Camelot: A Charmless Making

There is something wrong about Camelot, the new TV telling of the Arthurian Legend. 

It could be the stilted acting, it might be the anachronistic language of the script, perhaps it is the fact that Eva Green always makes me feel a little ill (I swear that woman has a touch of the fey about her), or horror or horrors could it be that the whole Arthurian Legend is now a bit tired? After all, we've been enjoying the BBC's Merlin (a kind of Arthurian Grange Hill) which is fun in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way, and Spam-a-lot is still playing in the West End, so perhaps we've just had enough of Camelot (after all, it is a silly place).

Or maybe there are bigger and better stories to be told these days. The Guardian suggested that Camelot is a sort of S Club Game of Thrones Juniors, and I agree that Game of Thrones is certainly in a different league, but surely Arthur comes before Stark? After all Malory predates Martin by 800 years or so. Yes, the tropes are a bit tired now, but they are Malory's tropes to begin with, and they speak to something true.

So what is wrong with Camelot?

For me this production never had a chance, because no matter what they do they could never be anything but a pale imitation of the Arthurian film to rule them all (no, not the bloody Hobbit films - they owe Malory too). The film I'm talking about is John Boorman's Excalibur, by my reckoning the greatest fantasy film ever made.

Excalibur realises that it is not telling a history, but a legend that is an echo of history, something that is a distillation of our collective memory. Its Anglo-Saxon knights thunder to war in Gothic armour, and celebrate their victories in Norman halls. But it is easy to forgive. It's a story filled with archetypes, the women are mother's, lovers, witches and wives; it's men mythic. And Excalbur? Well she is an emerald blade of perfection and the screen literally hums in her presence.

Fiennes may well grow into his role as Merlin, but Nichole Williams (complete with mirrored steel skullcap) is Merlin and gives a suitable inhuman performance. Jamie Campbell Bower may grow a beard, but he could never show as well as Nigel Terry how a simple man can make a great king. And Eva Green may be lovely (in a squeasy, bad-for-you sort of way), but she lacks the fierce arrogance of Helen Mirren's Morgana. 

So as I watched them ride about, roll around and generally make a lot of noise, I couldn't help hoping that the dragon's breath might rise and transform them into Excalibur instead.

Anál nathrach,

orth’ bháis’s bethad,

do chél dénmha

You can steal the charm of making, but be careful that the magic doesn't run out.

District 9: A Watchmen moment?

District 9, the new film directed by Neill Blomkamp and produced by Peter Jackson, is getting a lot of good press. Critics like the vision of the young director:

"District 9 proves that genre films, besides being a hell of a lot of fun, can say things you hadn't considered and show stuff you haven't seen." Time.com

They like the quality of the acting, and the special effects:

"District 9 is the rare arms-and-ammo flick in which the central human performance is as high-caliber as the hardware." Washingtonpost

And they like the setting; squalid Johannesburg slums in the blinding glare of the African sun:

"Who needs Manhattan when there are so many megalopolises and sprawling slum-republics about which brilliant films like District 9 can be be made?" Telegraph

I liked the film a lot too. Despite a slightly flappy story, the heavy-handed metaphor and a short-change ending It's almost certainly the best sci-fi film of the year and possibly the film of the year. You should go and see it.

But what really struck me about it was not the quality of the acting, the set-pieces, nor even the CGI, but the construction of the film itself. This is an oddly put together piece that starts as mockumentary, before descending into a more traditional third-person style, but peppered with news stories and spliced with character interviews and soundbites. Honestly, bits of this film resemble Transformers, and other bits resemble The Office.



Different scenes draw from different filmmakers and styles, but there is only one thing that the whole reminds me of, and that's not a film at all. What Blomkamp has done is pick different styles purposely and deliberately, his choices have cinematic and story purpose (for example, the mockumentary approach quickly normalises the bizarre idea of an alien slum, the news clips establish the broader context and set up audience expectations, while the action-packed third act accelerates the story and creates a sympathetic context for a little sentimentality).

This postmodern raid of the stylistic drawer reminded me heavily of Watchmen - not the mawkish film, but the brilliant original graphic novel. What Alan Moore did with Watchmen was use different media to get past some of the shortcomings of the comic medium. He interspersed the graphic chapters with letters, book chapters and newspaper articles, and even interweaved a second text, a comic within the comic (The Tales of the Black Freighter). The medium is the message, and with Watchmen the genius was in the telling - which is possibly why the literal film translation was a little disappointing.

Well, Blomkamp is doing with film what Moore did with the graphic novel. He throws away convention and presents a disrupted narrative, making stylistic choices that make his film deeper and more interesting while keeping it lean. It's just different enough from what we normally expect to be a little disconcerting, but it's very effective.

I liked this film a lot, but I'm more excited about what it's shown us is possible. These past two decades we have gotten a little to used to the polished tropes of epic sci-fi, District 9 reminds us that there is another way, that filmmakers are free to draw on all the facets of our media age and make their films the way that best fits their story rather than our expectations.

The Descent (from above)

Earlier this week I managed to watch The Descent, a British horror flick that I missed on its cinema, rental, DVD, and satellite spiral. Luckily the nice folks at Channel 4 marched it into the last broadcast saloon known as terrestrial telly and I finally caught up with it. Unfortunately they failed to warn me that it is the scariest movie ever made :-(

Essentially the story is that there is a group of intelligent, peaceful cave dwellers living under the Appalachian mountains, every so often they venture above ground and hunt for food, but otherwise keep themselves to themselves. Then one day a bunch of psychotic killers drops into their midst, all of a sudden the cave dwellers find themselves fighting for their lives as the deranged invaders storm every last corner of their home, smashing in dwellers heads with rocks, drowning them and being positively vicious with a pick axe.

The dwellers fight back, but because they are blind they have no real chance against the stronger, more intelligent predators that are slowly wiping them out. The invaders even get a bit bored and start murdering each other at several points in the story. The film ends with the brave dwellers taking out the invaders main soldier (at a huge cost if the screaming and splatters are anything to go by), while the invader's leader sinks completely into madness.

The weird thing is that the film makers decided to tell the story from the point of view of the psychotic invaders (who of course are humans, in fact a party of women going caving), almost ignoring the noble family lives of the dwellers (who of course are presented as hideous monsters).

I just don't buy this telling. It seems obvious to me that it is the women who are the most terrifying monsters, take the score at the end of the film:

• Humans 10
• Monsters 3

and that's with the monsters having the advantage of being on their home turf. Let's face it, as soon as the word gets out that the mountain's full of pasty-looking monkey-men they're stuffed (probably in the 'and mounted' sense of the word).

It's not the first time that I've noticed this weird twisting of the tale. Take the film Aliens (the second one with James Cameron at the helm). Its true that at the beginning of the film around 300 people get turned into human Cow&Gate paste for the Alien nursery (shame it wasn't those Spartans - that would have shown them!), but look what happens when we later inject a measly 13 soldiers into an otherwise peaceful alien colony. Thousands of aliens get wiped out in all manor of gun-porn ways, and then at the end, as if to add insult to injury the person who isn't a soldier goes all fancy dress in a JCB costume and tears great lumps out of the alien queen. But wait - there's more. Not intent with this carnage they proceed to nuke the remaining confused aliens from orbit.

• Humans: pretty much everything
• Aliens: 313

So the moral is that if you're at a party and notice a corner of wan-looking slimy cave dwellers, another of slick-headed Giger aliens with acid for blood, and a third of ditsy young women in day-glo jackets, go and sit with the monsters - you're statistically less likely to get your head bashed in.

Spiderman 3

At last I had a chance to see the Summer's big film (well - May's big film) in the form of Spiderman 3: Spiderman vs the icky-black-goo thing and the sandpit dude. I have low expectations of superhero films; for years I was convinced that if only they treated the subject matter with seriousness, as modern myths, they could produce some wonderful cinema. Then I saw X-men and realised the error of my ways (in fact the best superhero films are not explicitly superhero films at all, for example the recent 300, or the original Matrix).

So for me a real superhero film (the spandex kind) should be a fantastic spectacle, a roller coaster ride of childish exuberance, and the main job of the film maker is not to balls it up with to much dialogue or plot (which is not to say that I dislike dialogue or plot, but that in superhero films this always equals bad dialogue and plots with holes big enough to drive a blockbuster through, so they just should keep it quiet save the explosions and shouting).

All this meant that I wasn't expecting much from Spidey, even if he can do everything a spider can. In fact this is a very unusual film, in retrospect what obviously happened is that Sam Raimi and his team happily spent many months revising the script, staging and shooting scenes, and overseeing special effects before Sam retired to the editing studio with his buddies to edit the thing together.

After a healthy breakfast it all starts well enough, spidey is reintroduced, we are reminded of what happened in the other films and we get to see some interesting new villains. Over lunch things slow down a bit and they accidentally edit in an extra hour in the middle involving lots of teenage introspection, angst, needless handwringing and a blond.

Things pick up again in the afternoon and Sam gets into his stride, then something unfortunate happens. Just as we are getting into the denouement Sam has to take a toilet break. In his absence all hell breaks loose, some work experience kid gets his hand on the editing suite and suddenly the film is full of American flags, heavy handed plot twists, bad dialogue (told you!) and a laughable bad sequence shot from the point of few of a news cameraman where Black goo and Sandpit revert to children in a playground ("Spiderman - stop us if you can!"). When Sam returns he is assured by his brazen team of film wreckers that everything is well, and he happily finishes the climax blissfully unaware of the gaping hole in his film just below the waterline.

As the credit roll I was struck by an image of a confused Sam Raimi standing on the sloping deck as his otherwise beautiful creation sinks into the waves. Maybe he can do everything a spider can, but he can't swim. Utterly bonkers.

2001: An Event Horizon

Imagine a world in which The Sword of Shannara was written before the Lord of the Rings. It's good, Tolkien's critics might say, but its just a reworking of that Brook's drivel - isn't Gandalf just Allanon with a beard? Why has Shea shrunk? Swords, rings, who cares?

In a more just Universe Danny Boyle's new film, Sunshine, would have been released in 1997 and I would now be saying that the newly released film Event Horizon was derivative rubbish, but unfortunately this isn't a just Universe, and it's Sunshine that has just been released 10 years too late.

Sunshine isn't a bad film, in fact in some places it puts aside its pointless loopy captain and attains a kind of beatific Zen wonder, but its to little to late (or more accurately to soon, because it's the first half that's great). It's carefully put together, I love the fact that nothing is explained but it all still makes sense (the international crew, the gold space suits, the botanic garden). It's an ode to 2001, which deserves the homage, and it's just as pretty, but it's the shadow of Event Horizon that stretches an inglorious sunspot over the film. Ship goes off to do something importantly MacGuffinish and doesn't come back, another ship follows because the MacGuffin is important, the second ship finds the first ship. Much is weird. At this point someone goes bonkers, some other folk die, pause for transcendental moment... and release. Actually its kind of like Sphere as well :-(

Oh well. The direction is great, the performances are believable and the Sun is beautiful. Forget the annoyingly pointless burnt-out third act and focus on the Star. What can you see, what can you see? A missed opportunity that's what :-(

300

Wow! - the Battle of Thermopylae has never looked so good. I've just watched the film adaptation of Frank Miller's 300, itself based on the 1962 film The 300 Spartans. I've been struggling a bit with how to describe it - the critics are divided, is it a 21st century masterpiece or a shallow array of action set-pieces? What about the plot, they ask, what about the characterisations? But that's a bit like complaining that Michelangelo's David is a bit drab, that War and Peace lacks pictures, or that the Mona Lisa is a bit small. In short - it completely misses the point.

300 is not a narrative film - it's not supposed to be. 300 is a film of simple emotions, raw physicality and beautiful, beautiful imagery. Damn it, if the basic plot line bores you then put your fingers in your ears and just watch the pictures. I promise you that it would still be more enjoyable than staring for two hours at this oil painting of the same story by Jacques-Louis David - and he was a famous artist don't you know.

Of course you might also take exception to the one-sided perversion of history, xenophobia, homophobia, testosterone soaked fascism, misogyny and eugenics - but then again nothing is perfect.

In all senses of the word 300 is bloody good fun.