be anywhere as good. But for now, let's savor being in Pizzolatto's psychosphere.

© 2014 Nicholas Nicastro

Gunning for Modernity

Wu Jiang makes his point in A Touch of Sin.

«««½ A Touch of Sin.  Written and directed by Jia Zhangke. DVD release on March 18, 2014.

          

It's no secret that the Chinese take the US as the standard by which to measure their emergence as a world power. That emergence isn't confined to skyscrapers and stealth fighters: Chinese fast food consumption (and obesity) are rising, and everybody seems to want a car to eat their burgers in, too. Troublingly, there are also signs that US-style gun violence is also becoming more common there, despite some of the harshest anti-gun laws in the world.

          In that context, Jia Zhangke's remarkable A Touch of Sin (Tian zhu ding) may be one of the most provocative films to come out of China in years. Its virtues haven't been lost on foreign audiences. Zhangke's film made the short list for the Palme d'Or at Cannes, and won the award for Best Screenplay. Alas, it is a touch too provocative for Chinese censors: as it makes its premiere in Ithaca this week, Zhangke's film has still not been cleared for release in mainland China.

          The thing starts with a bang. A spooky guy on a motorbike (Baoqiang Wang) is accosted on a remote highway by a trio of ax-wielding thieves. He reaches into his jacket---apparently  to get his wallet—but pulls out a gun instead. He blows all three away with extreme prejudice, then calmly proceeds on his way. The violent spasm is presented with the unadorned realism typical of Zhangke's other, more placid efforts (Still Life, Platform), lingering particularly on the victims as they expire.

          From there, Zhangke's screenplay wends through a handful of stories of people loosely connected by circumstance, but linked by instances of stunning, impulsive violence. We encounter Dahai (Wu Jiang), a rural villager outraged by corrupt local officials who, after failing to get his grievances noticed, takes matters into his own hands. We roundaboutly meet the motorbike guy again, who appears to support his estranged family by robbing people in broad daylight on city streets. And then there's Xiao Yu (played by Tao Zhao, Zhangke's wife), an employee in a massage parlor with a troubled love life that drives her to shocking acts against an abusive customer.

          This may not sound very appealing, but Zhangke shoots apparent chaos with such masterly control it's impossible not to admire his craft. Between the killings, his camera takes impassive measure of modern China in much the style that Michelangelo Antonioni looked askance at industrial Europe in the early 1960's. His figures wander a landscape tamed and scarred by massive infrastructure (bridges, bullet trains) that connect people physically, but alienate them socially. Unlike Antonioni's spiritually exhausted Italians, however, Zhangke's rootless characters insist on touching others, be it through the barrel of a gun or the edge of a knife.

          Given that China's "communist" regime buys the acquiescence of its people by keeping China growing economically as fast as possible, it's no surprise that the authorities are skittish about Zhangke's film. By suggesting that breakneck growth—without a culture that gives that growth meaning and context—is unsustainable, it calls that legitimacy into question. America isn't the only place where street violence isn't just a private vice. Both here and on the other side of the world, it's a symptom of something widely, and tragically, wrong.

© 2014 Nicholas Nicastro