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Showing posts with label Hugh Jackman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hugh Jackman. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
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That a film with the pitch 'an autonomous police robot equipped with an experimental learning AI is stolen by South African 'zef' rap band Die Antwoord who raise it to be their gangsta robo-son' was put into production, made and has been given a wide release proves that we truly are in the best of all possible worlds. In typically bold Blomkamp style, Chappie plunges us into sci-fi as political allegory, the film a prism through which various theories of class, culture and philosophies are refracted in deeply entertaining ways.
We open in near future Johannesburg. Faced with a violent crime epidemic, robotics company Tetravaal have invented and implemented a mechanised robot police force. Working in tandem with human officers, these Judge Dredd-like automatons are programmed to violently resist any criminals with a variety of high ordinance. Under the cosh of these bulletproof overlords, crime falls.
This is a problem for criminals across the city, but especially for eccentric performance art gangstas Ninja and Yo-Landi. With a rival boss after their blood for a botched drug deal, they realise they have to pull off a major heist to pacify him. Knowing they don't stand a chance against Tetravaal's robots they hatch a plan to kidnap their designer Deon (Dev Patel) and get him to reveal how to switch them off. What they inadvertently end up with is Chappie (mocapped by Sharlto Copley), a damaged, child-like police robot with a quick-learning AI brain.
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| Chappie and Yo-Landi |
Under Ninja and Yo-Landi's tutelage (and to Deon's dismay), Chappie becomes a foul-mouthed, strutting, dayglo gangsta robot - perfect for a crime spree. Watching angrily from the wings is rival robot designed Vincent (Hugh Jackman), whose huge Metal-Gear-a-like VR piloted 'MOOSE' is roundly mocked as overkill. The seeds of confrontation are thus set, society rapidly devolving into anarchy while Ninja, Yo-Landi and Chappie struggle to survive assaults from rival gangsters, cops and Vincent's MOOSE.
First things first; enjoyment of Chappie is largely predicated on your tolerance for Die Antwoord. For those not in the know they're a rap duo as performance art project, the two members devoted to living zef. In practice this means ridiculously vulgar materialism, a commitment to being as obnoxious as possible at all times, a childish dayglo aesthetic and religious devotion to the 'gangsta' ideal (all of which are summarised in one of their excellent videos). Needless to say I think they're dead cool.
In Chappie they play lightly fictionalised versions of themselves, wear their own merchandise and spraypaint the eponymous robot with their logos. Thus, the film stands as an extension of their zef evangelism. At it's core Chappie is a paean to punk - demonstrating the joys of removing yourself from bougie society by donning a liberated art gangsta persona that's ready to gob a big ball of sticky phlegm in the eye of anyone that'd dare to disrespect you.
Sounds fun right? Well in both Chappie and reality, this translates to Ninja and Yo-Landi being irredeemably scummy arseholes (especially Ninja). They're such an affront to polite, middle class sensibilities that when Deon disgustedly refers to Ninja as a stupid, vicious moron it's difficult not to agree. It's similarly really easy to sympathise with his horror as he sees the child-like, naive Chappie becoming morally corrupted by his zef education. But peer a little closer and Chappie's 'corruption' reveals itself to be personal liberation, a perfect example of Ninja's philosophy: "People are unconscious and you have to use your art as a shock machine to wake them up."
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| Ninja |
A repeated motif in Chappie is the notion of fully identifying with the 'black sheep' - permanently aligning yourself with hated, deviant outsiders in order to realise your maximum potential for social change. This means that Chappie eventually evolves from mindless cog in the system towards agent of revolutionary change, the zef 'black sheep' perspective allowing him to see new solutions; the creation not only surpassing, saving and educating his creator, but eventually seizing the means of robotic production and acting as midwife to a 'new society'.
Chappie fits neatly alongside Blomkamp's excellent District 9 and the flawed but ideologically sound Elysium in outlining the potential transformative power of the downtrodden, spat-upon and discriminated against. These politics, combined with Die Antwoord's obnoxious aesthetic and performance art sensibilities combines to create a science fiction treat that's as smart as it is cool.
There's also giant robot fights, brill comedy sequences, beautiful special effects and Hugh Jackman in some very tight shorts. Chappie is bold, brave, brilliant cinema, and miles from your usual multiplex fare. Go and see it already!
★★★★
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
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Prisoners is not an easy movie to watch. Sure it's got beautiful Roger Deakins cinematography and looks absolutely fantastic from start to finish, but the subject matter is about as grim as it gets. Two families, the Dovers and the Birches, meet for Thanksgiving dinner. They're the very model of suburban American perfection, loving, attentive to their children, friendly and Christian. Yet as the meal winds down they realise their two preteen daughters, Anna and Joy, have gone missing. The only lead is that they were last seen playing near a sinister looking beat-up RV. Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhall) quickly tracks down the RV and its driver, the super-creepy Alex Jones (Paul Dano).
All leads point to him, but he's not spilling the beans and with no hard evidence the police are forced to release him from custody. Wracked with grief, Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman), the father of one the missing girls, abducts Alex, locks him in an abandoned apartment complex with the aim of beating the whereabouts of his daughter out of him. This complex set-up is but the first sequences of a sober and extremely depressing exploration of parental grief and child murder.
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
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'Les Misérables' certainly doesn't skimp on the miserable. The movie is adapted from the enormously popular musical of the same name by Alan Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg, which is itself adapted from the 1862 novel by Victor Hugo. It's a story of the dispossessed and the destitute desperately and tragically fighting against an uncaring, cruel society. Our protagonists find themselves kicked into the dirt over and over again by cruel and unbending justice, exploitation of women, child slavery and eventually the sheer might of the military. Some of them survive their battles, some don't. All of them end up physically and mentally crushed. 'Miserable' is the exact right word for it.
For the most part this is an achingly serious film about universal injustices. But, obviously, 'Les Misérables' is a musical, and not just a musical where the characters occasionally break into song, everything is sung. The plot is a sequence of (for the most part) solo numbers, sung directly into the camera. The film isn't embarrassed in the slightest about this, and this gung-ho attitude makes it easy to admire. The audience's familiarity with the musical makes this weirdness easy to overlook, but seeing characters bare their souls in such an intimately shot way is like few other things I've seen in the cinema. A point of comparison that springs to mind is Dreyer's 'The Passion of Joan of Arc' (1928), a silent film that is entirely carried on the facial performance of Maria Falconetti.
Musicals are generally filmed by recording the soundtrack and playing it back on set for the actors to lip-sync along to. 'Les Misérables' dispenses with that, having the actors singing live on set while they perform, allowing them to more easily incorporate facets of the song into their performance and vice versa. It works fantastically well. Musicals require multiple layers of artifice to function, relying on an audience to willingly suspend their disbelief. But, by stripping away some of the barriers between actors and the audience, the characters of 'Les Misérables' become more personal and much more emotionally accessible than in an average musical.
Much has been made of the decision to cast actors rather than professional singers in these parts, and much snobbery has been aimed in the direction of the actor's singing. I really couldn't give a toss about the technical perfection of a character's vocals. If the underlying acting performance is solid and moving, that's what's important. If I was reviewing a performance of the musical in concert my priorities might be different, but this is a very different beast. On stage an actor must play to the entire theatre, working in the knowledge that their voice is the leading factor; people sitting in the back rows simply won't be able to see any physical subtlety. But a large part of the power of this adaptation is entirely conveyed through physical (especially facial) subtlety.
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| Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean. |
A major highlight is Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean. Jackman is clearly enthused about getting to work out his pipes on camera, and throws himself both physically and vocally into the role. His physical transformation over the course of the film, from bearded, filthy prisoner, through to dapper man about town, back to filthy again and so on is impeccably conveyed through Jackman's body language and eyes, which grow sadder and wearier the as the film goes on. This is a character that makes several huge sacrifices for others, yet Jackman's humble performance prevents him from becoming unrelatably pious.
The opponent of this intrinsically good and likeable man is Inspector Javert, played by Russell Crowe. I say opponent rather than villain because Javert is not a evil man, rather someone whose inflexible moral code naturally sets him in opposition to our hero. Crowe has been given some stick for not being able to sing as well as the rest of the cast, but I thought he was great. Javert is introverted, sexually and emotionally repressed, a man who is literally tightly buttoned up for most of the film. For a character whose beliefs are under this much stress to be marching around singing beautifully doesnt' add up. Crowe sings his songs in a growl, injecting a testosteroney fierceness that feels more appropriate than soaring operatic extroversion. What Crowe excels at is to showing us Javert's inner turmoil when reality repeatedly fails to conform to his beliefs, and if you've nailed that, then you've nailed the performance.
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| Russell Crowe as Inspector Javert |
Every actor in this film must push themselves into a heightened emotional state, and there's no-one that comes out of it looking silly. A few of the performances are less affecting than others, but this is primarily a problem with the material than the film. Amanda Seyfried as Cosette is perfectly fine, but it's a thankless role with little of the depth of the other characters. Eddie Redmayne's Marius falls into the same trap, being slightly less boring than Cosette, but in no way someone we're eager to find out more about.
Despite all these fine performances, it's Anne Hathaway's Fantine that effortlessly stands head and shoulder above everything else in this film. Fantine is a relatively minor part, but it's this astonishing performance that neatly encapsulates everything the film is trying to say. She's desperately trying to provide for her daughter, but is victimised by society and slips into a Hogarthian nightmare. She loses her job, her hair, her teeth and finally her hope in an heartwrenching sequence that's like a musical version of 'Requiem for a Dream'.
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| Anne Hathway as Fantine |
As the last gasps of her hope slip away, she sings 'I Dreamed a Dream' in one unbroken shot closeup. I've always seen 'I Dreamed a Dream' as an impossibly sappy, self-indulgent song, soporific talent show shite. But, in one unbroken take with the camera inches away from Hathaway's face she gasps torturously as she sings, weeping with a crushed vulnerability. The effect is the illusion that she's making up the song as she goes along, realising bitterly that everything she's singing is the truth. This window straight into a character's soul is what Hooper must have had in mind when planning this, and it's an instantly unforgettable moment in cinema. It's so amazingly good that it makes the rest of the film suffer in comparison.
While the tactic of placing a camera right in Hathaway's face pays off in spades, the film keeps using the same trick over and over again. Each time the effect is diminished, until by about the two hour mark you're desperate for something more dynamically visual. This is one of the most successful musicals of all time, and you sense that Hooper wants to give us something we can't get on stage, namely the facial performances of the actors. But practically every song is a character baring their miserable, tortured soul to the camera in closeup and there's so much emotion to deal with that you find yourself becoming a bit numb. There are some more cinematically adventurous moments, notably during 'One More Day' when we neatly cross-cut between each character singing a segment of the song. But with the film having proved that it can stay visually interesting if it wants to, it slips back into a neverending series of closeups.
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| Helena Bonham-Carter and Sacha Baron-Cohen as the Thernardiers and Isabelle Alan as young Cosette |
This all adds up to an obstinately uncinematic experience. Surely there's enough going on in 'Les Misérables' to fill the screen with fascinating visuals? One consequence of sticking closely to the stage version is that when a sequence begins, we're going to stay with that set for as long as is humanly possible. These sets are curiously stagey and claustrophobic rather than cinematic. The worst offender is the street set for the barricade sequence; we spend much of the second half of the film in one street corner which quickly becomes very dull to look at. Another factor that adds to this sense of claustrophobia is that the film is shot in 1.85:1. It's an understandable enough decision, it'd be difficult to compose as many tight closeups in a wider aspect ratio. But the epic nature of the film, in particular the opening and revolution sequences are crying out for more room to breathe cinematically.
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| Aaron Tviet as Enjolras |
But even leaving this aside this is a film with big narrative problems, most of which stem from the musical its based on. The first half of the film is impeccably constructed, with a tight focus on Jean Valjean and Javert, whose relationship is a near perfect example of how unsympathetic authority can conspire to crush a good man. It's a personal story, and this, tied with Fantine's downfall is compelling and utterly moving.
By the time we get to the Paris and the revolution I was ready to see a new society being built, but it's at this moment that the film introduces to us to a load of new characters that simply aren't as interesting or complex as Valjean and Javert. The importance of social change is lost at the very moment we need to care about it most, and even worse, is sidelined for a romantic relationship between two cyphers. Cosette and Marius' intense love is what fuels this half of the play rather than revolution, a love that exists purely because the story says it does. Maybe I'm being a bit cynical, but I want characters that fall in love for reasons a little more complex than that they've glanced at each other across a crowded street.
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| Amanda Seyfried as Cosette and Eddie Redmayne as Marius |
This means the story winds up in an extremely unsatisfying place. We're masterfully shown through Fantine's fall that life is utterly terrible for the poor. Then we're told why it's so terrible, that this fantastically unequal, starving society is the creation of the aristocracy, thus justifying the revolution that we implicitly want to see succeed. The revolution heroically fails and the young, charismatic revolutionaries become martyrs. After this, the 'happy ending' is a son of the aristocracy rejoining the bourgeoisie and dragging Cosette into his social class.
I'm sorry, but that's just not good enough. It's the anti-'Casablanca'! When that film tells us that 'the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world' it's a fantastic line because it's absolutely right! Just saving Cosette from poverty isn't good enough. What about the starving masses? What about the thousands of victimised Fantines out there? We end with nothing changed in the slightest other than Cosette living a slightly more comfortable existence.
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| Anne Hathaway has that Oscar in the bag. |
It's not that 'Les Misérables' isn't worth seeing, it's ambitious in all the best ways and works as a film in its own right rather than simply as an appendage of the musical. The numerous problems with the cinematography and more cruciallythe narrative don't cancel out the amazing performances. It's butt numbingly long, but it's just about able to justify its length. And, above all that, it is literally worth sitting through the entire thing just to see Anne Hathaway sing 'I Dreamed a Dream', a moment that reminds you how effective the spell that cinema weaves can be.
***/*****
***/*****
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