Archive for the Category »movie review «

Jul

When Paramount Pictures released the retro science-fiction adventure film, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, September of 2004, it had been much anticipated since June when it was first intended to hit theatres. Was the delay, due to director, Kerry Conran’s additional tweaking of this virtually total CGI movie, worth it? You bet your MAC IIci it was!

Sky Captain was a debut not only for its director. It was also the first motion picture done entirely with no sets, locations or props. The actors were real but everything from 1930-style city scapes to exploding zeppelins and flying robots were digitally rendered. “A lot of filmmakers would find it limiting, but I find it strangely liberating,” said Conran in an interview with Frank Rose in Wired Magazine. Actor, Gwyneth Paltrow, however had another take on working in the computerized blue-screen void: “You get a little nuts in that blue,” said Paltrow. “I started to feel like, if I ever see this color again, I’m going to kill myself.”

Conran had set out a decade ago to make a black an

skycaptain03 Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

d white movie set in the 1930s about a mad scientist and his robot army. When no studio offered the novice the $100 million to re-create the era, Conran turned to computer generated imagery to provide him his richly imagined world. This ironically gave Conran the liberty to create his imagined world just in the way he wanted, which included a clever mixture of obvious animation with sharp realism; multi-textured imagery, creations of realistic fantasy and the use of “brushing”, superimposed images, imaginative angles and muting in mostly sepia-toned settings. Packing every frame with a terraced layering of visual details rivalled only by Ridley Scott’s visual masterpieces (e.g., Bladerunner, Alien) Conran’s film is worth watching several times just to study the details within the rich expanse of its sweeping tapestries.

“Drawing from a well of pulp fiction, film noir and comic book imagery ? not to mention influences from the Wizard of Oz and Metropolis” (Allison Benedikt, Chicago Tribune), Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a stylish and elegant film with a genuine mood and look of a 1930s motion picture. Gwyneth Paltrow plays Polly Perkins, a gutsy reporter who discovers that the world’s scientists are disappearing. After witnessing a giant robot invasion, in which Sky Captain, the mercenary hero-for-hire (Joe Sullivan, played by Jude Law), is called in to help fight, Polly seeks him out to help her solve the mystery. Undaunted by his sour reception, Polly strikes a bargain with Joe and they form a shaky alliance based on mutual distru

skycaptain04 Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

st and peppered with good wordplay.

Polly’s obsession over getting her front-page story ? and the ultimate photograph ? plays counterpoint with her vulnerable attraction to Joe. He is a much maligned mercenary with a just heart and a weak stomach beneath his tough bravado. We learn very soon into the story that the strong-willed nosy reporter shares a history with the legendary swashbuckling Sky Captain, and that they’d parted some time ago on rather ill, if not dubious, terms. Sky Captain’s cool bluster and nasty insults barely mask his weakness for the lady, making us wonder what happened between these two earlier to make their coffee bitter-sweet.

Polly and Joe’s search for a mysterious scientist, who formed a secret organization outside Berlin called Unit Eleven and thought to be behind the machine armies, leads them across the globe to exotic locales from the stormy Himalaya mountains of Nepal to Dr. Totenkopf’s tropical island in the middle of the Pacific.

Conran rendered his 1930’s mood with relentless consistency in everything from his authentic sets in sepia-tones to casting the most appropriate actors. The actors who played the principal characters looked like they’d come from that time period. Conran went so far as to resserect an actor from that era, the late Sir Laurence Olivier, to play Dr. Totenkopf (German for ‘d

skycaptain05 Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

eadhead’). He achieved this by using CGI-manipulated archive footage of Olivier.

Conran keeps the actual plot fairly simple, which lets him ensnare the movie-watcher into his mesmorizing alternate universe. For instance, watching a zeppelin dock atop a New York sky scraper at night transported me to a place that might have existed but never did. It was like entering another dimension. When the flying robots first appeared in the New York evening sky, looking like one of my old alien-attack nightmares, I felt a kind of déjà vu with all the old 1950s SF movies. I kept feeling like I’d slipped through some crack between time into an alternate universe where all the inventions that didn’t take here actually worked. It was as though I was trapped in a dream where history had rewritten itself. This strangely enticing mixture of famili

skycaptain01 Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

ar with the unfamiliar is a common device of retro-fiction, sometimes called “recursive fiction” that has become quite popular. Examples include, among many, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy and Jasper Fforde’s Tuesday Next series. The recent film, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is another example.

I also didn’t mind Conran’s replete use of old SF clichés like a scientist’s Frankensteinesque laboratory, ray guns, metal-rivetted robots, or even a tongue-in-cheek reference to a come-on gesture made famous in the Matrix. The reason I didn’t mind was that he wasn’t just borrowing these, he integrated them into his retro fantasy and turned them on their sides. It also didn’t matter that some of the concepts didn’t make sense in the physics of our world. An example is the British Royal Navy’s mobile air strip. When Sky Captain’s shark-tooth painted plane runs out of gas over the middle of the ocean, he lands it on an incredible airborne landing strip run by Frankie (Angelina Jolie) of the Royal Navy, a no-nonsense girl of erect stature, sporting a patch ov

skycaptain06 Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

er one eye, and who turns out to be Polly’s former rival for Joe’s affections.

From its first spectacular zeppelin scene to its last, Sky Captain races with non-stop action, punctuated only by frequent comic relief. The adrenalin surging airborn chase through the streets of New York city combined high tension with taught humor through characters’ witty banter ? something North American movie goers have come to expect in action movies. Paltrow’s and Law’s sometimes clever and amusing bickering lies much in the vein of legendary actors of that era such as Hepburn and Tracy or Bogart and Bacall and of a more current ‘scoundrel’ and his lady, Han Solo and Leia Organa in Star Wars.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow entertains in ways classic motion picture was intended since its inception. Conran delivers a full meal of action-adventure, spiced with a strong salsa of character repartee. The ending is spectacular, moving and humerous at the same time. A feat not easily achievable in films today.

Sky Captain has drawn incredibly mixed reviews, from: it “never exceeds the level of a clever exercise” (Carla Hall, San Francicso Chronicle) and has “no emotional centre” (Sarah Chauncey, Reel.com) to it is “a dazzling and groundbreaking film … the most fun you’ll have at the movies this year.” (Jeffrey Brunner, des Moines Register). This dichotomy of opinion is understandable because no film can be all things to all people. However, I strongly disagree with critics who pan Sky Captain as shallow and boring. I believe that this action-adventure delivers exactly what it was designed to deliver: a visually impressive and entertaining story.

Summing up both ends of the critical spectrum, Stephen Holden (The New York Times) says it best: “When Sky Captain remembers that storytelling and characters matter more than design and special effects, it charms as well as impresses.”

Well, it’s been out on DVD for a while, so go pick it up and tell me differently.

Share and Enjoy:

Category: Angelina Jolie, CGI, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, movie review, movies, recursive fiction, retro-fiction, review, science fiction 5 Comments

May

Aeon Flux: Motion Picture & Animation–Review

Nina Munteanu

When I was first tantalized by the high-speed trailor for the 2005 Paramount motion picture, Aeon Flux, directed by Karyn Kusama (Girlfight), I was blissfully unaware of its history: that it was based on the darkly irreverant and raunchy 1995 MTV Liquid Television animated SF series created by Korean American animator, Peter Chung. The series achieved cult status among a select audience of imsoniacs (it played at midnight on MTV, if that tells you anything). This may have worked in my favour. I had no expectations or preconceptions, except for a hair-flying ride. As a result, when the content (written by Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay) had merit as social commentary, I counted it as a bonus.

In typical dystopian fashion, we join t

Aeonfluxdvd Aeon Flux: Motion Picture & Animation Review

he Aeon Flux story roughly four hundred years after an industrial-related virus has killed 99% of the world’s population. Scientist, Trevor Goodchild (Marton Csokas) has developed a cure and the Goodchild dynasty secures a home for the five million survivors in the last city on Earth, Bregna, a paradise walled off from the unrestrained wilderness that ever-threatens them. Dystopias, like Bregna, often appear utopian on the surface, exhibiting a world free of poverty, hardship and conflict, but with some fatal flaw at their core. Built from scientific premise and intended only as a temporary measure, the technocratic society of Bregna continues long after its intended span as the Goodchilds attempt to deal with an internal and enduring glitch (infertility) of the “cure”. Like most imposed provisional governments, this one’s solution to a problem (cloning) has created yet another problem (fugitive memories from the previous clone’s life).

It is now 2415 and the walled society of Bregna appears utopian—clean and organized, beautiful, rich and spatious; but beneath the laughter and contentment, stirs an uneasy disquiet. Bregnans are losing sleep, having bad dreams, and are plagued by memories that don’t belong to them. Rebels challenge the Goodchild regime, run by Trevor and his brother Oren, and among the rebels is a highly competent and ruthless assassin, Aeon Flux (Charlize Theron), whose tools include whistle-controlled ball-bearing bombs, drugs that allow her to meet people on higher planes of existence, and interchangeable eyeballs. She is aptly named, as she serves a true agent of discord to Goodchild, the guardian of order and all that he naïvely believes is good.

“Some call Bregna the perfect society,” Aeon tells us in the opening scenes of the motion picture, “Some call it the height of human civilization…but others know better…We are haunted by sorrows we cannot name. People disappear and our government denies these crimes…But there are rebels who…fight for the disappeared. They call themselves the Monicans. I am one of them.” Several critics disliked the narrative introduction. I found that it particularly worked, by adding a reflective literary quality to the motion picture. It is noteworthy that in the original animated series, Trevor Goodchild often frames each episode with his reflections; only fitting that Aeon gets her chance in the film version. The reflective narrative of

aeon flux 03 Aeon Flux: Motion Picture & Animation Review

the motion picture is meant to enlighten its audience that this is not your ordinary action thriller. What follows is a fast-paced yet thoughtful story, with elements of romance, that explores notions of longevity, social structure and connection, faith and greed to a satisfying end.

Twitchfilm.net aptly called the motion picture “biological science fiction”. Says Oren, Trevor’s treacherous brother who betrays him: “We’ve beaten death. We’ve beaten nature.” The film’s clean organic high-tech look faithfully captures the “sense of biotech gone wild” of the TV series by exploring several paradigms inherent in a society that lives deliberately in the absense of nature’s chaos. Indeed, the lack of connectivity resonates throughout the motion picture in its exploration of friendship, family, loyalty, and purpose. When her sister is murdered in the beginning of the film supposedly by Trevor’s men (but in actuality by his scheming brother, Oren), Aeon’s mission becomes personal: “I had a family once. I had a life; now all I have is a mission.”

The film truly launches into stylish action and intrigue when Aeon gladly accepts a mission to assassinate Trevor, thinking that this violent act will make it all better. Instead, it unravels her, beginning with when she confronts him; finding him uncomfortably familiar and alluring, she

aeon flux 04 Aeon Flux: Motion Picture & Animation Review

hesitates and decides not to kill him. “What do you want?” Trevor asks her. “I want my sister back. I want to remember what it’s like to be a person.” It is indeed he—or rather what he knows—that holds the key to who she is. The key is that she, like he and all those in Bregna, is a 400 year-old copy of someone before the virus. Four hundred years ago she was the original Trevor’s wife.

Filmed in Berlin, the movie is visually stunning, from the opening shot on the steps of Sans Souci to the labrinthine wind canal used by the Nazis. Displaying an eclectic mixture of spareness and mid-century design the film is acted out in a fluid dance to Graeme Revell’s (Sin City) haunting score. The action is rivetting and seamless with both plot and underlying theme of bio-tech gone awry. Early on we are treated to a thrilling sequence of Aeon and her biotech-altered rebel colleague negotiating the security of Goodchild’s sanctuary that consists of a beautiful but deadly garden, guarded by patches of knife-sharp blades of grass and poison dart-spitting fruit trees.

Aeon champions moral ethics and single-handedly destroys the relicor, the supposetory of the clone DNA, pursuing honour at the expense of loyalty (to Goodchild) and heralding in a new age of “mortality”. The movie ends as it begins, with Aeon’s narrative: “Now we can move forward. To live once for real and then give way to people who might do it better…to live only once but with hope.” This is truly what Aeon Flux represents and what her very name embodies.

The term Aeon comes from the Gnostic notion of “Aeons” as emanations of God. Aeon also means an immeasurably long period of time; the Suntelia Aeon in Greek mythos symbolizes the catastrophic end of one age and the beginning of a new one. This is apt for our heroine, who, at least in the movie version, pretty well single-handedly destroys an old corrupt world, and heralds in a new age. Aeon was “emanated” back after four hundred years by the gentle oracular Keeper of the relicor, whose original version saved her DNA and kept it hidden and safe until the right moment.

Fans of Peter Chung’s baroquely violent animated Aeon Flux will recognize some similarities between Kusama’s 2005 film adaptation and the original MTV cartoon. While admitting that the motion picture version was only based on Peter Chung’s characters (check the credits), Karyn K

Aeondvd2 Aeon Flux: Motion Picture & Animation Review

usama intended to “honor [the cartoon version’s] wierdness in spirit and…pay homage to its esoteric boldness and…strange energy.” Homages to the animated series include: Aeon’s signature fly-catching with her eyelashes, demonstrating a woman extremely in tune with her body; Monican anarchists (though in the film they are subversives within Bregna rather than from an adjacent society); a virus that kills off most of the population and assassination attempt on Goodchild (Pilot); the harness worn on the torso that transports the wearer to another dimension (Utopia or Deuteranopia?); passing secret messages through a french kiss (Gravity); issues of cloning and two colleagues crossing a weaponized no-man’s land together (A Last Time for Everything). Original and movie adaptation also share at their core the exploration of the consequences and ambiguities of choices in life and the role that nature plays, subversive or otherwise.

Although they share recognizable motifs and characters, the 2005 movie adaptation contrasts in some important ways from the six 5-minute shorts of 1991 and 10 half-hour episode TV series that aired in 1995. Chung’s avante garde series is set mostly in a surrealistic dark future Earth (presumably) where two communities, Bregna and Monica, are juxtaposed but separated by a wall (not unlike East and West Berlin). Bregna is a centralized scientific-planned society and Monica is Bregna’s ‘evil twin’, an anarchistic society. Chung’s innovative use of “camera angles” reminiscient of cinematography, together with a spare, graphic choreography, portrays a sprawling Orwellian industrial world. Peo

aeonflux05 Aeon Flux: Motion Picture & Animation Review

pled with mutant creatures, clones, and robots, it features disturbing images of dismemberment, mutilation, violent deaths and human experimentation as Chung explores post-modern notions of cloning, mind and body manipulation, and evolution through a series of subversive aggressively non-narrative pieces. On the subject of his cloning experiments (A Last Time for Everything) Goodchild says to Aeon: “My work offends you. Why? Human beings aren’t so unique, just a random arrangement of amino acids.” To which Aeon retorts, “These people you’re copying are already superfluous. You’re trafficking in excess.”

The title character in the animated version is a tall, scantily-clad anarchist (featuring the sultry voice of Denise Poirier) skilled in assassination and acrobatics, who infiltrates technocratic Bregna from the neighbouring revolutionary society of Monica. As with the movie character (elegantly portrayed by Theron), the animated Aeon is a stylish dance; completely in tune with her body. Says Chung of his creation: “The way she’s dressed, the way she looks, the way she moves was tailored to seduce the viewer to watch more, even though they may not understand at every moment what was happening.” Despite their similar intelligence, physicality and drive, the two Aeons depart as characters. For instance, one of the major differences between original animation and adapted film is the ongoing relationship between Aeon and her nemesis/lover, Trevor Goodchild (John Rafter Lee). The sexual and intellectual tension between Flux and Goodchild is far more palpable in the TV series and does not explain itself or resolve itself like it does in the movie. The opening of the animated series describes their odd relationship, which suggests that their destinies are bound together: Aeon: “You’re out of control.” Trevor: “I take control. Who’s side are you on?” Aeon: “I take no side.” Trevor: “You’re skating the edge.” Aeon: “I am the edge.” Trevor: “What you truly want only I can give.” Aeon: “You can’t give it, you can’t even buy it and you just don’t get it.”

The Gnostic “Aeons”, emanations of God, come in male/female pairs (aptly represented by Flux and Goodchild). As with the Gnostic “Aeon pairs”, Flux and Goodchild make up inseperable parts, the yin/yang (complementary opposites) of a whole, and represent the paraxical oxymoron of chaos in order. Long-limbed and continually in fluid motion, Flux dances through Goodchild’s rigid scientific world of order with an ease that stirs both his fascination and his fury. He, in turn, enthralls her and ensnares her with his intellectual hubris. The Gnostic “Aeon” male/female pair (called syzygies) of Caen (Power) and Akhana (e.g., Love) closely parallel Goodchild and Flux as they flirt with each other in a complex dance of power and love. Their attraction/antagonism mimics the characterizations of Eris (Greek goddess of discord) and Greyface (a man who taught that life is serious and play is a sin) in the Discordian mythos. Like Eris and her golden apple, Aeon Flux stirs up trouble for Goodchild’s complacent technocratic regime, constantly challenging his hubristic notions of human evolution, perfection an

aeon flux06 Aeon Flux: Motion Picture & Animation Review

d even love.

The cartoon Aeon Flux—and Trevor Goodchild, for that matter—are also far more compelling than those depicted in the movie. Headstrong, foolish and selfish but also dedicated and deeply compassionate and honourable, Chung’s Aeon Flux is a paradox. She scintilates with passionate self-defined notions against an industrial tyranny, while nurturing a naïve desire for personal love; the target of both being found in one man, Trevor Goodchild. Often cruel at times, she shows moments of selfless consideration, compassion and humour. Despite her violence, perverted fetishes and lustful obsessions, she is as appealing as she is strange; a discordant rock tune, which often enough hits a resonating note that draws out one’s interest and captures one’s empathy. In contrast to the super-hero competence and aloofness of the two-dimensional movie Aeon, the animated Aeon is wonderfully flawed; she is a complex paradoxical character, who makes mistakes, blundering often due to over-confidence and poor decisions (usually connected with her feelings for Trevor). Chung’s Goodchild is equally complex, and is, unlike the naïve feckless scientist of the movie, a true equal to Flux’s energetic and often misplaced heroics. Kusama’s Goodchild is neither menacing nor diabolical; rather, he is a well-intentioned and watered-down version of the Machiavelian scientist that Chung created. And, though quite appealing, he is also uncompelling as a result. Chung’s Goodchild is a visionary pedant, who often spouts twisted Orwellian diatribe: “That which does not kill us makes us stranger.” “The unobserved state is a fog of probabilities…” “There can be no justice without truth. But what is truth? Tell me, if you know, and I will not believe you.” Flux cuts through Goodchild’s dogma with her own one-liners—“Trevor, don’t trouble me with your thin smile”—and usually shuts him up with either a smack or a kiss.

The animated series is far more gritty and edgy than the movie version, featuring twisted eroticism and dark humor amid scenes of graphic violence. It oozes with a delicious perversity that the movie version abandoned in favour of cohesive narrative (and a PG-13 rating). Showing a healthy and irreverent disregard for that very narrative continuity, Chung’s animated series successfully makes commentary on various societal notions and behaviours through his uniquely disjointed and liberating form. Chung asserts that this plot ambiguity and disregard for continuity were meant to satirize mainstream film narratives. I think it does far more than this as art form, by providing a journalistic style of reporting the nuances and filigrees of life that gives it an immediacy hard to overlook. Chung’s apparent intention was to emphasize the futility of violence and the ambiguity of personal morality. This is best shown in his six 5-minute shorts and pilot, created in 1991. The shorts commonly featured a violent death for the title character, sometimes caused by fate, but more often due to her own incompetence.

The TV Aeon Flux flows like a subversive movement; punctuated by a series of abstract, often garrish, statements on various themes of souless biotechnology. Each episode is a vignette that explores singular questions of integrity, honour, loyalty, belief and love using the clever platform of the kiss/kill dynamic of Aeon and Trevor. Their interactions scintilate with clever wordplay, often amid physical-play that usually involves a pointed weapon: Aeon: “You’re psychotic. You no longer have a common conscience with your fellow man.” Trevor: “I understand the will of evil…[it] is like an iron in a forge…conscience is the fire.” Aeon: “you’ve lost the substance by grasping at the shadow.” The underlying question of connectivity and what it is to be human filter through his discordant series primarily through the twining of his two main characters, both loners with little connection to anything except to one another (which they both seek and abhor). The motion picture version pursues through a more st

aeon flux 02 Aeon Flux: Motion Picture & Animation Review

ructured and lengthy narrative, the same theme of connectivity (with nature, with others of our society, with family, and our beliefs) and the consequence of living a life with out meaning, though on a far more simple level. At the end of Kusama’s movie, Aeon challenges Trevor’s assertion that cloning is their only answer for survival: “We’re meant to die. That’s what makes anything about us matter…[otherwise] we’re ghosts.” In contrast, at the end of Chung’s episode, Reraizure, Trevor closes with these words of reflection: “We are not what we remember of ourselves. We can undo only what others have already forgotten. Learn from your mistakes so that one day you can repeat them precisely.”

Kusama’s film version chose narrative coherence to make its statements by sacrificing character for story and challenging its audience cerebrally. Chung’s cartoon version challenges us more deeply, at a visceral level, through the interplay of his characters where cohesive narrative doesn’t matter. In the final analysis, the motion picture version pursues the same questions posed by Chung’s original animated version. Only, Chung isn’t so eager to provide answers, leaving both interpretation and conclusions to the individual. Both versions are mind-provoking and a celebration of excellent art. While the film’s moralistic tale resonated and lingered like a muse’s long forgotten poem, the subversive kick of the comic series (which I thankfully saw later) struck deep chords and left me breathless with questions.

Share and Enjoy:

Category: Aeon Flux, Berlin, Karyn Kusama, Peter Chung, movie review, review 6 Comments

Feb

Critique of the Motion Picture "Contact"

Nina Munteanu

The opening sequence of Contact tells the entire story… It is both spectacular and humbling at the same time as we begin with a view of Earth gleaming in a sunrise. An almost frantic jumble of broadcasts— news, TV shows, music—assail our ears. As we pull back from Earth and pass the outer planets, we hear older broadcasts… disco…Kennedy… the Beatles… Hitler…then ultimately the unintelligible static of all the radio stations on Earth. Then, as we leave the solar system, passing breathtaking nebulae, the sounds give way to silence. A dead silence, as we continue to pull back out of the galaxy and out of the local group of galaxies into the quiet depth of our vast universe. “It’s enough to make you feel tiny and insignificant and alone,” says Maryann Johanson of FlickFilosopher.com. “Which is precisely the feeling it’s meant to evoke.” From that vastness, we are brought back to our own “mundane” existence within it as the universe transforms into a dark reflection in the protagonist’s eye.

With a powerful entrance like that, it is hard to imagine that this 1997 movie directed by Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump) and based on the novel by Carl Sagan, received very mixed reviews by critics. Cindy Fuchs of the Philadelphia City Paper called it “far more mundane than its aspirations to cosmic insights might have produced.” Kevin N. Laforest with the Montreal Film Journal said, “Contact is not a bad film, but I can’t say it’s all that good either.” Even TVGuide.com rated it a two out of four: “It’s really about [Jodie] Foster, and with her lips pressed tightly together and her hair carelessly shoved behind her ears, she’s utterly convincing as a researcher who’s subverted everything to a life of the mind. Unfortunately that adds up to a rather remote protagonist and Ellie is surrounded by a supporting cast of one-dimensional types…far too cold-blooded for summer audiences.” This is ironic, considering that the advertizing pitch calls Contact “a journey to the heart of the universe.” Finally, Christopher Null (Filmcritic.com) recommended it for its looks but not highly. Said Null: “Carl Sagan’s ode to the superior intelligence of aliens (and how us darned humans mess everything up) is consistently beautiful and interesting, but it never makes a point (except for that bit about the darned humans). Well, Mr. Null, I think you’ve missed the point, as have some of the critics I have just quoted. Contact—and its somewhat tortured protagonist—demonstrates much in the way of “heart” and in doing so, makes a compelling story. Hearts beat deeply inside us, and this movie is no different; its “heart” runs deep, deep beneath the surface rhetoric that seems to have distracted several critics who likely prefer to take a shallow sip of their coffee steaming hot than wait and savor the rich flavor of a dark blend in a deep swallow. Perhaps I’m too harsh, you say. Well, hear me out. Here’s my argument:

First of all, for those of you who have not yet seen this 1997 motion picture by Time Warner, Contact examines the moral, social and religious implications of our first contact with extraterrestrial intelligence through the personal journey of astronomer, Eleanor (Ellie) Arroway (played impeccably and sensitively by Jodie Foster). Never knowing her mother (who died at child birth) and having lost her father when she was ten, Ellie grows into a strong-willed scientist who dedicates her life to finding alien life in the universe by foregoing a career at Harvard to join a SETI Observatory in the Puerto Rico jungle. In an earlier scene with her father, she asks the question we have all pondered at least once: “Do you think there are people on other planets?” to which her father blithely answers, “if it’s just us, seems like an awful lot of wasted space,” a simple argument that appeals to the young logically-minded Ellie and one that will dominate the perseverance of her adult life in her resolute search for life in the universe.

And persevere Ellie must, because nothing comes easy for her. Shortly after she settles at the SETI Observatory her teacher (and nemesis) David Drumlin (Tom Skerritt) pays her a visit with implied threats of shutting the place down. Ellie also meets Palmer Joss (Mathew McConaughey), a man of faith, who is writing a book about the effects of science and technology on the third world. Although she is attracted to him, alarm bells go off in Ellie, who feels threatened by his faith (something she does not outwardly understand yet clings to in another form). Wanting to see him again, she introduces him to the man he wants to interview: Drumlin. And one of the most poignant conversations follows:

When Ellie challenges Drumlin’s apparent wish to do away with all pure research, he responds with, “What’s wrong with science being practical, even profitable? Nothing—”
Palmer cuts in, “—As long as your motive is the search for truth, which is exactly what the pursuit of science is.” Drumlin counters peevishly, “Well, that’s an interesting position coming from a man who crusades against the evils of technology.” To which Palmer responds, “I’m not against technology; I’m against the men who deify it at the expense of human truth.”

Palmer and Ellie collide from two different worlds and despite their differences, they are profoundly attracted to one another. But as quickly as she falls for Palmer, she recoils from him.

Nothing comes easy for Ellie: “small moves, Ellie,” her father is accustomed to telling her, “small moves…” Shortly after she and her colleagues have been shut down by Drumlin and have set up anew (thanks to eccentric billionaire entrepreneur, S.R. Hadden, played by John Hurt), Drumlin and others shut them down yet again. But, as though a greater force intervenes, this is when Ellie makes her momentous discovery and intercepts an alien message from Vega, a young star still surrounded by a proto-planetary cloud of debris about 27 light years away from us. The scene is scientifically plausible and elegantly powerful— it gave my husband goose-bumps (even the second time watching!)—as we witness the drama of this phenomenal discovery unfold in a frisson of action. Zemeckis wisely shows us exactly how such an event would really play out. And Sagan didn’t pick Vega out of whimsy: a sphere sixty light years thick of radio communication radiates from Earth from our radio and TV broadcasts. These signals may be captured by alien technology and sent back as a “message”. In theory, such a signal could be received on Earth anytime after 1990, the round trip time for a light or radio signal to travel to Vega and back from the first global signal, which in itself is momentous and telling. In another spine-tingling scene, the scientists who have descended upon Ellie decipher the arcane harmonics of the “message” as the broadcast of the opening ceremony of the Berlin Olympics in 1936 (the first truly global TV broadcast made) over which Hitler presided. In fact, in another stroke of irony, the now infamous swastika is the first icon they decipher. Later still, they discover embedded instructions to build a machine that appears made to take a human on an extra-galactic trip.

At the same time that Ellie intercepts this message, Palmer Joss experiences a meteoric rise to stardom with his bestselling book, Losing Faith: the Search for Meaning in the Age of Reason (which could well have been the alternate title for the film; it certainly describes the subtext of the story and the major thematic element: Faith & Meaning). In an interview with a prominent news show host, Palmer asks the question that most of us have avoided: “The question that I’m asking is this: are we happier? Is the world fundamentally a better place because of science and technology?…We shop at home, we search the web—at the same time we feel emptier, lonelier, and more cut off from each other than any other time in human history…We have meaningless jobs, we take frantic vacations [and] trips to the mall to buy more things to fill these holes in our lives.” Ironically, Palmer touches a similar nerve in Ellie when he brings up her dead parents: “It must have been hard… being alone…” insinuating that her fanatical search for intelligent alien life may simply be filling a hole in her heart. She flees Palmer shortly after, fearing his revealing intimacy. When they next meet, years later, they fall naturally into their familiar banter and she turns the table to challenge his faith in the same way: “What if science simply revealed that [God] never existed in the first place?” She then evokes Occam’s Razor, which says that “…all things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the right one…what’s more likely? An all powerful mysterious God [who] created the universe then decided not to give us proof of his existence or that he simply doesn’t exist at all and we created him so we wouldn’t have to feel so small and alone?” Both of them are saved from an answer by the intrusive rings of their cell phones.

Ironically again, it is Ellie’s lack of belief in God that causes her to be overlooked for the momentous journey in the alien craft, in favor of the crafty Drumlin with the oily smile. Unfortunately, a religious zealot sabotages the mission and Drumlin, along with the whole alien craft and construct, are blown up in a spectacular explosion at NASA’s Cape Canaveral. Ellie gets her chance after all when they build a second one. Her journey in the alien space craft, which we are later told takes up eighteen hours of her time but passes instantaneously on Earth (to the point where they all think nothing actually happened), is truly epic and elegantly portrayed. Her encounter with the aliens is also in keeping with the plot and imagery of the story. One of the most poignant scenes in the movie is the one where Ellie is introduced to the incredible and indescribable beauty of the vast Universe. It is at this point that she experiences her epiphany: science is not the sole purveyor of truth in the Universe. As she gazes at the splendor revealed before her, she acknowledges that the language of science is unable to express the sheer magnitude of the breathtaking scene. Grasping at something to say, she blusters with a scientific term then finally gasps, “No words…to describe it…they should have sent a poet…”
Upon her return, Ellie is challenged by skeptics who think she suffered a giant delusion (remember that on Earth, no time had passed during her supposed eighteen-hour voyage). Ellie offers up a strained scientific explanation (e.g., wormhole travel through space-time also called Einstein-Rosen bridges) which is challenged by National Security Advisor, Michael Kitz (James Woods) as only theory, and must finally resort to her faith; one she selflessly offers to the world: “I… had an experience. I can’t prove it, I can’t even explain it, but everything that I know as a human being, everything that I am tells me that it was real. I was given something wonderful, something that changed me forever. A vision of the universe, that tells us undeniably, how tiny, and insignificant and how… rare, and precious we all are. A vision that tells us that we belong to something that is greater than ourselves, that we are not, that none of us are alone.”

Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat of Spirituality Practice said it best: “Robert Zemeckis has fashioned a truly awesome movie that celebrates the spiritual practices of listening, wonder, love, and zeal. It affirms that there are times and places where reason must yield to mystery.”

The SETI Institute, who currently conduct the search for alien life, have a website dedicated to the move: http://www.seti-Inst.edu/phoenix/contact.html.

Share and Enjoy:

Category: Contact, Jodi Foster, aliens, motion picture, movie review, movies, science fiction, space 12 Comments

Jan

Review of “Solaris”—Book & Motion Picture

Nina Munteanu

Steven Soderbergh’s stylish psychological thriller, released November 2002 in the United States by 20th Century Fox , eloquently captures the theme of Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 book. Written almost fifty years ago, “Solaris” is an intelligent, introspective drama of great depth and imagination that meditates on man’s place in the universe and the mystery of God.

Soderbergh’s “Solaris” is a poem to Lem’s prose. Both explore the universe around us and the universe within. Not particularly palatable to North America’s multiplex crowd, eager for easily accessed answers, “Solaris” will appeal more to those with a more esoteric appreciation for art.
When I saw the 2002 20th Century Fox remake of “Solaris” (released on DVD soon after), I was blissfully unaware of its legendary history. I say blissfully because I harbored no pre-conceived notions or expectations and therefore I was struck like a child viewing the Northern Lights for the first time. The stylish, evocative and dream-like imagery flowed to a surrealistic soundtrack by Cliff Martinez like the colors of a Salvadore Dali painting.

It was only later that I discovered that Russian experimental director, Andrei Tarkovsky, had previously filmed “Solaris” in 1972 based on Stanislaw Len’s masterful 1961 book of the same n

solaris06 Review of “Solaris”—Book & Motion Picture

ame. Reprinted by Harcourt, Inc. with a new cover featuring a sensual image from the 2002 film, the original book was translated in 1970 from the French version by Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox for Faber and Faber Ltd.

Written almost fifty years ago, “Solaris” is a dark psychological drama. Soderbergh faithfully captures the intellectual yet sensual essense of Lem’s book by tempering the language and movements. Featuring a fluid and haunting soundtrack, his film flows like a choregraphed ballet. There is a dream-like quality to the film that is enhanced by creative use of camera angles, unusual lighting, tones and contrast, and sparse language. “Solaris” is not an action film (no one gets shot, at least not on stage), yet the tension surges and builds to its irrevocable conclusion from frame to frame like a slow motion Tai Chi form.

In response to his friend’s plea, a depressed psychologist with the ironic name of Kris Kelvin (played with quiet depth by George Clooney), sets out on a mission to bring home the disfunctional crew of a research space station orbitting the distant planet, Solaris. Kelvin arrives at the space station, Prometheus, to find his friend, Gibarian, dead (by suicide) and a paranoid and disturbed crew, who are obviously withholding a terrible secret from him. It is not long before he learns the secret first hand: some unknown power (apparently the planet itself) taps into his mind and produces a solid corporeal version of his tortured longing: his beloved wife, Rheya (played sensitively by Natascha McElhone) who’d committed suicide years ago. Faced with a solid reminder, Kelvin yearns to reconcile with his guilt in his wife’s death and struggles to understand the alien force manifested in the form of his wife. He learns that the other crew are equally influenced by Solaris and have been grappling, each in their own way, with their “demons,” psychologically trapping them there.

Ironically, our hero’s epic journey of great distance has only led him back to himself. The alien force defies Kelvin’s efforts to understand its motives; whether it is benign, hostile, or even sentient. Kelvin has no common frame of reference to judge and therefore to react. This leaves him with what he thinks he does understand: that Rheya is a product of his own mind, his memories of her, and therefore a mirror of his deepest guilt ? but perhaps also an opportunity to redeem himself.

Lem packs each page of his slim 204 page book with a wealth of intellectual introspection. Through first person narrative, he intimately unveils the complicated influence of this arcane force on Kelvin. Lem explains it this way: “I wanted to create a vision of a human encounter with something that certainly exists, in a mighty manner perhaps, but cannot be reduced to human concepts, ideas or images.”

Such an incomprehensible entity would serve as a giant mirror for our own motives, yearnings and versions of reality. For me the contrast presented by such an arcane alien force emphatically — but also ironically — defines what it is to be human. It is only when faced with what we are not that we discover what we are. Later in the book, Kelvin cynically observes: “Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labrynth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.” In the film Gibarian sadly proclaims of the Solaris mission: “We don’t want other worlds – we want mirrors.”

Lem’s existentialist leaning is provided throughout the book and even alluded to in the name he chose for the space station: Prometheus. In Greek mythology, Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humankind for which Zeus chained him to a rock and sent an eagle to eat his liver (which grew back daily). It is interesting that Soderbergh chose to send Prometheus to a fiery crash and named Kelvin’s dead wife, Rheya, after the Greek goddess, mother of Zeus and all Olympian gods. In a late passage of Lem’s book, a devastated and sorrowful Kelvin formulates a personal theory of an imperfect god, “a god who has created clocks, but not the time they measure . . . a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose ? a god who simply is.”

Soderbergh addresses Lem’s existential vision with several brief but pivotal scenes. One occurs when Kelvin’s dead friend, Gibarian, returns to him in a dream on Prometheus and responds to Kelvin’s question, “What does Solaris want?” with: “Why do you think it has to want something?” Another scene occurs as a flashback to a dinner on Earth, when the real Rheya, prior to her suicide, argues with both Gibarian and her own husband about the existence of an all-knowing purposeful God, which both men argue is a myth made up by humankind: to Kelvin’s suggestion that “the whole idea of God was dreamed up by man,” Rheya insists that she’s “talking about a higher form of intelligence,” to which Gibarian cuts in with: “No, you’re talking about a man in a white beard again. You are ascribing human characteristics to something that isn’t.” Kelvin fuels it with: “we’re a mathematical probability,” which prompts Rheya’s challenge: “how do you explain that out of the billions of creatures on this planet we’re the only ones conscious of our immortality?” Neither man has an answer. Gibarian later commits suicide on Solaris rather than deal with the manifestation of his conscience. And I can’t help but wonder if the underlying reason for his inability to reconcile with his “demon” is because he was unequipped to, given his nihilistic beliefs.

Gibarian also tells Kelvin (and we must remember that all this is Kelvin really saying this to himself through his memory of the character): “There are no answers, only choices.” It is interesting then that the first pivotal choice in the story is made by the doppelganger Rheya (also a manifestation of Solaris but a mirror of Kelvin’s own mind) and it is a choice made out of love: to be annihilated, rather then serve as an instrument of this unknown alien power to study the man she loves.

Some critics have called Soderbergh’s “Solaris” pretentious, boring and devoid of action and intimacy. I strongly disagree. It is simply that, as with Lem’s original story, Soderbergh’s “Solaris” does not surrender its messages easily. The viewer, as with the reader, must intuitively feel his or her way through the fluid poetry, free to interpret and ponder the questions. This is what I think good art should do. And I feel both the original book and Soderbergh’s movie do this with enthralling brilliance.

Where Soderbergh and Lem depart lies more in each artist’s personal vision and belief. We are defined by the questions we ask and Lem asks a great deal of questions. Whether the forces that drive our universe are best defined by current science and the mind as random without purpose or as the manifestation of arcane motive more readily known through spirituality and the heart is largely a matter of belief.

Reviewer, Rick Kisonak, asserted that Lem’s “novel is an icy meditation on man’s place in the universe and the mystery of God. It poses countless metaphysical questions and makes a point of answering none of them. In Soderbergh’s hands, however, ‘Solaris’ becomes a celebration of romantic love, which culminates in the revelation of a caring, forgiving creator. At the end of his book, Lem writes [Kelvin ponders]: ‘the age-old faith of lovers and poets in the power of love, stronger than death, that finis vitae sed non amoris [life ends but not love] is a lie, useless and not even funny.’ The director ignores the author in favor of just such a poet.” Kisonak is referring here to Rheya’s interest in Dylan Thomas and its reference throughout the movie. Another reviewer, Dennis Morton, goes so far as to suggest that the screenplay of “Solaris” is the first stanza of the poem, which ends with: “…though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion.”

While I agree with some of Kisonak’s reasoning, I think he has missed the point of Lem’s book. If one continues to read from the passage Kisonak quoted above ? as Kris Kelvin transcends from what he “thinks” in his intellect to what he feels and “knows” in his heart, to accept his (and humanity’s) destiny with humble fatalism ? we learn that Lem ends his book in much the same way as Soderbergh’s movie: life ends but not love. The endings are physically different, in keeping with some radical alterations from the book in the movie’s setting (e.g., the original Solaris station is located on the planet and Lem assiduously describes Kelvin’s observations and interactions with the alien ocean; whereas Soderbergh’s crew virtually never leave orbit and the planet remains aloof in the background, reflecting Soderbergh’s focus). Yet, Kris makes the same choice in faith and love in both book and movie (although the choices play out differently).

In matters of faith and love, here is what Kris has to say in the book: “Must I go on living here then, among the objects we both had touched, in the air she had breathed? . . . In the hope of her return? I hoped for nothing. And yet I lived in expectation . . . I did not know what achievements, what mockery, even what tortures still awaited me. I knew nothing, and I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past.” In the end of both movie and book, Kris Kelvin lets go of his fears and lets his spirit rise in wonder at what astonishing things Solaris (and the universe) will offer next.

In the final analysis, both book and movie are incredibly valuable but for different reasons. Soderbergh paints an impressionistic poem, using Kafkaesque brushstrokes on a simpler canvas, to Lem’s complex tapestry of multi-level prose. Lem challenges us far more by refusing to impose his personal views, where Soderbergh lets us glimpse his hopeful vision. I think that both, though, come to the same conclusion about the ethereal, mysterious and eternal nature of love.
On the one hand, love may connect us within a fractal autopoietic network to the infinity of the inner and outer universe, uniting us with God and His purpose in a collaboration of faith. On the other hand, love may empower us to accept our place in a vast unknowable and amoral universe to form an island of hope in a purposeless sea of indifference.

Whether love mends our souls to the fabric of our destiny; enslaves us on an impossible journey of desperate yearning; or seizes us in a strangling embrace of unspeakable terror at what lurks within ? surely, then, love IS God, in all its possible manifestations. This is unquestionably the message that unifies book and movie. And it is one worth proclaiming.

A form of this review was previously published in the Internet Review of Science Fiction Vol I, No. 4 (2004)

Share and Enjoy:

Category: Nina Munteanu, Solaris, Stanislaw Lem, Steven Soderbergh, book review, george clooney, movie review, review, science fiction 12 Comments

Aug

Is James Bond an Altruist?

Nina Munteanu

Now, before you go have a bird and laugh me off the blogosphere, just hear me out…Well, after I tell you what I thought of the latest Bond motion picture, Casino Royale, that is…

This motion picture, directed by Martin Campbell (Goldeneye) created a dichotomy in my family and in my movie-going community: one side was utterly disappointed, even disgusted, and the other side surprisingly impressed. For once, I sided with the critics—many who extoled this latest of Bond films for its refreshing candor, dark edge and gritty realism. I say, for once, because, more often than not, I have taken the opposite side of the majority of critics (see my other reviews here and elsewhere), finding gems where others have found only rock. This time I have good company; except for my own family and friends, that is. It would seem that, although Casino Royale was highly regarded by the critics of the franchise, its long-standing viewing public was not equally impressed. Yes, this was a different Bond movie, which the Mandelbrot fractal designed title opening and title song hinted at: did you listen to the words of the title song?

Of those in the negative camp there appear to be two major reasons for rejecting this lastest version of Bond. One is the Bond character himself (played with edgy grit by tautly coiled Daniel Craig) and how the other characters were portrayed (especially Bond Girl,Vesper Lynd, superbly played by Eva Green but with no revealing cleavage); the second is the lack of Bond clichés, such as the techno-gadgetry, non-stop action, womanizing and comic-book humour. Despite showcasing some of the most mouth-watering chase scenes (particularly the opening chase with parkour [free running] originator, Sebastién Foucan, and Craig doing most of the stunts himself), this Bond film was a more thoughtful one. It was also probably one of the most physically demanding Bond films to play by its lead character. David Edelstein of New York Magazine, describes the director’s “awe for the poetry of human bodies doing things that, evolutionarily speaking, they haven’t needed to do since the saber-toothed tiger died off.”

There are, I think, several reasons for this dichotomy between those of us who loved Casino Royale and those who remained diffident, disappointed or outright disliked it. One of which—and it is I think an important one—is that I have read the entire series, and long before a flashy movie was made using the title (often only using the title!). I grew up with Sean Connery as the quintessential Bond, a roughly handso

me man with striking eyes and a cruel mouth.

In the book version of Casino Royale, Vesper Lynd, after just meeting Bond, admits to Mathis: “He is very good looking…but there is something cold and ruthless in his [mouth]…” Ian Fleming’s Bond is a somber misogynist who initially wants to bed Vesper as if to punish her for not falling for his charm:

Her eyes were wide apart and deep blue and they gazed candidly back at Bond with a touch of ironical disinterest which, to his annoyance, he found he would like to shatter, roughly.

I would not describe Campbell’s Bond as a misogynist, despite tendencies for being a ruthless sociopath with a slightly sadistic sense of humour. After Casino Royale and his experience with one particular woman, he might have turned into one, though…

Daniel Craig and those scintillating radioactive blue eyes brings us back to why we are ultimately fascinated with the character of James Bond. Think for a moment: this man is basically a sociopath, an assassin with a license to kill, dispense violence and torture to protect queen and country—a concept. Well, perhaps not quite a concept. Which brings us to M, Bond’s pithy superior in MI-6 in the British Secret Service. Bond is like a child in many ways, emotionally certainly. David Edelstein of New York Magazine describes Craig’s Bond as: “haunted, not yet housebroken, still figuring out his persona.”

The movie series—and this film in particular—explores this aspect of Bond through his complex relationship with M (played superbly by Dame Judi Dench). M is like a mother to him. His allegiance to queen and country, so prevalent in many of the Bond movies, appears a natural progression of this intuitive search to belong and connect, particularly in his reltionship with M. He breaks into her private house, not for a moment realizing—or capable of caring— what this invasion of privacy means to her. M scolds Bond like he is a child and calls him a “blunt instrument”. Says M: “Any thug can kill. I want you to take your ego out of the equation.” Craig’s Bond is the closest to the original character envisaged by Fleming, who describes Bond’s features as “a taciturn mask, ironical, brutal, and cold.” Carrie Rickey of the Philadelphia

Inquirer describes Craig as “earthy and exotic, holding himself like a smoking gun.”

Thanks to excellent script writing by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Paul Haggis, it is Vesper Lynd in the movie who recognizes that Bond is an orphan, looking for home—though she doesn’t call him on the latter. Bond is a man who doesn’t recognize boundaries, who’s closed off his emotions from the rest of him.

The length to which he protects that inner vulnerable self is evident in his rakish and shallow relationships with women. After Vesper insists on separate rooms at the hotel, Bond says, “Don’t worry. You’re not my type.” To which she tartly quips, “Smart?” And he responds, “Single.” This is more elaborately described in the book:

Bond saw luck as a woman, to be softly wooed or brutally ravaged, never pandered to or pursued…One day, and he accepted the fact, he would be brought to his knees by love or by luck. When that happened he knew that he too would be branded with the deadly question-mark he recognized so often in others, the promise to pay before you have lost; the acceptance of fallibility.

It is so apt that Vesper Lynd is the one to shatter his cool and it is she (in the form of luck and love) who literally brings him to his knees by the last pages of the book with her tragic act of suicide.

Despite a truly chilling villain in Le Chiffre (played by Mads Mikkelsen) and that frightening souless Mister White (keep an eye on him from the first scene; I think he will resurface in Bond 22), it is not the villains in Casino Royale who place equal footing with Bond; it is the two women in his life. I found atypical “Bond Girl” Vesper Lynd (his alluring and mysterious foil with dark depth) and M, his forthright boss, equally compelling and complex as Bond. They, better than the villains, help to define Bond and permit the film to rise from the shallows of its predecesors into the interesting arena of real art.

This definitive Bond film, begins appropriately wtih a slick black and white prologue of Bond’s pre ‘00’ status (prior to achieving two kills). The heady and violent chiaroscuro creates a mood in keeping with the edgy grit of Craig’s Bond, “whose cruel charisma rivals that of Sean Connery” (Ty Burr, Boston Globe). Every scene that follows defines Bond: his ruthless drive in the footchase; his sardonic humor when he’s mistaken for a valet and “punishes” the customer by crashing his expensive car, marking Bond’s disdain for the declassé rich (a trait that is further made apparent during Vesper’s penetrating analysis of him in the train).

Producer, Barbara Broccoli, successfully subverted the Bond trope to finally portray a “Bond Girl” as equal to Bond; someone equally complex, mysterious and interesting with her own compelling story, so much so that she draws the insular Bond into it. “The idea of a woman who is Bond’s equal is unusual in the 007 series,” says Jay Stone of the Times Colonist in his article entitled, “Bond Girl with Brains”. Vesper is a compelling character, a real person; not just a mannequin for men to fantacize over. There have been other intelligent and strong-willed Bond Girls (e.g., Jinx in Die Another Day; Polly Goodhead in Moonraker; Natalya Simonova in Goldeneye), but none as engaging, none as vulnerable, contradictory and multi-layered as Vesper, who harbors a dark secret. It is partly Vesper’s dark secret that unknowingly clinches Bond’s interest. Vesper demonstrates right from her opening scene where she first meets Bond onboard a Euro fast train that she is not a typical Bond girl. First there is no gushy “Oh, she’s gaspingly beautiful!” music to accompany her on-screen entrance; no highlighting of her physical attributes; no bikini to cue us in that she is the “Bond Girl”.

Instead, Vesper sweeps in like a

summer storm and sits across from Bond, dressed in what he describes as “slightly masculine cut clothing” and flashes him with eyes that sparkle of taunting girlish impudence. As she takes her seat, she summarily announces “I’m the money,” succinctly letting him know that she is in charge and what she thinks of him. Even his attempt at a rakish response, “Every penny of it,” doesn’t phase her and she launches into a sarcastic examination of the plan, further letting him know what she thinks of the whole plan of poker: “I suppose you’ve given some thought to the notion that if you lose, our government will have directly financed terrorism”. So she’ll be keeping her eye on their government’s money and not on Bond’s “perfectly formed” backside. To this Bond quips, “You noticed.” Vesper has a quick come back: “Even accountants have imagination.” To his suggestion of a plan, “Oh, there’s a plan,” she responds in a mocking tone. “I got the impression we were risking millions of dollars and hundreds of lives on a game of chance.” Then she challenges him on his ability to bluff and read people (which provides the first in several installments of a subplot involving bluffing and “tells”).

Their verbal joust, which sizzles with sexual tension, escalates when Bond, priding himself in his ability to read people, demonstrates his skill as a poker player by arrogantly analyzing Vesper’s personality and life from cues in their conversation. She turns the tables by doing an even more penetrating character sketch of him, calling him on his hubris and ego, and essentially outbluffing him:

“By the cut of your suit you went to Oxford or wherever and actually think human beings dress like that. But you wear it with such disdain. My guess is you didn’t come from money and your school friends never let you forget it, which means you were at that school by the grace of someone else’s charity, hence the chip on your shoulder…and since your first thought about me ran to orphan, that’s what I’d say you are…” Seeing his expression, she gloats, “Oh, you are! I like this poker thing. And it makes perfect sense. Since MI6 looks for maladjusted young men who give little thought to sacrificing others in order to protect queen and country. You know, former SAS types, with easy smiles and expensive watches…” She glances down at his. “Rolex?” Then dives in for the killing blow: “Now, having just met you, I wouldn’t go as far as calling you a cold-hearted bastard…but it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine you think of women as disposable pleasures rather than meaningful pursuits.”

But more than outbluffing him, Vesper also proves herself to be a complex person on her own “hero’s journey”, a tortured character (we find out only later) with heavy matters to consider that involve more than the Bond girl’s typical single question: “should I sleep with this guy or not?” The fullness and depth of her character as a “real” person is no better found than in the tender shower scene midway, where we are reminded that Vesper is a real person, an accountant unused to violence. Again, we find Bond about to enter their common bathroom to the sounds of a shower; I fully expected to see the typical playful scene between the Bond girl, nude in the shower, and Bond. But when he opens the door, she is revealed sitting under the

casino royale Is James Bond an Altruist?

shower, still fully clothed in her evening gown, shivering in shock. She’d just witnessed (and had even helped) a violent altercation in which Bond had to beat a man to death. For the first time in this series, we have a perfectly plausible reaction. Vesper is strong at first and assists Bond by helping to force the gun out of the assailant’s hand, then breaks down after she’s done what needs to be done and is alone. Bond surprises us by melting into a caring human being as he quietly and patiently comforts Vesper. And Broccoli tastefully does not let it dissolve into a sexual love scene. This scene is just one of several where the film takes a typical Bond cliché and brazenly turns it on its side—where we expect one thing and get quite another. An amusing example of this is when Bond playfully informs Vesper, as they are driving to their hotel, of her cover name (“Miss Stephanie Broadchest”) to which she takes great exception.

Vesper certainly has Bond sized up. “There are dinner jackets and there are dinner jackets,” Vesper informs the bemused Bond in an earlier scene. She introduces him to the tailored tuxedo, in which he looks utterly splendid, by the way. The scene where he critically eyes himself in the mirror in his new tux provides us with a snapshot that is all Bond (and all Craig, I should add!): suave, sophisticated and mercurial, yet boyishly inviting, even awkward. Eva Green’s “Vesper is teasing, angry, and vulnerable in madly unpredictable proportions” David Edelstein (New York Magazine) adds. A smart, self-possessed government accountant, Vesper “has the sensuality and extraordinary empathy to tenderize [Bond’s] presence,” said Scragow of the Baltimore Sun. Broccoli improved on Fleming’s Vesper by making her a treasury accountant in charge of the money, and therefore of Bond.

Keeping true to Fleming’s first James Bond book, the film version of Casino Royale is, at its heart, a tragic love story. As Stax (IGN) says: “Bond falls in love, he changes; he cares for a woman rather than just lusts after her. They make love, laugh, quarrel but there is a friendship and tenderness between them. That makes the outcome of the story and Bond’s infamous last line—‘the bitch is dead’—all the more heartbreaking”. Casino Royale is a story of how a scarred man found his humanity through love, only to loose both to the ‘game’. The irony of what Bond became, following Vesper’s death, lies in her absolute mastery of him. Her power over his heart was elegantly shown as she both physically and metaphorically jumpstarted it. In fact, she saves his life twice. In the end she beats him with the ultimate bluff, beating him squarely at his own game. When she realizes that she will never escape SPECTRE, Vesper successfully hides her tortured decision to save Bond by ironically betraying him. In keeping with the book, Vesper’s character is tormented by her genuine love for Bond and her conviction that he would hate her once he learned the truth about her—compelling her to end her life. The reason she succeeds so well in outbluffing him (and the audience) is because in matters of the heart she is tenderly sincere. As Bond himself declared to her, “Everyone has a ‘tell’…except you…that’s why I love you.” Blinded by their mutual love, he is totally sidewinded by her underhandedness. This explains why Bond later refuses to lower his armor and become vulnerable with any other woman; how can he trust his spy-sense when matters of the heart intersect and blur his cold judgement? He must, Bond concludes, keep them apart, tuck that humanity way inside, never let it get out again.

While some of the movie-Bond tropes are there…they are few and well placed and just enough to remind us of how Bond uses off-colour humor to disarm or even to disturb. After a near-fatal interlude during the film’s card game, he quips, “I’m sorry, that last hand nearly killed me.”

Another cliché which this film turned on its side is the classic figure emerging out of the sea—this time not the Bond Girl, but Bond himself. To those who lament the old clichés, Ty Burr of the Boston Globe offers this: “consider whether, after twenty-one Bond films and countless parodies, your response is simply Pavlovian.” Grow up. Bond has.

…So, where does altruism enter into all of this…How about I tell you in my next post…

Share and Enjoy:

Category: altruism, casino royale, james bond, motion picture, movie review 15 Comments

Archive for the Category »movie review «

Pages

Recent Posts

Tag Cloud

Meta

Archive for the Category »movie review «

Popular Posts

Pages

Recent Posts

Tag Cloud

Meta