Volver and Apocalypto
Volver
I have always been an Almodovar fan, but I'm not much of an Almodovar scholar. I missed Bad Education entirely, for no particular reason. So I'm sorry, this is not going to be the most intelligent Almodovar review.
I'm increasingly beginning to think that Pedro Almodovar cannot make bad films. Women are Almodovar's thing. They are his inspiration, and it amazes me that he continues to make films almost completely devoid of men. The men in his films are generally either horrible people, or drag queens, and he concentrates on studying the relationships between his extremely strong female characters. He also seems to deal a lot with death. Volver is no exception on either of these themes. The film tells the story of Raimunda, her 14-year-old daughter Paula, her sister Soledad, the death of their great aunt, the return of their dead mother, and their friend Agustina's fight with cancer. There is a loose plot involving a murder, but overall there really isn't a plot so much as a continual revelation of the intricacies of the characters' relationships. Remarkably, despite the central roll that death plays in the film, it is probably the least depressing of Almodovar's recent films. The great aunt dies, but her death brings about the reunification of Raimunda and Sole with their mother, making the net result rather happy. There are some incredibly unpleasant subjects raised in the film, but they are not dwelled upon. Every turn of events is cast in a pleasant light, making it one of the most enjoyable and, dare I say it, feel-good films of the year.
I don't know why, exactly, Almodovar has decided to make such a happy movie, but that doesn't matter. He did it in an all-encompassing sort of way. The camerawork, the colors, the music, even the general expressions on the actresses' faces, are joyful to the last. Not joyful in an annoying Miracle On 34th Street sort of way, or even joyful in a lovely Amelie sort of way; it is a completely believable kind of joy that's present even when the characters aren't happy. Hard to explain, I guess. Let's just say that watching the film was like a giant dose of happy tranquilizers. I never had a problem with Almodovar's more serious films- indeed, Todo Sobre Mi Madre is perhaps my favorite foreign language film of the 1990's- but watching Volver is an entirely different experience, and a surprisingly welcome one at that.
The most important thing to make note of in Volver is the excess of amazing performances. Penelope Cruz, as nearly everyone in the world has pointed out, is perfectly natural as Raimunda, a woman who is married to a dead end guy, who puts her daughter's well-being before everything else, and who makes fairly significant changes in her life throughout the film. Carmen Maura (Irene, the dead mom) and Lola Dueñas (Sole) are both perfect as well. It really it quite the ensemble cast, so if the rest of this review wasn't enough to make you want to see it, go see it for the performances alone.
So much happy, plus an old lady with crazy-distortion eyeglasses, means it definitely gives it a 9/10.
Apocalypto
I had absolutely no intention of seeing Apocalypto, but Dean Semler, the cinematographer, brought it to school, along with the main technician on the Genesis, and so I had to. I hated Mel Gibson looong before he became Mr. Reprehensible Anti-semite- hell, I've hated him ever since Braveheart. I despised the very idea of The Passion of the Christ, and I was concerned that Apocalypto would be the same sort of idiotic, snobby film of which the only interesting talking point was the fact that it was made in a dead language. It seemed that Gibson was just revisiting a formula that had already worked for him once.
And so it is, sort of. I'll say this: it's a lot better than I thought it would be. SPOILERS AHEAD A small Mayan village in the rainforest is attacked and raided by another group of Mayans. Jaguar Paw, the main character, hides his pregnant wife and young son in a stone sinkhole/cave sort of thing so that they will not be killed or captured. He himself is then captured and taken, along with the remaining adults in the village, to a gigantic city with stone temples and sacrifices and such. He is on the brink of being sacrificed when there is a chance solar eclipse, signifying to the high priest that the Sun God has been satisfied. Eventually Jaguar Paw escapes and runs into the rainforest only to be pursued by a whole bunch of bad guys in what is possibly the longest chase I have ever seen. All sorts of bad things happen to him along the way, and of course it starts to rain, and the cave the wife and son are stuck in starts to fill up with water, and then of course his wife starts to have the baby. Jaguar Paw reaches them in the end, having thwarted his attackers, and the baby is fine, and all works out well, except for the fact that Spanish conquistadors arrive on the shore. But that, I suppose, is meant for another movie.
Putting aside the whole "written in the Ancient Mayan tongue" thing, Apocalypto follows the rules of Screenwriting 101: it raises the stakes. There is something good in the beginning that is lost, and in order to regain it, the protagonist must face many trials. There is never any question as to what are Jaguar Paw's desires, and hardly a thought paid to the idea that the bad guys are human, too (while there is one incident that might hint at this, it's really only used in order to raise the stakes for Jaguar Paw even more). So it's a very cut-and-dry story, if you ask me. Nothing complicated at all.
In fact, my main problem with it is that it's a very one-note story, the idea for which seems to almost have orginated in the slasher-flick genre. At least a third of the film is taken up by the chase through the rainforest, which just continues to hammer home how incredibly screwed Jaguar Paw is. The attackers are some of the most resilient attackers I've ever seen, as though they're actually Ancient Mayan robots or something. They just keep on chasing. There were at least three or four times when Jaguar Paw is about to get away, and then they show up again, still chasing, and I thought "oh, you have GOT to be kidding me." So you have the requisite chase scenes of a horror film, and then, to throw a little slash in the flick, Gibson comes up with just about every gory and atrocious way to kill a person that you can possibly imagine. His other films are gory, yes, or at least Braveheart is, and I've heard that Passion is almost unwatchably so, so maybe this is just Gibson's schtick as a director, but I think it's a lame one. Brutality does not necessarily a good film make (someone might want to tell Martin Scorcese the same thing, while we're at it). I have no doubt that the Mayans might have been brutal when engaged in battle or sacrificing people to the gods, but Mel, if "disgusting" is the main impression people get from your film, you might want to rethink your strategy, however historically accurate it may be.
It would be wrong of me to talk about Apocalypto without mentioning the cinematography for three reasons: 1) it was pretty good, 2) it was shot on the Genesis with very little light, and 3) Dean Semler showed it to us. Dean Semler is pretty awesome. He's this blustery old Australian guy, the kind whom you'd think would have really big bushy eyebrows (and kind of did). The coolest thing about how he shot Apocalypto is that it was largely done with very little articificial lighting-- and that's saying a lot for a movie shot almost entirely in a forest, under a thick canopy of trees. He pushed the Genesis to a level to which no one had taken it before in many ways, but the low-light thing is what impressed me most. There are scenes that he shot at an effective 2500 ASA on the camera, using 1.9 primes and the 360 degree shutter, which had basically no light at all and which look like daylight in the film. Granted, he took the whole thing to a DI in the end, but still... pretty cool, for a video camera. The other "groundbreaking" thing he did with the camera was to shoot an action movie like it's an action movie. The Genesis allows this a lot more than other HD cameras because the motion doesn't look as video-y, but I guess no one had really tried it before. There are still shots in the film where you can detect video motion, but it's not so bad. Now, these things out of the way, I have to say that I wasn't extremely impressed with the look of the film in general. It's technically very solid, and there are some great shots and some nice lighting, but it's nothing astonishing. I like the idea of shooting a forest as though it's a forest and not augmenting your light sources with much at all, but the end result didn't really wow me. I feel like he's pretty much a shoe-in for the ASC award, but I'd be surprised if he won the Oscar for it. The ASC is way more into tech than the Academy ever will be (duh).
And a final complaint: Semler told us that Mel Gibson generally directs by going onto the set and acting things out FOR the actors, then having them do the same thing. This is one of my biggest pet peeves with directors: the ones who act out a movie for their actors, who are looking simply for replication of their own ability, run themselves into a hole. Their movies will never be any better than they themselves are as actors. Mel Gibson is a decent actor, of course, but even he can't bring hundreds of characters to life in significantly different ways. I don't really know how I felt about the acting in Apocalypto. I want to say it was kind of flat, but I'm concerned that this might stem from the fact that I don't understand Ancient Mayan. However, it might also be that I was essentially just watching Mel Gibson, over and over, in lots of different costumes. And I have already told you how I hate Mel Gibson.
So I suppose my main point is that the story of Apocalypto is fairly lackluster, although there was some pretty monumental production design going on in the Mayan city, with the temples and stuff, and it certainly is a milestone in digital cinematography. There were parts that I really enjoyed (like the fluffy baby jaguar!), and parts that I absolutely hated (like the fluffy baby jaguar's mom getting killed), and parts where I rolled my eyes into the next room.
I'll give it a 6/10.
After all, anything would have been good after seeing 300 the day before, but I'll get to that tomorrow.
I have always been an Almodovar fan, but I'm not much of an Almodovar scholar. I missed Bad Education entirely, for no particular reason. So I'm sorry, this is not going to be the most intelligent Almodovar review.
I'm increasingly beginning to think that Pedro Almodovar cannot make bad films. Women are Almodovar's thing. They are his inspiration, and it amazes me that he continues to make films almost completely devoid of men. The men in his films are generally either horrible people, or drag queens, and he concentrates on studying the relationships between his extremely strong female characters. He also seems to deal a lot with death. Volver is no exception on either of these themes. The film tells the story of Raimunda, her 14-year-old daughter Paula, her sister Soledad, the death of their great aunt, the return of their dead mother, and their friend Agustina's fight with cancer. There is a loose plot involving a murder, but overall there really isn't a plot so much as a continual revelation of the intricacies of the characters' relationships. Remarkably, despite the central roll that death plays in the film, it is probably the least depressing of Almodovar's recent films. The great aunt dies, but her death brings about the reunification of Raimunda and Sole with their mother, making the net result rather happy. There are some incredibly unpleasant subjects raised in the film, but they are not dwelled upon. Every turn of events is cast in a pleasant light, making it one of the most enjoyable and, dare I say it, feel-good films of the year.
I don't know why, exactly, Almodovar has decided to make such a happy movie, but that doesn't matter. He did it in an all-encompassing sort of way. The camerawork, the colors, the music, even the general expressions on the actresses' faces, are joyful to the last. Not joyful in an annoying Miracle On 34th Street sort of way, or even joyful in a lovely Amelie sort of way; it is a completely believable kind of joy that's present even when the characters aren't happy. Hard to explain, I guess. Let's just say that watching the film was like a giant dose of happy tranquilizers. I never had a problem with Almodovar's more serious films- indeed, Todo Sobre Mi Madre is perhaps my favorite foreign language film of the 1990's- but watching Volver is an entirely different experience, and a surprisingly welcome one at that.
The most important thing to make note of in Volver is the excess of amazing performances. Penelope Cruz, as nearly everyone in the world has pointed out, is perfectly natural as Raimunda, a woman who is married to a dead end guy, who puts her daughter's well-being before everything else, and who makes fairly significant changes in her life throughout the film. Carmen Maura (Irene, the dead mom) and Lola Dueñas (Sole) are both perfect as well. It really it quite the ensemble cast, so if the rest of this review wasn't enough to make you want to see it, go see it for the performances alone.
So much happy, plus an old lady with crazy-distortion eyeglasses, means it definitely gives it a 9/10.
Apocalypto
I had absolutely no intention of seeing Apocalypto, but Dean Semler, the cinematographer, brought it to school, along with the main technician on the Genesis, and so I had to. I hated Mel Gibson looong before he became Mr. Reprehensible Anti-semite- hell, I've hated him ever since Braveheart. I despised the very idea of The Passion of the Christ, and I was concerned that Apocalypto would be the same sort of idiotic, snobby film of which the only interesting talking point was the fact that it was made in a dead language. It seemed that Gibson was just revisiting a formula that had already worked for him once.
And so it is, sort of. I'll say this: it's a lot better than I thought it would be. SPOILERS AHEAD A small Mayan village in the rainforest is attacked and raided by another group of Mayans. Jaguar Paw, the main character, hides his pregnant wife and young son in a stone sinkhole/cave sort of thing so that they will not be killed or captured. He himself is then captured and taken, along with the remaining adults in the village, to a gigantic city with stone temples and sacrifices and such. He is on the brink of being sacrificed when there is a chance solar eclipse, signifying to the high priest that the Sun God has been satisfied. Eventually Jaguar Paw escapes and runs into the rainforest only to be pursued by a whole bunch of bad guys in what is possibly the longest chase I have ever seen. All sorts of bad things happen to him along the way, and of course it starts to rain, and the cave the wife and son are stuck in starts to fill up with water, and then of course his wife starts to have the baby. Jaguar Paw reaches them in the end, having thwarted his attackers, and the baby is fine, and all works out well, except for the fact that Spanish conquistadors arrive on the shore. But that, I suppose, is meant for another movie.
Putting aside the whole "written in the Ancient Mayan tongue" thing, Apocalypto follows the rules of Screenwriting 101: it raises the stakes. There is something good in the beginning that is lost, and in order to regain it, the protagonist must face many trials. There is never any question as to what are Jaguar Paw's desires, and hardly a thought paid to the idea that the bad guys are human, too (while there is one incident that might hint at this, it's really only used in order to raise the stakes for Jaguar Paw even more). So it's a very cut-and-dry story, if you ask me. Nothing complicated at all.
In fact, my main problem with it is that it's a very one-note story, the idea for which seems to almost have orginated in the slasher-flick genre. At least a third of the film is taken up by the chase through the rainforest, which just continues to hammer home how incredibly screwed Jaguar Paw is. The attackers are some of the most resilient attackers I've ever seen, as though they're actually Ancient Mayan robots or something. They just keep on chasing. There were at least three or four times when Jaguar Paw is about to get away, and then they show up again, still chasing, and I thought "oh, you have GOT to be kidding me." So you have the requisite chase scenes of a horror film, and then, to throw a little slash in the flick, Gibson comes up with just about every gory and atrocious way to kill a person that you can possibly imagine. His other films are gory, yes, or at least Braveheart is, and I've heard that Passion is almost unwatchably so, so maybe this is just Gibson's schtick as a director, but I think it's a lame one. Brutality does not necessarily a good film make (someone might want to tell Martin Scorcese the same thing, while we're at it). I have no doubt that the Mayans might have been brutal when engaged in battle or sacrificing people to the gods, but Mel, if "disgusting" is the main impression people get from your film, you might want to rethink your strategy, however historically accurate it may be.
It would be wrong of me to talk about Apocalypto without mentioning the cinematography for three reasons: 1) it was pretty good, 2) it was shot on the Genesis with very little light, and 3) Dean Semler showed it to us. Dean Semler is pretty awesome. He's this blustery old Australian guy, the kind whom you'd think would have really big bushy eyebrows (and kind of did). The coolest thing about how he shot Apocalypto is that it was largely done with very little articificial lighting-- and that's saying a lot for a movie shot almost entirely in a forest, under a thick canopy of trees. He pushed the Genesis to a level to which no one had taken it before in many ways, but the low-light thing is what impressed me most. There are scenes that he shot at an effective 2500 ASA on the camera, using 1.9 primes and the 360 degree shutter, which had basically no light at all and which look like daylight in the film. Granted, he took the whole thing to a DI in the end, but still... pretty cool, for a video camera. The other "groundbreaking" thing he did with the camera was to shoot an action movie like it's an action movie. The Genesis allows this a lot more than other HD cameras because the motion doesn't look as video-y, but I guess no one had really tried it before. There are still shots in the film where you can detect video motion, but it's not so bad. Now, these things out of the way, I have to say that I wasn't extremely impressed with the look of the film in general. It's technically very solid, and there are some great shots and some nice lighting, but it's nothing astonishing. I like the idea of shooting a forest as though it's a forest and not augmenting your light sources with much at all, but the end result didn't really wow me. I feel like he's pretty much a shoe-in for the ASC award, but I'd be surprised if he won the Oscar for it. The ASC is way more into tech than the Academy ever will be (duh).
And a final complaint: Semler told us that Mel Gibson generally directs by going onto the set and acting things out FOR the actors, then having them do the same thing. This is one of my biggest pet peeves with directors: the ones who act out a movie for their actors, who are looking simply for replication of their own ability, run themselves into a hole. Their movies will never be any better than they themselves are as actors. Mel Gibson is a decent actor, of course, but even he can't bring hundreds of characters to life in significantly different ways. I don't really know how I felt about the acting in Apocalypto. I want to say it was kind of flat, but I'm concerned that this might stem from the fact that I don't understand Ancient Mayan. However, it might also be that I was essentially just watching Mel Gibson, over and over, in lots of different costumes. And I have already told you how I hate Mel Gibson.
So I suppose my main point is that the story of Apocalypto is fairly lackluster, although there was some pretty monumental production design going on in the Mayan city, with the temples and stuff, and it certainly is a milestone in digital cinematography. There were parts that I really enjoyed (like the fluffy baby jaguar!), and parts that I absolutely hated (like the fluffy baby jaguar's mom getting killed), and parts where I rolled my eyes into the next room.
I'll give it a 6/10.
After all, anything would have been good after seeing 300 the day before, but I'll get to that tomorrow.