Heavy Handedness in Movies

When I think of a movie as heavy handed, I typically am meaning that the movie in question is so explicit in its theme or underlying message, that it hampers the viewing process of the story. A good example of this was the movie The Triplets of Belleville, in which I recently watched in an animation class.

It's a French animation that is about a mother trying to rescue her kidnapped son. In the movie, the mother travels to this New York-like Metropolis, called Belleville, and the first sight we see is of a mockery of the Statue of Liberty, where Lady Liberty is represented as obese and in her hand she holds a cheeseburger. The message is so clearly heavy handed that it actually overpowered my sense of story, trying to show me that Americans are obese. Okay, I got your point, do you have to consistently show me obese American-looking people eating burgers and standing before a mockery of the Hollywood sign where it says Hollyfood instead of Wood.

Another example of this I watched recently was The Graduate, the Dustin Hoffman-starrer about a recent college grad who has an affair with his father's business partner's wife, to only fall in love with her daughter. The movie is essentially about Hoffman's character, Ben Braddock's indecision as to where he plans to go in life, which is represented in the visuals so beautifully by director Mike Nichols, but why did they feel the need in order for Braddock to constantly remind us through dialogue that he has no clue what to do in life? Is the visual message not enough? This, and the fact that the movie kind of got muddled up a bit in the second half in the attempt to try and tie up all of the plot lines introduced early on in the story, presenting a very unclear, perhaps even rushed sense of time passing, are the primary detractors for such a classic for me.

To me, an overexplanatory line of dialogue that we've heard thousands of times before, or the incessant use of a similar image over and over again, simply to drive home a point, just ultimately detracts from my viewing pleasure of a movie. Is it wrong to include such explanatory lines of dialogue or images? I think, no. Once or twice in the movie I feel is never bad, but when you're constantly reminded every ten minutes or so, it just hurts the experience. Maybe I'm too sensitive, but to me, that's what heavy handedness is.

Talk Like a King

One movie that is sure to have some sort of presence at next year's Academy Awards is Colin Firth-starrrer, The King's Speech. The movie hits theaters in November, but it premiered this week at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado.

The movie, set in 1930s England, tells the story of the future King George VI, who must take over the throne of England after his brother abdicates, but George is faced with a problem, he has a debilitating speech impediment. How can a man be king and garner the trust of his subjects if he shows any weakness? A lot of the movie will focus on the relationship between Colin Firth's King George VI and his speech therapist, being played by Geoffrey Rush. Both are being touted as serious awards contenders for this upcoming year.

Being honest, I didn't really jump at the immediate idea of the movie, neither as Academy bait, nor as a good movie in general, at least one I wanted to see anyways. I usually don't like biopics, so I didn't see why I should be excited for this one. But that's changed thanks to this review from Kris Tapley of incontention.com, who I like his views on movies. Kris praised the movie, and has actually peaked my interest into seeing a movie that I initially believed would be a banal experience at the theater. After all, how can a visually intriguing movie be made about the speech of a person? See, what makes me excited to see this movie now, is to see this underdog story brought to screen.

I've always been fascinated by how people like Jimmy Stewart, who had a natural stutter, managed to get their impediments under control and garner public adoration and approval. Just look at FDR and how well he is remembered; and there is something even more dramatic about a king being the one that has to overcome such an ailment. I've always been a sucker for the underdog movie, but when the stakes are highest, it's always more intriguing, and when are the stakes higher than for a would-be-king of one of the most powerful countries in the world?

I think why I didn't initially care for this movie is cause I didn't see how it could be done and be entertaining at all. I mean, a ton of movies, in particular movies about British royalty, are just usually bland and lifeless, but that review really made me wanna see this. By the movie being in a sense more about the personal life and relationships of the king, it could give the movie more zest and a life of its own, rather than being a biography for the biography channel. So I guess the dying form of film critiquing still has some impact on the moviegoing populace.

Check out this clip of The King's Speech below:

Flashbacks to Childhood

There is a certain fondness that we hold to the movies of our childhood. Whether or not they're still even good movies or not, we talk about movies, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze, more enthusiastically than any movie we're liable to ever see in our adult lifetimes. It's just an interesting thought. Why do we have such a connection to certain movies from our childhood?

For my brother, one of his favorite movies from when he was little, is Jurassic Park, but now he is the farthest thing from a Spielberg-fan, but yet he still loves this particular movie. So his liking for this movie, unlike me, does not come from the director behind the camera, but more so from a nostalgic place deep within. To him, Jurassic Park is an encapsulation of that carefree innocence and joy of his childhood, much how I am with the original Star Wars or Indiana Jones movies. It's the same reason for me, I do not associate Indiana Jones with Spielberg, as I do with E.T. or Jaws, because to me, Indiana Jones is more about my childhood, where as I didn't discover E.T. or Jaws till I was a teenager (primarily cause I was too scared to get past the first five minutes of E.T. as a kid).

See, to my brother, Jurassic Park is that constant that has never changed, regardless to all of the changes that we must face in an ordinary life. I think we all face so many major changes in our lives, that having these little shreds of our innocence, like a favorite toy or a favorite movie, can take on a meaning in our own minds that nothing else shares. It's an interesting connection, and it's sort of funny to think that in twenty years time or so, the kids of the future will be talking of Avatar in a similar way as to how I talk about Star Wars, Jurassic Park, or Indiana Jones.

The Anatomy of Suspense

This afternoon, I was watching Alfred Hitchcock's classic, Spellbound. It's the story of a female psychologist trying to help an amnesiac who may or may not have committed a murder, and I was wondering what made this particular movie from Hitch so suspenseful. It wasn't the simple fact that Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman were being pursued by the authorities; no, it was something more, the suspense was deeper. The true suspense of Spellbound is in the uncertainty of our own thoughts and beliefs while watching it.

Within Spellbound, Gregory Peck's character starts off as one person, then turns out to be someone else. Who, we do not know, but what we do know is that he is the only suspect in a murder case. Like Ingrid Bergman's character, we are initially fooled by this charming, but clearly unsettled individual. The thing that makes Peck's character so unsettled is that you never know what he's going to say or do. Like the flip of a light switch, Peck can go from charming Roman Holiday-Gregory, to creepy, farthest thing from Atticus Finch, Gregory.

There is one scene in particular where Peck wakes up in the middle of the night, and has a mental breakdown in the bathroom. Peck grabs hold of a razor and slowly creeps back into the bedroom where Ingrid Bergman is asleep, and for all of those long, agonizing moments that Hitchcock milks for all their worth, he leads us to believe that perhaps Peck did commit this murder that he is being accused of and that he might murder again. Of course he doesn't, but it's for scenes like this where all of the suspense of Spellbound emerges.

As the movie plays on, we learn more about Peck's psychosis, why he has his innate fears of the color white, and through a marvelous dream sequence, we psychoanalyze Peck alongside Hitch and discover the odd association Peck's character has with sloped structures and his own tragic childhood of accidentally killing his own brother. And this is where I'm getting to the point.

Peck's character has masked these long forgotten traumas for years upon years, to where he ultimately forgot his entire identity just to not have to remember the severe traumas of life. Now, I think what makes this so suspenseful for an audience member, such as myself, is I begin to wonder if I have long lost memories somewhere in my own psychosis that I can't remember because I wish to never relive them. Perhaps I don't, or perhaps I do.

It's naive to think that we know everything there is to know about ourselves, the mind being quite possibly the hardest thing to dissect of the human disposition. Sure, psychoanalysis exists to try and understand the mind, but that is still just guesswork at best. The honest truth is that there are untapped regions of the human mind, doors so to speak (as is visualized in the movie when Peck kisses Bergman for the first time and we see in a dream sequence doors flying open, showing Peck entering into Bergman's psyche), these hidden regions in our mind may be our own worst enemies, like Gregory Peck's mind was in Spellbound.

So, in essence, Hitchcock internalized his classic scenario of the wrongly accused man and created quite possibly the most chilling tale of psychological analysis ever put to celluloid. The human mind is the villain for once, and that is the suspense of Spellbound.

"Fantastic Four: Reborn"

The first Fantastic Four is a guilty pleasure of mine. Minus the acting of Jessica Alba and Julian McMahon, I think it was a faithful adaptation of Marvel's oldest family. Michael Chiklis was a fantastic Ben Grimm, Ioan Gruffud was how I always imagined Reed Richards, and Chris Evans was as good a Johnny Storm I could want. Regardless, most fans didn't respond with as much enthusiasm, and after a failed sequel, the Fantastic Four are getting a reboot.

The reboot is being called Fantastic Four: Reborn. Akiva Goldsman is the driving force behind this, both writing and producing, and I don't know how I truly feel about that, seeing as how he was the writer behind Batman & Robin. Early word is that 20th Century Fox is wanting to take a more serious take on the material, which is what majority of fans want, though I've always been more partial to the '60s Fantastic Four, which might be why I liked the movie from a few years back. Though the rumors for casting are intriguing.

The rumors are that Adrien Brody is up against Jonathan Rhys Myers from The Tudors for the role of Reed Richards. British actress Alice Eve is up for the role of Sue Storm, and word is that this is why she was replaced as Emma Frost by January Jones in X-Men: First Class, cause Fox wanted her as the Invisible Woman. No real concrete rumors yet for the part of Johnny Storm, but word is that Fox is wanting to take the character of Ben Grimm, a.k.a. The Thing, and do him entirely CGI, and have him be voiced by none other than Bruce Willis. But what about Doctor Doom? Latest rumors position True Blood star and now Mr. Anna Paquin, Stephen Moyer the frontrunner for the part. As for the director's chair, there have been many names buzzing around, most notably Joe Carnahan (The A-Team) and David Yates (the director of the final four Harry Potter movies). Personally I'd love to see Carnahan get the gig, cause I mean the FF are sort of American, no offense to Yates, who I think has done a brilliant job with Potter.

Fox really seems to be aiming for big money and high rewards with this reboot, even though I'm not full force behind it. With a more marketable and prestigious cast than that of the original, perhaps the fans may get what they want in a more serious take on these characters. Maybe I'll like it when this reboot hits theaters, but right now I just despise the idea of a CG Ben Grimm.