gatsby is great

First, a lesson about watching films adapted from novels: never read a novel before seeing its corresponding film. That way leads to madness, as the burdened brain latches on and amplifies every little detail the movie gets wrong until it explodes in a shower of dissatisfaction. Allow some space and time between book and movie, however, and it becomes possible to appreciate the story as fitted into its medium. Thus, drawing on a lesson learned from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which only truly came into its own for me once my memory shed everything but the novel’s highlights, I avoided revisiting Fitzgerald’s novel to appreciate Lurhman’s adaptation on its own terms.

And now, with that little bit of wisdom imparted, on to the movie.

Sumptuous filmmaking, decadent excess, a cheerfully anachronistic score – Baz Luhrman, singular among those few directors who rate as auteurs, knows how to throw a party. And with F. Scott Fitzgerald as master of ceremonies, the result is cinema that moves as well as it dazzles.

Curiously, the rumblings that made it past my filters suggested disappointment, as if Lurhman’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby was yet another of those hollow spectacles Hollywood is fond of. I would argue that, as a visual medium, it is an achievement for a film to achieve a genuinely cinematic quality, the kind that demands a large screen in a darkened theatre. Too many films deliver this story, than quietly fade to black. Lurhman’s zesty work is certainly cinematic with its directorial acumen and brilliant production, of which the costume design is but its most obvious ambassador. The spectacle is perhaps too underappreciated in general, perhaps a bit too readily made subservient to substance. With respect to those quiet little dramas stripped of frills and flourishes in the name of authenticity – and many of my favourite films are as technically unassuming as they are narratively forceful – their lack of spectacle often calls into question the need for a large screen. In this is the reason why viewers enjoy the summer blockbuster season, despite complaints about nonsensical plots and craven attempts to part people from their money through inflated ticket prices; because sometimes we just want to be struck with awe, to be shown a story in a way that we cannot experience in reality. In delivering the jazz age in all its quasi-libertine glory, and depicting the stark contrast between the world of the wealthy and that of the poor, an exuberant director like Lurhman is, indeed, the right person for Fitzgerald’s material.

Of course, if the spectacle comes imbued with substance we can declare ourselves successful discoverers of the Holy Grail. This is where the disappointment with The Great Gatsby is puzzling, because the film fills every beautiful frame with Fitzgerald’s characters and narrative. The nuances are there: the character flaw that leads Gatsby to his undoing, the unjust social context that amplifies his nostalgia to tragic proportions, the exposure of cold class warfare whose combatants invariably run hot. Tobey Maguire, as the story’s observer and narrator Nick Caraway, offers a grounded and subtly poignant perspective on a tragedy that is Shakespearean in scope but also uniquely American – which is, naturally, what makes the novel such as a seminal work. Leonardo DiCaprio, a natural charmer with considerable emotive power, embodies Gatsby with all the pathos the role demands. And the cast overall, which includes Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan, add to the well-written script’s refutation of the notion that Lurhman did little more than assume the Wizard of Oz’s persona.

While there are no doubt differences and liberties taken from the novel – such as a framing story in which Nick Calloway, undergoing psychiatric counseling, recounts his experience with Gatsby to a kindly doctor – the film distills the novel’s essence into a cinematic vessel that holds its own. The proof lies in this: whereas Gatsby falls victim to a monstrous tragedy, we nevertheless achieve a vindication of sorts. Like Nick Calloway, and unlike the story’s other characters, we can bear witness that Gatsby is better than the peers whose status he aspired to, that he is indeed great. That Lurhman is capable of evoking of sense of hope amidst a sense of tragedy, however bittersweet the blend, rates as a success.

inflaming the shrew (at TFPO)

Could the fault, dear reader, be not in our Bard but in ourselves, that we are sensitive? Controversial among Shakespeare’s plays, the Taming of the Shrew could just as easily be called The Making of a Stepford Wife for its misogynistic proclamation of female submission to husbands...While the text is the text, the play’s delivery can achieve some measure of ironic detachment from the material with the right troupe, enough to achieve a satirical rather than literal effect. Despite a promising start, the Theatricum Botanicum is...

Read the rest of my review of the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum's staging of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew at The Front Page Online.

art you can see through (at TFPO)

X-rays may not seem the likeliest of artistic mediums, but let’s be honest. Despite potentially morbid diagnoses and comparisons to Where’s Waldo? or Rorschach tests, X-ray prints possess a distinctive aesthetic that can mesmerize even folk who don’t frequent the uniquely fantastic Melrose Boulevard curio-seller, Necromance. Beyond the otherworldly photographic effect, x-rays are laced with an ineffable aura of awesome. After all, they let us see through and inside things. It thus seems like the most likely of art mediums using technology more advanced than paint brushes and film cameras.

Enter Dr. Paula Fontaine, a podiatric surgeon and artist, with computer wizard Joseph Moisan.

Read the rest of my feature on Radiant Art Studios, which includes an interview with the x-ray artists themselves, at The Front Page Online.

the vio-lens of film

Ryan Gosling's new film Only God Forgives, currently screening at Cannes, was apparently booed. But that's not the interesting bit. This is, from an article at the Toronto Star:

The gore quotient in the film is high even for Winding Refn. It includes eye gouging, head piercing and an appalling act of desecration of a body that can’t be described here, other than to say it might well have sent Sigmund Freud calling for his mommy.
...

Winding Refn made no apologies for any of this, and actually seemed to revel in it all at the press conference. Peering imperiously through his black glasses, he chided a British female journalist for bringing up the topic of movie violence: “You sound like my mother!”

“Art is an act of violence,” he continued. “Art is about penetration. … I approach things very much like a pornographer. It’s about what arouses me. And certain things turn me on more than other stuff, and I can’t supress [sic] that. … I have surely a fetish for violent emotion and violent images and I can’t explain where it comes from.”

Setting aside the fact that art is not about penetration - how very patriarchal and phallocentric of Refn to believe so - and that art is most certainly not an act of violence, however one might debate the nuances of the equivocation, at least he is honest about his relationship to film violence. This is more than can be said for most, who insist on dressing up their fetish with all kinds of rationales without acknowledging the underlying impulse.

star trek into nowhere: an unreview

Though I never came close to reaching the peak of pointed-eared fandom seen in conventions, there was a time when Star Trek was, if not an obsession, than at least a pleasant passion. As Roddenberry’s concept changed from an iconoclastic and, above all, earnest science-fiction vision to a profitable franchise, that passion gradually weakened with each successive Trek series and movie not involving the original crew. Despite inevitable and often more than quibbling reservations about characters and storylines here and there, I did develop an affection for The Next Generation, once it grew into its own, as a vehicle for genuinely outstanding and humane science fiction – the first and last episodes of the series, for example, count among the best science fiction stories. Deep Space Nine started strong and collapsed into a distinctly un-Roddenberrian heap of militarism, cynicism, and religiosity. Voyager, though compelling on account of its premise and characters, often suffered from a lack of ambition and a lazy overreliance on time-travel or Borg stories. Enterprise held a lot of promise, although like many I had my suspicions about the viability of a prequel series. Still, the Trek show with the lousy theme song managed to be likeable on account of its characters even though its militaristic narrative arcs were contrived and unsatisfying.

If I were to sum up what it is I love about Star Trek in general, it would be the blend of speculative science fiction, human drama, and optimistic vision of the future (which wasn’t as Pollyanna-ish as many people seem to think). And while any individual Star Trek story might have been more strongly focused on character operatics than sci-fi concept,s these stories earned it because of a rich history of episodes that built up the Trek universe and made significant efforts at offering narratives that were, indeed, rooted in  high-concept speculative science.

This brings me to J.J. Abrams reboot, which left me unimpressed the first time around. Now we have a second, which I’m even less enthused about on the basis of this “official” synopsis:

When the crew of the Enterprise is called back home, they find an unstoppable force of terror from within their own organization has detonated the fleet and everything it stands for, leaving our world in a state of crisis. With a personal score to settle, Captain Kirk leads a manhunt to a war-zone world to capture a one man weapon of mass destruction. As our heroes are propelled into an epic chess game of life and death, love will be challenged, friendships will be torn apart, and sacrifices must be made for the only family Kirk has left: his crew.

Force of terror? Personal score to settle? Weapon of mass destruction? Sounds like the first film, which involved a force of terror (vengeful Romulan) with a personal score to settle (the death of his family and home planet) using a weapon of mass destruction (a time-travelling ship with devastating weapons). Setting aside the gorgeous production design and solid casting (characterizations notwithstanding), J. J. Abrams and his scriptwriters Orci and Kurzman entirely failed to deliver, in their first foray, an actual Star Trek film. Since the arguable failure of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the studio system has struggled to take Star Trek away from Roddenberry and, despite the sincere efforts of individuals committed to his vision if not his continued involved, finally found in J.J. Abrams the man capable of decisively clipping the Great Bird’s wings.

What he delivered was a story predicated on violence and destruction, delivered with style and special effects capable of deceiving audiences into thinking they watched a better movie than they had. And judging from the previews, synopses, and a few reviews, it seems like they’ve done it again with Star Trek Into Darkness. Once again, Hollywood proves itself the carnival barker that promises a classly striptease in the red velvet tent only to deliver a moonshine-soaked hoochie show instead.

However much I respect those who click with Abrams’ vision for Star Trek and wish them well in their enjoyment, I have no intention of watching Star Trek Into Darkness. Perhaps my impression of the film as yet another exercise in boldly going nowhere is wrong…however articles like this one by Spinoff’s Anna Pinkert suggest I’m not. We could debate the quality of the script writing (poor, in my opinion, and overly riddled with plot holes and inconsistent characterizations) and other aspects of the film, but ultimately I’m not interested because there’s little about this rebooted Star Trek that recalls to me what I loved about the original. Crucially, it’s not even a science fiction story, merely yet another plot about violence and aggression in an industry obsessed with exploiting violence and aggression for entertainment.