A little bit of raving about movies
[we seriously didn’t have a movies category on here?]
Three movies in one weekend. That doesn’t happen very often, but we’ve decided to catch up on our movies. So, onward to thoughts about Lord Of War, The Prestige, and 300.
First up was Lord of War. I’m not a big Nic Cage fan. Counting Cage movie I like on my fingers would just barely get me to my other hand. But this movie was really solid all the way through. The lack of Hollywood-ized redemption was a nice touch, along with just enough sympathy for Yuri that you can’t completely hate him.
Later that evening it was The Prestige. Pretty sure this Nolan guy is a pretty good director. My top ten favorite movies list now contains three directed by him. I was trying to put into words to N just how impressive it was that it managed to stack the metaphors so seamlessly, almost recursively, into the same coherent piece of work. I didn’t succeed, either because I didn’t articulate my thoughts or because N–who is a much more intuitive and observant watcher of movies than I am–thought it was so painfully obvious as to not need comment. The point I tried to get out was that it was a movie about how magic works, and a movie about actually doing magic, and a movie about the people who do magic. And when a ripple occurred in any of those layers, it disturbed the fabric of the others as well. I haven’t seen a movie as well-constructed as The Prestige in ages, maybe since Miller’s Crossing (still firmly #1 on the aforementioned list).
Then, with an unexpected opportunity for child care, we took off sunday noon to see 300. It was a bit of a letdown after The Prestige. The plot of 300, in 20 words or less: Spartans hope to die in glorious battle. The king of Sparta gets the chance to die this death. He does.
Oh, I know. It’s art, you say. It kicks ass, you say. Well, it is, and it does. And I like art. But the stylized violence was so stylized that it didn’t have much real impact.
What bugged me above all was the word “Sparta.” How many times do the Spartans talk about being Spartans? I lost track in the first ten minutes. I am of the belief that when people talk about something incessantly, it’s because they secretly are fishing for outside validation. They talk about it to everyone else because deep down, they’re not convinced themselves. So maybe there’s a deep angst in the Spartan psyche that Miller is subtly addressing when we hear about how tough and superior the Spartan is. If you know Miller’s work, that seems unlikely. He spins linear narratives, what are basically war stories, and things like nuance and symbolism and metaphor are just things for girly men who can’t tell real stories. But it’s still oddly telling, even if it wasn’t intentional.
I also walked away thinking that the primary purpose of making movies of Frank Miller comics is not to make great movies, but to stroke the ego of Frank Miller.
March 20th, 2007 - Posted in Movies | |
