potc: hoist the colors
EW's Owen Gleiberman on Dropping Rancor: whether PoTC 3 "makes sense" and why it matters.
Gleiberman falls into the "this movie is a narrative muddle" camp, and this article is thoughtful and interesting. But as I made clear in my own review of the movie, I think the movie is both terrific and coherent. Since I feel so strongly about it, I may as well respond to the article here.
When Lord Cutler Beckett, the scoundrel of the East India Trading Company, extracts a promise from Jack Sparrow to betray his comrades, the betrayal, initially, makes sense - Jack, a bit of a scoundrel himself, wants to get back to a merry pirate's life of sailing and boozing, without all of these damned obligations. But for all the focus and gravitas that's placed upon this moment of ''intrigue,'' it pays off...not at all. It's a red herring. Jack never does much to tilt the action Beckett's way, and he is never really forced into confrontation with his friends. The whole backroom-scam subplot doesn't develop and surge - it just evaporates.
Um, actually, Jack agreed to work with Lord Beckett--but then ended up not needing to (at least fully) go through with the deal. I do agree that there were a lot of incidents like this in the movie, and if I were a movie critic sitting there making notes and trying to construct a linear storyline to reference later (as I can only assume they do; I know I'd be worried about remembering stuff like that, especially in a movie this long and crowded), it *would* be frustrating. But imo, those big "backroom intrigue" moments served to remind the audience that every single major character would screw over the others in order to further their *own* goals if they considered it necessary or were offered an alternative that seemed opportune at the moment. In other words: pirate! In AWE, at last, every one of the main characters had hidden motives and secret plans and they were all willing at one time or another to double cross or lie to one another for the sake of expediency. Until, of course, the end, when they were forced to work together (which, btw, WAS the emotional resolution of all those so-called "red herring" subplots as well as of the overarching narrative).
I kept waiting for the Davy Jones/Tia Dalma plot to come to fruition, but instead, it's just another stray piece of information, made irrelevant the moment that Tia Dalma expands, like the dough boy at the end of Ghostbusters, into the Goddess of the Sea, a special effect that seems to exist for no other reason than to make us go ''Wow!''
Hm. As I said, I wasn't totally invested in the Davy Jones/Tia Dalma subplot and didn't particularly *want* to see a whole lot of backstory (it seems enough for me to know that Davy Jones was in love with the embodiment of the sea--I mean: duh, really; it's both logical and kinda awesome that they gave it such a literal twist). Well, it seems to me that Gleiberman has become trapped by his own professionalism. I don't throw out that accusation lightly; I do, actually, unlike many, believe being a film critic requires an education (I know enough about it to respect it) and a certain amount of objectivity. But I suspect that same education teaches a film critic to watch for narrative threads, grab hold of them (even on first viewing they probably can't knock the habit), and trail them to their resolution. On the other hand, a casual viewer or a person watching solely to be entertained will wait until later to sort out those narrative threads. They won't find themselves in the middle of the movie with a handful of slack threads (to stick with this metaphor, since it seems to be working) and wondering what happened. They will have moved on seamlessly, so long as the action kept flowing, and only on looking back later will they find that those threads were tied off elsewhere (and, in this case, fairly neatly) in order to move on with the pattern. Um, so to speak. While Gleiberman was, by his own admission, waiting for the big twist, for the movie to "complicate our feelings about [the villain] by giving him a sympathetic back story," the movie was happily leap-frogging over the foregone conclusion. (The way I look at it is: why bother going there when the audience has already pulled every "villain-who-wasn't-always-bad" cliche out of our collective cinematic experience and applied it anyway? I recognize this would not always excuse the issue. *g*) But I don't think you can blame the movie for *not* putting its focus where the critics thought it should be. There was enough information about Davy Jones in both this and the last movie to form a very clear picture of who he was or is. In cooperation with the clear (in fact, almost too heavy-handed) parallel between Elizabeth and Calypso, and the more subtle (only overt at the end of the film) one between him and Will, it was actually a powerful--but, due to its sidelined status, fairly unsentimental--love story. The love between Will and Elizabeth and between Davy Jones and Tia Dalma/Calypso, while treated as valid and with very tangible consequences, was not the only or even the primary factor in the rising action. Again, I was never focused on the Will/Elizabeth love story, and I'm still SO grateful it didn't turn into a Will/Elizabeth/Jack love triangle, that I was not at all disappointed by the resolution of the respective love stories. Had the relationships become big and epic and anchored the conflict of the narrative, I WOULD have been very unhappy, especially as I would have felt they cheated the set-up promised by the other two movies. (Now that would have been a real red herring: piratey action ruined by doomed lovers.) A lack of melodrama does not automatically make a love story ineffective. I'm not sure if that's quite the criticism Gleiberman intends, but the statement still stands.
The two halves of this argument may be yelling at each other, but in another sense they're really saying the same thing. It's just that some of us want even a pirate adventure movie to add up in a certain way - not just on the connect-the-dots level of a comic-book flowchart, but as a genuine dramatic journey, a roller-coaster for the heart. For others, that very goal may now be passé.
This is the synthesis of Gleiberman's message board analysis. The thing is, I don't think those are the only two options. I *do* "want even a pirate adventure movie to add up in a certain way" and I promise, if I didn't think this movie--or DMC--*did* add up to a "genuine dramatic journey," I would come down on it like a hammer. Don't think I haven't done it before, even with movies (and TV shows) that got better reviews. I think a movie should have both depth and surface. I don't want just eye-candy, and I *like* old-fashioned resolution. I have a very low tolerance, in fact, for shallow entertainment and fallacious narratives. (I'm even pretty iffy on unconventional structure, but that might be another topic.) Which is why I've gotta stand by my gut with this one. The PoTC trilogy as a whole is both coherent and satisfying. At least for me. But I promise, hand to heart, I will NOT go running to a message board to tell people they could "get it" if they "only had a brain." *g*
One more "arrr!" and, okay, I'm done.
Gleiberman falls into the "this movie is a narrative muddle" camp, and this article is thoughtful and interesting. But as I made clear in my own review of the movie, I think the movie is both terrific and coherent. Since I feel so strongly about it, I may as well respond to the article here.
When Lord Cutler Beckett, the scoundrel of the East India Trading Company, extracts a promise from Jack Sparrow to betray his comrades, the betrayal, initially, makes sense - Jack, a bit of a scoundrel himself, wants to get back to a merry pirate's life of sailing and boozing, without all of these damned obligations. But for all the focus and gravitas that's placed upon this moment of ''intrigue,'' it pays off...not at all. It's a red herring. Jack never does much to tilt the action Beckett's way, and he is never really forced into confrontation with his friends. The whole backroom-scam subplot doesn't develop and surge - it just evaporates.
Um, actually, Jack agreed to work with Lord Beckett--but then ended up not needing to (at least fully) go through with the deal. I do agree that there were a lot of incidents like this in the movie, and if I were a movie critic sitting there making notes and trying to construct a linear storyline to reference later (as I can only assume they do; I know I'd be worried about remembering stuff like that, especially in a movie this long and crowded), it *would* be frustrating. But imo, those big "backroom intrigue" moments served to remind the audience that every single major character would screw over the others in order to further their *own* goals if they considered it necessary or were offered an alternative that seemed opportune at the moment. In other words: pirate! In AWE, at last, every one of the main characters had hidden motives and secret plans and they were all willing at one time or another to double cross or lie to one another for the sake of expediency. Until, of course, the end, when they were forced to work together (which, btw, WAS the emotional resolution of all those so-called "red herring" subplots as well as of the overarching narrative).
I kept waiting for the Davy Jones/Tia Dalma plot to come to fruition, but instead, it's just another stray piece of information, made irrelevant the moment that Tia Dalma expands, like the dough boy at the end of Ghostbusters, into the Goddess of the Sea, a special effect that seems to exist for no other reason than to make us go ''Wow!''
Hm. As I said, I wasn't totally invested in the Davy Jones/Tia Dalma subplot and didn't particularly *want* to see a whole lot of backstory (it seems enough for me to know that Davy Jones was in love with the embodiment of the sea--I mean: duh, really; it's both logical and kinda awesome that they gave it such a literal twist). Well, it seems to me that Gleiberman has become trapped by his own professionalism. I don't throw out that accusation lightly; I do, actually, unlike many, believe being a film critic requires an education (I know enough about it to respect it) and a certain amount of objectivity. But I suspect that same education teaches a film critic to watch for narrative threads, grab hold of them (even on first viewing they probably can't knock the habit), and trail them to their resolution. On the other hand, a casual viewer or a person watching solely to be entertained will wait until later to sort out those narrative threads. They won't find themselves in the middle of the movie with a handful of slack threads (to stick with this metaphor, since it seems to be working) and wondering what happened. They will have moved on seamlessly, so long as the action kept flowing, and only on looking back later will they find that those threads were tied off elsewhere (and, in this case, fairly neatly) in order to move on with the pattern. Um, so to speak. While Gleiberman was, by his own admission, waiting for the big twist, for the movie to "complicate our feelings about [the villain] by giving him a sympathetic back story," the movie was happily leap-frogging over the foregone conclusion. (The way I look at it is: why bother going there when the audience has already pulled every "villain-who-wasn't-always-bad" cliche out of our collective cinematic experience and applied it anyway? I recognize this would not always excuse the issue. *g*) But I don't think you can blame the movie for *not* putting its focus where the critics thought it should be. There was enough information about Davy Jones in both this and the last movie to form a very clear picture of who he was or is. In cooperation with the clear (in fact, almost too heavy-handed) parallel between Elizabeth and Calypso, and the more subtle (only overt at the end of the film) one between him and Will, it was actually a powerful--but, due to its sidelined status, fairly unsentimental--love story. The love between Will and Elizabeth and between Davy Jones and Tia Dalma/Calypso, while treated as valid and with very tangible consequences, was not the only or even the primary factor in the rising action. Again, I was never focused on the Will/Elizabeth love story, and I'm still SO grateful it didn't turn into a Will/Elizabeth/Jack love triangle, that I was not at all disappointed by the resolution of the respective love stories. Had the relationships become big and epic and anchored the conflict of the narrative, I WOULD have been very unhappy, especially as I would have felt they cheated the set-up promised by the other two movies. (Now that would have been a real red herring: piratey action ruined by doomed lovers.) A lack of melodrama does not automatically make a love story ineffective. I'm not sure if that's quite the criticism Gleiberman intends, but the statement still stands.
The two halves of this argument may be yelling at each other, but in another sense they're really saying the same thing. It's just that some of us want even a pirate adventure movie to add up in a certain way - not just on the connect-the-dots level of a comic-book flowchart, but as a genuine dramatic journey, a roller-coaster for the heart. For others, that very goal may now be passé.
This is the synthesis of Gleiberman's message board analysis. The thing is, I don't think those are the only two options. I *do* "want even a pirate adventure movie to add up in a certain way" and I promise, if I didn't think this movie--or DMC--*did* add up to a "genuine dramatic journey," I would come down on it like a hammer. Don't think I haven't done it before, even with movies (and TV shows) that got better reviews. I think a movie should have both depth and surface. I don't want just eye-candy, and I *like* old-fashioned resolution. I have a very low tolerance, in fact, for shallow entertainment and fallacious narratives. (I'm even pretty iffy on unconventional structure, but that might be another topic.) Which is why I've gotta stand by my gut with this one. The PoTC trilogy as a whole is both coherent and satisfying. At least for me. But I promise, hand to heart, I will NOT go running to a message board to tell people they could "get it" if they "only had a brain." *g*
One more "arrr!" and, okay, I'm done.