A horror or science-fiction movie without subtext is like Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory without electricity. The inner metaphor is what gives it life and resonance. Otherwise, it's just a story about stitched-together people parts. Or take David Cronenberg's "The Fly," a riveting, poignant horror/science-fiction/romance about an ambitious scientist who accidentally gets his DNA mixed up with that of a housefly. Everything about the movie is first-rate, from the direction to the performances to the effects. But what really grabs hold of you is the universal theme: We are all Brundlefly, sentient, self-aware beings whose bodies are going to decay and die. In 1986, a lot of people assumed the subtext was AIDS; Cronenberg later said he was thinking in more general terms about the process of aging. It doesn't matter. The movie works on those levels.
Cronenberg is particularly ingenious at making the word flesh, and the ways he develops his ideas are often even scarier than the explicit horrors: "The Brood" is a masterpiece about the psychosomatic effects of rage turned inward, and about the legacy of emotional abuse passed down from one generation to the next; "Videodrome" is about technology as an extension of the body and the brain; "Dead Ringers" is about mutant forms of psychological and sexual intimacy; "Naked Lunch" is about a writer who has to internalize his own sexuality before he can create art.... Cronenberg is an organic, visionary thinker, storyteller, filmmaker. His movies have meat on their bones. Other filmmakers whose work strikes me as insubstantial lack this ability to flesh-out their pictures with compelling, animating ideas. Their plots are meticulously plotted, but they're skin-deep and there's nothing to sink your imaginative teeth into.
Which brings me to this summer's hits, "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" and "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," neither of which I have much interest in seeing. Instead I'm intrigued by a few things I've read about them -- specifically about their subtext, or lack thereof. In a piece about the racial themes of "The Help" ("Why Can't Critics Just Get Along?"), David Poland writes:
It is not really a stretch to see "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" as a film that lingers in the subtext of race, WWII-inspired action-dramas, and especially the films where a small band of scary men come together to protect a native village from some other form of greater organized terror. But many critics simply refuse to see that film as anything more than cynical money-grabbing ugly clanging metal not worth actually thinking about.
In 1968, critics made much of "The Planet of the Apes" as a racial allegory. It was 1968, after all, and as I never tire of saying: movies are not made or seen in a vacuum. In 1999, Eric Greene published a study of the initial five-film "Apes" series called "'Planet of the Apes' as American Myth: Race, Politics, and Popular Culture. The publisher noted:
The Apes films confronted some of the most controversial issues of the time, including Vietnam and the Black Power movement, all the while remaining crowd pleasing box office hits.
Eric Greene uses rare photographs, transcripts, and extensive interviews with the writers, directors, actors, and producers to read the Apes saga as a profoundly American myth. Greene also looks at the attempts of filmmakers like Oliver Stone and James Cameron to remake the myth for the 90s. This enjoyable and meticulous book gives the reader an insider's look at the complex relationships between race, politics and popular culture in America.
In his review of the 2011 prequel, "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," Ed Gonzalez at Slant Magazine writes:
Franklin J. Schaffner's 1968 sci-fi classic was an audaciously pulpy, uniquely Serling-esque allegory for racial relations in Civil Rights-era America in which the historical relationship between whites and blacks was reversed. That sly allegory was hatefully perverted by white supremacists, even deemed derogatory by some in the Black Power movement, but its provocation is unmistakable as one directed against the forces of institutionalized racism. "Rise of the Planet of the Apes"'s only provocation is that it would appear to buy into the myth of a post-racial America. Rather than hold a mirror up to a country's racial hostilities, it capitulates to Hollywood formula and political correctness; save for a tacky scene during which a scrawny white goon at an animal compound turns a fire hose on the uppity Caesar (a handsomely motion-captured and best-in-show Andy Serkis), it only has the best interests of PETA, not the NAACP, in mind.
Over at GreenCine, Vadim Rizov sees the new "Planet of the Apes" movie as thematically hollow:
"Rise" decides it doesn't really need resonance or grown-up subtext. It has something better: digitally rendered monkeys that can move really fast. When the chimps make a run for the woods, they move at velociraptor speed. The '60s and '70s didn't have such technology and relied on profundity, but "Rise" doesn't need ideas.
So, the questions arise: If a movie contains any subtext at all (whether compelling or coherent is another matter), what is it working through and how does it operate? Zach Campbell at Elusive Lucidity coined the term "Diffuse Cinema" for films that are often described by critics with lists of diverse thematic elements. By way of example, he quotes a review of last year's "Splice" by Kim Dot Dammit: "the film manages to combine a whole mess of hot topics such as abortion, biotechnology, the reproductive industry, genetic research, cloning, big pharma's role in late capitalism, maternity, sexuality/gender and so much more into one disturbingly effective film."
"A while back," he writes, "I gave a conference paper on 'reversible films, blockbuster cinema that seeks to accommodate politicized readings by accommodating even contradictory ideologies."
On a textual level, there is no true interpretation to movies like "The Lord of the Rings" or "The Matrix" or even more ostensibly right- and left-wing "300" and "V for Vendetta." These films have fluid, if not gaseous, rules for the construction of their allies, enemies, and causes. Their engineering as narrative packages is highly clever and streamlined. In a related way but on a more sophisticated level is another articulation of cinema, what we might call 'diffuse.' The difference -- and of course I'm speaking impressionistically and in generalities, and any given film will offer particularities which trouble my categories -- is that a reversible film fosters a political position (any number of positions), a spiritual forebear being something like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," whereas the diffuse film knowingly revels in the messiness, in the feeling of impossibility of a clear political through-line. It goes into the cul-de-sac, it embraces the ethical, epistemological, sociopolitical clusterf**k. But diffuse cinema, like "Splice" or "District 9" (Neill Blomkamp) or some Arnaud Desplechin, seems to me to deliberately inspire such lists of diverse topical or thematic content as those highlighted above. When the film in question is considered effective, the iteration of such lists is meant to indicate that these nodes are mobilized in rich, weird, perhaps unpredicted or unpredictable, and sophisticated ways.
At my old Jeeem's CinePad site (consistently never updated since 1998!), I have a section called The Big Lie, featuring reviews of popular movies that claim to be about one set of values on the surface, but fatally undermine those ostensible values with ("Pretty Woman," "Mississippi Burning," "Dead Poets Society," "Thelma and Louise," "Natural Born Killers"). The matter of their "messages" collides with the anti-matter of their cinematic techniques and... poof. From the introduction:
In movies, style is content. But what a movie says and what it does aren't necessarily consistent or compatible. Sometimes those contradictions are part of a deliberate strategy to provoke or unsettle you. Sometimes they're just signs of the filmmakers' incompetence. And sometimes they tell... The Big Lie.
The movies below are fascinating to me because, like a bad con artist who can't look you in the eye, they make claims that are undermined and contradicted by their own cinematic "body language."
The movies I examine in this Big Lie section are at war with themselves in ways that are both appalling and irresistibly fascinating. It's not that they're hodge-podges of fragmentary notions and topics, or that they have nothing going on beneath their plot/character surfaces, but that they exhibit such cinematic cognitive dissonance they implode as you watch them. If you watch them. These movies were mainstream popular hits and few questioned that they were what they said they were -- that "Pretty Woman" was a romantic Cinderella story, "Mississippi Burning" a civil rights melodrama about how J. Edgar Hoover's nice FBI men helped out those poor Negroes down south, "Dead Poets Society" a celebration of nonconformism, "Thelma and Louise" a feminist fable, "Natural Born Killers" another rebel-couple-on-the-run tale... (See my reviews for what I think these movies are really up to.)
I wonder if Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby" (a peculiar title for this story if you think about it) would have become an Oscar-winning hit if audiences saw it the way Carloss James Chamberlin did in a senses of cinema essay called "The Magic of Risking Everything For a Dream Nobody Sees: 'Million Dollar Baby': The Shadow Film." I've always been disconcerted by aspects of the movie that don't make much sense in terms of story and character -- especially the final revelation that Scrap Dupree's (Morgan Freeman) narration has been in the form of a letter to Frankie Dunn's (Eastwood) estranged daughter. Chamberlin re-examines the entire movie as a Jungian psychodrama in which Frankie acts out his rage toward his real daughter by loving, punishing, crippling and murdering her surrogate, Maggie (Hilary Swank):
Murder, then, but as therapy. In psychological terms, "Million Dollar Baby" is a myth of rebirth. What Frankie has done is projected his lost daughter onto the tabula rasa that was Maggie, and made her a totem for his real one, exploited her, and even loved her successfully, according to his terms, and then killed her off, which pays unexpected and significant benefits in the matter of his conscience. Killing Maggie allows him to evade the trap set by his "bad" conscience. Non Habeas Corpus. Scrap [the embodiment of Frankie's conscience] bears witness, but will never have the opportunity to reproach.
Maybe I'm stretching things a little, but in this reading "Million Dollar Baby" becomes a kind of horror film along the thematic lines of "The Shining" or "The Stepfather," in which Frankie invests his rage over his family and career disappointments -- and his thwarted love -- in a Million Dollar Baby (his shot at redemption), whom he creates himself (see "Frankenstein," "Splice") and when she lets him down by getting severely injured, becoming another burden, he kills her and walks away. Which is one hell of a subtext.
I maintain that movies are, primarily, metaphors and if all they're doing is laying out a plot that takes the characters from A to B to C (even if the chronology is cleverly scrambled) then there's not much to engage the imagination. A story doesn't require complexity, but it needs depth to resonate.
How important is "subtext" to you? (Sorry, I actually hate that word -- it sounds like my elementary school teachers telling us to "read between the lines.") Is a ripping yarn good enough?
78 Comments
Wow, that is one hell of a read on Million Dollar Baby. I approve.
I dunno. I feel like the new Apes film did have a subtext though. It has been years since I've watched the 1968 film (which I very much enjoyed), so I can't compare the two in sophistication very effectively. But the film is *extremely* concerned with responsibilities to our family unit, or extended community, and the related questions of what to do when those communities are in conflict.
*mild spoilers*
The impetus for the serum that James Franco develops, which eventually leads to Caesar's heightened intelligence, is two-fold: he wants to find a cure for Alzheimer's, which benefits humanity as a whole; but his particular motivation is to cure his father. The family unit that forms between James Franco, his father, his girlfriend, and Caesar then becomes the focus of the film for some time. Caesar is first identified as dangerous by the general population when he
And as far as the racial metaphor, I think that there is something genuinely interesting about the way Franco and Caesar interact. First of all, Caesar is, for all intents and purposes, as moral and as intelligent as humans. So I think he codes quite well as a human from an underclass, as the only thing that distinguishes him from other people is his genetics. Obviously his genetics are much, much different from humans than any two humans are, but, well, that's where the metaphor comes in.
So Franco takes Caesar in and raises him as his own. He clearly loves him. So does his father (John Lithgow), and so does his girlfriend. Caesar clearly loves them. But there are problems. There's a moment in which Caesar looks longingly, a little bit jealously at Franco and his girlfriend at one point, and we recognize that sexual/romantic life is something he's allowed to/able to have. He is kept on a leash and he asks Franco whether he's a pet. Franco says that Caesar is his son. Franco means it. But he does treat him as subhuman in public by leashing him. He wants to love Caesar completely. But social expectations of others are pretty ingrained. He both has to live in society according to society's laws, which means he has to treat his own "son" like crap -- he actually *cannot* just break out of the systemic oppression against another conscious being he personally *knows* to be smarter, kinder, etc. than other people do, without drawing attention to himself, without risking his ability to protect Caesar. But there is some condescension in all this too; while he is happy to let Caesar go and play amongst the trees, he doesn't seem to think far enough ahead to what Caesar actually needs, beyond a roof and food and toys, and the companionship of their very tiny unit.
Bigger spoilers, up to the end of the film:
What prompts Caesar to get caught and taken away is that he attacks another human who is seemingly threatening Lithgow. It's an understandable thing for a kid to want to do, but most kids a) have the opportunity to be socialized, and b) further, don't have Caesar's strength. Mostly though it's another instance of the main theme: Caesar protects people in his circle (the father) which goes against the demands of society as a whole (represented by the unlikable but not unreasonable neighbour). If he were a human child, he presumably would not have been such a big threat, and wouldn't have been taken away. We can view this discrimination as relating to the high degree of prejudice against non-affluent white people when it comes to crimes, if we want. Caesar then gets sent to live in a small cage, and the only thing to do in their little prison is to be mistreated by prison guards and periodically have fights for turf during their small time of recreation. (The underprivileged and prison? Yes.)
Franco wants to get Caesar out. But he can't; human society won't let him. He tries hard. But does he try as hard as if it were his own biological son being mistreated? An adopted human son? Franco accepts the prejudice that Caesar deserves less than other people, to some tiny degree, though for the most part it really is human society that is foisting it upon him.
Further, we know that Franco, love for Caesar or no, still experiments on other apes. He tests his scary dangerous experimental drug on them, knowing that they will (probably) have effectively human-level intelligence but will still be treated as disposable creatures. If he can set aside all his moral/personal objections with the other apes, and ignore their personhood, how genuinely do his feelings about Caesar's personhood run? Or is it rather that his immediate blood group -- his father, in particular -- simply mean so much more to him than others?
When the apes eventually revolt, as we know they must, the understandable priority of the police is to stop them from escaping. They are hurting people. We recognize that they feel they have little choice but to do so; that they are treated as a subhuman class and that it was humans, not apes, who created the us vs. them mentality. (The older baboon tells Caesar calmly that the humans actively *dislike* apes that are smart. Justifications were always presented that it is acceptable to mistreat minorities (along gender, racial lines) *because* they were ostensibly less intelligent, less able to take care of themselves. It becomes necessary for the underclass to hide their intelligence because they expect to be punished for it; and they are punished for it because asshole bullies like Tom Felton's (none-too-subtle, admittedly) character feel so low about themselves because people on top *like* the power structure and don't *want* to see evidence that their rationalizations are wrong.)
Franco understands this and he goes to try to help Caesar -- but only Caesar. Why? Because he's the one Franco cares about, and he is thinking in terms of individuals. Caesar sees and respects this, which is why he still clearly cares for Franco at the end of the film. But he also correctly identifies that Franco doesn't actually care about the broader movement. And so their relationship has to fall apart, because Franco's desire to protect Caesar comes from love, yes, but it's love laced with condescension. Caesar is home with the other apes. They share the same plight.
It should be obvious, by the way, that I don't think that the apes' actually killing people is good. This is a prequel to Planet of the Apes, so we are led to believe that eventually the apes will expand and take over the world, along with a disease that spreads to human society by human-society-representative the neighbour, who turns out to be a pilot. (The disease is part of the same thing that makes the apes smarter. Some kind of change in circumstance which will tend to shift the makeup of what class/race/gender/etc. will be successful in the world? Not sure what that means.) Caesar starts the process here by cutting his ties to the one human he remains compassionate toward in Franco.
So there is a lot in here about the difficulty of privileged, white men of truly relating to and helping the oppressed, even ones they love. A bit on the conflict between larger society's interests, which one cannot actually control, and interests of a smaller community. Much of this was ham-fisted in the film, perhaps, but I enjoyed it greatly.
At the very moment you posted this I was watching "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" in a theater. It's a pretty good visual spectacle about apes gone wild, which was all I was looking for at the end of a long work week. I think there is a subtext, though: the triumph of CG characters over people. The apes are much more compelling than the human characters in every respect (motivation, dialogue, even appearance [sorry, James Franco]), which I initially read as a simple cute reversal (monster/alien as protagonist), but now I wonder if a cleverer point was being made - i.e., who cares about humans anymore when we can create fabulous new fake creatures that don't need to obey any knows laws of science or human nature?
I doubt the thesis--another subtext-like word that doesn't benefit from overuse--that a film or plot can truly be subtext-less. Take Rise of the Apes. It's quite plainly about a mass demographic being systematically oppressed and then standing up for their freedom (the text being the particular story of Caesar the chimp and his wooden dummy owner/father James Franco). What it isn't is especially illuminating or thorough in this regard, thanks as much to the barebones plot as the stylistic restraint (i.e. pulling PG-13 punches) and political shallowness (i.e. its treatment of capital punishment). So it has subtext, just not very deep (and occasionally contradictory) subtext.
I suspect subtext is intrinsic to any plot (or plotless work) for the simple reason that literally every idea cannot be spelled out in an ADD-friendly running time, what with editing, composition, blocking, movement, etc. adding to the load. So, for me, it's not about how important the existence of subtext is, but about how strong/consistent/termite-like a film's worldview (which I think is a more comfortable term than subtext or thesis for that which a film's aesthetics intend).
It's always better for the characters to represent something, for the outcome of the story to have some moral significance, but you know, sometimes a really good car chase is a really good car chase.
I was thinking about Frankenheimer's "Ronin" when I wrote that, and now I'm trying to think what the subtext of that movie would be...I don't think much about the meaning when I watch it. I'll try to sum it up in the way you summed up those Cronenberg film...hmm...it's about loners who have dangerous jobs, and are good at them, and look and sound good while they're doing them. It's about maintaining your conscience in a world of steel-cold ruthlessness. Of course the ruthlessness is part of the fun...and there's something romantic about the loners.
Is there a difference between subtext and the exploitation of basic human emotions?
For me, the main problem with 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' (other than having a title with two "of"s) was not a lack of subtext but a lack of basic pieces of dramatic structure. Specifically, it has no definite protagonist or antagonist. Caesar, the ape, and James Franco, the loveable guy who has been working as a scientist for ten years (so I guess he got out of Scientist college when we was 15?) are our main characters and would, in normal circumstances, be our protagonists. The problem is, there is nothing specific for them to fight against. There's a mean boss and a mean ape keeper, both of whom are bad people but neither of which is developed enough to hold any weight as a villain. Other than that, there's a bunch of nameless faceless cops. I don't even want to start on how poorly John Lithgow's Alzheimer's was handled. (I don't think it was their intention for me to be holding back snickers.)
Jim, to me it's crucial. If it has nothing to say, then I have nothing to see.
I understand the attraction of "pure entertainment" movies, as a way of relaxing from stress. But I'd rather take a nap. I might dream.
A friend of mine told me one that a song is garbage if the lyrics aren't any good. I asked him how he qualified classical music. He said classical music was garbage. At least he stuck to his convictions.
I really enjoyed this piece, especially the bit about Million Dollar Baby(!), but I wonder if you picked the wrong movie with "Apes."
I really enjoy maybe one special-effects/action movie every few years, and "Apes" was one that I very much enjoyed. It was flawed in places, but it displayed a strong sense of effects/action filmmaking that other blockbusters lack...such as a sense of setup and payoff, stronger spacial relations within a shot and slightly longer cuts to better appreciate the special effects.
I don't think I would have liked it with heavy subtext. It wasn't a "cart before the horse" situation, where the subtext drives the story (as with, arguably, the original Apes film). There was a decent story here in the Frankenstein mold, with some mild subtext about humanity and our domain over nature....the apes "rose" above us from a moral perspective as well as a literal one. But it was all subtle in a way that I appreciated. Also, I'm not sure what Ed Gonzalez's point is...a movie that relates to PETA's standpoint is less worthy than one that relates to the NAACP?
I can also get behind Pam's theory that the movie is a comment on the effects used to create it, much like the first "Toy Story" was.
A good ripping yarn is often enough for me. In a way, a well told story that sucks you in can create its own substance, even if there isn't any larger metaphor or subtext present. Just look at Raiders of the Lost Ark, for instance.
Villainous Nazi characters are obliterated by the powers of a Jewish artifact while the two American characters are helpless to watch, let alone act. In a film by a Jewish director.
You really think there isn't a subtext at work there?
Though RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES does ignore some of the racial subtext long associated with the series, I wouldn't say it's as shallow as some critics would assert. One could make a compelling case that the subtext here, problematic as it might be, is "Caesar as special needs child." Surely James Franco's character begins to see the untapped potential in Caesar despite the necessity of providing extraordinary care and protection from a judgmental society unwilling to accommodate any being deemed deficient by their standards (Caesar's inability to communicate through speech). Though Caesar lacks speech and not intelligence, he is treated as if he were "dumb," an expression once applied to the deaf/mute.
What does that saying mean? "Is a ripping yarn good enough?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripping_Yarns
A yarn is a story. I think the slang came for a metaphor for weaving, as if you are weaving a story. Ripping means exciting.
Sure subtext is important. To me it's a by-product of depth, depth of character, depth of setting, depth of plot. With enough below the surface, it's difficult not to end up eventually wading into it. But I'm not sure that all movies are metaphors. I think all movies are influenced by the time in which they are made. They are reflections of our history, or present, but that doesn't necessarily make them metaphors. I do think it's possible to bring too much to the party, to start creating meaning that's not there, and that's when interpretation becomes the revenge of the intellect upon art (to borrow a quote).
My comment is not about "Apes" - but since you brought up Dead Poet's Society, why not reply to this here...
You were dead spot on about "Natural Born Killers," and I remember feeling all of those things when first saw the film - even as the friends I was with loved it. ... And "Million Dollar Baby" - my favorite tear down of that overrated mumbo jumbo was by Stephanie Zacharek in Salon (at the time).
But I can't agree with you about "Dead Poet's Society." I lack the ability to articulate it as well as others who go on for about 1,000 words on your site - and I lack the patience as well - but I wholeheartedly disagree. In fact, I just read your review -- with an open mind -- and I still don't understand what you found distasteful about it. Perhaps it's a reading comprehension problem. I believe Dead Poet's Society effectively conveyed the exact things you're saying that it contradicted. I am failing to see the contradiction - despite have just read your whole review carefully.
There's a laundry list of movies that the masses find to be great, that I thought were horrible -- and I find myself in complete agreement with you on the likes of "Slumdog Millionaire", "Crash" - and the others mentioned above.
However, then there are movies that were popular, and I believe are unfairly ripped by the literary critics (and I'm not using that term in a pejorative way, just by way of describing yourself and other critics of the ilk) ... and they include "Forrest Gump," "Saving Private Ryan" - and "Dead Poet's Society" ... movies I find myself defending time and again.
I like to think I'm an elitist myself :) - but then sometimes, I guess I'm a populist too ... it's a never-ending friction of my life :) ... Although I think I find Forrest Gump to be effective for reasons most mainstream people overlook - but whatever...
I left a comment but it didn't seem to make it through -- well, anyway, I'll rewrite it in case. I'm not sure if it was the spam filter or what.
First off: the best interpretation of Million Dollar Baby ever.
Second: I actually did think that there was a fair amount of meaning behind 'Apes.' I agree that it was clumsy in a lot of ways -- the commenter above who mentions the poor handling of Alzheimer's is correct.
That said....
But the film is *extremely* concerned with responsibilities to our family unit, or extended community, and the related questions of what to do when those communities are in conflict.
*mild spoilers*
The impetus for the serum that James Franco develops, which eventually leads to Caesar's heightened intelligence, is two-fold: he wants to find a cure for Alzheimer's, which benefits humanity as a whole; but his particular motivation is to cure his father. The family unit that forms between James Franco, his father, his girlfriend, and Caesar then becomes the focus of the film for some time.
I think that there is something genuinely interesting about the way Franco and Caesar interact. First of all, Caesar is, for all intents and purposes, as moral and as intelligent as humans. So I think he codes quite well as a human from an underclass, as the only thing that distinguishes him from other people is his genetics. Obviously his genetics are much, much different from humans than any two humans are, but, well, that's where the metaphor comes in. So take Caesar as a metaphor for a member of an underprivileged class/race/gender/whatever.
So Franco takes Caesar in and raises him as his own. He clearly loves him. So does his father (John Lithgow), and so does his girlfriend. Caesar clearly loves them. But there are problems. There's a moment in which Caesar looks longingly, a little bit jealously at Franco and his girlfriend at one point, and we recognize that sexual/romantic life is something he's allowed to/able to have. He is kept on a leash and he asks Franco whether he's a pet. Franco says that Caesar is his son. Franco means it. But he does treat him as subhuman in public by leashing him. He wants to love Caesar completely. But social expectations of others are pretty ingrained. He both has to live in society according to society's laws, which means he has to treat his own "son" like crap -- he actually *cannot* just break out of the systemic oppression against another conscious being he personally *knows* to be smarter, kinder, etc. than other people do, without drawing attention to himself, without risking his ability to protect Caesar. But there is some condescension in all this too; while he is happy to let Caesar go and play amongst the trees, he doesn't seem to think far enough ahead to what Caesar actually needs, beyond a roof and food and toys, and the companionship of their very tiny unit.
Bigger spoilers, up to the end of the film:
What prompts Caesar to get caught and taken away is that he attacks another human who is seemingly threatening Lithgow. It's an understandable thing for a kid to want to do, but most kids a) have the opportunity to be socialized, and b) further, don't have Caesar's strength. Mostly though it's another instance of the main theme: Caesar protects people in his circle (the father) which goes against the demands of society as a whole (represented by the unlikable but not unreasonable neighbour). If he were a human child, he presumably would not have been such a big threat, and wouldn't have been taken away. We can view this discrimination as relating to the high degree of prejudice against non-affluent white people when it comes to crimes, if we want. Caesar then gets sent to live in a small cage, and the only thing to do in their little prison is to be mistreated by prison guards and periodically have fights for turf during their small time of recreation. (The underprivileged and prison? Yes.)
Franco wants to get Caesar out. But he can't; human society won't let him. He tries hard. But does he try as hard as if it were his own biological son being mistreated? An adopted human son? Franco accepts the prejudice that Caesar deserves less than other people, to some tiny degree, though for the most part it really is human society that is foisting it upon him.
Further, we know that Franco, love for Caesar or no, still experiments on other apes. He tests his scary dangerous experimental drug on them, knowing that they will (probably) have effectively human-level intelligence but will still be treated as disposable creatures. If he can set aside all his moral/personal objections with the other apes, and ignore their personhood, how genuinely do his feelings about Caesar's personhood run? Or is it rather that his immediate blood group -- his father, in particular -- simply mean so much more to him than others?
When the apes eventually revolt, as we know they must, the understandable priority of the police is to stop them from escaping. They are hurting people. We recognize that they feel they have little choice but to do so; that they are treated as a subhuman class and that it was humans, not apes, who created the us vs. them mentality. (The older baboon tells Caesar calmly that the humans actively *dislike* apes that are smart. Justifications were always presented that it is acceptable to mistreat minorities (along gender, racial lines) *because* they were ostensibly less intelligent, less able to take care of themselves. It becomes necessary for the underclass to hide their intelligence because they expect to be punished for it; and they are punished for it because asshole bullies like Tom Felton's (none-too-subtle, admittedly) character feel so low about themselves because people on top *like* the power structure and don't *want* to see evidence that their rationalizations are wrong.)
Franco understands this and he goes to try to help Caesar -- but only Caesar. Why? Because he's the one Franco cares about, and he is thinking in terms of individuals. Caesar sees and respects this, which is why he still clearly cares for Franco at the end of the film. But he also correctly identifies that Franco doesn't actually care about the broader movement. And so their relationship has to fall apart, because Franco's desire to protect Caesar comes from love, yes, but it's love laced with condescension. Caesar is home with the other apes. They share the same plight.
It should be obvious, by the way, that I don't think that the apes' actually killing people is good. This is a prequel to Planet of the Apes, so we are led to believe that eventually the apes will expand and take over the world, along with a disease that spreads to human society by human-society-representative the neighbour, who turns out to be a pilot. (The disease is part of the same thing that makes the apes smarter. Some kind of change in circumstance which will tend to shift the makeup of what class/race/gender/etc. will be successful in the world? Not sure what that means.) Caesar starts the process here by cutting his ties to the one human he remains compassionate toward in Franco.
So there is a lot in here about the difficulty of privileged, white men of truly relating to and helping the oppressed, even ones they love. A bit on the conflict between larger society's interests, which one cannot actually control, and interests of a smaller community. Much of this was ham-fisted in the film, perhaps, but I enjoyed it greatly.
What do you think about "The Twilight Zone," which seems to disdain subtext? The pinnacle of that is "He's Alive," and represents some of the problems but also the gold nuggets of earnestness.
A few observations:
1) Just because Rise of the Planet of the apes doesn't have the SAME subtext as the original Planet of the Apes (i.e. racial inequality), does that mean it has NO subtext? Does it have an "inferior" subtext, what does that even mean and by what criteria does one determine that? Why is racial inequality the only valid (or perhaps "most valid") subtext for an Apes movie? Didn't Kennth Branagh's post-Vietnam adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry V have a completely different subtext than did Laurence Olivier's WWII version? Both were affected by the eras in whic they were produced. Which one then is "inferior?"
2) The reading of Million Dollar Baby is an interesting one, but I'm not sure that it's an accurate one. That's my biggest problem with "subtext": because it is implicit rather than explicit, a person's interpretation of the subtext really says more about them than it does about the work they're analyzing.
3) Does this latest Apes movie remind anyone else of the 1980's film Project X with Matthew Broderick?
Yeah, I do enjoy subtext a lot, maybe because it has something to do with how truth can kind of makes us feel good and when there's a subtext, it kind of feels like you are being let in on a truth. Also, there's a feeling that it's not supposed to be real and kind of sets up the movie, the actors etc. for interpretations, to kind of create/exist in a neutrality as the basis for the illusion of spontaneity, unlike Spielberg who is so obsessed with the real that he doesn't realize that HE is the filmmaker, such as the way he doesn't have choreographed camera movements, like every other movie does, where the camera moves exactly when the actor moves; he's thinking of himself as a viewer when he is making a movie, not as the filmmaker. I'll show some examples in "Minority Report"
Notice at the 00:33 second mark, how, when the actor's moves his head up, the camera is late to move with his gaze, but it moves up late.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZICAbJNRyRU&playnext=1&list=PLDBF841327A9F4C74
The camera movements are like editing without a cut. When you are late like that, it makes it seem unimportant. He does this because he is so plot-infatuated that he doesn't care about the camera tells the story.
I mean, imagine a scene where a woman is alone in her house at night and thinks someone is trying to kill her and she quickly turns her head and the camera moves with her. Imagine if the camera were late to turn with her head and look in the direction. It would look unimportant.
And boy does it get ugly on the fight scenes as the camera trails behind their movements.
(3:17 mark)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20IFzoZaCYI&feature=related
I've gone through this fight scene movement by movement before in Roger's blogs and also in the Ebert Club, but maybe I'll just let you see this mess for yourself, how the camera is late to follow all of the actor's movements.
Anyway, the point was, that he's so obsessed with the real (so much so that he's forgetting that HE's the filmmaker), that there isn't room for interpretation.
"Videodrome" would be a movie where that room for interpretation is also crucial to that feeling of being outside of your own body (as well as being realistic in what it is like to be on LSD, cough).
About "The Matrix" I saw it, as, well, supposed to being about how living out of habit makes us go into a dreamworld, made most visible in the Joe Pantoliano scene where he betrays the crew so he can eat a steak. He then says "ignorance is bliss" and says he wants to live a fantasy life as someone who is important etc. So, it is more important for him to eat steak and live out a fantasy life then to experience reality, which was represented by eating gruel and living out in a ship etc. So, I guess maybe you could say that that was another movie where it was the opposite of what it was supposed to be about, or doesn't realize what it is supposed to be about; I guess the subtext just goes into the "the truth hurts" category: and it wasn't good at portraying that either. If it were, then the crew would have had more of a feeling of shock or something; I guess maybe there was at times a sense of danger or something from when the big machines were approaching, but it didn't really feel like it capitalized on the "the truth hurts" category.
In "Million Dollar Baby" I'm still not quite sure what the subtext was, and the ending didn't really strong affect me. Okay, now having read that essay (well, some of it; it makes me feel like both throwing up and suffocating, ha) I just think it was supposed to be about the inability to live your dreams because of the inability to live your life, kind of just symbolically represented by the loss of the body. Or maybe that was just kind of a messy extension of a subtext of characters representing certain traits: She was "the heart"; Eastwood "the mind"; and I guess Freeman was the successful mixture of the two, and they other two characters represented what goes wrong when you are too much one of the other. It seemed kind of as simple as that to me. Also the retarded "Danger" character was a kind of symbolic of this "too much heart, not enough mind" theme. So, I think maybe that's why I wasn't quite as affected by the ending of the movie. I kind of just saw it more in terms of its theme of "too much heart and not enough mind" and what was that "protect yourself" thing was about. It was kind of about the balance of mind and instinct: which is perhaps what all art is about: how to live: and further in how to achieve the highest achievements through cultivating one's creative genius.
However, it's one thing to say it, and another to do it and maybe that's why art is about the how and not the what.
Ouh, you've pick the wrong filmmaker there, Spielberg's movies are loaded with subtexts, especially the sci-fi ones. Maybe there's not much to discuss plotwise, everything is clean and neat in the end, but that doesn't mean there's nothing else going under. The most obvious example is War of the Worlds, which is, among other things, the Holocaust movie Schindler's List failed to be (and Spielberg implicitly answers to these failures and try to correct them), a 9/11 allegory and it's yet another self-critical look at his previous movies from the 70-80's, like Spielberg constantly does since Jurassic Park. And the camera doesnt have to follow every movement from the actors, I don't understand why it makes them seem unimportant. I would say it's quite the contrary: if Spielberg was so infatuated with his plot, he would closely follow his actor's movement, because the plot is always driven by their action. If the camera is moving out of synch with his actors, I would take this as a sign that there's much more going on, that the camera is maybe telling something the actors can't. Which happens to be the case.
About actor-camera choreographed movement, I don't think it's a case of knowing the rules before breaking them; I think it's a case of not caring because of plot-infatuation; I don't think he realizes he's supposed to be doing that (and apparently his cinematographer doesn't know that either or care to say anything about it).
And what I was talking about was interpretation, such in the actor's performances; I was saying, when it's all about the real, then there's less room for interpretation, like before the invention of the camera, painting was mainly used for rich people to get a portrait; after the invention of the camera the artist's were liberated: cubism, impressionism etc. If you look at the early look of film pre-1950's there was more of an impressionistic look to it and so the acting was more theatrical, and the writing. If you just look at television just before digital, say in teh early 90's or 80's that freed everyone to dress up in all sorts of whacky ways etc. Anyway, so there's kind of a this obsession with realism. Did you know that the reason he made "Schindler's List" was because he thought/said in interviews that the Holocaust was in danger of being a footnote to history? So, his primary reason for making the movie was supposed to make people remember the Holocaust: which of course was through the overemphasis of realism over interpretation. Of course, the subtext was wrong there because And of course, didn't achieve that goal through subtext, because the actual subtext of the movie was how a man found good who was surrounded by evil; so it wasn't even really doing what it's subtext was supposed to be doing: which was not forgetting the Holocaust to think about this one guy, but to think about the Holocaust. So, I think there is a subtext (I never said there wasn't), but that that it is overshadowed by the overemphasis on realism over interpretation, to where it you see it as an idea rather than as something that is supposedly real; it's the suspension of disbelief, not the suspension of the suspension of disbelief.
So he's plot-infatuated, which looks good on paper. You know what else looks good on paper? Storyboards. So what he did was just say "I want you to get that [plot] what's on this storyboard [plot]" and then not care about how it gets there, when every movie has uses the camera to tell the story, by timing it with the actor's movements; it'slike the text in a novel.
I've already written all this our before, but, d if you look at that fight scene as a novel it would look like...
John Anderson throws his face down. No, I think he punched something. Now, it looks like he's starting a lawnmower. No, I think he punched something....Colin Farrel walks over and slams his head down on something...uh, a barrel.
I went through it step by step here (press ctrl + f to search for my name in blog). You can also click on my name here and see how I talk about the timing of movies and the universe, which was relating to how the camera movements in the blog below.
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2011/01/more_than_ever_the_future_of_f.html
But about what I was saying about realism, to get back on topic,
I think the reason there isn't subtext is because there's too much emphasis on it being real, on the "Dude, can you imagine if this really happened?" factor, rather than the "Dude, this makes me think of the continuing post-racial divide still confronting us after the Obama Presidency" factor. When there's too much realism, it's only focused on the former so much that there isn't care about the subtext. The subtext, like with Spielberg, is just all about "Hey, that looks like how it would look in the real world, doesn't it?" That Is the subtext. That's kind of the substitute for writing and subtext, is "Dude, it looks real, doesn't it?" That's kind of the whole logic why they remade "Planet of the Apes" just so they can say "Hey, looks real now." So, the subtext now is mostly just look how "real" that is. So you can see how the subtext is overshadowed/overlooked by an overemphasis on realism. So, rather than the subtext being about an idea, the subtext is about it being real, or about the idea of it being real, or the false sense of illusion of the imitation of reality (rather than as an idea). There's kind of more truth to it when you see it as an idea rather than as an imitation of reality, like with a painting that's like a cartoon.
Here's an extended clip of "Rise of the Planet of the Apes." (Go to the 00:47 mark)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a399lde68vw&feature=related
You can see it's all about the false sense of illusion, or the imitation of reality rather than an interpretation of reality.
Well, I think Spielberg is doing exactly the opposite of what you're describing: since Jurassic Park, he is constantly arguing against what you call the "false sense of illusion of the imitation of reality", or, to put it more aptly, he is reminding us that images can be illusions, and especially his own images. Jurassic Park is a major case of an artist criticizing his own work: John Hammond represents the Spielberg from the 80's, the one who make beautiful, magical and soothing images of pure entertainment which are distracting ourselves from our sad reality (see Close Encounters and the Dreyfuss character for instance, so obsessed by his ETs that he neglects his own boring family). In Jurassic Park, in the first scene we see the dinosaurs, the spectator is amazed by the special effects the same way the characters in the movie are amazed by what John Hammond accomplished. So you could say, at this moment, yes, Spielberg is saying "look how real they look, how magical it is to see dinosaurs on a big screen looking real". But from then on, Hammond's entreprise is always criticized and everything goes wrong, there is something terrible under this amazement and we should not forget it, like Hammond does. The Laura Dern speech toward the end of the movie is quite explicit: it's all an illusion and we should not take the illusion for the reality, we cannot live like a child like Hammond (or Whoopy Goldberg in Color Purple), and avoid the reality. Especially when the reality is something as horrifying as a velociraptor. Both Jurassic Park make direct references to King Kong, another case of "horror as entertainment gone wrong".
But Jurassic Park is only the beginning: in Minority Report, not only the images are illusions, they're also lying (and, coincidence, the movie is loaded with publicity). At first they appear magical (they can predict the future), but at the end they are covering a murder. The end of AI, greatly misunderstood, is pessimistic as can be: the concept of family is completely desintegrated, so the last image shows the only kind of family now possible, the one between a robot and an image of his mother. It's possible to find this moment beautiful, but you have to forget that two minutes earlier it was clearly stated that the ressurection of the mother would be a fleeting illusion (and that the robot is more human than any real humans in the movie). Spielberg wants us to look at what is underneath his images, past the entertainment they offer at first, until we see the terrible reality they are covering, meaning our own reality (thus the political allegories of War of the Worlds). His movies are not "entertainment", they are a self-critical look at what is "entertainment", and how dangerous it is to lose our sense of reality in a world filled with illusions (the act of looking is very important in all his movies, especially War of the Worlds, a superb treatise on how to teach a child to look at the horrors of this world).
And for the action sequences, I also disagree, Spielberg is still one of the best action director, I'm never lost or wondering what's happening in his scenes. They're complex and fluid, he uses mostly long shots and the camera stay far from the action so we can actually see what's happening, unlike most movies today. Without the subtexts and the multiples interpretations, his movies are still pure visual pleasure, with exquisite cinematography and an actual mise-en-scène, each scene being shot differently in order to respect the actions and the emotions.
"He is reminding us that images can be illusions, and especially his own images."
Name one specific reminder...where he isn't overemphasizing the emphasis of your seeing it as "real" to the detriment of the subtext.
And once again, you keep talking all this stuff about subtext as if I said there weren't any: which I never did. I said that it was being overshadowed by the "realness" of it. It's almost looks like the whole "look at how 'real' this is" IS the subtext (which kind of goes back to what Jim was saying about unintentional subtext).
It seems to me to be "realness" over theatricality, for one example.
Could you look at any of those movies, Jurassic Park etc., as is, as being able to be a small play?
This "realness" is boring, and also, it makes even more boring that he does it with these non-functional flashy camera movements, or does it just because he thinks they are cool and saw it in some other movie where it actually was functional (as well as not really caring about the movements either, in how they tell the story; he's just trying to get what's on the storyboard without care about how it gets there: piggish camera-swinging; non-timing of actor's movements; flashy movements that just draw attention to themselves etc.)
About that "Rise of the PLanet of Apes" clip, Look at how, when John Lithgow is getting into the car, how he is making all these exaggerated faces, and is bugging his eyes out etc....but then it kind of goes back into "real" mode. I think they should try to sustain that theatricality as opposed to the whole "look how 'real' this is" factor somehow; like where the ape is flying through the trees and they could have maybe made it more theatrical, that like say, the guy kind of sensed that there was inevitable impending doom and show it in his face and then maybe trip or something at the exact moment where he realizes its over, all in a kind of exaggerated way. Instead, they just go, "hey, the way that ape flies through the trees looks 'real'."
Like I said, you really could view all these movies with the subtext of "imagine if this were 'real'." The whole movies are kind of just built around that subtext, like when the ape beats the guy in the street and then a car pulls up...because that seems "real"; and before that, the guy is angry about him crashing into his car...because that seems "real." When, instead of it being "real", it should be quite the contrary.
I was going to quote Elizabeth Bowen, but google books and other places wouldn't let me search in the book. Well, in one of her non-fiction books on writing, she talks starts out talking about the quote "truth is stranger than fiction" and then she kind of disagrees with it, I think, or actually she says something to the effect that the job of fiction is to be strange. Then she mentions all these examples from all of these authors, like Dickens and so on, giving examples of kind of how, perhaps, the logic of the subtext going to in its inevitability is to go toward the strange (not sure if that's at all accurate). But basically, it's about not being "real." So, I think a lot of these movies, have got it backwards trying to be "real" and building the whole movie around That subtext.
Sorry, but I'm not sure I got my point around with the subtext of the guy getting beaten up by the ape in that clip, there should maybe be, with his kind of knowledge of the inevitable impending doom, maybe also a kind of commentary or a kind of feeling that his fate was always that of a kind of impending doom. Maybe a kind of feeling of fate about it. I'm not sure, but I think that feeling of fate, that feeling of this-is-supposed-to-be or could-not-be-any-other-way or a kind of feeling of predeterminism might be an essential component to storytelling, but I'm not sure...but if it were, that should be incorporated into the theatricality....of the ape killing the guy or any other movie.
OOps, I meant to go back and erase some of the stuff I said about "Million Dollar Baby". I kind of started over-analyzing it rather than just thinking of it in terms of my initial thoughts, which was that it was about the yin and yang of the conscious and unconscious mind, or "the heart and the mind." It was a movie about what happens when you don't successfully merge the two together in harmony.
I saw ROTPOTA as a reversal of the original film, complete with exploitive hunters (um, that doesn't have a racial sub-text?!), and the high-point being an exclamation of protest that parallels the Heston character's first post-throat injury words. As far as some interpretations of sub-text, as the previous commenter noted, they say far more about the writer than the subject—the analysis of "Million Dollar Baby" works well...if one hasn't seen the movie. That being said...it's always a good policy to make one's interpretations based on an actual viewing of the film, rather than a cock-eyed Cliff Notes' analysis of "what it all means." The film is the genuine article, while the analysis could be questionable in its interpretation. Movies speak to us individually—better to actually see it than rely on the interpreter.
I've been thinking about my favourite moment in Ronin: a shot at the beginning of the famous car chase which has Jean Reno, in the passenger seat, calmly putting on his seatbelt. It always felt like such an awesome decision, leaving that in - it grounds, somewhat, a spectacular sequence. It's a stylistic decision that makes an ordinary action epic and an epic character somewhat more ordinary. It's a shot that's meant to evoke a mechanical identification with the character in the average audience member. But is there any sub...terranean import, as well? I suppose it says something about the character, that he cares about his life, that he's not so cavalier as to not wear a seatbelt during a dangerous car chase. But, I'm asking myself now, for which reason do I love that shot, so much? The unconventional stylistic decision? The knee-jerk identification with the (ultra cool) character? Or the subtle message the movie is sending to me?
The answer is, most probably: all of the above. But it's not the subtext alone that makes it pop, and I would say, even though I perhaps lack the sufficient self-knowledge, that the subtext here is the least important of the three.
Re: your ending question. Very. But there are occasional exceptions, where the sheer ecstasy of filmmaking is more than enough. "The Evil Dead" comes to mind. What you see is what you get, and I love every hand-held second of it.
The subtext (if there is any at all) found in "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" is simple and totally conservative - science is bad and destructive mayhem will erupt when science is utilized - including finding a cure to Alzheimer's. It is anti-science, anti-evolution and bizarre.
It's not even nearly as thought provoking as the sum total of the original films, including the "lighter" of the bunch - "Escape From the Planet of the Apes," which addressed flow of time and time travel (with a nifty explanation of 'infinite regression' thrown in for good measure), physics and alternate universes, impending nuclear destruction and the debate to stop it even if it means aborting an 'innocent,' the evolutionary process, religion and the idea of God, the morality of human and animal medical experimentation (which are referred to "atrocities" in reference to both), the power of love, familial genetics, species pride and prejudice, and, finally, the use of intellect and compassion to become fully "human" in the most humane sense.
Let's face it "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" is merely big, dumb filmmaking.
Respectfully, Chris, I didn't pick up the conservative bit. The oppressed rise up and overthrow their opressors. That's definitely not a conservative theme. I also didn't get that science is bad; I got that corporations which pursue science reckelessly in the name of profits, are bad. Just my opinions.
I got an even more narrow message: Big Pharma is evil.
I swear, if someone did a Big Pharma vs. Nazis movie, the audience would be cheering on the Nazis. People know their oppressors, even if it's only subconsciously.
I think subtext almost always enriches a film, but I usually find myself warming more easily to films whose subtexts are philosophical, rather than social or political. The voyeurism inherent in movie-watching in "Rear Window," the idea of Purgatory "In Bruges," Ethan Edwards (Tom Donovan) uneasily handing America over to Jefferson Smith (Ransom Stoddard)in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," the way people bury undesirable truths and reinvent themselves as heroes like Leonardo DiCaprio's character in "Shutter Island"... these are all examples of subtexts that enrich films, and I haven't even into Ingmar Bergman's filmography yet.
Like Cronenberg's "The Fly," these are all films whose subtexts are genuine SUB-texts, buried just beneath the surface but with considerable depth; many modern films' subtexts are worn on the films' sleeves, but with very little depth below the surface. "District 9" and "Avatar" were good examples of this kind of shallow allegorical thinking, with easily identifiable heroes and villains and simple "I was blind but now I see" character arches for the human-turned-alien protagonists.
The point at which subtext becomes a distraction and a detriment is when the film's subtext becomes polemical, rather than thoughtful. Unless a film is a fantasy (a la "Indiana Jones," "Star Wars," Disney, etc., all of which are films I thoroughly enjoy) or a fantasy-allegory (like many westerns), it should never be so easy to identify the good guys and the bad guys, just as it never is in real life. "High Noon" seems to me a much less juvenile film when I read it simply as a man standing alone against abstract forces of pure evil, rather than a man standing alone against HUAC; "On the Waterfront" would seem less one-sided and simplistic to me if it were really about conscience, and not about naming names.
I feel you're sort of giving too much credit to the original "Planet of the Apes"-- some of the "subtexts" bashed the audience over the head, to the point where it became almost didactic.
Even if, perhaps, "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" lack the complex subtext of "Planet of the Apes," you have to admit that the script and dialog was much superior.
I've often found myself at war with "New Criticism" and the affective fallacy when it came time to reconcile my own interpretations of a film with the over-arching excess of what typically lay before me.
To put my thoughts simply, years ago, in high school, a classmate of mine rose up against our totalitarian Honors English teacher with a very unique interpretation of Herman Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener." He dissected the short story in ways I cannot possibly begin to remember so that he had argued- surprisingly well- that Bartleby was in fact an alien whose adaptation to human life was the cause of his own demise.
My point: just because we are presented with visuals, information, and "metaphors" that we are able to construct into both eloquence and "meaning" does not mean we are identifying the "true viewing" of the film.
My lengthy interpretation of the uneven and fallible "Donnie Darko" involves the titular character's search for God. I found Donnie's mysterious use of "Deux Ex Machina" at a crucial point of the story's development to be a clear marker of THE real interpretation...
...only to have the wealth of "extras" and outside information available on the well-done Donnie Darko website treat the material as though it were nothing more than a Science Fiction adventure.
Again with the new criticism: at what point do we consider a movie as existing within it's own vacuum, and ruler of its own universe? As a rule, do we HAVE to apply our own prejudices and social interests to every film in order to achieve "true viewing"?
I don't think so. I think sloppy film making has created inherently fallible films that collapse under the weight of their own ambition (and pretentiousness). I think any interpretation becomes just as good as the next, because at any moment, my old classmate is going to dissect "Million Dollar Baby" into being a film about vampires, and I'm going to begrudgingly concede his points.
The subtext is about what makes us "human." It's about the conflict between benevolence towards others and being patronizing and elitist. It is about fathers and sons. It is about the power of science to do good and the danger of much bad arising from that endeavor.
The subtext of this article is "I can use a film's popularity to drive page views while being condescending towards a film I haven't seen."
Ag
"A ripping good yarn" may be enough -- in a movie that doesn't, say, initiate the downfall of the human race. A movie that goes THERE had better have something to say about it.
RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES is not a cautionary tale, not an anti-war tale, not a tale of scientific hubris. It's a tale about oppressed apes rising up against human oppressors. It's too busy being triumphant in the last act to reflect on the human tragedy implicit in the story. Nor does it reflect on what is special about humans that will be lost -- the way the 1968 film did with that shattering final image.
It is essentially a story of nature conquering humanity, and it's okay with that. If it's not quite posthuman porn, it verges in that direction.
Your whole argument is a little weak when you are making assumptions about a movie you haven't even seen.
Jim: I don't think it's fair to critique a movie if you haven't seen it. True, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is no The Fly, but it's not really in the same category as the useless Transformers either. I get your points about subtext, and your movie knowledge humbles me, but I encourage you to see the film before commenting about its lack of subtext.
I don't think it's fair to critique a movie without seeing it, either. Which is why I didn't. I don't know if it lacks subtext. I quoted what some other critics wrote about "Rise" (and some other movies) in order to talk about how subtext is used to enrich movies, particularly horror and science-fiction. But I myself said nothing at all about "Rise." Because, as I stated, I haven't seen it. I didn't put it in the same category as "Transformers," either; I just gave an example of one writer's view of its subtext. (Remember -- the indented stuff is attributed quotation!)
There is subtext in "Rise of the Planet of the Apes". Perhaps it is simple but this is a mainstream film. Intricate subtext that requires anything more than a few seconds thinking is not a 'must' in a blockbuster film.
Not every film has to have subtext. It's disturbing that many people seem to require topics for intellectual discussion in ALL their movies. Filmmakers should be allowed to create films for sheer enjoyment without needing to integrate subtext. There are plenty of other films that already fit the bill.
I'm gonna call b.s. that you've even seen Rise of the Planet of the Apes, because I don't know a single person who saw it who wasn't rooting for the apes. I certainly don't know anyone who read it as a conservative, "look what evil ol' science has done to us!" manifesto. I can't believe anyone would read it that way. I don't think it's possible for the plot to exist and concurrently be be anti-evolution, seeing as the entire movie revolves around apes gaining human-level intelligence simply through a genetic retrovirus. Unless you mean that there are people that are "anti-evolution" who believe in it but think that it's a bad thing. Which would be pretty bizarre.
My comment was supposed to be in reply to the earlier comment by Chris Barry, I don't know why it showed up as a new comment. I wasn't "calling b.s." on you, Jim, you admit to not seeing it.
Thanks for your interesting post (actually make that blog).
I think one the issues that many people have with "Super 8" is that it is focused so much on the subtext of a young boy (and his father) struggling with the death of the mother that it makes no sense on a "realistic level".
Let me go in some detail what I mean:
*Spoiler alert*
- alien/monster = physical manifestation of repressed grief (id, in Freudian terms) in the boy (living below the graveyard!)
- train = amplified representation of the steel beam that killed the mother and threatening to kill the stand-in mom Alice, just as she is speaking the "last words", the mother never said, bringing to surface the grief surpressed in the very first scene (closing of the amulet)
- Army = physical manifestation of the super-ego trying to repress the grief but ultimately causing more and more destruction but not allowing anyone to deal with it properly
- stealing of car engines = symbol for Joel losing all initiative - he is mostly passive for the first half of the movie
Joe needs to accept the death of his mother and h- is grief in order to let go.
etc.
On this level I found the movie quite enjoyable (and making a bit more sense).
Would love to hear your opinion on this.
When I saw the original Planet of the Apes, I was in high school. Yes we got the racial subtext, and thought it was "cool". We also got the subcontext of science run amok, which was carried on into the sequels, which became more and more absurd, reminding me of some Hollywood interpretation of a H.G. Wells story.
I really have no desire to see the current prequel based on what I have seen and heard about it. I get enough Left Coast propaganda for free without having to pay for it. When will Hollywood learn that CGG is no substitute for good story telling. My wife and I went to see Cowboys and Aliens and despite the critical panning, enjoyed it. No politics of race there, just an interesting melding of storylines that have over the decades become bland and predictable. It was entertaining and sometimes, thats all we should want a movie to be. To be honest, about Apes, I find it hard to believe that with our ability to kill millions of humans with efficiency and finality, that we could not do the same for talking thinking Apes, no matter how smart they were if they constituted a real threat. Suspension of disbelief can only go so far.
No "politics of race" in Cowboys & Aliens?
An invading alien race comes to this land to rob it of natural resources with no regard to the indigenous population it sees as "savages" and disposable.
Does that sound familiar in any way?
Subtext is important, but you are definitely stretching it with that interpretation of MILLION DOLLAR BABY, which does not seem to hold any water once you start thinking about what actually happens in the film (or, as Damien suggested, once you actually watch the film). I don't feel that Maggie was exploited (she was the driven one who wanted Frankie to train her, etc.), nor did she ever become a burden to Frankie. He killed her because she begged him to, and he loved her.
Lord of the Rings I'll give him, but is there really no "true" interpretation of The Matrix? At least the original. It seems pretty clearly militantly left-wing, anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist, anti-industrialist. It's all right there on the screen, and then just to confirm it, the film ends with a song by Rage Against the Machine over the credits.
Which actually makes me think of a very interesting case of theme/subtext, Dogville, which seemed to me like a great, universal condemnation of human nature/ critique of Jesus in light of human nature. And it seemed in no way specific at all beyond that. And then the end credits place it squarely as a specifically anti-American picture, which it was not.
But yea The Matrix anyway is politically obvious. And it's a much more serious and angry film on the political front than many would suspect or remember. There's a scene within a "real world" sim where Fishburne first tells Keanu about how any person in the Matrix can become an agent.
Morpheus: The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.
[Neo's eyes suddenly wander towards a woman in a red dress]
Morpheus: Were you listening to me, Neo? Or were you looking at the woman in the red dress?
Neo: I was...
Morpheus: [gestures with one hand] Look again.
[the woman in the red dress is now Agent Smith, pointing a gun at Neo's head; Neo ducks]
Morpheus: Freeze it.
[Everybody and everything besides Neo and Morpheus freezes in time]
Neo: This... this isn't the Matrix?
Morpheus: No. It is another training program designed to teach you one thing: if you are not one of us, you are one of them.
That is pretty militant and it's not very veiled. In the context of the rest of the film, it's left-wing militant.
Ah subtext! Of course the whole idea of "The Planet of the Apes" is deeply stupid. Had the studio actually asked African-Americans before they made the movie, they would have been told that they REALLY didn't like where this nnalogy was going. (And is there any explanation given in the movie, which I've only seen once, for why everyone is speaking English? If not, then Heston's character is even more stupid than he appears at first glance.)
To get back earlier to a discussion on this site a few days earlier, one of the reasons that Hitchcock's works endure is the underlying subtext. "Vertigo" is obviously a great movie because it isn't just about James Stewart being a pawn in an overly complicated murder plot. It's about desire, and about people will manipulate and destroy others in order to achieve it. Likewise "Psycho" isn't just about an embezzler who has the bad luck of being murdered by a transvestite. It's about repression, much as "Rope" is about power, "Strangers on a Train" is about temptation, and "Frenzy" is about misogyny. Even a comparatively "light" film like "Family Plot" is an interesting study of two couples, three of whom are happily amoral, and one of whom is actually evil.
Of course not all subtexts are equally rich. In fact if the demonic possession in "The Exorcist" stands for anything, it stands for fears of your children's puberty. Likewise the random purposeless murders in "Halloween" are punishments for teenage sexuality. But I want to disagree with the people who disliked "The Usual Suspects." Once the puzzle is solved, what we have is a movie about a man who cunningly, completely, and ruthlessly uses a good man for his own purposes, and then disposes of him. I find that perfectly compelling. Or to take the underrated "Angel Heart" what we have is an unpleasant, unlikeable man of limited talents who finds out that he has absolutely nothing.
The mind is a curiosity-engine, and an active mind seeks subtext. All texts have a subtext--if you don't think that's true of a given text, it's because your curiosity-engine hasn't adjusted to that text.
On the other hand, good texts can feed the mind without--here comes the oxymoron--an explicit subtext. Hamlet is a ripping yarn; we leap to its subtext(s) because a very good writer wrote it. Shakespeare's curiosity-engine was always revved up to the redline; he couldn't help (a) writing a ripping yarn and (b) setting what amounts to landmines to blast holes into subtext.
I haven't seen it, but I suspect Rise of the Planet of the Apes has plenty of subtext. Maybe they're illegal immigrants.
I'm not sure that subtext is the exact right term for what you're praising in the original Apes movies. It's straight-up allegory, certainly not "diffuse." I don't love the original movies; I may have seen them too late.
The new movie is not a racial allegory, though it is a powerful tale of oppression. I think it's a well-constructed tragedy, rich in pathos, with surprisingly effective lengths free of human dialogue. The villains at the San Bruno primate center are cartoonish enough to let humanity as a whole off the hook, but James Franco's well-meaning scientist trying to help his father puts us back on it.
In any case, it's worth seeing for Andy Serkis's performance. Serkis and his technicians are making contributions to physical cinematic performance that stand up next to those of Buster Keaton. It may be the case that the ape peformances breathe depth into a film that doesn't bring everything it could on the page. I wish you would see it; I'd like to know what you think of the movie, rather than of what you've been told about it.
Jim,
I agree some of the movies you mentioned contradicted their own premise. However, please do not put Apes and Transformers in the same category without having watched them.
If your article was simply commenting on the general critical reaction, this article would make a little sense. However, it seems you have decided to adopt other critics' opinions as your own and used this opinion as the throughline for this article.
For the record, I've seen Planet of the Apes and feel the film carries more subtext than any other blockbuster summer movie I can remember. I've yet to see Transformers and therefore cannot offer an opinion about it.
Please pay closer attention to the text. Show me where I made any comment about "Rise" or "Transformers" other than to say I hadn't seen them. All comments about them are clearly labeled, indented quotations from writers offering their (sometimes conflicting) opinions about the subtexts of those movies. And to say I put "Transformers" and "Rise" in "the same category" (defined only as hit movies from this summer). To say that puts them in the same category in any other way (especially since I say up-front that I haven't seen 'em) is silly, the kind of illogic Louis CK ridicules when he says Ray Charles and Hitler are practically the same. Because they're both dead. Does that put them in "the same category"?
Don't we all bring subtext with us? You and I can see a movie, and come away with two completely different meanings, both of which could be completely different from what the filmmakers intended (even if they intended no subtext at all). In the above posts, I've already read several different takeaways from "Apes" most of which seem valid. It's makes for interesting/entertaining academic discussions. Many of which, though fascinating, end up revealing more about the people discussing the movie than the movie itself.
I was moved by the story of Ceaser, regardless of subtext, intended or unintended. As much as I love reading the academic discussions above, If a movie doesn't create characters the audience cares about (they don't have to necessarily be "likable") and doesn't take them through a plot from A to B to C in a way that challenges and moves both those characters and the audience, then there's not much to engage the imagination. It's very difficult for an inner metaphor to resonate without story and stitched together people parts.
A movie about oppressed characters leading a violent revolt against an indifferent hegemony seems pretty chock-a-block with subtext, considering it's the number one movie in America while England riots, just months after the Arab Spring.
It's not an allegorical, 1-1 rendering, but it seems to me that a lot of its power and thus popularity stems directly from this subtext. It strikes me as revealing that many of the same things that set of the revolutions and riots are at play here too, we just watch them in movies.
Hey Jim, did I ever tell you about my dream scenario, in which a hotshot young director presents a thoughtful, well-researched film about a concrete social issue -- oh, let's say a housing shortage in a major metropolitan city -- and then holds a press conference where he explains it's all a metaphor for zombies?
Ha! And then there's AMC's "The Walking Dead," which so far has struck me as a zombie movie allegory about zombies as zombies.
You can write an essay about film criticism that is written about films you have not seen.
But you cannot claim that a film you have not seen does not have subtext.
Just clarifying.
Vadim Rizov said APES was without subtext in the excerpt I quoted from his review. Ed Gonzalez said the subtext had more to do with PETA than the NAACP. I did not venture an opinion myself because, as I said, I haven't seen the movie; I wanted to discuss how critics may have differing interpretations of a movie's subtext. Obviously, I did not claim that a film I haven't seen does not have subtext (why would I do that if I haven't seen it?). You might think of it this way: You shouldn't offer a clarification of a blog post you haven't read.
Burned.
But I read the post, and I stick by my comment.
On another note, I love your take on Million Dollar Baby as a horror movie. It seems to me that a great many Hollywood movies need only be tweaked a few degrees to make a ho-hum film into an interesting horror movie.
I know you don’t deny that there is a subtext in his movies, but you're accusing him of being too obsessed by the realism of his illusions when I think it is exactly what Spielberg tries to criticize. I'm not even sure what you're point is: yeah, he wants his dinosaurs to look real, and he wants us to believe in the story he is telling, why wouldn't he? If the dinosaurs don't look real, how can he argue against the danger beneath the illusion if the illusion is not convincing in the first place? And anyway, how can you measure this sensation of "Dude, can you imagine if this really happened?" in his movies, or any movie? Or, more precisely, how do you know that he intends his movies to feel so real, where is your criterion for this assumption? If his movies try to be so real that this intention overshadows everything else, how am I even able to argue that there is, indeed, something else? I guess your point is about immersion, the idea that I’m so enthralled by a movie, so move by the plot, the editing is so invisible that I forget that I’m watching a movie, and therefore stop to think about the movie. But I am, as you are, thinking about movies. Pure immersion is a fallacy, no matter how real a movie feels, or how real the director intends his movie to feel, he can’t stop me, or anybody else, from thinking. Or: what is your point about painting before cinema? Would you say that the characters depicted in a painting like Les Menines by Velasquez look so real, the reproduction of the human figure is so well executed, that you can’t see anything else, like the mirror in the background, and therefore all the subtext about representation? I think this is exactly what you’re doing with Spielberg, you can see the illusion in front of you, but not the mirror in the background, and the reflection of yourself as a spectator which is included in most of his movies (again, the emphasis on looking). I do not need a brechtian distanciation or any kind of artificiality in order to find subtext. Realism, conventional as it is, can also be a powerful tool for meaning (I would even argue that it is the most powerful one in cinema, reality being more ambiguous than any kind of artifice can be). And I really don’t know how an artist can overemphasize this feeling of “look how real it looks”. There is exactly the same amount of emphasis each spectator put, it has nothing to do with the artist. You could say that there’s nothing behind the illusion, no subtext, like in, I guess, Rise of the Planet of the Apes (haven’t seen it), but this is clearly not the case with Spielberg. I’m not even sure that “no subtext” is possible, I think it would be more apt to say that there is a subtext, but it is uninteresting, or undeveloped.
Sorry, I was answering to keith carrizosa way up there, not to the article...
I've already described it with camera movements (that's one). But, of course, you disagree and think all of this other stuff about him knowing the rules before breaking them was what he was trying to do; I disagree and think that he didn't care to think about choreographing movements with actors Like Every Other Movie....Every Other Movie choreographs movement with the actor's movements....Every Other Movie. And No, that is not the only reason I think that he didn't do it on purpose, I also mentioned timing.
You know, I think you are brainwashed. Notice how I have to keep going on about stuff that you say isn't real? You know what this means to me, that you're mind is asleep through brainwashing from advertising (don't feel about, probably 9 out of 10 people are the same way; trolls are one of these types of people, constantly focusing on what they think is "not real" about what someone else says...not saying you are a troll...I wouldn't do that in front of a crowd). Minds that are asleep just live out of habit and don't realize they are doing and is never about The Real. But I shall continue anyway, as you continue not to focus on the real because you are dreaming.
I thought I said it very clearly earlier on starting with just that choreographed camera movement,which I thought was a subtle but illustrative example of this. It demonstrated how Spielberg is plot-infatuated, which I don't even need evidence, pretty much, to point this out: which I also said was something that looked good on paper: which is another way of saying it. Plot, as in Dinosaurs, aliens, etc., looks good on paper. You can't deny that this looking good on paper, this plot-infatuation, is a very big part of his decisions in choosing a movie. Okay, and I know he uses storyboards because I've watched his James Lipton's interview on "Inside the Actor's Studio" many years ago when he said he did. Okay, then I saw how he didn't, yes, do the camera movement thing, and I put two and two together...he just wanted to put the plot (which looks good on paper) down, and do it by storyboards (looks good on paper) without really caring how it got there. He did do that, and I don't think he did it knowing that he was breaking the rules; I think he wasn't caring...because of this plot-infatuation.
And I also tried to get you to view his movies, as is, as being small plays. If you imagined them, as is, as being small plays, I thought you might just see how much "real" he was trying to make it. So, I'll give you a scene and you tell me if you think it will cut it as a small play, or if it is really just all about the "realness."
Now, really, try to imagine that you are watching this scene in a theater in a play-setting, it's dark in the background etc. while just looking at the acting and what they are saying.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JylK4HuKMvQ
It seems quite clear to me that what this scene is about, or is built-around, is the "realness": kind of moronically worshiping it so; they're all drugged up on "the realness" of seeing a dinosaur, moronically (I have to keep adding, not that I want to), at the "realness" of seeing a dinosaur (vicariously for us, the audience). Then she examines the dinosaurs tongue (because it's "real"), and then says "microvessicals. That's interesting *sticks tongue out in disgust*." Now, this kind of thing could have been humor at itself, that it wasn't taking its own "realness" too seriously, but, really, even the humor can't escape this "realness"-clutch. Even the humor is meant to be played as "real", how it would be done if you were "there", rather than not taking itself too seriously as a movie. Okay, then there's just more boring science-talk (boring because it is trying to cheat this realism on us so much). Then she says she needs to examine the dinosaurs droppings and once again, it could have been an example of the movie not taking its "realness" so seriously, when Jeff Goldblum says "Droppin--Dropping?" I mean, it's all so clearly just trying to cheat you into believing it's real. Okay, so, then there's Jeff Goldblum saying "That is one big pile of sh*t." Once again, could have been a moment where movie making fun of itself, but.. Anyway, if you imagine this, as is, as being a play, it wouldn't really work. People would be saying, it's too focused on trying to be real. The whole thing is just trying to cheat us into believing it. Which goes back to what you were saying about realism.
Yes, I do think that realism has a place for cinema, but it's very hard to do: which is why, for instance, war documentaries in Afghanistan, with explosions etc. is a lot more intense than an action movies war footage: because you know it's real. So, yes, if you can really pull it off, then I suppose there is a place, but if you are just constantly just trying to cheat that illusion then I think it can be very boring: because there's this constant barrage of "See?..See? It's real." However, as far as interpretations, I think an interpretation has more truth.
Well, while you said I picked the wrong filmmaker (I don't think so), I think you picked the wrong painter, as it is said that he played with representationalism, or wasn't trying to be "real" but that was kind of what painting was forced to do back then. But I was talking about how there's more truth to a painting that almost like a cartoon than a painting that's trying to be basically the same thing as a photograph: which is what painting was mostly about before the camera. So, that's what I'm saying with Spielberg, with his constantly trying to cheat you into thinking it's real, with as I mentioned, first their moronically being drugged by the "realness" of it (vicariously for us), then just boringly talking doctor stuff, not even really in an interesting way, just to kind of say "that seems 'real'"; I mean all these things. So, I'm not talking about the "feeling" of it being real; I'm saying they are straight cheating, which, in effect, does Not make me Feel that it is real. That's why I say that the "realness" kind of IS the subtext, because it looks like the explositional dialogue in a plot, that is explaining the story and everything, but it is positioning people and camera angles in a way as if to keep saying, like the expositional dialogue, "Hey, remember that? And that?" while instead of talking about plot points they are saying "Hey, remember the realness? Remember that...two seconds ago...and right now...remember? I'm a guy in a Jurassic park outfit? Remember that real discussion I'm having right now about dinosaur biology? Remember that....right now?"
Keith-
I always thought those piles of feces were too big and took that part of the scene as a self-consciously over-the-top visual joke (and I'm talking about my child-self here, because I haven't seen the movie in years).
And about the scene you posted from Minority Report: what about that shot of the jetpack flames cooking the burgers? The shot doesn't feel "real" at all: the slow, straight progress of the flames doesn't make visual sense when edited in with the shots of the two men flying chaotically about. It's an overt, fairly cheesy visual joke meant to lighten the tension of the scene (and there are more than one in that sequence), which I think contradicts your theory that Spielberg doesn't want his audiences to think of his movies as movies.
I think Minority Report is a horrible example of what you're trying to say anyway, that's one Spielberg movie I find over-stylized.
I think subtext can often be a lazy way of avoiding directly dealing with an issue.
From Stardust Memories:
What do you think was the significance of the Rolls-Royce?
I think it represented his car
Of course a movie doesn't need subtext to work. Or, more to the point, not all movies require the audience to be able to detect the subtext in order for them to work.
I can watch Raiders of the Lost Ark very carefully, and pull out (I suppose) perfectly valid subtexts about WW2 relations between the Germans and the French, or commentaries about the Nazi obsession with the Jewish supernatural, and I'm sure it's all in there. But so what? In no way does the movie work because of those subtexts. The movie works because it's one of the most exciting, pulse-pounding, funny, terrifying, and just all-out entertaining movies ever made.
A lot of movies are like that. E.T. is obviously about a boy seeking a father-figure, but do you think the millions of kids who love it care or even notice that? Spielberg's Duel and Scott's Alien are both fantasy movies in which one can read commentary about the war of the sexes, or male emasculation, or rape, but again, so what? Both of those movies work on the emotions, not the intellect. You can be completely oblivious to the subtext, and the movie works just as well.
A movie is not a book. It's a visual medium, not a textual medium, and it therefore works first and foremost on the emotions. If a movie (sf or otherwise) works perfectly on the emotions, it needs no metaphor or symbol or allegory.
Now, that isn't always the case, of course. I believe A.I. and Blade Runner only really work if you explore the subtext. Bot not all movies require that. Of course Truman Show is even more powerful if you read it for its subtext, but the original Star Wars? Nope. Subtext does nothing for it. It's just a great ride.
Maybe, at the end of the day, some works of creativity are just sufficiently well done that you can never hope to better them. To be sure, any version of the Planet of the Apes made in the last ten years is going to have much better special effects (although, the makeup in the originals are still pretty damned impressive, even in the age of CGI), but underlying the original movies was indeed subtexts, rooted to a large degree in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but still there, and not all the allegorical aspects have lost their gravity in the intervening forty years.
Beyond that, the scene of Heston beating his fists into the sand as he looks at the half-buried Statue of Liberty is one of the great closing scenes in the cinema. Obviously that was the Cold War aspect, but I think it isn't hard to stretch the metaphor to include other ways in which mankind could destroy itself and leave some other species to take his place (ie. Global Warming). Despite its many flaws (it is by no standard a perfect film), The Planet of the Apes still looms large in our collective imaginations, invoking in a powerful fashion the archetypal fears of a species that has at its disposal the means to destroy itself. I don't think a modern filmmaker could do as good a job simply because he doesn't have something as immediate as a nuclear holocaust to construct his parable around.
Subtext helps a movie bear the test of time, and a movie with rich subtext continues to speak to us and to tell us something about important present day individual and social issues. Movies about subject matter that might not matter to me on the surface, can usually excite me because they're about far more than what they seem. I expect many of us could go back to PLANET OF THE APES even now, and find something resonating about ways any group of people treat each other - i.e., Republicans and Democrats, Muslims and Christians, long-time Citizens versus immigrants, etc. One of my favorite films for subtext - ORDINARY PEOPLE. It's like a rich current that keeps flowing beneath the surface.
I have to say, Chris, not only do I find your take on the film totally off, but I consider it equally superficial to the reading you posit.
I've only seen the '68 original and now this "reboot" (it's certainly better than most reboots, and let's not forget, 2006's Casino Royale is a reboot, and if you don't at least consider it one of the best Bond films, then we haven't much to talk about), but even if you think the film is too aesthetically bland or merely provides lip service, you have to give it over to at least *wanting* to seriously consider the dangers of financially-guided discovery, greedy business practices, and more traditional Frankenstein-like themes, among others. I think it's almost a great B-movie, sort of a riff on "The Dawn of Man" from 2001. I'm with Glenn Kenny -- it had a couple of genuine "holy $h!t" moments for me.
At the very least, consider how much deeper the barrel of "big, dumb fimmaking" can go. This ain't anywhere near the bottom.
Ok, one last time at this circus: your argument doesn’t make sense. It has nothing to do with Spielberg, you just can’t argue that a filmmaker, or any artist, is saying ‘look how real this is’, because this is only an assumption about his intention, and no critical argument can hold on this kind of ground. It doesn’t matter what an artist says in interviews, Spielberg may as well have said every time he spoke “I’m so plot-infatuated that I don’t care about my storyboards, as long as the story comes across”, your argument would still be inadmissible. But then again, I’m not really surprised that you don’t understand this, because instead of trying to understand my point, you accuse me of being brainwashed (to be fair, I know I may not be that clear: english is not my first language, so I’m struggling here to get my point across).
You say you don’t need evidence, but without evidence you have nothing. Let’s look at your analysis of the Jurassic Park scene: “they're all drugged up on "the realness" of seeing a dinosaur, moronically (I have to keep adding, not that I want to), at the "realness" of seeing a dinosaur (vicariously for us, the audience) » Well, yeah, this is true, they are kind of worshipping the « realness » of this dinosaur, but you don’t see dinosaurs every day, do you? I would probably appear drugged up if some real dinosaur stomps in my backyard. But then, that’s your point, that’s what Spielberg wants, he wants the audience to be as drugged up as the characters, he wants us to look at how real his dinosaurs appear to be. And then nothing else. But that’s where you’re wrong : first of all, your argument is badly stated. You say : « He’s so focused on his plot and wanting it to look real that no other subtext can emerge from his movies, there’s nothing to grasp behind the illusions ». You can’t make an argument by saying « that’s what the director wants », your argument really should read something like « In a Spielberg movie, the shots are so focused on the plot and getting it across, making sure that every situation and every action look real, as if we were there, that there’s nothing to find beneath the plot, everything is too plot-centered. » So, the real point isn’t that Spielberg wants us to look at his situations as if they were real, an intention you can’t prove, the real argument you can make is that there’s nothing interesting underneath the plot (which may or not be interesting itself). And in the case of Spielberg, this is wrong (but I will at least understand you if you say that you can’t see nothing interesting in his movies, it’s your loss, but at least you can try to defend this with valid argument).
I responded to your first post mainly because in the case of Spielberg, all his movies since Jurassic Park are about the danger of this “realness” in a theatre. That’s what I find so ironic with your comment. So, how can I defend my vision of his cinema then? Like I said in my first answer, in Jurassic Park, John Hammond is Steven Spielberg. Why? Because John Hammond uses some kind of special effect to recreate dinosaurs and make them look real (well, they are real). The audience, like the characters in the movie, is supposed to be amazed by the magical “realness” of the dinosaurs, like in the scene you describe, but I would say it’s true for the first scene mainly, the magic then disappears because it’s the only time the dinosaurs are not sick or dangerous. If this is not convincing enough, the film shown at the beginning of the Jurassic Park tour explaining how they create the dinosaurs first presents a string of ADN who then transform itself into a film strip before taking the shape of a dinosaur. It’s pretty obvious to me: making dinosaurs alive is the project of Spielberg and Hammond. But what happens in this movie? Everything goes wrong! The whole movie is constructed around the different point of view of each character (except the lawyer) who are constantly criticizing Hammond for his dangerous project. Take this speech from Hammond, at the end: “You know the first attraction I built when I came down from Scotland … was a flea circus. Petticoat Lane. Really … quite wonderful. We had, uh … a wee trapeze, a merry-go…carousel. Heh. And a see-saw. They all moved, motorized, of course, but people would say they could see the fleas. "No, I can see the fleas. Mummy, can't you see the fleas?" Clown fleas, highwire fleas and fleas on parade. But with this place … I wanted to give them something that wasn't an illusion. Something that was real. Something they could see, and touch. An aim not devoid of merit. » I don’t know, but this sounds exactly like the words you put in the mouth of Spielberg: “I want to make something real”. But the point of view of John Hammond is made explicitly wrong during the whole movie, Laura Dern is quite clear when she says: “It's still the flea circus. It's all an illusion. » It is not real. That’s the point of the movie : « Why am I making a movie about dinosaurs eating people, what can we possibly find entertaining in this kind of display of violence ? Why is there children in the theatre ? Don’t you know this a violent and dangerous movie? Don’t you know how to raise your kid?” It may sounds sanctimonious, but Spielberg is mainly questioning himself, his own project, not the audience. I find this movie quite moving, it’s so rare to see an artist being so aware of his own work and critical of it. Jurassic Park 2 is very interesting too, this time Spielberg is questioning his role as a producer instead of a filmmaker (“Why am I making a sequel of a movie that should not have been made in the first place? Why nobody listened to me? If I make this darker, would you understand me this time? Why are your children still there?”) So, that’s it: you can argue if you like that what I see is not there, a product of my imagination, but you can’t say that it’s because Spielberg is focusing on making it look real. And if I’m not convincing, I would suggest some of the reviews from Cahiers du Cinéma on Spielberg, they’ll be better than me to explain all this.
I would never have guessed that English wasn't your first language.
But one thing about Jurassic Park: the T-Rex, everyone's favourite dinosaur, who has a grand rather than a sinister presence compared to the raptors, only kills one character, the lawyer, who everybody hates, and in the end becomes the hero of the movie when it saves Sam Niel and Laura Dern from the raptors. So I don't think the movie comes down so firm on one side as you seem to think it does.
But I'm glad I read your interpretation because I'd never thought of it before. I was always baffled by the shots of the birds flying next to the helicopter at the very end, but now I think I get it.
Thanks, Andrew.
The T-Rex is trying to kill everybody, it's just that he doesn't succeed. But I think you're right, Spielberg does have this tendancy of suddenly undermining his own discourse at the end of some sequences, by flashing his own ability as a filmmaker, reminding us "what a good show it was", like that last T-Rex shot (but he's right, what a powerful closure on an already flawless action sequence!) It's the same thing with War of the Worlds: the movie begins with Tom Cruise putting his children by force in front of the window to see the electric storm they are clearly afraid of. While Cruise is saying "Look it's beautiful", they are saying "But it's dangerous." At the end, after many others scenes where he tries to direct or protect the eyes of his daughter, he asks her to close her eyes. He has finally understand : "This is not the kind of show you can see." So he goes in the dark, we don't see what he does, because there's nothing entertaining in a murder, nothing a child should see. But after that, Spielberg goes back into "showtime mode", and presents the spectacular destruction of the ETs, which was unnecessary at this point. But that's the beauty of his filmography: each movie finds what's lacking in the last one and tries to correct it, always trying to find the best way to represent the world, and the "good" way to look at it, acknowledging the horror without making a spectacle out of it.
He’s so focused on his plot and wanting it to look real that no other subtext can emerge from his movies, there’s nothing to grasp behind the illusions
Actually, YOU said that....ONCE AGAIN, accusing me of saying that I said he had no subtext: Which I Never Said (press ctrl + F and search "behind the illusion" and you will see you are the only person who said this quote).
What I was talking about with brainwashing was, what you are saying over and over again, is "What you are saying Keith is not real" and yet that is where all the discussion leads to, only focusing on the "not real" because you are dreaming. You see how you are dreaming...by saying something is not real and how everything you say, no matter what it is, goes back to that...to this unreal thing...because you are dreaming? You just keep saying "that is not real", yet I can't take my eyes off of it. See? You are only focusing on the "not real" mesmerized by it because you are brainwashed to be mesmerized by things and just consume like a mindless consumer. Commercials and things they make people passive and psychologically manipulate people to do this with their promise of easy answers "AFter I bought this, I feel good about me and it changed my life." See, that's what you are doing with me, you are focusing on something that is not real (easy answers) and yet just habitually just keep going after it again and again (mindless consumer). You've been trained to be mesmerized by the "not real" easy answers and habitually consume. So, that's what you are doing with me; you are constantly focused on the "not real" about what I say and just habitually consume on that "not real." Blinded and dreaming by the "not real."
No matter what I say, you are going to say "that is not real...yet I think of nothing else." That's just one part of what I see. I also think that this is really some form of abuse masquerading as logic, a mechanism that only understands fighting, and thus only see people as enemies/as an opportunity for fighting. So, it seems that's another thing: all of your "logic" just goes back to why I'm someone who deserves to be fought: because you only understand fighting, so everything is set-up to create a fight. It's a mechanism, so it really isn't you doing this, so I'm not bothered. It's like when you train an animal, you are not supposed to give them anything that they can tear up, like cloth, but something they can't tear up, like rubber, or anything like that, or else they think that everything is to be torn up (including people) and thus, everything is a fight. They don't know how to play and they are always begging for food saying "Hey, what's wrong with you? Feed me." Everything is always standoffish, like "Hey, don't touch me, just feed me. Hey! (scratches at you) feed me." This is also what I see as going on. All of your "logic" goes through a mechanism that filters every situation towards creating fighting and so it's always going to try to manipulate the situation towards that end. So, no matter what I say, you are going to be 1) blinded by the "not real" and also blinded by the fighting mechanism so 2) it sees everyone as an object to fight or "tear up" and so there's nothing but barking with the expectation that I'm to bark back. That is what abuse is; a mechanism that only understands fighting and uses logic to create other people as enemies/bad people so they can then fight them. It can do it in any number of ways; it might do it by being annoying, because then the person will react negatively and give this clinging semblance the semblance of fighting.
Really, that's where your logic is always leading to: aside from the habitual mindless consumerism. It is only trying to create a fight. That's all it understands.
Also, always thinking about the "not real."
Everything you say.
For yet another example of you just focusing on the "not real", you, yourself, say "Hey, I know you never said that you don't think Spielberg's movies have anything interesting to say: but why not? Say that. Say that and then I'll say "no, that's not true."
Just talking about something that never happened and then wants to create that situation so it can then make it not happen further by then saying "I disagree."
I mean, you're creating an argument that isn't here just so you can make it not there again.
Your mind is always going back to the "not real" what's "not there."
You know, like "The Manchurian Candidate?" Always thinking of the "not there" things that were brainwashed into them. That they were in a war etc. when really the army just took them in a room and shot a guy.
That's what you are doing. Always focusing on this thing that's not really there that's been implanted in your mind to think is there. But that's just the advertisers at work with their promise of easy answers...just buy their stuff and everything will be that fantasy (fantasy in this case; nightmare in "Manchurian Candidate....but still only thinking of that "not real'), that "not there" that you are always going on about.
Wow, thanks for clarifying what I think. You're much better than I am, I would never have guessed that I was "fighting" in any kind of way, I only thought I was arguing. I guess that's the ultimate proof: if you're that good at reading my thougts, you can probably read as easily Spielberg's intentions.
Yeah, everyone's bad a person that deserves to be fought according to this mechanism because that's all it knows.
And, as I said, with Schindler's List, Spielberg said himself (you can google the interviews, as I said last time) that he made because the Holocaust was in danger of becoming a footnote to history. It was all about wanting people to become in touch with this "realness" (which, really wasn't necessary, as there are plenty of Jews who would never forget it, even if there weren't any Hollywood movies made about it) and he also said he discovered his Jewishness during the making of Schindler's List (yes, you can look that up too), so evevn for HIM it is all about the "realness" not just us. So, no,I don't have to read his thoughts. And once again, there are plenty of Jews who don't need a Hollywood movie to discover their Jewishness.
Here's another clip, this time of Schindler's List, that ends in a snapshot, as if to say "Hey,...that looks "real" doesn't it? Probably a "real" photo out there just like what I recreated here."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRZh_NO5tic&feature=channel_video_title
Also, I said in an earlier blog here, about critics writing about what filmmaker is a chore for them to sit through, I wrote there that I would say Spielberg because he has a total lack of subtlty. This, too, I think is at the service of this "realism", of the belief that it should be real.
So, I don't even think there is subtext with
Spielberg and probably a lot of similar "real"movies; I think it's protext; he just beats you over the head with it.
Like this scene in "The Color Purple"...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7ZT5sajkys
...he does all this stuff,and song and dance...and then at the end of the scene he just comes out and tells you what it's about, when she says "See, Daddy, sinners have soul too."
I mean, all that, what could have been subtext, and then he just comes out and tells you, making it protext; it's like, "Ok, then why did you do that whole scene, if you're just going to come out and tell me?"
Anyway, that lack of subtlty, as i said, is also at the service of his belief that it should be real.
Boy, Jim, does this post raise some issues. Lots of things I've thought about over the years.
I remember reading an essay on (I think) Roger Ebert's site, deconstructing "It's a Wonderful Life" as a depressing essay in fascist conformism (my own phrase, not the author's). George Bailey is shown that he MUST remain "at his post" rather than try to grow, stretch himself, try something new - else all hell breaks loose in his town. The message was that sacrificing oneself for others, doing what others expect of you, is the route to happiness and self-fulfilment.
As you say, no movie is seen in a vacuum.
I haven't seen the Apes movie. I saw the first one, on television, years ago. I never felt the urge to see any of the others. So I can't comment on that.
However, some of your comments about "diffuse cinema" make me think something I've been thinking about movies in particular, and our society in general, for some time.
Forty or fifty or sixty years ago, movies did have sub-text. Perhaps in a way, they had to. They couldn't avoid it, because if they wanted to be about something, they had to tackle it from an angle, not head on. The late forties, fifties and early sixties were a time of great conformism in North American society (I'm including Canada here, because, well, I am Canadian). And so you had sub-texts of homosexuality in some of James Dean's films. Sub-texts of racism in Planet of the Apes. And so on. Cinema in those days was a cinema of ideas.
Today, we have a cinema of corporate interests, and the paramount corporate interest is making money. So movies aren't about anything anymore. But in an effort to seem to be about something, they throw in a tossed salad of references to various issues. They don't try to solve any of these issues - they merely refer to them, and such is sufficient these days to have your movie adjudged "deep". And they use references, not sub-text, simply because studio executives don't (can't?) trust the average audience to figure out a sub-text. These are the people who renamed "The Madness of King George III" because they didn't want people to think they'd missed parts I and II. They renamed "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" to "Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone" for the US market only, because...I forget the reason but it was essentially "we think the US audience is too stupid to get the reference to the Philosopher's Stone."
But all this relates back, in a larger way, to our society as a whole. Cinema is both influence and mirror. And the cinema we have today is often vapid, vague, and superficial. If it attempts to address any issue, the discussion is often heavy-handed and one-sided, void of nuance (think "Avatar").
As a society, we've become conditioned to think that the issues we confront are "wicked problems", without any solution that doesn't itself cause other problems nearly as bad. We've lost our collective confidence, our faith in ourselves to deal with our issues.
And the result is a hollowness in our society - we've reduced ourselves to mere eating/producing/consuming/reproducing machines, devoid of vision or ambition.
And we have a cinema that both reflects and reinforces that.
Leave a comment