Epics, epics, epics. Well, I guess West Side Story isn't truly an epic, but whatever. All three of these movies push the 2.5-3 hour mark, and that's all I'm going to say about that. I had my fill of griping about movie length way back at the beginning of the list. Anyway, enjoy the films! I sure did. Well, most of them.
So, this one's a biggie. Everything I've ever read about Intolerance points to it as a major innovation in the history of film, and its director, D. W. Griffith, is one of the giants of Silent Cinema. And then there's its colossal, ridiculous, utterly breathtaking ambition, a 3+ hour epic that cross-cuts between four distinct historical settings and storylines, which makes the film literally a biggie. On a more subjective note, Intolerance is big for me and specifically for this blog series because giving myself an occasion to watch Intolerance was one of the main reasons I started my trek through the AFI 100. I'll be honest, though: prior to (and even a couple hours into) this first viewing, my interest in this movie was primarily academic. I wasn't exactly itching to watch it (I mean, at the risk of sounding horribly prejudiced, it's an epic-length silent drama—if that description makes you want to drop everything and watch it right away, well, you're a more sophisticated viewer than I), but based on its reputation and influence, I knew it was one of those movies I had to see if I wanted to be serious about rounding out a knowledge of film. Well, Reader, I have seen Intolerance, and it pretty much blew me away. Now, I'm not gonna lie: stretches of the movie (heck, whole historical timelines—why is the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in here?) made me restless enough to glance at the clock, and I watched the thing in two sittings. But the payoff was magnificent. Foremost, Intolerance looks lavish. Back when I wrote about Gone with the Wind [1], I mentioned how awe-inspiring those "cast-of-thousands" shots are, but Intolerance's setpieces make Gone with the Wind's look like they were done with Fisher-Price toys. The grandeur of the Babylon sequences in particular is at a level I don't think I've seen in any other film, and Intolerance basically solidifies this idea that's been brewing in my head recently, that for all the advantages of CG-enhanced cinema, digital crowds and sets can't hold a candle to the majesty of those giant Hollywood shots of actual crowds from the old epics. All that spectacle is great fun to look at; however, the thing that pulls everything together is Intolerance's emotional power. It's a slow-builder for sure, but once it gets going, there's nothing stopping the panoramic humanity of the picture. The last ten minutes are deeply moving in a way that I never expected in my anticipation of seeing this film. All that is to say, if this can be said of a nearly ninety-year-old movie: believe the hype.
And speaking of hype, if there's an Intolerance of my generation, Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy is it. By that I mean that it's a work of filmmaking so enormous in its ambition, so successful in its combination of sweeping spectacle and equally sweeping pathos, so influential in terms of how much it changed the tone and vocabulary of mainstream American cinema, that it's sure to be turning up on lists like AFI's from now on, if only for its sheer historical significance. For whatever reason, Jackson's LOTR has fallen in critical estimation in the years since its original theatrical run (just check out how few of those "Best of the Decade" lists from 2009 made room for any of the three films). I, however, still love these movies as much as when I was first seeing them (and Fellowship is probably the best of the lot—well spotted, AFI), so rather than dwell on the good and the bad of this movie, I just want to point out something that's maybe kind of obvious: the early 2000s was this weird wonderland of a time when studios made major risks by handing over huge, expensive genre projects to idiosyncratic, totally un-four-quadrant indie directors, and The Lord of the Rings is Exhibit A in this trend. I mean, Peter Jackson, a man who up to that point was known mostly for splatterhouse horror and black comedy, a man who had not had one major mainstream hit, was given the reigns to one of the single riskiest, most enormous cinematic undertakings ever. Like, holy cow, what divine accident caused one of those profit-counters at New Line Cinema to sign off on that?? And then you've got people like Sam Raimi (like, Evil Dead Sam Raimi!), Alfonso Cuarón, and Guillermo del Toro put in charge of big-budget productions of Spider-Man, Harry Potter, and Blade, respectively, only a year or two later. I mean, golly. What was even crazier was that each of those directors made movies out of those properties that felt true to their filmography. The Lord of the Rings movies feel like Peter Jackson movies, by gum, which is really saying something given the number of eyes those films no doubt had to pass by before reaching the final cut. All that is to say, the blockbuster world of 2014 feels a lot more committee-run and a lot less personal than it did even ten-to-fifteen years ago, and for as many successes as that's brought (I like the Marvel Cinematic Universe a whole lot, guys), I sometimes miss the days of The Fellowship of the Ring's production. Which is probably a judgement totally clouded by nostalgia and historical revision on my part, but whatever.
Basing the plot of a movie on Romeo and Juliet is one of the few ways to guarantee that I will not like a movie. Reader, I just don't like that play. One of the main reasons for this is that Romeo and Juliet are stupid, irritating, and (worse) insufferably dull characters. YOU GUYS JUST MET EACH OTHER, THERE'S NO WAY YOU'RE IN LOVE, GAAHH. Ahem. Sorry. I've heard people argue that that was Shakespeare's point, that Romeo and Juliet's cooperative vapidity is meant to show the foolish idealism of young love, blah blah. Well, maybe, but that doesn't change the facts that I just can't stand either of them and that they're uninteresting to read about/watch. So, given all that, it should come as little surprise to anyone that I did not really care for West Side Story. In all fairness to the movie, the deck was pretty stacked against it to begin with; in addition to everything I've already written here, there's also my well-documented tepidity for movie musicals in general [2]. And in further fairness to the movie, I enjoyed pieces of it. The social dynamics of both the gangs and the immigration issues are handled with an impressive degree of sophistication and honesty (especially for a mainstream Hollywood musical), with the film striking in interesting balance between fatalism and personal agency as instigators of tragedy. The show also has a few songs I enjoy, with my favorite probably being the surprisingly thematically complex "Gee, Officer Krupke," although I make room in my heart for the "Tonight Quintet" and "Jet Song," too. The majority of the songs, though, I find kind of boring and background-music-y, and the movie is far too fond of extended wordless dance numbers that are great fun live but rather a chore to sit through in a film. And of course, there's no saving Tony and Maria (your Romeo and Juliet proxies) from being boring as Elmer's glue, so their sections of the movie have all the vibrancy of a pile of rocks with no moss. That's a death knell for the film, which makes these sections its primary focus. Once their plot dovetails with the gang violence, it picks up a little, but by then, it's too late to make me feel anything for those two. Does that make me heartless? Maybe. But dang it if I just look at the clock whenever Tony shows his dopey face.
And BAM! I'm halfway through this list! Unfortunately, I'm more than halfway through the summer, which means that this project will carry over into the school semester... which means that my pace through these movies will slow significantly come mid-August. Oh well. As always, feel free to let me know what you think of these write-ups. Until next time!
If the spirit moves you, you can look back at the previous post, #s 46-48, here.
Update: The next post, #s 52-55, is up here.
1] If you want to feel weird things about the passage of time and cinematic evolution, think about this: there are twenty-three years between the release of Intolerance and the release of Gone with the Wind. That's about the same amount of time separating us from Terminator 2, Beauty and the Beast, and The Silence of the Lambs.
2] For the record, I've seen this performed live on the stage as well, and per usual, I enjoyed the show quite a bit. It's just movie musicals, man. They'll get ya.
No comments:
Post a Comment