King Arthur (2004)

This is an interesting film.  Fuqua does not take the “Pete and Repeat” attitude like others before him have done.  He doesn’t stick completely to the most recognized and overdone Arthurian narrative, and while I commend him for taking the narrative road less traveled (because Arthurian tales DO vary), I also have to say that what Fuqua did to the essence of the Arthurian tales is an abominable.   I say this, firstly, because of the final battle scene between Arthur’s Knights and the Saxons.  As we were watching this bloody and gratuitously violent scene, D asked me who I thought would win between the Saxon King and Lancelot and I said, of course, Lancelot does not die. Neither does Gawain!

But, of course, they do die. They die ’til they are dead.  And Lancelot and Gawain are two of the most awesome knights Arthur has! 

And while Fuqua makes a sickeningly obvious attempt to show sexual tension between Guinevere and Lancelot, it doesn’t do much good considering he kills him off WAY too early to cause any problems for Arthur & Guinevere’s domestic bliss!  Ahh, the horror!  The horror!

There are three battle scenes, “thoughtfully” placed at the beginning, middle, and end. The first one goes on forever and is way too much, just like the last one. The middle one is fair-to-midling.  The endless slaughter is so…Braveheart! 

And, speaking of Braveheart, turns out in Fuqua’s narrative, Guinevere is of the Scottish clans AND is a top-notch marksman, especially when she is wearing the Clan’s standard bikini push-up top and is painted blue for battle.

It was a decent movie to watch, but as far as overall critical enjoyability, I at least wouldn’t rank it lower than Troy in terms of narrative inconsistencies between it and the literary tradition, but it isn’t ranked much higher. I will say that Clive Owen is more convincing  as Arthur than Brad Pitt ever was as Achilles. And another highlight was Ray Stevenson, who played the knight Dagonet (anyone remember that one from the Arthuriad???):  he played Titus Pullo in my beloved Rome…oh, bring it back HBO, bring it back!

Oh, and before I forget:  the film was about the most obvious propaganda I’ve seen for the spreading of British-American “democracy” EVER!  Arthur brought Freedom to the Britons: Freedom at a very high cost.

Hellboy II (2008)

I have mixed emotions about this film. On one hand, I love the costumes and characters that Guillermo del Toro creates for his films. Pan’s Labyrinth was also great in terms of that.  What I’m struggling with in terms of Hellboy II is the fact that there are many aspects of the film that have been more-than-just-slightly appropriated from at least two other epic stories: The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars.  I’ll explain my reasoning (which has not been tainted by the outside world, by the way):

In terms of The Lord of the Rings connection, you have the very obvious “ring” metaphor, which in Hellboy II is the three-part “crown” that was created to reign supreme over the Golden Army of mechanical, indestructable monsters.  The three parts were divided up: two to the Elf King’s two children, and one to the Men.  I mean, come on Mr. del Toro, don’t you know we’ve already seen this trope and it has been cemented in our subconscious by Peter Jackson (not to mention J.R.R. Tolkein)?!  Also, in Hellboy II, the animated sequence with the wooden-looking Men versus the Elf King and Trolls was creative in terms of its aesthetics, but it was just a retooled LOTR, even down to Sauromon’s “making” of the Orc Army.  In Hellboy II, the subterranean Golden Army factory was exactly the same as what we saw in LOTR.  And the Elves & Trolls vs. Man thing…c’mon?!  I just don’t get why del Toro did this.  It really brought the overall quality of the film down.

And, is it generally recognized everywhere that all Elves have long blonde hair, or was that del Toro just riding piggyback some more.

In terms of Star Wars, del Toro re-used a few tropes: Liz Sherman’s pregnancy & Hellboy’s destiny.  Liz’s pregnancy is a secret to Hellboy for most of the film. And, when we get to the final scene of the film, as they’re all walking away, Hellboy says something about the “baby” and Liz says, “babies.” Hellboy turns around and she flashes two fingers up and mimes “two,” then the film ends on Hellboy’s stunned face.  So what does this have to do with Star Wars, you say?!  Only everything!!!  Padme ushers in the twins, Luke & Leah, in 2005’s Revenge of the Sith, and their destinies are all tied to the fate of the universe (as we all know from watching all of the films).    So, like Padme, Liz Sherman’s twins will no doubt have an effect on the fate of the world, especially because of the information she receives about Hellboy’s destiny, via  ”The Angel of Death,” who heals Hellboy’s wound so he can live to eventually destroy the world….???  That screams the Anakin-Darth-Vader-destiny-trope to me, loud and clear. As the Angel of Death was telling Liz about Hellboy’s destiny, and how she would suffer the most, I couldn’t help but think of Padme laying on the table dying after giving birth to Luke & Leah, while Anakin was out on the burning plain, dismembered and prostrate, primed for his destiny, anger palpable and growing exponentially after being defeated by Obi Wan.

The last thing I’ll say about this film is that there were loopholes in the plot and dialogue that do not explain why the Elves & Trolls are living under Manhattan, especially when the secret hideout for the Golden Army is in Ireland.  I just don’t get why del Toro places this mythical world under NYC.  And it certainly isn’t explained for the viewer.  At least that part is original: I doubt anyone would believe the locations for Star Wars or LOTR were ever in Manhattan. Despite that originality, it still leaves the viewer wondering:  why?!  

I’m just saying that Hellboy II, despite its very funny moments and decent cinematography, was a re-rendering of other films.  I’m not saying it was a bad film. It was okay. I just wish we could get a good action-superhero film with great costumes and interesting characters, that was at least not a near-exact duplication of other films we’ve already seen.  Can’t we watch films like this and not feel like the director takes us for mindless Trolls?

Last Life in the Universe (2003)

I’ve been holding off on writing about this film because I wasn’t quite sure what to say about it.  It’s a film about perception of reality, though on the surface it is about suicide, love, life, living & relationships.

This film reminded me of a Haruki Murakami novel because of the mystery that unfolds for the viewer.  As the film progresses, the viewer sees that what was presented before has now changed, and what this new reality is, is an unstable one for the viewer but maybe not for the characters. Or maybe it is just as unstable for them as it is for us.  It is very much in the same vein as another film I wrote about on this blog, Open Your Eyes (and of course, Vanilla Sky, Mr. McG!)

The film is set in Bangkok, Thailand and the protagonist is a Japanese man (Kenji) who works as a librarian, and a Thai girl (Noi) who is a call girl/prostitute.

Reality comes into question when the viewer gets a glimpse of Kenji’s brother’s full-back tattoo, and later Kenji has this same full-back tattoo. Whether the brother ever truly existed is a matter up for debate, I suppose.  Also, when Noi and her dead twin sister become interchangeable to Kenji without a second glance from him, it becomes clear that something is rotten in the State of Kenji’s mind. 

All I know is that sometimes it’s nice to watch a film and at the end of it I look at D and say: what’s that supposed to mean?!

In many ways, I think this film has some loose intellectual ends, though it was creatively done.

Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors (1963)

 

This Russian film was directed by Aleksandr Rou. And like all fairy tales, it has a moral.  And, like many Russian films, that moral tends toward glorifying the State.  And that’s okay.  I don’t mind.  I liked this film a lot.  I loved the colors and the characters with their backwards names, like “Dneirf,” which was translated in the subtitles as “Friend.” Or “Lesaew,” which was translated in the subtitles as “Weasel.”  Clever. 

The moral for children is to not only obey your elders, but  to also be able to see yourself through someone else’s eyes.  This is what gets Olya into trouble with Grandma, and ultimately she takes a trip into the Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors (where she meets her “crooked mirror image twin, Yalo,” and they have adventures to save Dneirf) , only to come out of that crazy, crooked world where people are manifestations of animals, understanding that she must watch her behavior.

The moral for adults is summed up nicely in the end when Olya, Yalo, and Dneirf sing a song praising the flag, after Olya and Yalo save Dneirf through a series of very treacherous adventures. 

The sets and backdrops were fabulous.  As I’ve said on this blog before, I really like the obvious fakeness of older films, and this one does not disappoint in that respect.  The acting was great, with a few standout characters:  the Parrot King and Minister Toad.  The Parrot King really did the parrot sounds and movements remarkably well, not to mention his costuming and hair.  And the Minister Toad character was very funny at the end as he was running up a hill and making frog-swimming motions, as if he were swimming through the air to get up the hill.  And Minister Toad was the most colorful of the characters;  also the most scary looking!  I think the acting was very well put together overall. 

What I notice, upon researching the names again is that there appears to be a difference between the subtitles from the version I watched and the names listed online.  And I don’t know Russian so I’m doing my best to describe the characters and associate with them the names I remember.  For instance, “Dneirf” in the film’s subtitles is called “Gurd/Drug” on Wikipedia, and probably in the original Russian in the film. There are other differences with other characters too, obviously. But, I’m not writing a dissertation about the film, only a brief entry here. 

These Russian fairy tales are fun to watch.  I’ve written about another one on this blog, Old Khottabych (1956).     Good stuff!  Ready for more!

10,000 B.C. (2008)

Despite the clear fictionality of the “history” that is portrayed in this film, it was a decent film.  I didn’t know what to expect and was hoping it wouldn’t be a horrible film. Overall, I was pleasantly surprised.

What I liked was the plot.  I think this film does what Babel cannot:  show the TRUE interconnectivity between people who “seem” to have no connection with each other, other than being purely human.  (As a side note, I have always severely disliked Babel and apparently find any opportunity available to me to point out how bad the film is).  This is a laudable goal for a director to convey to the masses:  that despite our seeming differences, we are all human and we should all be working WITH each other, not against each other.  In the film, working together accomplished more than anyone could have ever imagined.

The plot led the viewer through the interconnectivity between the people in the film. The Mammoth Hunters were connected with the first African tribe by one man (D’Leh’s father), and the father then created the next connection with “Egypt.”  But it was D’Leh that got the ball rolling as far as bringing everyone together to free the captured slaves.  And, the Mammoth Hunters were connected with the group of Egyptian slaves by their similar prophecies, both of which turned out to be individuals from the Mammoth Hunter tribe.  This shows how one group of people is integral to another’s survival, or even well being.  And, ultimately all groups of people are integral to the survival of everyone.

The only downside to the film is that it’s very difficult to figure out where the Mammoth Hunters are from, and the viewer tends to want to know (or be able to figure out) those things.  They appear to be Near or Middle Eastern???  But they do not cross any major waterways until they get to what I assume is the Nile River.  They cannot be coming from the “East.”  And, because they run into a bunch of African tribes, and they are traveling toward Egypt, they must have originated in the Southern part of Africa.  Really, the geography doesn’t add up, and neither does their “ethnicity.”  So, one must simply chock this up to fiction and not worry about who they are or where they came from. It’s not a “true” story.  And, the mountain shots seem to have been filmed in New Zealand, and other shots filmed in South Africa, so go figure.

Either way, it was an enjoyable film with a nice love story, a story of one man’s (D’Leh’s father)misunderstood devotion to his people, and an unexpected Hero (D’Leh) who rises from the ashes of cowardice to free many people from many different “tribes” and restore confidence in his own people.  In the end, the Hero takes down even the “God” in order to set the people free.  A miracle, truly.

Pleasantly surprised, I was.  Small world, it is, that we live in. Figure out who the “God” represents, we must.  Work together to take him down, we shall.

Little Otik: Otesanek (2001)

We came across this film from the Czech Republic on Netflix in the “Watch Instantly” section.  Who could resist a description and a movie poster like this:

In this bizarre fantasy from the Czech Republic, an ordinary couple, Karel and Bozena, are unable to conceive a child. When Karel digs up a tree root and whittles something vaguely resembling a human baby, Bozena’s strong maternal longings transform the stump into a living creature … with a monstrous appetite that can’t be met by baby’s formula!

In my rudimentary research into the fairy tale of Otesanek, I could not find whether or not this was a real Czech fairy tale or one that was made up just for this film.  But, as with all good fairy tales, there is always a very dark and sinister side, and it is obvious that the moral of the story is for not only children but also adults.

Otik is the stump-baby that the father, Karel, engenders from a felled tree in the back yard.  Otesanek is the fairy tale equivalent of Otik.  They are essentially one in the same.

When Karel gives Bozena, his wife, the stump-baby, he doesn’t quite understand the extent of her maternal longing until he hands the stump-baby over to her.  She latches onto it immediately and devises an elaborate 8-month-long plan to act as if she is pregnant so she can “give birth” to this stump-baby and bring it into town so they can live as a family and not in hiding–which is ironic because she never lets anyone actually see Otik because, obviously, he is a stump.  When 8 months is up, she mimics labor pains in front of her neighbors so they will not be suspicious and she and Karel go out to their country house to get the baby (which they keep stored in a cupboard).  Karel drops her off and leaves for a few days so that their plan can be as realistic as possible–going to work and telling his coworkers, telling his neighbors, etc.  When he gets back to their country house, Bozena is nursing the baby.  Up until this point, the stump has just been a stump, but now its mouth moves.  But that’s just the beginning.

Turns out little Otik has a taste for more than porridge and mother’s milk:  he craves flesh, and human flesh if he can get his hands on it.  He grows to an astronomical size and eats quite a few people.  The parents eventually lock him in a chest in the basement of their apartment building, but the suspicious little girl next door (Alzbetka), who has been onto their little Otik for a while (she is the one that introduces the viewer to the fairy tale book about Otesanek), befriends the blood-thirsty stump baby and takes care of it when its parents abandon it to (hopefully) die.

Alzbetka is about as precocious a little girl as was ever conceived.  She reads text books about reproduction and other adult-type things, and seems to understand them.  She says many intelligent things that consistently dumbfound her parents.  And she seems to be a step ahead of everybody, especially the building pedophile (an old man with a penchant for staring at her bottom).  She’s a little girl but she’s smart.  In fact, like with all good fairy tales, Alzbetka is the smartest one of the lot.  She has an insider’s view of the situation–she knows how to control Otik like only a child could.  Many of the adults get eaten, but not her.

I could go on and on with the description of this film.  But what I’d like to consider now is what the heck was going on here?  What’s the purpose of this fairy tale/allegory?  We have impotent parents enabling a blood-thirsty stump-baby despite the fact that they know it’s wrong to enable such behavior; we have “out-of-touch” parents raising precocious little Alzbetka, and who don’t listen when she tells them that their old man neighbor is a predator; and we have a society in which people disappear and no one notices–this is a frequent line in the film.  So, it appears that no one pays attention to those around them, and frequently people overlook the obvious moral/ethical-issues that face them and their society.

It appears as though many characters are impotent in this film.  The two parents, Karel and Bozena; the old man pedophile–when Alzbetka imagines he is getting aroused at the sight of her, what comes out of his pants is a hand, not something else, so he must be impotent; Alzbetka’s parents are impotent at raising their own child and feeding her mind with materials appropriate for a girl of her intelligence; and the police don’t seem to do much about all the murders until the last minute, it seems.

Society-and-the-family-as-impotent is a disheartening idea.  Something is going terribly wrong when we allow a monsterous beast to take over our lives and devour those around us because we are too impotent to do anything.  And the fact that Alzbetka takes on the responsibility for Otik’s eating habits is infinitely disturbing–she’s a child and should not be participating in such blood lust, going as far as “drawing straws” to decide who in the building is going to get eaten next.  We have an absolute corruption of morals here.  The girl lures the old man into the monster’s lair with sexual advances, and ultimately to his doom.  She is accomplishing a few goals:  feeding Otik (her plaything, and something she can apparently control), and revenging her dignity. She’s smart.  She’s deliberate.  She doesn’t exhibit the kind of morals we want individuals to have in society.  But she is a direct result of those around her–impotence apparently breeds dysfunction.  That is certainly the case with Otik. 

In the end, the character who saves the day is the old lady caretaker who has been growing and tending to her cabbages for the entire movie.  The only character who has grown anything properly is the only one who can wipe the slate clean with her hoe.  And that’s what she does–according to the fairy tale about Otesanek, it is the farmer that slices open the monster’s belly with her hoe.  Now, the viewer doesn’t see this on screen but it’s obvious that it happens.

But how does the little girl recover from such things as she’s witnessed and done?  Can she be rehabilitated?  The only rehabilitation available to Karel and Bozena is to die as a result of their impotence, same for the old pedophile.  But the little girl is the future and she must be set straight.  She still has parents around her, and the old lady caretaker who perhaps represents moral balance.  But what about little Otik?  Why should he die because no one knew how to raise him?  Well, he was a monstrocity, unnatural, inhuman.  No possibility of rehabilitating a real monster.  But the little girl, she’s worth saving.  We have to try harder next time.  We have to not raise monsters.