God of Carnage

Zack Snyder (with some assistance from Christopher Nolan) does some interesting things with one of the most archetypally America superheroes, Superman, in Man of Steel. While movies have traditionally presented Superman as the icon of Truth, Justice and the American Way, Man of Steel gives us a questioning hero, a drifter who has not yet defined himself in relation to his environment even if he has an idea of inevitability.

The film opens with an extended segment set on Krypton, home planet of Jor-El (Russell Crowe) and his wife Lara Lor-Van (Ayelet Zurer). Unfortunately, Krypton is also home to the militant General Zod (Michael Shannon), and in the time honoured fashion of clearly differentiating the good guys from the bad, Jor-El speaks in an English accent while Zod is unmistakeably American. We soon find out that Krypton is doomed, but Jor-El’s baby boy Kal-El is saved from planetary destruction and sent into space to eventually land on earth.

Grown-up Kal-El, going by the name of Clark Kent (Henry Cavill), occupies himself with odd jobs whilehe tries to figure out Who He’s Meant to Be. Much of the film is about Clark’s road to awareness as told in flashback, which is where we meet the Kents as played by Kevin Costner and Diane Lane. Early on, the themes of sacrificing for the greater good and the recognition of accountability are outlined, and I was surprised – and impressed – by how much time Snyder and screenwriter David S. Goyer were willing to spend solely on investing in their main character.

Along the way, the film introduces a spirited Lois Lane (Amy Adams) and weaves her into Kal-El’s search for himself (it sounds cornier than it is). Many critics have commented that there’s little spark or chemistry between Cavill and Adams as romantic leads, but honestly, the film doesn’t pitch these characters as possible lovers as much as colleagues. The film is so Kal-El centered that romantic subplots are briefly spun off at best. By the time Zod and his cronies make it to earth, having all survived the destruction of their home planet, Kal-El is ready to do what needs to be done.

In completely rebooting the Superman story, Man of Steel gets a few things right, and many things wrong. There are character moments strong enough to make me want to revisit the film on Blu-Ray, and say what you will of Snyder’s work, but he’s a fantastic visualist. In 300 he demonstrated his ability to craft impeccable big-screen carnage, and in Watchmen he took on one of the most daunting directorial challenges of the past twenty years and, in my view, pulled it off. In addition, Nolan’s involvement favours a ‘realistic’ approach to the character, with even the red underpants falling away.

Yet for a film so intent on presenting some sort of realistic take on the superhero, Krypton is strangely fantastical, complete with flying creatures. And for someone who’s excelled at clear, convincing combat in some of his earlier the films, Snyder prefers the fashionable accelerated aesthetics for most of the fight scenes, especially those early in the film. As a result, it’s hard to see who’s doing what to whom, and the 3D only makes it worse. The repeated punch-ins on objects lose their novelty quickly.

Much has been made of the messiah-like character of Kal-El, as if it’s some sort of revelation. The Christ-like character of the hero is nothing new, but Snyder handles it as if the audience won’t get it unless it’s hammered, repeatedly, into their heads. That is Snyder’s approach in general, for most of the film: why show someone getting punched if you can show them getting punched, bounced, and dribbled? Why have a villain verbally express his anger if you can rather show him pick up a car and throw it through someone’s house?

Like it or hate it, Snyder’s visuality, often focusing on movement and using filmic techniques that emulate movement , gets results. In this case, Man of Steel showcases quite possibly the most jaw-dropping action in any superhero movie. For Snyder, less is simply less. The destruction and debris filled finale makes The Avengers seem cute, and I had to wonder about the actual death toll such a battle would have. Overall the film is also a strangely humourless affair, possibly in a misguided attempt to keep things realistic and serious.

Less is less for the characters too, unfortunately. Cavill certainly looks the part of the hero, but he delivers dialogue like a low-rent Michael Fassbender at best. It doesn’t help that the dialogue is seldom imaginative and often overly familiar. Much of what Cavill has to say are clunkers, and would come across as such regardless of who says it. On the other side of the spectrum, Shannon follows the Pacino approach to villainy: shout, and if in doubt, squint and shout some more.  

Man of Steel delivers spectacle in spades, even if it lacks the deep thought that made Watchmen so compelling, even if it skims over the moral quandaries that made the Dark Knight so interesting. While Man of Steel is far flashier, bigger and meaner, it doesn’t have the heart that Superman Returns had (and that’s a sentence I never thought I’d type).

A feature-length film about love

Michael Haneke is one of the greatest living filmmakers. I’m not going to add “arguably” to that statement. Consider the Austrian’s oeuvre: the cruel experiment of Funny Games (via Jim Emerson); the sexual masochism of The Piano Teacher; the black-and-white collective psychosis of The White Ribbon; repressed guilt and accountability in Cache. With his latest film Amour, which garnered Haneke a second Palme d’Or in Cannes (2012), the director enters a much more personal territory than before with a film that has been considered (rightly so) as his most humane.

An elderly couple, George and Anne (Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva), live out their retirement in a Parisian apartment. They go to musical performances and appreciate good literature. They seem perfectly contented to spend time with one another, revisiting memories and doing the chores around the house - all part of a comfortable, sustaining routine. Then one morning, Anne has a stroke. The scene is spellbinding; Georges does not realise what’s is happening to Anne, but when he seems to begin to understand that something is wrong, he takes rational action. Haneke’s use of image and sound is perfect; visually, he alternates two-shots and close-ups, while the sound of water running off-screen adds to the tension.

The stroke causes paralysis in half of Anne’s body. George, her husband of decades, her lover, her companion, becomes her caretaker. She makes him promise that regardless of what happens, he will not have her hospitalised (an arrangement reflecting the real-life pact between Haneke and his wife). As Anne’s condition worsens, George must address not only his responsibilities towards his wife, but also deal with a daughter (the beautiful Isabelle Huppert) concerned for her mother’s well-being and uncertain as to whether her father can take care of her.

What an audacious move to call your film Love – and Haneke gets away with it. While the elements of suffering are there – ageing; disease; incapacitation; the certainty of death – Haneke chooses to foreground love. In its sombre and stark way, the film shows how love is a barrier against the suffering which is irrevocably part of life. In embodying the power of love, Trintignant and Riva deliver superb performances. Riva realises every phase of Anne’s mental and physical degeneration, while Trintignant’s grief and perseverance in the face of his wife’s condition is inspiring without being indulgent or celebratory. A husband is simply doing what one does when a loved one is in need. George and Anne come to vivid life in the carefully constructed apartment, which is not just a home anymore, but a space for love and care to manifest in considerable capacity. Haneke never sugar-coats the severity of the couple’s situation, but makes the devotion that George has for Anne palpable. Haneke does not deal with an ideal of love, but with the act of love. While many films deal with love as abstraction, Amour shows love as a performed part of daily existence.

There are so few truly great films about love, yet there are so many lifeless attempts at showing and understanding love in soulless films that either focus on youthful exuberance or prefer to idealise human relationships as a series of happy events. Love often has little to do with happiness, as Haneke understands, and much with commitment, devotion and determination. Amour deservedly won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film and was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Director. It is a flawless film, full of life, with a master filmmaker delivering some of the best work of a decades-long career.

Family First

Paul Eilers’ Verraaiers is a long film. At two hours, it feels like three. This Bosbok Ses production is overall a more merit worthy experience than Roepman, their previous film I liked but a film I found to be too whimsical and spiritually thin for its own good. Verraaiers is, for better and for worse, a more grounded experience, an exploration of loyalty and betrayal against the backdrop of the South African War (Anglo-Boer War).

At the centre of events is Jacobus van Aswegen (a strong Gys de Villiers), who with his sons – including Vilje Maritz – fight the British until he starts to question the wisdom of their involvement in the conflict. With the implementation of Kitchener’s scorched earth policy, whereby farms were burned down and women and children taken to concentration camps, Van Aswegen decides to rather stay at home with his wife (Rika Sennett) and daughters (including Roepman’s Beate Olwagen) so that he can be there to protect them if necessary. This decision is seen as betrayal by some of the Boer authorities and before long Jacobus and his kin (and some friends) are arrested and set to stand trial on charges of treason.

The first part of the film is the narrative and thematic set-up and provides a clear idea of why some Boers decided to personally withdraw from the war even if they supported the effort as a whole. The second part of the film concerns the trial, and is a complete slog to sit through. When the trial-part of the film begins, the film has nothing else to focus on, no B-storyline to alternate with the trial-storyline. So, for nearly an hour we see the men worry, talk to the Boer authorities, question themselves and so on. There are some cutaways to the women all alone at the homestead, but those quickly become pointless due to a specifically bizarre scene which suggests something completely unconvincing about the Boer women in question, particularly the mother.

Then we’re back with the men who sit and toil and wonder their way to an unsurprising ending. Half the film is thus claustrophobic and constraining without visual reference to whatever else is happening while the protagonists are imprisoned – why are we not shown the scorched earth policy in practice? – and the film grinds to a halt. In films such as Der Untergang (Downfall) such characteristics – claustrophobia; constraint; a focus on a specific small group of characters – were beneficial in sustaining suspense and a sense of foreboding, but in Verraaiers their sum total is tedium. There’s something in the combination of shot selection, editing and the screenplay that severely undermines the film, something I hope will become clearer to me in a second or third viewing (which I’m not looking forward to, given how leaden half of the film is). 

Johan Baird and Stian Bam are solid in important supporting roles, but there are odd character moments that don’t convince, such as an early scene with Carel Trichardt as a judge wondering aloud (as if on stage) about loyalty and betrayal, somewhat clumsily foregrounding the film’s themes. Yet it’s the pacing that remains the biggest problem. I’ve seen war films that go on for three hours; I’ve seen hour upon hour of Tarr and Tarkovsky and am all the better for it. Those films, regardless of their running time, have a poetry to their images that is undeniable, and often, to me personally, unshakeable. Maybe that’s why Verraaiers felt so long and seemed so lifeless as it continued: it is so sincere, so focused on representing history in a functional and visually instrumental manner, that, to its detriment, it fundamentally lacks a sense of imagistic poetry. 

The Cause

The Master, the latest film by American ingénue Paul Thomas Anderson, is a demanding and frustrating film. I have no problem with it being demanding, but the film needs to meet its audience somehow, and that’s where The Master reveals its Achilles heel. Anderson’s major works to date, Magnolia and There Will Be Blood, hum with a dynamic tension that makes the films’ three hour running times fly by and present the viewer with a point of entry into the film unvierse, usually through a sympathetic character. Both of these films represent some of the best American filmmaking of the past twenty years, so expectations were high for The Master. But Anderson also made Punch Drunk Love, the oddly ineffectual drama with Adam Sandler; this film plodded onward driven by Sandler’s solid performance.

With The Master, it’s once more the performances that drive the film. For most part, the electricity that flowed from every frame of There Will Be Blood has been replaced by scenes that seem strangely static. Not all of the film has this problem; there are moments, such as the “informal processing” scene and a power-establishing scene between the titular character and his wife, that make the film come alive. Still, these scenes are few and far between. Another problem is that the film’s main character is a simple-minded and offensive WWII Navy veteran, Freddie Quell. Quell is a fevered character thoroughly rooted in all sorts of conflict, yet is the single most boring character in the film. He likes sex, liquor and farting. He is an all surface character in a complex film, and it doesn’t fit. Some will argue that Quell holds a mirror up to the far more intelligent Lancaster Dodd, and even so Quell is not nearly as compelling as Dodd.

We are introduced to Freddie (Joaquin Phoenix) while he’s still in the Navy, and Anderson makes it clear that the man is somewhat sex focused and has little social skills. To his credit, he is a master distiller. Back in the States, Freddie has a hard time holding on to jobs and one evening he slips onto a boat where a lavish party is being held. His choices have brought him into the company of Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), often simply referred to as the Master, the author of the worldview-challenging The Cause and currently working on its long awaited follow-up. For reasons that are hard to pinpoint, the sophisticated Dodd takes the intellectually limited Freddie under his wing. There is a third party in this power relationship, Dodd’s wife (Amy Adams), whose crucial role becomes clear only later on and had me wishing to spend more time with her than with Quell.

The three main performances in this film are all worth savouring; Adams seemingly has little to do but she is a force of nature when required, while Hoffman presents another fascinating, rather walled-off character. But it is Phoenix who completely embodies Freddie as a broken man who goes through life without any idea where he’s going. As much as I have issues with the character, Phoenix cannot be faulted; he surrenders himself to a challenging role.

The Master is far from a failure. The cinematography is superb, as one can expect from an Anderson film, and there are parts of the film that are inspired and enthralling (Quell’s hallucination at a Cause get-together). As a whole, though, Anderson’s film doesn’t quite come together. Additional viewings may change this perception, but for now, The Master lacks the compelling character ensembles and rhythm of previous Anderson films.

Note: much has been made of The Master as based on the life of L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, but don't expect anything salacious. It's simply not Anderson's nature. 

A boy and his tiger

Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi reaches the screen in spectacular fashion thanks to Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Brokeback Mountain). The largest part of the film features two characters – one human, one animal – adrift at sea, and Lee makes sure to provide some breath-taking ocean-bound imagery as the film unfolds. From the star covered skies mirrored in a flat ocean surface to phosphorous night-time aquatic visitations, Life of Pi is, if nothing else, visually tantalizing viewing. Even the 3D is functional; I could hear audience members gasp for breath during a storm sequence and also where Lee allows us to enter a frame in a comic book.

Life of Pi tells the story of Pi Patel who leaves India for Canada after his father decides to relocate the family to the West for financial reasons. Along for the boat ride are all of the family’s animals that they acquired while running a zoo, including a Bengal tiger called Richard Parker after a name registration mishap. A savage storm hits, and Pi (Suraj Sharma) finds himself on a lifeboat with the tiger, a hyena and a zebra. The film details Pi’s attempts to stay alive and not lose hope while caught between the pitiless if beautiful sea and a hungry carnivore. Throughout, Pi finds his faith in God tested as sharks circle the boat and the sun beats down relentlessly. The story is framed by a journalist interviewing the adult Pi (Irrfan Khan) on his extraordinary adventure, a tale that, according to Pi’s uncle, will make a man believe in God.

But it’s best to not think too much of the film’s religious dimensions, which get increasingly fluffy towards the film’s end. Pi’s initial interest in various religions is entertaining and sympathetic, and once he is out to sea, his faith is a necessity for survival. As an adventure based on the relationship between a boy and a tiger and as a psychological drama the film works like a charm, but as a spiritual film, it’s a real meringue. The final explanation of how the story makes one believe in God is a horrible theological cop-out. 

Yet I remain in awe of the film’s visual effects, and with how much emotional heft Lee invests Pi’s relationship with Richard Parker. Lee establishes the animal as predator kept alive by instinct, but as Pi explains, there’s more to animals, and to the tiger in particular, than just basic instincts.It's a gripping story of survival and resilience; don't be too put off by the design-your-own-brand approach to religion.

Capsules: The horse, the fish & the cult

As can be expected from Spielberg, War Horse is relentlessly sentimental. I fell for every lavishly lit and shot second. By the end of the film, I was properly doused in Spielberg’s particular brand of saccharine, and I savoured every moment. Spielberg is superb at historical drama (Schindler’s List, Munich), but here his focus is less on history and more on humanity. Based on the novel by Michael Morpurgo, Steven Spielberg’s latest epic is a family drama set against the backdrop of the World War I. It’s a stunning looking film, shot as usual by Spielberg’s right hand man Janusz Kaminsi, and scored by the legendary John Williams. Again Spielberg explores a favourite theme, the return home, but this time he anchors the narrative around a noble horse instead of a human character. That said, in the figure of Albert (Jeremy Irvine) the recurrent character of the young male innocent returns, as does the father who cannot be trusted (Peter Mullan) and the sensitive mother (Emily Watson). The film also has Tom Hiddleston, Benedict Cumberbatch and Niels Arestrup in smaller but important roles.

So it’s the familiar Spielberg film of virtuous youthful faith and belief, but told from the position of Joey the horse. War Horse follows Joey as he leaves his home and becomes a participant in World War I as he moves from owner to owner. The film builds to an ending that depends so much on coincidence and chance that it can only happen in a Spielberg film, and he’s a master at emotion for those susceptible to it. I’m sure that some thorough psychoanalysis can shed light on my readiness to be exhilarated by the infamous filmmaker, but for the moment I’ll say that the masterful final images are perfectly constructed moments of affect as well as tributes to another classical master in cinema history.

With references to A Nightmare on Elm Street, an opening scene-setter featuring Gary Busey and bringing David Hasselhoff in for support, Piranha 3DD, the sequel to last year’s moderate hit 3D horror, has fewer stars, a lower budget and a less competent director who doesn’t allow things to go completely off the rails during the bloody climax (admittedly, this could be due to budget constraints). Set in a water park no that the lake from the first film has become a quarantined wasteland, Piranha 3DD has a bunch of horny teenagers up their genitals in blood and mayhem when the prehistoric piranha make a return. Mercifully clocking in at only 79 minutes, Piranha 3DD is exploitative and gratuitous, and not in a good way. The film gets most of the nudity out of the way its opening minutes, and from there on there are many budget-restoring underwater piranha POV shots as the aquatic critters go for heels, hands, breasts and, once again, penises. While the film has enough gore for horror hounds, it is devoid of ideas. In other words, it’s pretty much what you expect from a film called Piranha 3DD. It has a heart of cash and a mind of silicone.  

 

Writer-actor Brit Marling, so impressive in Another Earth, stars in The Sound of My Voice as Maggie, a sickly woman claiming to be from the future where living in America is a daily struggle for food and survival. She presents herself as someone who can train people to prepare for this dark future. So convincing is her story that she’s become nothing less than a minor cult leader. A teacher (Christopher Denham) and his girlfriend (Nicole Vicius) enter the cult with the prerogative to film a documentary expose on Maggie and her clan. The Sound of my Voice plays with the absurdity of Maggie’s tales of time travel and what future America looks like, and as can be expected draws you in to believe some of her stories only to have you later shake your head at the impossibility of it all. The science fiction element (the possibility of time travel) is even less prevalent here than in Another Earth (literally another Earth appearing close to our own), and The Sound of my Voice seems more prone to actively avoid spectacle. The result is a quiet, claustrophobic drama that is far more successful in exploring cult psychology than the over hyped Martha Marcy May Marlene. 

Capsules: the ghost, the bear, the MMA champ

James Watkins’s The Woman in Black is an old fashioned ghost story unconcerned with the post-adolescent thirst for bloody carnage, putting atmosphere above gore and playing with tragedy rather than troublesome suburban poltergeists. Daniel Radcliffe carries most of the film alone as a young lawyer, Arthur, recently widowed, who treks to a remote part of the English country to settle the affairs of an estate. But he’s not alone in the old deserted mansion where no-one else is willing to set foot, and how is it that so many children have died in the nearby village? This is a horror for audiences who understand horror to be about tragedy coated with the supernatural, not drowned in blood. As a remake of a Hammer studios classic, Watkins succeeds in evoking a sense of dread and grave inevitability as the young lawyer, ably performed by post-Potter Radcliffe, comes to fear for his own safety. It’s an atmospheric, quiet, satisfying horror.

Here we have another film that seems more concerned with other films than with telling a story itself. Instead of telling an involving and funny story, Ted steadies itself upon other movies, propped up on pop references and cues to make things funny when there’s very little happening on screen. I’d rather watch Flash Gordon again than watch Ted again. Between the Saturday Night Fever reference (or rather an Airplane! reference) and many other winks at better films, the film plods along with an odd and misguided stalking subplot thrown in featuring Giovanni Ribisi. I’ve seen Ted described as transgressive and subversive, but the film is the same-old-same-old story about friendship that we’ve seen a hundred times, even if the titular character is a marijuana smoking foul mouthed teddy bear. Indeed, contemporary American cinema’s celebration of the persistence of adolescence has become quite tedious, and despite a few genuine laughs – including an inspired jab at a Twilight cast member – and excellent visual effects, Ted is neither refreshing not intelligent comedy entertainment. Creator Seth McFarlane’s television work, mainly Family Guy, provide better material.

Haywire, Steven Soderbergh’s first foray into mainstream action (accepting that his Oceans movies are lightweight capers, not action films) is a sombre, yellow-hued affair with MMA star Gina Carano starring as Mallory Kane, an employee of a company contracted by the United States government to address sensitive international situations by way of assassination. While Carano is clearly not a strong actor, her physicality more than makes up for often clunky line delivery. Haywire is a female driven Bourne but stripped of spectacle and with Soderbergh’s trademark restrained editing. As a result, the combat scenes are exciting without being exaggerated or indulgent. Haywire tells a simple story but in Soderbergh’s hands it becomes (momentarily) cerebral. The film features Ewan MacGregor, Michael Fassbender, Channing Tatum, Antonio Banderas, Michael Douglas and Bill Paxton. Fans of The Expendables 2 need not apply.

Return of the Ring

Note: I saw The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey projected at 24 fps in 3D. The 24 fps was fine, the 3D superfluous.

Peter Jackson’s return to Middle Earth is delightful. Where Lord of the Rings told a major story with nothing less than the fate of the known world at stake, The Hobbit recounts a tale much smaller in scale. This gives Jackson, Philippa Booyens, Fran Walsh and Guillermo del Toro (who ceded directing duties to Jackson) the opportunity to play with and expand Tolkien’s universe. While The Hobbit is not the ground-breaking fantasy epic Lord of the Rings was, Jackson clothes the story with whimsy and populates it with endearing heroes. Actually, just seeing Gandalf and Gollum back on screen are alone certainly worth the effort both in terms of revisiting major fantasy characters as well as the visual effects and make-up used for each.

That’s what’s going to make the crucial difference between joy and disappointment: whether or not one accepts The Hobbit as a delightful three-hour indulgence in glorious fantasy for the filmmakers and the audience. Anyone looking for something to top Lord of the Rings in terms of scope and sheer adventure will come away disappointed. The Hobbit is best seen as a family friendly companion piece to Jackson’s magnum opus from the previous decade. Seen in this way, there’s nothing frivolous about the film, and then the long exposition will enthral, not infuriate, as peace-loving hobbit Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) is called to adventure by wizard Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen) in a quest to join a selection of dwarves headed by Aragorn-substitute Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) as they set off to reclaim their ancestral home and heritage from the dragon Smaug.

It’s a basic story, then, and Jackson and co stretch a single novel into another nine-hour epic, with parts two and three coming out in 2013 and 2014. Many have accused the film of being unnecessarily bloated and overlong, but I found myself won over by the film’s charms, from a beautiful rendition of the “Song of the Misty Mountains” that becomes a key motif in Howard Shore’s score, to touching moments between Gandalf and Galadriel (the eternally luminous Cate Blanchett) and spectacular flashbacks that flesh out characters’ backgrounds. The story also introduces another wizard, the fauna and flaura loving Radagast the Brown who adds another dimension to the story and makes it seem a little less contained. In addition, Gollum has never looked better, and once again Andy Serkis makes the character homicidal and sympathetic. 

Speaking of villainous characters: the film cleverly avoids any revealing views of Smaug but manages to establish the dragon as a figure of immense power. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will frustrate those looking for fast action, and the film is far less dark than its predecessors, opting instead for a familiar sense of questing and derring do. The film falters slightly with a clumsily conceived troll scene and there’s a bit of pandering to younger viewers, but The Hobbit manages enough excitement – especially in its final hour – to make up for some occasional and minor missteps.

The Bond Identity

With Skyfall, the Craig-era reinvention of the infamous British spy James Bond has come to a full. The grittier, more grounded and eventually wounded Bond that was introduced in the electric Casino Royale and remained committed to his search for international terrorists in Quantum of Solace has matured into Skyfall, an intelligent Bond film that points to the character’s past as much as it establishes what lies ahead for Bond in future iterations. At the crux of the events in the film stands M (Judi Dench), Bond’s aide across the years. After a rousing opening scene which sets off the events to come, M is held accountable for a major lapse in international security when a list of undercover NATO agents ends up in the hands of a terrorist.

This terrorist goes by the name of Silva and is played by a blonde-haired and terrifying (for a Bond villain) Javier Bardem. Bardem is well known for his turn as the agent of order, Anton Chigurgh, in No Country for Old Men, and here he creates another memorable antagonist. There seems to be a personal vendetta at play here, as if Bond is caught in the middle between a dangerous Silva and vulnerable M. Complicating matters is government representative Mallory (Ralph Fiennes) and another intelligence agent (Naomie Harris) who has a hand in steering Bond’s life in a particular direction. As the new Q, Ben Whishaw (Cloud Atlas) doesn’t have much screen time but he makes the most of it; his banter with 007 in an art gallery is highly amusing.

Skyfall sometimes looks like an art film, as if the acclaimed director Sam Mendes is committed to aesthetically reinvigorating Bond. Casino Royale was tropical, colourful; Quantum was filled with browns, greys and blacks. Skyfall has a more balanced colour template until the second half heralds an increase in darker, muted colours. Mendes, who garnered critical acclaim for his films American Beauty, Road to Perdition and Revolutionary Road, gives us Bond at his most introspective yet. It’s as far removed from Roger Moore’s Bond as can be imagined as Craig plays Bond with a weight equal to Timothy Dalton. As filmed by legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins, some scenes from Skyfall take on a life of their own: Silva against an illuminated background in the dead of night; M’s sense of isolation at a crucial moment; an ocean of lanterns.

But my favourite scene of all is a fight scene that is symptomatic of the film’s overall aesthetic success: a compact hand-to-hand fight scene with Bond and his opponent etched in silhouette against a changing wall of colour in Shanghai, their movements framed and flanked by sheets of glass. In a scene like that – in many ways the opposite of the spectacular opening scene - the fighting becomes more than that just two men grappling. This scene is shot in a single take for most part; there are no quick cutaways to elbows and knees to frustrate the viewer. Everything happens in front of our eyes in a fluid, clear and bracing manner. This stands in contrast to the norm for action cinema today, for instance, in the hyperkinetic and self-conscious editing found in the Bourne movies.

As I pointed out above, Skyfall differs in some way from most contemporary action cinema, and it’s also different from most Bonds. For one thing, there is the notable absence of a proper Bond girl, though Naomie Harris comes close. For another, the film feels contained. While the film features exotic locations (Shanghai, Macau) the brunt of the film is located in the UK. It’s as if the entire franchise, not just Bond, sought to reconsider and re-establish its relationship with queen and country. It makes sense that its climax would concern only a specific group of characters and be located in a very specific, significant place. As for the film’s preoccupation with age and aging (the redundancy of old technology and the shelf life of active field agents are addressed), Skyfall acknowledges the past by bringing it into perfect alignment with Bond’s future; the film’s closing scenes should have Bond fans applauding.

Skyfall is a superb Bond entry. I'm not yet certain that it is the best of the series, as many have hyperbolically claimed, but it is certainly in the ranks of Casino Royale and Goldfinger.

Of bongs and bear traps

Written by fanboy favourite Joss Whedon and directed by Drew Goddard, Cabin in the Woods is a halfway successful unravelling of horror film conventions. By the end, it’s three movies in one (survival horror; postmodernist horror; apocalyptic horror), and not one of those really gets its due. While certainly one of the better recent horrors of recent times – and certainly one of the funniest – it’s not nearly the genre reconstruction its rabid fans make it out to be. Please note that for reasons of spoiler sensitivity I will provide only the most basic plot set-ups, basically recounting what happens during the film’s opening scenes.

The film opens with a stroke of genius: Sitterson (Richard Jenkins) and Hadley (Bradley Whitford), dressed like two mid-level businessmen, have an important job to do. They like their job, which consists of various administrative responsibilities, and take pride in doing it well. Meanwhile, four teenagers (including Chris Hemsworth, Kristen Connolly and Fran Kranz) set off to a cabin in the woods for some post-adolescent debauchery. Soon after their arrival, they realise that all is not well at the cabin, and that their lives might be at stake.

So far, so horror formula, but Whedon’s take on what happens but also how it happens is rather refreshing. Cabin in the Woods is considerably meta; not only does the film explicitly foreground the beat-by-beat mechanics of the genre, it implicates the audience in what’s happening on screen. It’s no coincidence that the opening titles reference Haneke’s Funny Games (the Austrian’s film is far more terrifying and sophisticated). There is one scene in particular that succeeds in creating exquisite discomfort in the viewer, as a moment of celebration and a moment of bloody murder occurring simultaneously in the same frame. 

To be sure, Cabin in the Woods has its highlights: there’s a tense game of truth or dare that ends in a cross-species flirtation; the wonderful use of a marijuana bong; some inventive creatures appear in the third act. By the climax, though, the story goes much too big, and the ending is best described as deafeningly anticlimactic. As good as the film is, it cannot help but collapse under its own weight, and the final shot should never have made it past the editing room. Cabin in the Woods has been described as a game changer, but it isn’t. Despite its initial silliness and eventual gore overload (both of which are entirely appropriate for the genre), the film overplays its hand and overstays its welcome.

Iranian tour de force

In a behind-the-scenes interview on the Artificial Eye DVD, Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi says that the camera sees not only the face, but also what goes on behind it, inside the mind. Farhadi’s tense drama A Separation, winner of this year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Film, shows and reveals what it has to in its characters' faces while keeping the viewer in the dark as to what route events will take. This is a film without grand gestures and rousing speeches about the importance of truth, yet the entire film asks exactly what the nature of truth is.

Nader (Peyman Mooadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami) agree to separate in the film’s opening scene. From there we see them make arrangements for living separately, she at her mother’s while he remains in his apartment where he takes care of his Alzheimer’s afflicted father. Their 11-year old daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi) stays with Nader for the time being, hoping that Simin will return sooner rather than later. Soon we are introduced to another mother, Razieh (Sareh Bayat), who will act as caretaker of Nader’s father while the son’s at work. Simin permits Razieh to bring her young daughter to the apartment when she’s there; maybe the two young girls will keep each other company.

That is the basic set-up. What ensues is both expected and surprising, and occurs in scenes of quiet, restraint and anger. When I refer to the film as a tense drama, do not make the mistake of anticipating plot twists and character reversals. The film is so tense because the odds are so high and the characters equally compromised. The actors, adults and children, are superb. As Simin, Hatami has a stunning beauty and dramatic weight reminiscent of Juliette Binoche. The verbal face-offs between her and Mooadi are vivid, compelling, discomforting. For all the cultural differences, they could be my neighbours.

I mentioned that the film is about truth. Simin makes certain accusations of Nader. He does not take her seriously. Who is right, and, more importantly, in what way are they right? When a marriage begins disintegrating after 14 years, who is responsible for what, and can the initial point of deterioration be pinpointed?

Then something sad happens. Who is to blame? None of the characters here are inherently bad. Life isn’t easy, and all of them are desperate in different ways. How did one individual cause something to happen to someone else? How does one go about proving that such causality was deliberate or not? Privileging the female position, Simin and Termeh, as well as the viewers, attempt to piece together what may pass as truth, some sort of distillation of versions of a single event. 

In this regard, A Separation recalls not only Rashomon but also John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt. In that film, Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep) observes that simply being certain of something is a sure indicator of truth. That is the way of danger. In A Separation, there is not a scene or shot that does not serve the whole. The film does eventually arrive at a point of truth, but by then we are far more concerned with the complex dynamic that has been established between the characters than with a causal chain. In a controlled manner, the last two scenes are devastating. Only considered, deliberate filmmaking can seem so natural and effortless.

Level Up

Stop me if this sounds familiar: Tama (Ray Sahetapy), a crime lord, has based himself in a run-down, 30-storey building in inner city Jakarta. A police task team is dispatched to take out this man, who in the film’s opening minutes executes a handful of men with such detachments that we cannot help but align with the police. The team is headed by Jaka (Joe Taslim), but the film’s focus is mainly on the physically unimposing Rama (Iko Kuwais), a rookie member of the team. Getting inside the criminal’s hideout is easy, but then bodies start to pile up on both sides and it seems that the job isn’t a simple takedown after all. Even if they get to Tama, he’s guarded by two much feared men, one of whom is appropriately called Mad Dog (Yayan Ruhian).

To say that The Raid is the new pinnacle of Asian action cinema is to say that it takes a familiar set-up (reminiscent of Die Hard, for example), clothes it with the minimum plot and story and then sets out to reconstitute our expectations of what action films can viscerally achieve. The last time physical combat alone elevated a film to near awe-inspired breathlessness, it was Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. But The Raid and Crouching Tiger are worlds apart; while the latter laces its intrigue with mythology and romance, The Raid has one relentless drive: invigorating action set in closed and confined spaces. What happens in The Raid makes combat choreography in most other genre films seem positively geriatric by example, and the film had me scratching my head, wondering “how did they do that?”, on a number of occasions.

The film’s detractors will point to the film’s lack of story, and they are not entirely wrong; Rama has a personal motivation for getting this particular job done, but that’s about it. Plus, the twist towards the end is entirely expected. Yet the film is so frenetic and so focused on delivering visceral combat – much like some video games – that the lack of depth is forgivable. Importantly, the action never reaches the level of tedium that has in the past torpedoed many other action films; think of the Ong Bak movies, which have more developed stories than The Raid but are far less memorable.

Director Gareth Evans, a Welshman, has with The Raid presented an exhilarating entry into contemporary action cinema by taking the genre back to its fist-to-fist basics and injecting it with silat, an Indonesian martial art so fluid and fast it seems to remap the possibilities of the body in violent motion. With its seamless combination of CGI and astounding physical stunt work, The Raid left me breathless. An American remake is already underway.

Birdy

Johnnie To can be such a delicate, precise action filmmaker. Consider the ballet on shattered mirrors in Mad Detective; the operatic shootouts in Vengeance that puts Woo to shame. In Sparrow, the filmmaker's most lightweight film in a long time, the uber-prolific To approaches the film with a near lack of gravity. As a result, the stylised film, essentially a crime caper of sorts, is so light - thematically, character wise - it seems to float before your eyes, and I mean that as a compliment.

Being a small time crook doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. Kei (Simon Yam) leads a pleasant life, often meeting with his criminal cohorts in a Hong Kong diner to discuss the day’s activities – a stolen wallet here, a lifted mobile phone there. Often tourists are the most visible, easiest targets. Kei is such a pleasant guy that when a sparrow flies into his apartment, he simply puts his fists in his hips and shakes his head, smiling. But when the beautiful, mysterious Chun Chun Lei (Kelly Lin) shows up, Kei’s world is shaken to its surface (there’s not much of a core). One by one, she coincidentally meets up with each of Kei’s colleagues, which invariably leads to trouble. Then Kei finds out about Chun Chun Lei’s secret, and he has no choice but to get involved in her private life.Kei is a bicycle riding, laid back, reluctant hero; Chun Chun Lei is a stunningly beautiful romantic foil.

To orchestrates some beautiful scenes: Kei’s infatuation with Chun Lei, initially caputred through a lense; a chase sequence that undermines what one expects from chase sequences; a delightful invocation of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg in a rainy showdown. In this film, unlike in many of To’s other, far more brutal films, the villains are as simultaneously weightless and grounded. Towards the film’s end, one cannot help but think of the main villain as an old man whose time has come, and not as a violent killer. To seems to endow Sparrow with a sense of inconsequentiality: for many of the characters, things will remains as they have for a very long time, regardless of what happens. 

This is To’s playground, and he’s surprisingly gentle; once we know the players, he directs them towards moments of playful deception and even physical comedy. There’s a romantic subplot but not in the way one might think. Between cleverly choreographed set pieces and some light character work, Sparrow is an eminently rewatchable old school crime flick.

Paternity Matters

I could write a combo-review of Saak van Geloof ("A Matter of Faith") and Jakhalsdans. Both are Afrikaans dramas set in sparsely populated, small South African towns. Jakhalsdans, about a reclusive musician who comes out of hiding in support of a school fundraiser, is set in Loxton and directed by Darrell James Roodt (Yesterday, Faith’s Corner). Saak van Geloof, a religious drama about faith and family, is set in Prins Albert and directed by Diony Kempen, who produced Jakhalsdans. Both films are shot by Andrew Tolmay. Both films represent some of the worst that Afrikaans drama has to offer.

One the one hand, there’s very little to say about Jakhalsdans. It stars Theuns Jordaan and is, to my eternal shock and disbelief, written by well-regarded crime novelist Deon Meyer. It has one of the worst endings in recent memory, a slap in the face of everyone who came to see the film based on its musical promise. It’s all build-up and no pay-off. It took me three attempts to finish the film. It is tedious, badly written, cheap looking and insulting to moviegoers as well as Afrikaans music lovers. The dialogue is as solid as a Karoo rock, by which I mean that it’s heavy, lacking in colour, and that it sinks.

There’s a little more to say about Saak van Geloof, though not necessarily in a good way. Lelia Etsebeth stars as Marietjie Naude, the daughter of Kallie (Robbie Wessels) and Ella (Riana Nel). Shortly before Christmas, Marietjie tells her parents that she’s pregnant, and that the father is none other than the Holy Spirit. Soon the entire town is gossiping about their own immaculate conception while the Calvinist minister (Niekie van den Berg) attempts an intervention.

Due to their similar ages, the three main actors look like siblings; whoever cast this film must suffer from a sight impediment. Also, Nel’s performance is the worst – the worst – performance by a female actor in an Afrikaans film I have ever seen. At least Lika Berning got to occasionally look cute in Liefling, and Jakhalsdans’s Elizma Theron, while robotic, at least delivered her lines with a modicum of intent. Granted, the dialogue in Saak van Geloof is horrid. Much of it sounds made-up on the spot.

I pity the actors for having to wrestle with such bad writing, uninspired plotting and shallow characterisation. The scene where Kallie, having struggled with his faith for a while now, receives an affirmative sign from above is an unintentionally bizarre and funny scene. Miscast and misdirected, the actors stumble from scene to scene aiming at moments of serenity and profundity but arriving at absurdity and foolishness instead. Etsebeth is the only one who delivers something close to a heartfelt performance in spite of how stilted her character often comes across. And Van den Berg’s minister Botha is a clichéd mess prone to over delivery: “This … is a matter… of faith!” Spelling out its themes in capital letters, the film is too simple-minded to offend or stimulate.

I welcome any film that engages religious discourse in a serious minded, informed manner. Bringing Christian discourse into more contemporary settings can be thought provoking (see Pialat’s Under Satan’s Sun) and fascinating (Dornford-May’s Son of Man), not to mention Denys Arcand's superlative Jesus of Montreal. Anyone venturing into evangelical filmmaking surely knows the company they are in, so why produce such a bland drama? Measured against similarly themed films, Saak van Geloof, with its superficial spiritual veneer and misguided messiah motif, is plain ridiculous.

(Note: a fun way of watching a movie is to play a drinking game where you take shot of mampoer – and it has to be mampoer - whenever an extra looks into the camera.)

Dawn is intended literally

Given the saturation with Stephanie Meyer’s young adult franchise, what’s the point of a plot synopsis? Either you know the story and you’re maybe interested in seeing for yourself where things go, or you don’t and you aren’t. For my part, I remain mystified by the franchise’s continued success given as how only two (!) major events happen in this entire film (mild spoiler warning, even though everything was pointed out in the trailer): Bella and Edward’s wedding, and Bella’s surprise pregnancy.

At least Breaking Dawn Part 1 is the best directed entry in the series; credit to Bill Condon in this regard, who provides some spooky imagery, even though the wolves still look far too computer generated to be convincing. Then again, so does Taylor Lautner, who plays the mostly quiet (or verbally stunted) Jacob. Quiet, that is, unless he’s screaming at Bella for what awaits her or threatening the perpetually waxy Edward (Robert Pattinson) for loving Bella. Not even Condon (Gods & Monsters) can completely salvage the vacuous narrative.

In their fourth film together, these characters still define themselves solely by their relationships with one another. Sure, there are social ripples in their own circles – vampires, werewolves – but you get the feeling that if one of the three main characters were to spontaneously evaporate, the other two would shortly follow. The wedding scene is perfectly fine in an adolescent-fantasy-forest-tree-princess kind of way, while the pregnancy is simply tedious. The child (“It’s a monster!”) is making Bella increasingly ill, and that’s all we see: Bella looking thin and frail like a Tim Burton stop motion character.

Bella remains on the road to vampiredom as her lamentably tired and depressing character arc still positions her as one who despises her species. I’m still amazed at how one shot of Carlisle (Peter Facinelli) can out-camp Rocky Horror. In this sense, the Twilight movies are not without their pleasures, but none of the four films so far has managed to be even the slightest bit exciting. Having read the novel, I’m also disappointed that this film didn’t translate all the gore from the book into corresponding blood drenched imagery. The Twilight films continue to fail as character dramas as well as supernatural narratives. At least this one has the dubious honour of introducing the worst character name yet though it sacrifices the homoerotic tension from Eclipse for some more preaching on the dangers of sex (have sex once and CARRY YOUR DEMON SPAWN!).

Artificial sweetener

Semi-Soet is South Africa’s very first post-transitional Afrikaans romantic comedy in the most Hollywood sense of the word. The leads are attractive, the story improbable, the humour often forced; the locations are breathtakingly beautiful; mistaken identities and misunderstandings abound. The formula is as old as classical cinema itself. Director Joshua Rous does not seek to undermine the formula in any way - the film even has a "wild animal" moment - but his command of the Hollywood romcom form is sure and confident. It's a lightweight mix of A Walk in the Clouds meets The Proposal.

Jaci van Jaarsveld (Anel Alexander) works for the ad company Mojo. To her boss’s (Corine du Toit) concern, a corporate cannibal nicknamed The Jackal (Nico Panagio) has indicated that he wants to buy out the company, which leads to large scale retrenchment. When The Jackal arrives for a meeting with Mojo, Jaci mistakes him for someone else and before you know it, Jaci and her corporate nemesis are on their way to a romantic business weekend (!) at Vrede & Rust wine estate. 

In tow are the obligatory supporting characters, with Sandra Vaughn as Jaci’s chirpy sidekick and Louw Venter as Hertjie, The Jackal’s lawyer colleague who here poses as a gay stylist. 7de Laan’s Diaan Lawrenson also appears as Jaci’s ex-boyfriend’s (Paul du Toit) current squeeze, the dim Chadrie. Although her character has little to do, seeing as she plays the consummate blonde bimbo, Lawrenson has one of the film’s best timed comic reactions.

Speaking of stereotypes: how unfortunate that Semi-Soet would resort to so many of them, especially of the gay variety. Surely there’s a romantic comedy that can work without indulging redundant gender stereotypes? So much of the film offers a viable Afrikaans complement to American romcoms that such a major misstep is indeed disheartening. Jodi Abrahams is a fine actor (he was one of the highlights in the TV series Hard Copy), and his talents are wasted as he prances around as an camp model agent.

If you’ve seen a couple of American romcoms you know what to expect, but to their credit the creative team keeps the film engaging for most of its running time (starting with some inventive opening credits). As the film nears its end, things get too farfetched and simultaneously old fashioned as the film utilises the type of plot developments that characterised much of 1990s sitcom fare. Regardless, the film puts some of its American contemporaries to shame; it beats genre prototypical drivel like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days with ease.

Verlange

Katinka Heyns’s first film in well over a decade, Die Wonderwerker (The Miracle Worker), is an engaging character drama built around a specific period in the life of South African poet and naturalist Eugene Marais (1871-1936), played here by Dawid Minnaar in one of the best performances of his career. Die Wonderwerker also provides Eliza Cawood with some powerful scenes where she mostly underplays much of the character Maria’s anxieties, and while many have complained about Anneke Weideman’s Jane, I have to admit that I was neither blown away nor offended by her performance. The way some people talk about her you’d swear the character is expected to be an essayist whose tour de force on Darwin got published at puberty instead of the immature 19-year old farm girl the film gives us.

En route to Nylstroom, Marais arrives on the Van Rooyen farm with malaria and the family take him in to see to his recovery. Marais’s presence intensifies tensions that are already present: Maria and her husband Gys (Marius Weyers) have not seen eye to eye for a while, and their son Adriaan (Kaz McFadden) has an unhealthy interest in young Jane Brayshaw, the Van Rooyens' adopted daughter. As these characters turn to each other Marais turns mostly to himself – he is addicted to morphine – until he starts to see Jane as possibly more than just a young girl.

Koos Roets, recipient of a lifetime achievement award at this year’s Cape Winelands Film Festival, remains a consummate cinematographer; Die Wonderwerker looks great, with a deeper colour depth than many other Afrikaans films. And how refreshing to see an Afrikaans film that does not feature that annoying sped-up day-to-darkness shots to indicate the passage of time.

I have major issues with Heyns’s previous work, and this film isn’t flawless, but it’s as if all of her films have lead to this moment: while the earlier films tick most of the features of old fashioned classical filmmaking, Die Wonderwerker is superb classical filmmaking. This film is far more successful at mastering this approach to storytelling than Roepman. Between all the formulaic storytelling and moments of indulgent exposition, Heyns delivers a memorable portrait of Marais constructed around her favourite theme: the outsider who brings turmoil and change into the Afrikaans nuclear family.

It’s a very specific portrait of Marais, and listening to people’s responses to the character construction I was reminded of Roger Ebert’s lukewarm review of Iris¸ the biopic of Iris Murdoch that I quite liked. To paraphrase Ebert: Iris is a wonderful film, but it’s not about the Iris he knew and loved. I suspect the same applies to Die Wonderwerker: it’s a depiction of Marais that may not positively correspond with how many see and appreciate the historical figure. Nonetheless, even those unmoved by the film’s version of Marais should recognise that between some over manipulative moments, Die Wonderwerker has greater emotional resonance than any of Heyns’s previous films.It is one of the best Afrikaans language films of the past few years.

Once there was a Hushpuppy

With its leafy aesthetic, its portrayal of the human in relationship and in resistance to nature, and a major claim for cinematic realism, Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild is eventually less than the sum of its parts. There are only so many times the camera can linger on a young girl’s face or glide restlessly across the trees before I realised that the film is not at all the masterpiece much loved by many, but rather a fetishisation of the child’s role in a nature myth. I had a similar experience with Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze’s tedious child fantasy movie, and like that film, Beasts feels at once strangely overlong and underwritten.

Six-year old Hushpuppy (Quvenzhane Wallis) and her father Wink (Dwight Henry) are residents of the Bathtub, a community of normative exiles gathered on an island just off the New Orleans coast, hidden (so they think) behind the levees that separate civilisation from their community. Some reviewers suggest that the characters here are people who are close to nature - and in the film’s beautiful opening scene, Hushpuppy makes that impression utterly vivid – but often they are simply drunk. Hushpuppy’s mother left a long time ago, and Wink, prone to moments of abuse as much as misguided care where he masculinises his young daughter, isn’t a consistently attentive father. Then Hushpuppy hears about global warming, and imagines mythical aurochs breaking free from the ice caps to walk the earth. When flooding becomes a very real threat to the Bathtub, Hushpuppy will be more reliant on one another than ever before, whether Wink is prepared for it or not.

Riding waves of acclaim all the way from Sundance earlier this year, the film drifts from one scene to the next until it all finally ends in the way you exactly suspected it would. The notion of death is introduced early on, and the film does little that is creative in its approach to the theme. In addition, the Bathtub community is uninteresting and the story gives the characters very little to do, with Zeitlin milking Willis’s young face for effect in reaction shot after reaction shot. Using a child protagonist to frame the story (complete with some voice over narration) is a tricky business at the best of times, and yet some majestic films have opened up the world through children’s eyes: The 400 Blows, City of God, Cinema Paradiso. In Beasts, Willis’s face simply becomes the emotional crux of the film. Both Willis and Henry, who runs a bakery and here makes his debut, give solid performances and share at least one riveting, emotional scene that involves more than just Hushpuppy’s wide eyes.

Beasts is also one of those films that mistakes “immediacy” for “hand held camera”. The one does not by default imply the other. Filmic immersion is earned through character, not waving a camera around and seeing what you come up with. I wanted to grab Zeitlin by his neck and say: stop moving. Put down your camera. Show me what’s worth seeing so that it’s clear, not fuzzy; located, not dizzy. Beyond its truly superlative first five to ten minutes, the film never conveys what is apparently so fascinating about the world and its inhabitants. While the ending also has some emotional resonance, the hour in between is dreary filmmaking.

I’m not angry at the film like bell hooks is. (hooks calls the film racist, and amongst other things, the pornography of poverty as shot by a privileged white male.) I clearly don’t think it’s a total failure on the scale of the despicable Precious, and I don’t get a strong sense of exploitation from the film. That said, I strongly agree with MUBI’s Vishnevetsky who perfectly problematizes the film’s world view, which is where my problem with the film is located: “Beasts pretends to be celebrating gumption and resolve, but what it's ultimately selling is stubbornness and isolationism. There is a word for films like this: bullshit”  (author's italics).

With all its chickens, trees, alcoholics, home-made boats and the thematically redundant aurochs, Beasts of the Southern Wild mostly left me cold. It is a profound disappointment. Those who praise the film would do well to seek out Bahrani’s vastly superior Chop Shop.

All About Gotham

Christopher Nolan’s take on the Batman mythology was always far removed from Burton’s grotesquerie and Schumacher’s camp rendition of DC heroes and villains. Nolan’s imagining of the character and the universe he inhabits is, in this third and final instalment especially, dark and despairing. This was always a strength of the series: that it took itself seriously, and allowed the films to speak to social conditions familiar to its audiences. Judging by the box-office intake, audiences responded positively to an iteration of a familiar character that is as flawed as the heroes of ancient Greece. From the outset it was clear that Nolan’s Bruce Wayne would put duty above pleasure at any stage, sustaining the billionaire playboy persona only insofar as it covers the version of him that is most authentic, the Batman.

In The Dark Knight Rises, Nolan and co-screenwriter Jonathan Nolan borrow from, amongst other sources, the critically acclaimed Knightfall storyline to shape their final entry. Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has become a recluse since the death of Rachel Dawes in The Dark Knight. It’s been eight years since Batman faced The Joker, since Harvey Dent died, since Batman instructed Gordon (Gary Oldman) to tell and sustain the life-giving lie: Gotham City would be saved if they had a hero (Dent) to believe in, with an antagonist, Batman, to take the blame for his death. With Gotham’s crime at an all-time low, there is no need for a masked vigilante to assist the police in apprehending criminals.

Until Bane (Tom Hardy), a nearly supernaturally strong mercenary with shadowy links to key figures in Gotham, shows up. With the police unable to sufficiently respond to this unanticipated threat, Batman is forced to reconsider his self-exile. Also, Wayne is visited by Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), a cat burglar with greater plans than to simply steal some of Wayne’s possessions. New additions to the supporting cast include Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Blake, a beat cop supportive of Gordon even when the latter is being undermined; Marion Cotillard as Miranda Tate, a prominent investor in Wayne Enterprises; and Matthew Modine as Foley, a policeman gunning for Gordon’s job. Michael Caine has a superb moment in his return as the butler Alfred.

The Dark Knight Rises provides what one expects from a Nolan Batman movie: big stunts, large set pieces, and some unexpected plot developments. But Rises is its own film, one that negotiates its way around much of what made Dark Knight such a fan favourite. Obviously The Joker is missing – he was always Nolan’s prime villain, and he left it at that. There is not attempt to link Bane to Joker or to make Bane into a Joker-like figure of anarchy. But there are other things, such as changes to the narrative focus, which I will address below. Please note: massive spoilers follow.

Arguably, Dark Knight was The Joker’s film, with Batman caught between the anarchist, the centurion and his great love. Joker, being what he is, wasn’t Batman’s enemy: Dent was. Dark Knight inserted Joker into Gotham and we watched the world burn as Batman struggled to keep his community from going up in flames, facing off with Dent in love and aspects of governance. Rises is all about Batman, however, even if he is not as physically present in the film as in the first sequel. This film follows Wayne’s trajectory towards reaffirming his position in the community even if it incurs great costs. His time in Bane’s pit is to a great extent an extension of his own self-exile in Wayne Mansion; individuation, as Jung would remind us, occurs naturally and artificially, and a natural process of psychological maturation is here intensified and focused by Wayne’s forced expulsion from Gotham.

The film’s focus on one’s commitment to the community is also located in Gordon’s increased activity in the film’s second half. As a constant supporter of Batman and a propagator of the lie that ended the second film but kept Gotham going, Gordon here becomes the type of figure that he used to pursue, someone who, once the lie is exposed as such and having always anticipated its end, gets his hands dirty. This is also indicative of the film proceeding with what we’ve come to know and understand of some supporting characters: Gordon gets angry based on having to sustain the lie for so long; Alfred refuses to watch as Wayne destroys himself.

In addition to the familiars, Rises introduces interesting new characters. Setting Blake up as Robin towards the film’s very end was highly problematic for some, but Blake, as a younger incarnation of Gordon’s principled engagement with law and order, perfectly fits this Batman universe. Based on the Gotham we’ve come to know, Blake is exactly the kind of person that city could help produce – that, of course, as well as hardened criminals. Yet again the villain comes from outside the community to destroy Gotham. Bane, as revealed towards the climax, had no community, and when Talia bonded with him, the relationship obtained a pathological and almost tragic dimension. Bane is not simply opposed to Batman, but to Blake specifically, as the characters demonstrate how engagement with the community (or lack thereof) can shape one’s life. They are thematic counterpoints. Being Batman’s right hand man is a natural development for Blake.

Another new character is Selina Kyle, not once referred to as Catwoman. In fact, there is no iconic moment for Kyle, no Pfeiffer-esque acknowledgement of the absurdity of the character. Rises’ Selina Kyle is a Trickster with an uncertain trajectory. She tarries with Batman until he convinces here that they’re on the same side. Some people have issues with her being the one to dispatch Bane. Since Bane literally breaks Batman earlier on, shouldn’t Gotham’s son be the one to avenge himself? Not necessarily; Bane, after all, is not the primary villain – Talia is. And Batman and Talia have a showdown of their own. If Bane is killed by what is essentially a bullet fired from a big gun, well, of course he dies. He is only human, and his vulnerability is emphasised by his emotional response to Talia’s monologue. He broke Batman, but he is himself not invincible.

That Kyle kills Bane is additionally meaningful not because she’s a woman (let us not fall into some misguided woman-kills-male-maniac reductionist reading!) but because she is one of the people that Bane actually addresses when he calls upon “the people” to take back “their city”. Earlier in the film, Kyle tells Wayne that he and the rich, the 1%, must “batten down the hatches” because the time has come for the 99% to get their due. And where Bane positions himself as a false prophet for the disenfranchised (mostly, prisoners), Kyle really is one of the 99%. Her takedown of Bane is appropriate, if brief. The homegrown Gotham criminal vanquishes the ideological pretender.

The film has some iconic scenes. There is a shot of Kyle speeding along on the Batcycle (I think) reminiscent of the Joker putting his head of a car window, enjoying the wind in his hair. But Nolan, always a fast cutter, does not allow us to savour the flow of this scene, this moment of joy, and undercuts it much like he did with the latter scene in Dark Knight. And the images of people swinging by their necks from construction cranes, as seen on TV no less, are surprisingly unsettling.

Rises has some problems. I’ve never been a fan of the digital read-out except in Speed, but I understand its purpose for the audience. Also, for a film so focused on being ‘realistic’, much of the violence is notably bloodless and, as a result, too clean. A more pressing issue is Nolan’s occasional disregard for narrative time. There are dizzying time gaps ranging from how, in a single quick scene, Kyle and a hostage start at the top of a building and are, within seconds on the tarmac far below, to Wayne’s inexplicable return to Gotham from India. Finally, the film really should have ended four seconds earlier. Too often Nolan over explains things and in so doing waters down the dramatic effect of a given moment. Consider Gordon's flashback followed by the unnecessary exclamation: "Bruce Wayne..." When the wise lawman finally realises who Batman really is, as the flashback demonstrates, he certainly does not need to spell it out.

Even with certain plot and editing issues, The Dark Knight Rises presents a weighty conclusion. Some will miss the unpredictability of a Joker-like figure, as well as the humour that accompanies such a character. Nonetheless, Rises is easily the equal of Dark Knight; the former is slightly less spectacular than the latter, and it finally gives the Batman character his due.

A final observation: how perfect that where one lie is revealed, another one takes its place "for the greater good" (and personal gain) at the film's end. As Dark Knight ended, citizens of Gotham needed a hero, even a dead one. Rises gives them that hero, but Gotham still doesn't trust its people with the truth.