View image Shot #1 (of this clip -- not of the entire sequence). A fairly conventional shot establishing the red car on the left gaining on the orange one on the right. I'd say these shots look a lot cooler on the page (and probably on the computer storyboards) than they do in "action."
View image Shot #2. Red car driver (Taejo) pulls up alongside Snake Oiler (not that their identities are clear from the movie itself).
There's no action
No no no there's no action
-- Elvis Costello, 1978
When I was four years old I went to the 1962 Seattle World's Fair -- the one where Elvis and Joan O'Brien were, according to the ads, seen "swinging higher than the Space Needle" in "It Happened at the World's Fair" (Norman Taurog, 1963). There was a roller coaster called the Wild Mouse, but I was too afraid to ride on it. I did, however, like The Scrambler, which whirled you around in a logical geometrical pattern (although it felt pretty wild when you were on it) that looked really cool when seen from directly overhead, up on the observation deck of the Space Needle. (For years I had nightmares about falling off of the Needle, and if I'd ever hit the ground I would like to think I would have been extra-scrambled by the Scrambler.)
View image Shot #3 (continued). "Camera" zips (the terms "zoom" or "dolly" don't really apply) in on orange car and device emerges from under hood, pointing toward red car (out of frame, left).
Another thing I loved about the World's Fair was this arcade stand where you could make your own art by squirting plastic bottles of different colored paints onto a spinning piece of paper. These were "motion paintings" (and could be quite psychedelic, although we didn't know that term in 1962), and although they were just a blur when you were making them, when the machine stopped spinning they looked like an explosion of colors. I had several spin paintings tacked up on my bedroom wall.
The joy, the thrill, I got from both these things -- the ride and the art -- had to do with color and the sensation of movement. No wonder I like movies so much. Even today, put me in front of a lava lamp, or a fully decked-out Christmas tree, and I'm mesmerized. But the motion on a two-dimensional plane is perceptually different than movement through three-dimensional space (or, at least, the illusion of it), and that's what I want to take a gander at here.
View image Shot #5. Close on gloved hand shifting gears. We assume this is related to the previous close up and therefore still Racer X.
View image Shot #6. A yellow and black car accelerates. Because we know from previous scenes that Racer X drives a yellow and black car, we've probably recognized that this is his vehicle. But, again, where is he in the pack?
View image Shot #6 (continued). Camera pans 180 degrees to follow Racer X's car as it goes by. You may or may glimpse the red car on the right, but you can spot it in this freeze-frame. One of the few shots that doesn't rely on a flat, trompe l'oeil motion effect.
View image Shot #8. Return to angle from shot #6. Because the motion is away from the traveling "camera," we assume these are the rear ends of the vehicles. Rear-ended car is not seen.
I feel about your average modern shootout/ chase/ race sequence the way Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman in Arthur Penn's 1975 masterpiece "Night Moves") feels about the work of a certain Gallic auteur: "I saw a Rohmer film once. It was kind of like watching paint dry." Leave aside, for the moment, that an Eric Rohmer movie is action-packed... because that's another story.
Steven Spielberg put his finger on it in an interview with VanityFair.com in February, 2008, which was quoted by Benjamin Wright in a fine aspect ratio post called "Cutting for clarity." Of constructing action sequences, Spielberg said:
I go for geography. I want the audience to know not only which side the good guy’s on and the bad guy’s on, but which side of the screen they’re in, and I want the audience to be able to edit as quickly as they want in a shot that I am loath to cut away from. And that’s been my style with all four of these Indiana Jones pictures. Quick-cutting is very effective in some movies, like the Bourne pictures, but you sacrifice geography when you go for quick-cutting. Which is fine, because audiences get a huge adrenaline rush from a cut every second and a half on "The Bourne Ultimatum," and there’s just enough geography for the audience never to be lost, especially in the last Bourne film, which I thought was the best of the three. But, by the same token, Indy is a little more old-fashioned than the modern-day action adventure.
View image Shot #9. Reverse angle to front of vehicles again. Orange car on right shoots green splooge.
View image Shot #12. Reverse angle. Red and black car rapidly approaches airborne blue car, now sideways.
Wright elaborates:
In the above quotation, Spielberg is discussing two elements of visual style. His preference for clearly defined spatial geography is not unlike many other contemporary filmmakers, who build scenes out of stable blocks of shots: master (establishing shot), medium, and close up. You establish the space with a wide or long shot, then move in for greater details and drama once direction and “geography” has been defined. David Fincher comes to mind, so does Paul Thomas Anderson, the Coen brothers, and Michael Mann. However, more and more films -- including the Bourne series -- sacrifice visual clarity for kinetic rhythm and movement.I look at it kind of like this: Spielberg is the Scrambler and the Wachowski Brothers of "The Matrix" and "Speed Racer" are the swirly painting.
In his New York Times review of "Speed Racer," A.O. Scott wrote: "When it comes to storytelling, “Speed Racer” has nothing in common with its title.... [It] is about a boy driving a car, surely a subject that cries out for linearity, simplicity, velocity." Is there some subversive reason that the Wachowski's should wish to negate the concepts of "speed" (rapid acceleration through three-dimensional space) and "racing" (the relative physical positions of two or more entities moving, more or less in parallel, along a course)? Was the concept was to suggest the flattened animation of the TV show? Why is the most dizzying (and charming) use of CGI -- and the strongest sensation of actually hurtling through space -- contained in a single 360-degree shot of wee Speed sitting in a classroom and fantasizing about racing at the beginning of the picture?
Look over the 25 frame grabs here, taken from 19 seconds of "Speed Racer." Most of them represent shots of one second or less, though two or three last up to three seconds. "Camera movements" are indicated in the captions. The Wachowskis aren't doing anything new (here or in the CGI-enhanced parallel-action-across-time sequences), but they're mixing traditional Hollywood cutting with some peculiar and confusing choices. Dig it or don't (I don't), but I'd argue that the movie sacrifices visual clarity and fails to create a sense of kinetic rhythm and movement. It just spins its color-wheels.
View image Shot #14. Cut back to wider shot. Same angle of shot #12. Blue car provides visual point of reference. Red car (with driver from previous shot) on the left. Orange car on right. Still no sign of Racer X.
View image Shot #14 (continued). Blue car appears to land on orange car, as yellow car (Racer X!) jumps over all. Snake Oiler vanishes almost before we can register that he's gone.
View image Shot #14 (continued). Red car swerves across frame from left to right. Yellow car continues leap.
Even in a video game, more of an influence on the movie's aesthetic than the anime TV show, it's essential that you know where your avatar is in the world on the screen at all times. How else can you hunt, or fight, or flee, or win? In a dimension where there are no rules or limitations, where anything is as likely to happen as anything else... then what matters? The "Speed Racer" drivers could use GPS systems.
I know "Speed Racer" was a flop and it is not my intention to pick on it just because it failed. I did that before. (Not much, after a charming ADD opening sequence in a classroom/principal's office, which you can see for yourself here, under "First Seven Minutes," which goes on about four too long. First words spoken by an on-screen character: "Distracted?")
View image Shot #16. Reverse angle. White car + M on helmet = Speed. We don't really have time to ask how he wound up so far behind his pals.
View image Shot #19. Smoke and stuff emerges from the loooooong mosque-like structure through which the cars have evidently been racing. Note camel or llama or whatever it is on the left.
I'm much more interested in how the movie is put together. Keep in mind, this is just a snippet from the last of several elaborate "race" sequences in the 135-minute film, though it's fairly representative of the movie as a whole. You can see more of this sequence and the one before it here, or the first 54 seconds of it here, under the clip title "Squealing Tires." (If you choose the former, note the old-fashioned horizontal wipe transitions, covered by close-ups of the actors -- a technique used repeatedly.) Even when you stop-frame it like this, the grammar (while not unfamiliar) isn't quite coherent. Nor does it strike me as particularly innovative or interesting, and after a short while I found it all numbing. It's a long and exceedingly busy movie, but as I said in my review, it felt to me like it was all movement and no momentum. Kind of iike visual white noise -- or like a spin-painting when it's still spinning so fast that all the colors blend to gray...
Here's an excerpt from Nathan Rabin's "My Year of Flops Case File #111: Speed Racer"
"Speed Racer the movie isn't ultimately about actors or plot or character arcs. No, it's about shiny things going zoom in happy color land. That isn't the problem. It's everything surrounding the scenes of shiny things going zoom that proves problematic...
The Wachowskis apparently had two very strong visions for Speed Racer that ultimately cancel each other out. They were going to transform it into a giddy, goofy live-action cartoon, a campy retro romp that delights in the synthetic, shameless, and shimmering. Secondly, they were going to create a sober family drama about a tormented, brooding young man who must overcome a formative trauma, corporate corruption, and his father's doubts and fears in order to realize his potential.
Alas, the Wachowskis are a lot better at making shiny things go zoom than they are at getting audiences to care about the people inside the shiny things. Speed Racer is a feast for the senses; every frame is filled with neat little details competing for the audience's attention. How can the actors playing comic-book archetypes possibly compete?
All the Wachowski brothers' latest has going for it, ultimately, is spectacle and speed. Yet it continually grinds to a screeching halt so Hirsch can have heart-to-heart talks with his family and friends. It's as if the Superman ride at Great America stopped every 40 seconds for a sentimental speech about Superman's complicated relationship with his adopted planet, and his angst at being the only surviving member of his alien race.
This is made grindingly apparent by a montage late in the film where Hirsch, at a crucial crossroads in his life and career, reflects back on the heady conversations he's had about his family's past and his professional future. The flashbacks are supposed to lend gravity and meaning to Hirsch's quest. Instead, they merely underline just how spectacularly the film's emotional elements fail. It's a greatest-misses compilation of dialogue that falls flat, too-pat emotional epiphanies, and labored attempts at investing a pop-art cartoon with substance. It turns out you can't be Batman & Robin and a racing-world East Of Eden at the same time after all."
He doesn't address the technical flaws of the film in the more fundamentally damning way you do, Jim ("the shiny things going zoom" apparently are as big a problem as the mindlessness of the whole enterprise).
Ack! I've gotta watch it, otherwise I'm gonna be up till 4:30 a.m. writing this comment! I wish I wasn't in the midst of schoolwork and trying to prep something for my own site AND trying to write something for which I'm actually getting paid (!), because if even one of these things weren't true I'd be able to take more time (and stay up later) writing and thinking about what you've written here. But until I can indulge the opportunity to be more than just a little general (and I honestly will try to do that before too much time passes), I will make just a couple of comments.
First of all, how did you get those screen grabs? From the clips you linked to? (Man, I gotta get me one of those fancy screen grab programs—probably should wait until I get a computer that powerful enough to run that and another program simultaneously…)
Second, if I’m Steven Spielberg I’m not sure I’d be holding up The Bourne Ultimatum as an example of how fast-cutting technique can preserve just enough geography so that the audience can keep its orientation. I do find his observation that Indiana Jones (I imagine he means the new movie) is “more old-fashioned than the modern-day action-adventure” somewhat amusing, however, especially since the Indiana Jones movies basically created the template for the modern action blockbuster, which has accelerated in tempo ever since. But I think Spielberg’s just looking for ways to paper over the disinterested tone that pervades his Crystal Skull by positioning it as “old-fashioned”, because his marvelous gift for action geography (and I’m not trying to be a smart-ass—his gift is marvelous) becomes irrelevant when the new movie plays as sluggish and rehashed as it does.
Finally, there are lots of observations made in your captions of the Speed Racer screen grabs that suggest several things to me. The beginning of the sequence as viewed clearly shows Speed fighting off at least two or three cars for positioning, which may help to clear up why he seems so far behind Racer X and Taejo so quickly out of the starting gate—because he is, and he has to catch up. And several of your questions concerning where Racer X is in the pack in relation of everyone else of importance seem more pointed when considering still images—however, when I see the sequence in motion, I have little trouble figuring out who is who or where they are. Besides, the way the sequence is assembled, the individual conflicts, especially at this stage, are more important than the big picture anyway, so as long as we can sort these relationships out visually without too much confusion (I was able to do this), I fail to see the evidence of the movie’s visual incoherence.
Looking at individual frames from a complex sequence like this seems a little like the L.A.P.D.’s defense in the Rodney King case—by isolating imagery we can draw whatever conclusion we want about spatial relationships and whether or not they go together and whether it’s all too confusing to follow. But it all tends to look clearer when we roll the tape. After having “endured” this movie four times now, in full motion, I don’t think I’m fooling myself into thinking that I’m able to track the geography of this action sequence. But I’m also not willing to suggest that the Wachowski’s aren’t deliberately going for some of the disorienting sensation of what it would be like to ride in and drive a car whose relationship to gravity and the physics of the real world is not as we understand to be true in the real world. And if I recognize this, then I may be more willing to forgive the moments when I’m not entirely sure where everyone is in relationship to everyone else because the movie has caught me up I (dare I say it) the poetry of speed, of disorientation.
(As for where Racer X is in relationship to the other racers—image #4—we’ve seen his car race by already, grouped tightly with Taejo, but when the shot happens he’s isolated by the fact of the close-up. If you didn’t notice his car before, this close-up might be jarring, but I always processed this shot as a natural selection to reiterate his presence to the viewer. We’ve already seen where his car is in the pack.)
Just one other question before I collapse: in the caption for image #14 you say, “Even though he gets singled out by name in the credits, Snake Oiler simply vanishes from the picture almost before we can register that he's gone.” Is it your understanding that Snake Oiler is eliminated from the race at this point, or the movie? Because neither is correct. He is seen many times in the desert race that immediately follows the emergence from the palace at the start of the race; he is seen pulling into the palace at the end of the first leg of the race—he is the one taking action poses and frozen in quick shutter snaps that immortalize his buffoonery as he gets out of the car; he is the one who tries to erase Trixie’s head with the wheel of his car (he thinks she’s Taejo, who has been sidelined by poison and does not drive the second leg); and he is the one who ends up careening over the cliff’s edge and parachuting to the bottom of the chasm just before the Casa Cristo race enters its final phase through the ice caverns.
I’m not suggesting that Speed Racer couldn’t possibly be confusing if you’re not paying attention. The first time I saw it I wasn’t always sure of my bearings, but rather than shut down on the experience something kept me compelled, enraptured, entertained. I’d say this was probably the Wachowski’s vision, which is propelled by much more than allegedly nausea-inducing cutting and camera movement. In fact, it is a myth favored by this movie’s detractors that it is nothing more than hyperkinetic kiddy fare; there are also moments in Speed Racer of quiet, of actual emotion (I disagree strongly with those like Nathan Lee who insist that these scenes bring the movie to a screeching halt-- the movie gets damned for being too fast, too shiny and too sincere?), and of expertly timed comedy, all of which rely on actors and what they can do with their faces and bodies that is completely non-reliant on the magic of the computer. I’ll never convince anyone who disagrees with me about the marvel of this movie, and I don’t need to. But I do think this is one instance where examining the movie in motion makes much more sense than looking at kinetically charged but motionless frames in the hopes of unlocking (or more aptly debunking) the considerable impact this movie has as a powerfully imagined world on film.
Dammit! It’s 3:30 in the morning! Jim Emerson, we will meet again in another race someday, and on that day I will be ready for you and you will not beat me so handily! (Does the canned dialogue of the original Speed Racer cartoon come through there at all? )
P.S: I liked your spin-painting metaphor!
I've now seen Speed Racer from, uh, you know, sources that I uh, ... anyway, I didn't pay to see it in the theatre and let's just leave it at that.
I think Nathan Rabin's comments as quoted by Harry Lime are close to my feelings on the matter but not completely. I prefer your shot for shot breakdown if only because of this line from Rabin: "Speed Racer is a feast for the senses; every frame is filled with neat little details competing for the audience's attention."
I completely, utterly and wholeheartedly disagree. Since my wife is an artist and painting is and has been a huge part of my life let me put it this way.
This piece of work by Thomas Kinkade is brightly colored, like Speed Racer and has much clutter and fill. Clutter and fill should never be confused with detail. These are two different things. Here is another
piece that has the same amount of flashy color and clutter. I DO NOT consider either of these a "feast for the senses" or even just the single sense of sight. I considered them a garish cluttered mess.
Now here is a
Hopper. It too has several colors, although more muted. It has detail, not clutter. Here is
Rothko. Less color, though not as muted, and less detail. Here is a
Bacon, inspired by Battleship Potemkin no less. No color, no clutter, plenty of detail within the figure.
I would consider all three of those "feasts for the senses" and consider neither of the Kinkade's to be. Clutter is not detail, use of multi-coloring is not innovation. If not for the fact that several bloggers whose opinions I trust and tastes I admire have praised this film I would say that lovers of this film would probably enjoy a Kinkade in their living room. But I know that Dennis Cozzalio, Ken Lowery and Chris Stangl are not of that ilk (Stangl in fact is a hell of an artist himself). I know they liked it for purely honest intellectual and aesthetic reasons which are, I am sorry to say, lost on me. They all liked it, and they're all intelligent enough to make me suspect I am missing something. But as to that question, the question of this film's quality, I am not yet convinced. In fact, I'm still in the disbelief stage over praise it has received.
I'd like to read more of their examinations of the style of the film (not the reviews but analysis of the style) to better understand it, to better understand what they are impressed with. I am confident in their ability to do so.
But for now, Speed Racer to me is the film equivalent of a Kinkade; full of clutter and color and gimmickry. It's not a feast, it's the aftermath of a foodfight.
Very nice play-by-play using screen-caps. And yet "The Brothers" (as they are known on the set) know how to make a movie, so it's odd they'd put a sequence together this way, let alone an entire movie. I wouldn't expect any substance in a Speed Racer movie, so the Style Over Substance comment doesn't apply here. Therefore, gee, I wonder who the movie was made for. People who like things that go zoooom.
I'm glad their is someone who agrees with me that the Bourne Ultimatum is the best of the three Bourne films.As for Jim complaining about the visual look in speed racer action sequences I agree with him because in the first place why did they have to make Speed Racer's world completely computer generated?Why not use sets or props.However,their are films like Sin City and King King where they would not be as good as they were if their environments weren't computer generated but why not use production designers that's what there for.Granted,I have not seen Speed Racer(and probably won't)but I like to see action sequences that use less or no special effects(like the car chase in the French Connection) because they come across as more thrilling and believable but if they are action sequences and their environmens are all done by special effects it feels like a video game.I don't mean to sound like an old fogey but I still like to see movies that give us old-fashioned storytelling.
Judging every film according to the rubrics of David Bordwell's "Classical Hollywood Cinema," up to and including the kind of narrative coherence you're looking for, is not an approach I admire, frankly.
The artistic choices of the Wachowski's you've outlined are neither good nor bad.
The characters in Speed Racer live in a hyperreality. The point here, as in the Matrix films, is that the goofiness of it all is not apparent to the silly people driving their cars so very, very fast. In this respect, the scene makes perfect sense.
A video game is about vicariously living through a character. This film has nothing to do with that, but I'm still puzzled by the lack of, specifically, audience participation this time around. The film, on a couple occasions, alludes to "closing one's eyes to listen." The visual overload is acknowledged by the film itself, and the suggestion of not watching it is surprisingly subversive. This isn't "dramatic," it's "epic" (in Brechtian terminology). The perceptual subtext of the dialogue was obviously missed by most viewers, but that's their fault.
If you really want to see "incoherent" along similar (albeit unjustified) lines, check out the Death Star battle at the end of Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. Bad? Good? Irrelevant, right? Just make sure to listen.
All: Yes, this post is my serious, painstaking attempt to understand why I found the "action sequences" in "Speed Racer" so dull -- despite all the motion and sound coming from the screen.
Some have said the movie was trying to do something "different." I'm still trying to figure out what that thing was, and why, and what the effect was meant to convey...
Dennis: I confess I couldn't even remember which racing sequence this was from. So, yes, I thought this was Snake Oiler's final appearance. But he never really registered with me to begin with -- though I assumed he was there to represent a character familiar to some in the audience from the TV show. What I wanted to show was that the movie uses conventional grammar in some ways, but doesn't use it to create a sensation of... speed.
I left a comment earlier but I guess it got eaten. Oh well. I don't think I can type all that again.
JE: I found it stuck in the junk filter with a bunch of online poker spam from Deutschland. It has been restored to its rightful place, above...
Apologies in advance if the geography of my train of thought is unclear due to poor editing, it's the end of a long week and I'm less capable of forming a coherent thought than ever.
Full disclosure: I'm almost unreservedly enamored of Speed Racer, yet I haven't been able to fully articulate why. Though I disagree with what you seem to be saying, your deconstruction of one of the action scenes is interesting. On the other hand, I have to admit after awhile I felt a little bit like I was listening to Kevin Costner in JFK ("Back...and to the left. Back...and to the left. Back...and to the left. Back…"). I think that's probably on me though and not you.
I thought a lot about this movie the first week when I saw it twice, and then afterwards I was a little depressed because everyone I knew hated it. Now I'm back to thinking about it thanks to an Anne Thompson piece in Variety this morning theorizing why it stiffed.
Anyway, usually my biggest beef about bad action movies are scenes with unclear geography so I'm not unsympathetic to your problem in general. Yet, with Speed I don't think the action scenes were meant to serve the same purpose as a typical action film. They were an abstract expression of kineticism. They provided a sense of the chaos of being IN a race rather than the thrill of watching one. They weren't intended to provide the roller coaster thrills of a typical chase scene, they were meant to give you the feeling of what it might be like to be involved in one.
Also, like Mr. Cozzalio, I never found myself unable to tell what was going on. There were moments when my grasp was tenuous, but I just kind of surrendered to the sights and sounds and let them have their way with me, knowing that in the end it would all be clear. And it was.
I can feel the rudder going out on this steamship of thought so I'm going to wrap it up.
Before I do however, I want to take further issue with Nathan Rabin assertion (quoted by Harry Lime) that Speed is a "campy retro romp." I don't think it's campy. At all. And approaching it from that assumption is the first misstep in failing to understand where the film is coming from or where it's going. Camp involves a wink and a nudge and everyone is in on the joke, but the Bros. Wachowski were not screwing around. I think they were completely earnest in their attempt to fashion a kid's film for adults, one that would make adults feel the way they felt as children watching Speed Racer.
For me, they succeeded completely.
It's an interesting insight from Spielberg, one I don't disagree with. Though sometimes the shot list that Wright talks about (master shot, medium shot, close-up) isn't very effective when used by some filmmakers. Spielberg is one of the few that can move characters in his spaces cleverly. The introduction of Indie in the most recent film was so cleverly devised and timed out, taking full advantage of what was in the space.
Though sometimes Spielberg does move things around in his space for purposes of composition from one angle to the next. It's a little thing called "cheating". You'll notice it especially in Jurassic Park when the jeep is tumbling down the tree at people. From one shot to the next objects are shifted to get a better singular shot with a complete disregard to geographical continuity and logic. Every filmmaker does this, but it's only more noticeable with Spielberg, who is a composition fiend! And sometimes his films are almost too composed. "Amistad" gave me a headache because the "geography" was so well aligned.
"The Bourne Ultimatum" was not a great story but as far as spatial relationships are concerned. It made sense when it needed to and stopped making sense when it didn't need to. The thing is a great director will show you the details that require you to make sense of a scene. The bad directors (Bay) will just throw the cameras around and have idea where something should cut or not.
As for the Wachowskis...I'm not sure if they ever wanted you to understand the space or not and that's their downfall. A good filmmaker will use it to the film's advantage. A bad filmmaker will just do it to do it...weeeee! Though I enjoyed some of Speed and wrote a similar little piece to the one left above.
Jim,
I think you are wrong about this movie. Speed Racer is actually a better movie than Iron Man. And I saw it twice in the theater, something I haven't done since Tim Burton's first Batman flick.
.
Why does no one focus on the clash between the lightness of the characters and the heaviness of the conspiracy plot? Just from watching the trailers, that seemed like the big flaw to me.
Online poker spam from Deutschland follows me wherever I go. I did finally get rid of the Ukrakian contract bridge spam though, so there's that.
First off, I would argue that use of color IS innovation when everyone else is going as close to black and white as commercial interests will allow. Even a mainstream action film like IRON MAN indulges a bit in the "brown, more brown, some more brown" aesthetic, and contemporary video games have been doing this for some time as well to show off how "realistic" their graphics are.
Secondly, I did find the scenes coherent as I watched them, usually because, as much motion as there is on the periphery, the focus is on one car or racer at a time. It's much like the actual series in that sense, which used the old anime trick of surrounding static images with speed lines and signs of motion.
I thought Ukrakian Ale was banned in the Federation?
Still haven't seen this, as it is yet to open here. I can't wait though - if you have Emerson on one corner, and Cozzalio on the other, you just know you MUST see that movie.
If Michel Foucault were alive, he would have a field day with this stuff. Specifically, the arguments for Speed Racer's merits. Me, I think making a movie with a perceptual subtext that you should close your eyes while watching it - am I getting it straight? - sounds disingenuous. Are the Wachowski Brothers trying to teach me about the sensory overload of post-modern consumerist culture and the way it diverts us from what really matters? Could they maybe next time do it in a way that is entertaining? Because I have to say, I have serious misgivings about forking over the ticket money for a movie that would like me to not see it. It's just that 4 euros out of a 30 euros non-essentials-budget is kind of a bite. Two hours of my time even more so. Am I being an ugly prole, unconcerned with Art, too concerned with money?
The thing is this, a smart subtext does not a good movie make. Like Roger Ebert says, it's not what your movie is about, it's the way it is about what it's about (or something to that effect, right?). The movie may, in fact, be up to some tremendously smart, ironic, subversive purpose. And so? Does that mean it's good? Because that's the thing for me. I read people's reviews that the movie is bad, and they seem based on, well, an actual appreciation of the movie. I read people's defense of the movie, and it's on the grounds that, supposedly, it's up to some witty subversion of itself. Okay, maybe. Judging by their Matrix movies, the Brothers are certainly pretentious enough to go down that road. But is it good?
Also, to say the movie has moments of "quiet, of actual emotion" doesn't mean those moments work. And the movie, from what I've read, isn't damned for "being too fast, too shiny and too sincere", but for being hypocritical; a big, lean, mean summer blockbuster with the power of Warner Brother's behind it on the one hand, and on the other, a fable of quiet, honest socialist emotion and non-consumerism, asking us to please not watch it, and really-quite-please not buy the merchandise. It is smart, I'll give the Brothers that, but a hard trick to pull. Not very original, though. A guy here in Portugal once did a movie of, what, 2-3 hours?, that had the sound, but just a black screen. No pictures, other than four photos. Some people thought, if you want to make a movie that isn't supposed to be seen, why not make a radio play instead?
That being said, I intend to watch it, just as soon as I have time to burn and a way to watch without paying (not that I'm planning anything illegal... the burn refers to the time, not the movie, see?).
Dennis,
For me it wasn't the characters that slowed down the film. I thought everyone in the film was fantastic. John Goodman is a national treasure. Sarandon did some great work. Ricci was outstanding. They were all playing in a film that was a cartoon. It was either the way Hirsch decided to play Speed or the way the Wachowskis decided to direct him that brought to movie to a halt. It's like he was in a different movie all together. There was such a dissonance between his internalizing and everyone else wearing it on the shoulder (and the face) that put the breaks on. Even Matthew Fox was outstanding. Hirsch showed more single minded passion for his mission as Supertramp. Here it's like he drove his car because he had to, not because he enjoyed it. That's what the movie was missing.
When the main character isn't having fun, why should we? (Though for most of it -- when it didn't rely on Speed's parking brake personality - I did enjoy it.)
The argument about Speed Racer being hypocritical is a bit ridiculous. Your implying that any film that wishes to be seen by audiences cannot pursue an anti-capitalist message at the risk of being hypocritical.
Speed Racer could of been a product placement nightmare with Mountain Dew cars and the like, but they avoided that. Sure there are toy cars and the film was funded by a major company, but the film ignores all of this, unlike Jurassic Park which features merchandise in the film itself, or Transformers which has Mountain Dew vending machine and an Xbox turn into villains.
And damnitall if I wasn't moved that Speed and Pops said "I love you" to each other. You don't get that kind of expression of emotion between family members that often in kids films.
Speed Racer is "new" in the way Star Wars was "new". It has taking retro concepts and re-invigorated them through technological developments and creative editing. There's a wonderful moment during the final minutes of the last race where super-impositions of the cars that are about to crash appear over the image of the final three drivers - each is visualizing the events to come before they occur. It is these moments where the traditional organization of space and time collapses that Speed Racer is really doing something interesting.
But hey, there were people who didn't get Star Wars. Heck, had Star Wars come out in 1976 it probably would of met with the reaction Speed is getting right now.
I think that Dan Peterson touches on the point behind the construction of the action scenes: the Wachowski's want us to stop analyzing the details of this world (and in this case, the shot-to-shot structure of a sequence) and look at the big picture. They are asking us to allow ourselves to become lost in what Dennis calls 'the poetry of speed'. For me it worked perfectly.
It is, however, a completely different approach to that usually taken in the execution of high-speed chase sequences. Even when I did lose myself it still made a hell of a lot more sense than The Bourne Ultimatum. Incoherence is an important part of the broader plan of Speed Racer and of the ideas it goes after, but it was pretty inexcusable in Bourne and really robbed a lot of the potential dynamism from the action scenes.
I feel that Speed Racer was vastly underrated, and its probably the best film I've seen this year. As for what, as Jim asked, it does that's new or different? For starters, look at this 'incoherence' that the blog post describes, and the general on-screen collapse and explosion of time. All of this carries real meaning and purpose, and to my eyes it is indeed very innovative.
I wonder if you don't mean "Wachowskis" but "Michael Bay"? The "Michael Bay" cuts without story, sense of screen direction, against scene geography, logic and storytelling sense all with the intention of artificially whipping up a sense of kinetic energy. He sabotages his own ambitions to Bigger Better More by rendering his favorite parts of his own movies (I presume. And I mean "explosions, chases, fights") blurry, incoherent and sloppy. There's a setpiece in Transformers, which should be simple and grand. And Mr. Spielberg, presumably, could have intervened. IIRC, the kids have to run down a single blocked-off city street, giant robots coming from one end, army guys from the other. Got it. But Bay won't pick an axis for the action, cuts around the narrative beats, doesn't build a rhythm, and splices together jittery shots that don't seem to be from a coherent, consistent point of view or even interesting in isolation. By the end of the movie, the king robot is saying that Jazz, the cool Black robot, died, and I'm all like "Wha? He did? When!? Did they show it?"
You don't have to play by the rules. Bending the rules till they snap and you have to make new ones is how we get Griffith and Hitchcock, Godard and Anger, Eisenstein and Michael Snow. Though visually sensitive directors, Tim Burton and Wes Anderson so regularly violate their axis of action that I'm not sure they even understand the rules. But they make it work, probably intuitively.
The Wachowskis not so much. The Wachowskis went to De Palma school. I see nothing but evidence that they care deeply about the sense of space and time in their films. Their most famous special effect - Matrix Bullet Time - is a celebration of screen space-time turned directorial fetish... and it probably has its roots in the "Speed Racer" opening credits and John Woo's opium-dreamy slow-motion.
Every shot of every film they've touched has been built like this. Their first film, Bound, meticulously sets up the geography of an apartment building and individual rooms, and relies on this hyperaware understanding of spatial relationships for suspense, for comedy, for character development, for romance and beauty and to drive its entire plot.
The Matrix trilogy is very much about journeying through spaces, how and where they connect, and the profound sense of displacement when those relationships become nebulous. All three films are jammed to the virtual rafters with action and suspense which works so well and is so pleasurable, so able to soar to bizarre, absurd heights because all the spaces are mapped carefully and inventively before the action beats begin mounting and twisting. The celebrated "they're in the walls" fight, the shoot-outs in forests of pillars, the machine attack on Zion, the assault on the Source building at the center of Reloaded, the triumphant image of a glass skyscraper rippling and shattering as a tethered helicopter plows into the windows: these all provide specific, crystalized, aesthetically powerful images, all are rousing action setpieces, all work and make "sense" because their kinetic flow through space has been routed by micromanaging obsessives.
The Wachowskis are cutting fast in Speed Racer, no doubt. But it's still cutting on the beat... the heart rate is just accelerated to 300bpm. The action scenes - indeed, the not-action scenes - all build up to absurdist images of physics, mechanics, and biology being violated in vivid detail. But because these (visually, aurally, emotionally) loud, crazed pictures are flashing by and are impossible and bizarre does not mean they haven't been crafted with care. The geography of the racetracks, flux of spatial relationships between drivers, and warped physics of the Speed Racer world are all laid out with clarity and efficiency... even in the clips being offered in this piece as evidence of incoherence. I know I'm just sort of offering the exact opposite stance, but... You can't freeze-frame Speed Racer to make sense of it. It's a movie about movement. The motion blur doesn't gain legibility by slowing it down, partly because it works like a cartoon. Literally, besides the flesh&blood faces occasionally on display, Speed Racer is as much a CG cartoon as any Pixar picture. Examining individual frames of a Bob Clampett cartoon is useful study for artists trying to grasp the step-by-step of the physical process of animating, but won't help a viewer render the scene coherent; if anything, it looks awkward, strange, and like it shouldn't work.
Following the races has a lot to do with rhythm, color choices, and the way the Wachowskis sort of syncopate the beat on particularly important, pretty/mad and striking moments. The editing is full of choices as bold as Speed Racer's color palette, and they may be distasteful to some sensibilities, but I'm a little perplexed as I thought all the race scenes easy to follow and full of joy, startling beauty and yeah, emotional thrills; the Grand Prix race finale essentially gathers dynamic rhythm, visual tension, narrative pace and emotional steam into a cinema-avalanche that mimics the color and light show of a brain in the throes of sexual climax. And no joke, I think you're supposed to get that weird, wiggy, glorious idea and feel it in the base of your skull.
The proper eyeball training for Speed Racer is neither Raiders of the Lost Ark nor a Bourne movie, but Oskar Fischinger's Radio Dynamics, De Palma's Body Double, and a steady diet of anime.
I saw Speed Racer this weekend (it only just opened in New Zealand), and (with the exception of this scene) I never had any difficulty trying to keep track of the main characters positions in any of the races. The Wachowskis seemed to be trying to push it, see what the limits were in quick cuts for a film with such an absurdly over-the-top visual style, but I thought they overall made it work.
The scene you've highlighted here was the one scene where I did have difficulty with the geography of the scene. But to be honest, I thought it actually made the scene work. It's supposed to be the first five minutes of a multi-day race, so the question of who is in the lead at that point is (to a degree) irrelevant. Besides, the focus of the scene is on establishing the insanity of the race. They're racing at insane speeds through a pillared area, with other racers actively trying to take them out (the sline, the rear-ending) so the racers aren't focused on where they are in position, but just on going as fast as they can and keeping an eye on the immediate threats. To that end, I thought the scene did really well in just saying "this is what it is like to be a racer in this race".