LONDON CITY NIGHTS: Ben Affleck

Saturday, March 26, 2016

'Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice' (2016) directed by Zack Snyder

Saturday, March 26, 2016 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

I've always gone to bat for Zack Snyder, often despite my misgivings. Sure, 300 was queasily fascistic, but it was visual dynamite. Watchman was flawed, yet studded with nuggets of brilliance, the Dr Manhattan origin sequence alone making the whole affair worthwhile. I even gave him the benefit of the doubt on Sucker Punch - sure it looked like a creepy fetishistic wet dream, but it's really a commentary on action film sexism..... right?

So it was with Man of Steel. It's by no means a great film but there's enough interesting stuff going on in there that you felt he was on the cusp of an artistic breakthrough. And now, with millions of dollars of studio money behind him and two of the biggest cultural icons of the 20th century meeting for the first time on screen, I figured Batman v Superman was going to be that breakthrough.

Christ almighty. What the hell was I thinking? Zack Snyder is a fucking hack.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is a misjudged calamity of a film with ideas embarrassingly far above its station. Boiled down, it's trying to do two things. The first is to launch the DC equivalent of Marvel's cinematic universe. So we get shoehorned in cameos from characters we know (and care) nothing about, together with ominous rumblings of the 'real' bad guy to come. The second is a high-minded philosophical exploration of the relationship between man and god, via examining the psychological effects of the 9/11.

This is all told by a convoluted story pieced together from, among others, clandestine CIA gun-running to African warlords, people smuggling, high-level Washington political machinations, and Frankenstein-like genetic meddling. The aim of this incomprehensible narrative is, as the title of the film suggests, to get Batman (Ben Affleck) and Superman (Henry Cavill) into a scrap.

Simmering away in the background is a barmier than usual Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg), a personality free Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), the perpetually concerned looking Lois Lane ( Amy Adams) and a smattering of supporting talent (Lawrence Fishburne, Jeremy Irons, Diane Lane, Holly Hunter), all of whom desperately try to salvage some semblence of character from a script that has none.

The film lumbers from set piece to set piece, tosses in half-baked moral queries, constantly spouts cringeworthy dialogue and has some serious performance deficits, mainly from Cavill's charmless Superman. But I think the core problem, the thing that makes the film so astonishingly unbearable, is a surreal lack of humanity.

Batman and Superman are essentially reduced to embodiments of philosophical posturing draining humanity from a film that already looks glossily CG sterilised. On top of that, Snyder is utterly self-serious about superheroes. Sure, they can be used to convey complex, mature ideas - but you need a dose of self-awareness that they're essentially there to amuse children. Even Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, despite its reputation for maturity, still recognised the basic ludicrousness of it's core concept.

So Batman v Superman has a comical lack of self-awareness of how ridiculous it is, perhaps best demonstrated so than in a pivotal scene where Superman portentously strides through the US Capitol building in Washington to deliver evidence to a Senate Hearing. Serious looking man in suits turn in slow motion to regard coolly regard Superman's presence, as if a man in a skin-tight primary coloured jumpsuit and cape just fits smoothly into The West Wing like it's no big deal.

This certitude that superheroes are serious business for serious grown-ups poisons every part of the film. Batman now sadistically stabs, shoots and brands criminals while rescuing/terrifying a prison cell of sex-trafficked women, Superman sports a constant miserable glower and spends his time joylessly floating around looking like he wishes he was anywhere else. The rest embody a low-level misery; Irons' Alfred clearly not giving a shit anymore, Fishburne's Perry Mason fruitlessly watches his newspaper go down the tubes and Lois sitting naked in her bathtub traumatised by guilt.

The nadir is the treatment doled out to Superman's Mum. She's kidnapped by Lex Luthor, who taunts Superman by scattering torture porn polaroids of her at his feet. These show a terrified, gagged woman with 'WITCH' scrawled on her forehead, shot in sickly pale snuff film lighting. It's tone deaf - and powerfully unfun.

No film has an obligation to be 'fun', but perhaps a summer superhero blockbuster should be, at minimum, enjoyable. The film isn't even an interesting fuckup; theoretically a superhero film with a stick shoved this far up it's ass should be interesting if only in its peculiarity. Yet, the predominant emotion experienced here is boredom - boredom with the lumbering narrative, the dull as dishwater characters and the ominous sense that they're setting us up for countless more servings of this tripe.

It's perhaps appropriate that the film ends on a vague promise of nihilistic horror to come. Just before the climax, Wonder Woman opens her laptop and stops the narrative in order for us to watch three teaser-trailers for The Flash, Cyborg and (god help us) Aquaman. This isn't even the most blatant sequel hook in the film - that comes when, apropos of nothing, a man rips a hole in space and time to yell confusing gibberish about the sequel at aperplexed Batman.

I can't quite believe I'm saying this, but Batman v Superman made me appreciate the dull competence of the Marvel films. Sure they're content with averageness, but at least they achieve that with broad professionalism. And, mercifully, at least there we're spared ridiculous intellectual pretensions that mercilessly eradicate any pleasure from the simple concept of strongman in silly costumes doing outrageous things.

What's that Zack Snyder? You're currently developing an adaptation of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead? Of course you are.

★

Monday, September 29, 2014

'Gone Girl' (2014) directed by David Fincher

Monday, September 29, 2014 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

Gone Girl is a beautifully crafted film. From its elegant editing to the moody Trent Reznor score to Jeff Cronenweth's evocative cinematography to the career-best performances from Affleck and Pike it radiates quality like a 100w bulb. David Fincher has been a personal favourite since a torrid teenage love affair with Fight Club, and my admiration of him only grew after Zodiac and The Social Network. Sure he's had a few bumps along the way, but even his failures are interesting. The release of a new Fincher film is a red letter day in cinema - audiences expect something special. So it's with no huge surprise that I happily confirm Gone Girl is a cornucopia of cinematic delights.

Problem is it's also a misogynistic piece of shit.

Oh fuck! The M-word! Deploying it is like waving a big red flag that says "liberal guilt incoming". Pallid and worn out from overuse it's a spat epithet used in haste as a weapon to shut down discourse: "X is misogynist, end of discussion." Using it casually kills its power; after all accusing something or someone of 'hating women' is a big claim to make.

So let me get a couple of things straight; I don't think David Fincher quivers with rage at the sight of a Tampax advert. I don't think author/screenwriter Gillian Flynn loathes her own sex. I don't think Ben Affleck gleefully rubbed his hands when he got the part, happy to finally stick it to those uppity dames. I doubt anyone at all involved on a creative level in this production literally hates women. Despite all that, in collaboration they have produced a profoundly misogynistic movie.

(There's no way to explain this without spoiling the film so considered yourself warned from this point on. I eventually give it two stars.)

Gone Girl showcases the unhappy marriage of Nick and Amy Dunne (Ben Affleck & Rosamund Pike). Nick returns home on the day of his fifth wedding anniversary to find a broken coffee table, a suspicious blood spot in the kitchen and no Amy. She has vanished. Amy is the basis for her mother's popular 'Amazing Amy' children's books, and thus a minor celebrity, so her mysterious disappearance rapidly becomes a major news event.

Meanwhile Nick is not doing a particularly good job of media management. He appears callous in interviews, acts suspiciously and, worst of all, smiles during the press conference appealing for information. As the days stretch on suspicion increasingly begins to fall on Nick, the media all but accusing him of murder. The public turn against him, the police consider him the most likely suspect - even his twin sister begins to have doubts.

Twist time. It turns out that Amy has faked her own murder in order to get back at a husband she perceives as ruining her life. Concealed underneath her wifely demeanour lies the heart of a Lecter-esque sociopath, one with the cunning and skills to create a perfect trail of breadcrumbs trail that leads the police to Nick, and leads Nick to the electric chair. The more we learn about Amy the more her evil is revealed; she has a history of falsifying rape allegations; she ensnares innocent men by stealing their precious bodily fluids and impregnating herself; she plays the perfect lover only to strike like a scorpion - at one point she literally bathes in male blood.

Amy is the physical manifestation of every masculine fear of femininity; the quintessential black widow that lures you into a relationship, paralyses you and holds you captive as she gloats over your misfortune. Skulk around the more pathetic corners of the internet and you'll run into Men's Rights Activists; a laughable bunch of losers who believe they're trapped in some kind of misandrist matriarchy. In Amy they will see their paranoid nightmares brought to life.

To give Gone Girl some credit Amy isn't entirely two-dimensional. The film tries to set out the roots of her sociopathy: intense frustration at a lifetime under other people's control. Her fictional counterpart Amazing Amy is shown to lead her life but better, embodying in fiction what she failed to achieve in life. She explains that she feels intensely claustrophobic in her marriage to Nick, especially when moving to his podunk town where she doesn't know anyone.

In a nicely written monologue she decries how he subtly forced her into the role of a "cool girl"; she has to be smart, sexy, fun, "one of the guys", thin and beautiful all at once. Later we see her being controlled more directly, the character moving between a series of gilded cages. Theoretically this gives her moral license to violently kick back against the pricks that try to mould her life without her consent, casting her campaign of manipulation and murder as feminist liberation. It's a pulpy, dime store kind of psychology, but it's this that Fincher relies on to justify her deeds.

Undermining this is the extremely sympathetic treatment of Ben Affleck's Nick. I don't know what he's like in the book, but here he's an unambiguous hero, we never suspect him of murder, his return home to care for his dying mother is noble and - crucially - we never see him mistreat Amy from an objective viewpoint. Sure he's got his flaws, notably that he's conducting an affair with a student behind his wife's back, but given that Amy is a straight-up, sadistic, cold-hearted monster who can blame him? The sympathy we feel for Nick robs Amy of her motive for framing him, resulting in her ending up (despite the author's protestations) as a simple "crazy psycho-bitch".

Even leaving Amy aside for a moment, Gone Girl makes a series of curiously anti-feminist statements. The arena for Nick's condemnation and shaming is The Ellen Abbott show. Abbott is a typical Fox Newsesque bundle of shining teeth, big-hair and perfect makeup and runs a show that appears to revolve around highlighting crimes against women.

This is Nick Dunne's crucible, Abbott constantly hurls insinuations of rape and incest against him, poisoning the well of public opinion against him. She invites on talking heads (who appear to be caricatures of feminists) to decry Nick. I'm just not sure what satirical point Fincher is making here - is there an abundance of rabidly ill-informed feminist news shows that needs to be exposed? Their presentation here is a strawman set up to be demolished.

What we see in Gone Girl is a flawed 'nice guy' under assault from an army of harridans with "fucking bitch" Amy leading the charge. Her instrument of destruction is a weaponised vagina, transformed into a tool to destroy men. Given that her Amy's motivations are unconvincingly defined, that her evil is defined purely in terms of her gender, the argument that the inevitable flipside of female liberation is male subjugation, the parade of vapid, ill-informed female characters and the heroic portrayal of Nick, Gone Girl is misogynist.

Pity, because otherwise it's a really good film. So good that I was scrabbling for a sympathetic reading that would allow me to enjoy it.

But I can't.

★★

Gone Girl is released 3rd October.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

‘Argo’ (2012) directed by Ben Affleck, 22nd October 2012

Thursday, October 25, 2012 - by londoncitynights · - 1 Comment

‘Argo’ is a film that tells you a story so preposterous that it must be true. It’s a very funny film that gets seat-grippingly tense. One that tries its level best to do justice to some pretty complex geopolitics but also fumbles the ball a bit in a few aspects.

The film is set in Iran at the time of the Iranian Embassy hostage crisis. The Shah had just been deposed and was been granted sanctuary in the US. The Iranian people wanted to put the Shah on trial, but the US refused to turn him over. The boiling point came when a mob stormed the Iranian embassy in Tehran, and took 52 embassy staff hostage. So far, so well known. What’s less well known is that six embassy staff managed to escape onto the streets in the confusion, and took refuge in the house of the Canadian Ambassador. Eventually the Iranians realised that they’re short six staff members, and came hunting for them. The USA had got to get them out of there, and their best bet was Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) an ‘exfiltration’ expert. His plan was to smuggle them out of the country under the guise of a Hollywood location scouting crew for a fake science fiction film called ‘Argo’.

Ben Affleck as Tony Mendez

It’s a hell of a good story, and Affleck has done a great job bringing it to life on screen. There are some bravura directing moments in this film, particularly the opening sequence showing the embassy being stormed. The film begins with a quick run-down of the C20th history of Iran, before moving straight into the midset of an furious mob demanding justice. Almost immediately we get a sense of the geography of the situation through aerial shots of the building and the crowd. As the situation becomes worse, and the protesters begin climbing the walls a well drilled panic sets in that gives way to chaos very quickly. We see the Embassy staff frantically destroying as much classified information as they can, and the military desperately trying to work out how to contain this situation without pouring petrol onto an already out of control fire.

Affleck quickly cross-cuts between the embassy staff, and the crowd outside who are swarm ing the building from top to bottom. The sense of things rapidly spiralling out of control is captured perfectly. Suddenly there are people on the roof, in the cellar and before you know it, through the front door. The mixture of aerial shots (which may be really great CG), and handheld grainy film gives everything a feeling of intense authenticity. The scene is given added power by the recent embassy attack in Benghazi. The similarities seem clear; staff initially taking the mob for granted ‘after all, there’s protests every day’ to the sudden cold sweat of panic when they realise all barriers have been overcome, and there’s nothing between you and an angry chaotic mob.

They may not look it in this picture, but trust me, those Iranians are FURIOUS

One of the main reasons why this scene works so well is that the Iranians are represented as more of an unstoppable force of nature than as individuals. We see them seemingly acting as one, their faces twisted in anger, practically foaming at the mouth. Affleck seems to use a lot of the same directorial tricks as you'd see in a zombie film, particularly Zack Snyder's remake of 'Dawn of the Dead' (2004). Meanwhile, the embassy staff get quickly sketched character moments over the course of their escape. These sketches evolve throughout the film, we quickly engage with the personalities of these six and sympathise easily with their plight. Meanwhile, the Iranian people are generally represented by large mobs, and if we do get to see individuals, they are generally shouting aggressively in Farsi and terrifying our leads.

This obviously is a bit problematic, but to be fair the film seems conscious of the somewhat murky tools its using to create suspense. As mentioned, it takes care to contextualise the story in the history of the country in a comic book style that seems to take direct inspiration from Marjane Satrapi’s ‘Persepolis’ (2007). So, theoretically the film justifies the anger of the mob, it's at least partly successful in explaining why these people are so angry and upset at Americans. It’s less successful when it comes to the sole entirely sympathetic Iranian in the film, a loyal servant who sacrifices herself to aid her Western masters. In going to so much trouble to outline her as ‘the one good Iranian’, they perversely make everyone else look much worse.

The embassy staff trapped in the Canadian Ambassador's house

Ben Affleck seems like a conscientious film-maker (he even added a postscript praising Canadian involvement in the operation this film depicts after people got upset), but at the heart of the production process here is a catch 22. To make it as tense and effective as possible, it’s dramatically necessary to portray the Iranian people as a single-minded, violent horde. For narrative purposes they sort of have to be extremely otherised, the more sympathetic they become, the less we're scared of them. I don’t believe Affleck sincerely wants to paint an entire people with an understandable political grievance as monsters, but he's in the difficult position of doing just that.

For me, this was a hard stumbling block to get over, as were the general politics of the film. I’m not exactly inclined to buy into any narrative that posits the CIA as fine, upstanding, noble people when all evidence points to the fact that they’re one of the most sinister and immoral organisations of the 20^th century. What I have to concede is that in this instance they seem to be acting justifiably, and anyway, I'm not going to side with the Ayatollah.

US exceptionalism clocking in for the day

It’s fortunate then, that the central plot of this film is so compelling and unique (well, maybe ‘Three Kings’ is a little similar). ‘Argo’ uses the central plot device of a ‘fake’ movie shoot as a way to shine a light on the way intelligence services spar with one another. In a fantastic sequence we see a fake press event for ‘Argo’, complete with bombshell actresses dressed in unlikely, cheesy looking Flash Gordon gear cross cut with footage from the hostage crisis. The message seems clear, this is all theatre. The difference is that if the hostage's performances aren't convincing enough then they're going to be killed.

This comparison raises the film up from being just another espionage thriller, and the audience knowledge that all this really happened only adds to the feeling of import. The film only really falters when it decides to artificially make things more exciting. In the final sequences there are perhaps one too many hurdles placed in front of our intrepid heroes, one too many unlikely coincidences or times when they look doomed, and then are saved in the nick of time. This adds up, and the fact that the film becomes a bit more self-consciously unrealistic saps some of the tension from the end of the film. What should be a sudden, intense relaxation of tension ‘merely’ becomes a happy ending. It’s a little frustrating, they had me! I was on the hook for much of the film, fully involved with each little idiosyncratic twist the plot took, but you get the feeling they felt that their amazing real-life tale wasn't quite amazing enough, and had to embellish it a bit.

Ben Affleck and an angry, unnamed Iranian (one of many in this film)

So this is a film with issues, but ones that it’s possible to overlook. It’s a fantastic achievement in direction for Ben Affleck too. His performance in this is perfectly serviceable, playing as he does a man whose skill is in blending in, but it’s behind the camera where he shows some real élan. This directorial confidence, coupled with a top notch supporting cast means ‘Argo’ is a fascinating snapshot of a rarely explored part of recent history.

'Argo' is on general release from the 7th of November 2012

LONDON CITY NIGHTS