sins and expiations

I've been busy. Well, that's only partially true. I've been busy, yes, but I've also been not writing. That isn't to say I haven't been doing anything. I've been really after Netflix again, and in the past week I've racked up Kurosawa's magesterial Kagemusha, Polanski's superb Chinatown, and Scott's brilliant Blade Runner. I also watched Lucas's poor excuse for a film, Revenge of the Sith, today.

Naturally, I've got strong opinions on all of these. Kagemusha is superb (Times, Ebert, Ruthless), of course, although perhaps not getting the attention it deserves by the nature of it being (in Kurosawa's words) as merely a "dry run" for Ran. I don't deny that Ran is a superior film, ranking as it does as one of the best films of the master, but I'm telling everyone that Kagemusha is amazingly good. A lesser director would count it his finest moment; only the transcendent genius of a Kurosawa would consign as mere rehersal. Kagemusha is dark, dealing with Lear-ish themes such as performance, simulation, identity, and the ultimate nature of man's interaction with the universe. I'd say that Kagemusha and Ran are as darkly nihilistic as anything in Lear, the most devastating of tragedies, and that there's an unrelenting hostility to paliation that marks these late films. The activities of mere men are foolish, inconsequential, and perhaps more damning, easily forgotten. See it, if you have the opportunity. Unlike lesser directors, Kurosawa is able to frame meaningful, memorable characters in the midst of great tableux. He's a fluid director of state activity and battle, but when he zooms in, the individual players are not squashed by their scenery but enliven it. George Lucas, who with Francis Ford Coppola helped finance Kagemusha could have learned a lot from the master.

What more to say about Chinatown (Times, Voice, Ebert) that has not already been said? Perfect, really, one of those movies (like Fargo) that has not a hair out of place, just a satisfying amalgamation of great shots and greater acting. Jack Nicholson caries the film with his bored, drowsy detective work (with his schnauze ensconsed in gauze, to boot). Great movie, taut and exciting, with a cruel nihilistic edge and a superb gut-punch of an ending, too.

Revenge of the Sith? I'm sure everyone's been waiting to hear what I think. It was lousy, poorly written, stupidly plotted, and did the great injustice to the franchise to forever link the inky black knight, Darth Vader, the menacing dark father, with the sun-kissed curly Californian locks of Hayden Christensten. Hayden can only pout, he lacks all dramatic range to hoist a tale of betrayal and violence upon, and he's undercut at every turn by Lucas's excerable script (reportedly doctored by no less than Tom Stoppard which can only make us wonder how bad it was before). In the end, Lucas's failure will net him billions of dollars and greater creature comforts at Skywalker Ranch but the rest of us, having sat through one leaden, groaning, unfunny movie after enough, will have to ponder how, exactly, he caught lightning in a bottle with the original Star Wars. All of Lucas's later sins are still under wraps in Star Wars. The dialog is crisp and often funny, the picaresque inventiveness of locations like Mos Eisly and Tatoine stands as a stark contrast to the arid, hermetic space interiors, especially on the Death Star. There's particularity. There's human interest. There's the sense that actors acted on sets, actual plywood sets built on sound stages, and didn't have to act in green rooms and imagine whole cloth where they would be standing. Episode III feels artificial, pinioned down under glass, beautifully crafted on a computer, but lacking verve...

At the end of the day, Darth Vader was a great villain. He might not have had the chops or pure malevolence of Iago or the sadistic excess of a Macbeth or even the psychological baggage and furious hatred of a Richard III, but he was big and he was mean and he cut off his son's hand when he wouldn't take out the trash. There was something majestic about Darth Vader and something mysterious. You got the sense through the snippets that he had this old life, as Annakin Skywalker, that he had a familial name, and parents, and kids, and that he walked towheaded and barefoot on a planet, too. But that was just hints, just whispers and inferences, and that was enough. The reality was plain: black suit, demanding boss, and that breathing. Great villains don't have exhaustive backstories. Nobody wants to know that Buffalo Bill was picked on as a kid, or maybe got rejected by a chubby girl at prom time. Nobody cares that Dracula was picked on for being pale at recess. Nobody cares! That's the point--villains need a chip on their shoulder above and beyond what is reasonable, beyond what can be explained by happenstance alone, beyond what is orderly and just. That's, I'm afraid, why they are villains. Lucas, in his idiocy, sets out to explain exactly why Skywalker went to the dark side: he was worried about his wife's pregnancy and he didn't get a promotion. Sounds like a reason to go to the bar, not join the dark side and start slaughtering everyone. Sheesh.

At the end of the day, after 3 crappy movies, I'm just left thinking, "why couldn't have George just left well enough alone?"



That's the difference between being a hack and being transcendentally brilliant. Kurosawa he ain't. But then again, financing Akira just might be the good deed George needs to get into heaven.