I saw two movies today at the Cartlon Cinema for cheap Tuesday matinees. The first film I saw was Robert Eggers' rather weird and horrific The Lighthouse. The second was also weird and horrific.
It was Cats! The hot mess of an acid trip of a movie!
The near-universal pans have been focusing on the practically non-existent plot and the CGI disaster that are the cats themselves. But there is a strange dichotomy with Hopper's Cats that one must grapple with when trying to review the film. You have the musical upon which the film is based, and you have the cinematic adaptation. Do you tear the film apart because the musical itself is bad? Or is it the filmmaking decisions that make this movie so terrible, so infamously horrible, so quickly?
As I often say -- why not both?
Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical is easy to dismiss as not exactly great theatre, but that's because so many people expect a conventional narrative-driven piece. Cats has no intention of being a plot-driven musical. Instead, it is widely noted for being a song sequence of cats introducing themselves, all while the patriarch cat tries to decide who will be sacrificed-- uh, I mean, who will be chosen to go to the Heaviside Layer, a cat version of heaven. Much dancing and singing ensues. Think of it as a sort of middle-brow pseudo-surrealism, a tripped-out musical fantasia of song and dance that has the dream logic of stream-of-consciousness writing.
The songs, unfortunately, are mostly unremarkable, and go on far too long (how many times does one need to hear the phrase "Jellicle cats"?), but by all accounts, live stage versions of the musical have fantastic dancing and performances. Cats is more of a formalist musical: by forgoing narration, we
should be focusing on the more formal aspects of the play: the songs,
the music, the dancing, the design.
And this is where the film adaptation goes so massively wrong.
The songs are unmemorable, yes, and the dancing has mostly been chopped up in the editing room. But what about the design? Oh! The design. If we're supposed to marvel at the technological feat of
turning the actors into cats, the filmmakers are sorely mistaken. These
look like cheap CGI cats with human faces pasted on, a feline uncanny valley. It's not even particularly well-rendered CGI, either. Famously, the producers almost immediately shipped out an "improved" version of the film after early screenings had negative feedback. But I remember seeing the trailers for the film and cringe-laughing, heavily impacted by major schadenfreude. The cats, simply put, look terrible -- and the basic scaling of the actors to their surroundings seems off: aren't cats a bit bigger than this? It's most obvious in the Train Cat's song (I can't be bothered to remember his name, despite it being sung a thousand times), as they stroll along a railway. They look more like the size of squirrels. And speaking of rodents...
There are dancing mice and cockroaches introduced in the Jennyanydots number that re-appear throughout the film, and these babies are pure nightmare fuel. Even worse than the Busby Berkeley-esque showgirl cockroaches are the faces of children slapped on the CGI mice. These mice get thrown around rather violently, but at least they don't get eaten alive by the cats, unlike their insect friends. It's a doozy of a directorial decision.
But there are other decisions by Hooper that made me scratch my head. One annoying tendency in the film is the use of silent breaks for dramatic effect: there are simply too many of them, and they just don't work. If the songs seem to go on forever, the film's use of these moments of silence make it worse. I must also really question the sound mixing of the film, which is often sloppy, possibly because the vocals were supposedly recorded live. More than once I thought I was in Robert Altman territory, with voices overlapping one another in an unpleasant way.
The supposed show-stopping song Memory is slipping fast from mine. It's a snooze, other than cringing at Hudson's over-performance of it. Hooper must've thought that hey!-- sticking the camera in Anne Hathaway's leaking face won her an Oscar, maybe it'll work again. Spoiler: it doesn't. Jennifer Hudson has been accused of over-acting before, but here it's a very valid criticism. Her performance is wretched, and I think it's because of Hooper's direction: "Emote! More emotion! Cry! Warble your voice! Pause unnecessarily during your phrases!" It's awful, my friends, and she deserves better. She's a talented singer, but... oh boy. This sticking the camera in the faces of actors is a Hooperism that sometimes works (The King's Speech) but often doesn't (Les Misérables), and the camerawork in the film is often of the shaky-cam variety. It's old hat now, and never really worked in the first place. Hold your damn camera still!
There's also something else that must be addressed. I'm not sure if it's the fault of Webber or Hooper, but there's a rather unsettling eroticism to Cats. Writhing figures, heavy breathing, a practical cat orgy at the Jellicle Ball fuelled by cat-drugs. It's uncomfortable for what's trying to pass itself off as a family film. It's made worse by the Taylor Swift cat's breasts and her performance as sex kitten. There's also the rampant fat-shaming that's supposed to be comedic, but instead reads as just lazy, obvious humour. James Corden is clearly having a great time, but I must ask why he is when his entire character is just one big fat joke.
And what's up with Idris Elba's Macavity? What a bizarre plot device this is: he's the "Napoleon of Crime" that has magical powers to make the Heaviside Layer nominees disappear to a boat on the Thames. I think it's an idea to introduce some sort of narrative suspense into the film, but it comes off as silly and unnecessary.
Silly and unnecessary. Yup. That about sums up this hot mess.
Showing posts with label Tom Hooper. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tom Hooper. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 8, 2020
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
"Les Misérables" Review
After writing this review, I've come across an article in the New Yorker that pretty much summarizes what I thought of Les Misérables. Oh, and do I have some scathing opinions. As one of my friends noted on Facebook as I posted my one-word response last night, there will be blood. (My response: "Ugh.")
Where do I begin? I'm really not sure. But how about with one of the most obvious elements of the mise-en-scène: the makeup and costuming. Oh boy.
Overdone makeup that piles on the sores, bruises, decaying teeth, dirt and mud -- to comical levels. Stephanie Zacherek suggests calling it "hobo chic", and I'm inclined to agree. The film has been art directed to death, with the only apparent direction being "More! More grime! More dirt!" The hyperbolic level of grime that covers every surface in an attempt at bludgeoning the audience with Misery is a dangerous romanticizing of what suffering is. The melodramatic form, of course, asks the audience to share in its characters' suffering as a cathartic roller-coaster of emotions -- one that I am often very glad to take a spin on. But here, the romanticization of misery strikes me as a particularly dangerous** style of kitsch, as it turns past, real-life suffering into spectacle. This becomes acceptable for some because this suffering is so far away from us: the film is a period piece in France with British accents and talk of Kings and lots of old-fashioned poverty. But the situation depicted is also oh-so-close, with the contemporary repetition of an increasingly wealthy and powerful elite towering over massive income gaps, while reinforcing their statuses through more and more drastic legal measures.
But such social commentary is beyond Les Misérables. Instead, such analysis is reduced to a simple "Be nice to those less fortunate, and Trust in God." The musical asks us to surge with some sort of pride or hope when we see good-doers do good-things, and empathy for those who are covered with lots of really really gross sores and dirty dirt.
"Strive for your dreams!", it seems to be saying in a kind of vague self-affirmation mantra. I, of course, find such proverbial affirmations to be misguided, ineffective and flatly irritating. Good intentions and a belief in a god are not enough to change the world, as Victor Hugo seemed to be slyly, faintly aware of as he sets his epic's climax the failed revolution of June 1832. Much like Baudelaire or Flaubert, I appreciate Hugo's attempts to highlight social problems, but find his crude sentimentality and aestheticizing to be misguided.
And thus enter Schönberg and company. The novel has proven a popular source for adaptations, but I have not seen or heard any of these other versions, and my familiarity with Hugo's material has been second-hand exposure to Les Miz through friends and a high school production of the score's "highlights" (a term I use loosely). I remember four songs: "Castle on a Cloud", "Master of the House", "Do You Hear the People Sing" and, of course, the power-ballad "I Dreamed a Dream".
I don't want to spend too much time analyzing the score, as there really isn't much to say about it. Let's all admit something: it's mostly forgettable. Kretzmer's English lyrics are an endless surge of rhyming couplets and recitative, bludgeoning the audience with easily digestible narrative cues and nary a clever phrase. How many of the songs end with a ringing final note, Jackman or Crowe or whomever belting out the piece's final lyric as if it's the most significant existential cry or a perfect encapsulation of the song's Theme? These criticisms have surrounded the musical for years, with most critics regarding the show as middle-brow popera.
As a film theorist, my problems with the movie are with its technique and its ideology. Much has been made in the popular press about Les Misérables' supposedly groundbreaking technique of live-set recording. It's a neat trick, I guess... that's been done before. (Notably, Bogdanovich's At Long Last Love from 1975 with Cybill Shepherd and Burt Reynolds, of all people.) And what are we supposed to take away from this stunt? A more raw emotional performance, as if the practice of dubbing isn't done in virtually every other film made since the 30s? Sorry, I don't buy it. I didn't get anything more out of Hathaway's performance if she had recorded her vocals afterwards. And maybe if they hadn't made such a fuss around this technique, they wouldn't have thought twice about re-recording Russell Crowe's vocals, which are often off-key, restrained and sound as if he's daydreaming. Big mistake.
Oh, but it's more "realistic" that Seyfried's sky-high notes are a bit strained, that Hathaway catches a few notes in her throat as she cries, or that Jackman occasionally falters? I see.
So what? Why are we so obsessed with pseudo-realism?
If the filmmakers were so keen on realism, why the shunning of deep focus? The rapid-style editing, which is as far away from DeSica as possible? The bombastic camera swoops through obviously-CGI Paris streets and ships? Hooper's auteurist stamps of canted and expressionist ultra-high angles? Realism and the musical form are often uncomfortable bedfellows, with the successful examples I can think of being those whose goals are near-Brechtian irony, or at the very least, some sort of edge. Pennies From Heaven or New York, New York blend gritty noir and some realist touches to create biting, jarring films that leave the audience deeply uncomfortable, and A Star is Born or West Side Story aim for touches of pathos amongst their beautiful, jazzy numbers. Les Misérables is utterly without edge, and any possible prickly bits are sanded down with bombast. Everything is ramped up to the highest level of superficial emotion, with only the Thénardiers (Helen Bonham-Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen) appearing as the requisite "comic relief". But the Thénardiers seem to have dropped in from a different movie (a French Sweeney Todd through kabuki) and just don't blend in with the attempts at realism and, in fact, are a jarring trumpet blast announcing realist failure. They also serve to remind us just how lacking in any humour the rest of the film is, which takes itself much too seriously.
And I'm not sure where to fit this, but one scene really struck me as gratuitous and... ugh. I speak of the romanticizing of shit. You know what I'm talking about it. The scene could have been filmed without this wonderful element, but instead we witness our characters swimming in it, emerging from the water with their faces caked in it, probably having swallowed some of it. I couldn't help but be reminded of Salo at this point. The petty bourgeoisies savour their meal of shit, just as we are supposed to watch this scene and gush "Oh, how horrid!"
I understand melodrama. I often crave the purging elements the form offers. But Les Misérables offers too much, and seems to be primarily designed --nay, constructed-- to be a big sob-fest. Instead of being sucked into its emotional sway, I found myself chortling. Rolling my eyes. Staring at audience members who were duped into becoming blubbering messes. And I'm the kind of person that will gleefully gasp, coo and "aww" at the most cliché-ridden Bollywood epic. Perhaps it's that Les Misérables tries too hard in its attempts to be "about something", its underlining of Hugo's Christian elements, and its hammer-blow emotional subtlety. Marius and his fellow young, idealistic men seem to me as sharing the same goals of the film: full of hopeful ideas, and relying on rousing people's superficial emotions to get them to join in the choir.
But who are these people, and why should I care? The eponymous "miserables" are archetypes drowning in period gear and slathered with mud. They don't strike me as real people. And as for the rest of the revolving-door cast, we have Éponine, played by Samantha Barks, as the insufferable child who somehow grows into a self-sacrificial lamb, for no apparent reason other than her capital-L love for freckled Eddie Redmayne's Marius. Some annoying blonde, blue-eyed boy whose name I don't think was even mentioned, foolishly playing with the big boys. Hathaway's Fantine, a hyperbolic martyr figure, is only in the first act. Valjean is just pathetic, Javert is too one-note in his conviction (WHY is he so obsessed with capturing Valjean, other than to be a representation of The Law?), and I've just stopped caring to continue or bother editing this more.
Oh, and Russell Crowe.
Where do I begin? I'm really not sure. But how about with one of the most obvious elements of the mise-en-scène: the makeup and costuming. Oh boy.
Overdone makeup that piles on the sores, bruises, decaying teeth, dirt and mud -- to comical levels. Stephanie Zacherek suggests calling it "hobo chic", and I'm inclined to agree. The film has been art directed to death, with the only apparent direction being "More! More grime! More dirt!" The hyperbolic level of grime that covers every surface in an attempt at bludgeoning the audience with Misery is a dangerous romanticizing of what suffering is. The melodramatic form, of course, asks the audience to share in its characters' suffering as a cathartic roller-coaster of emotions -- one that I am often very glad to take a spin on. But here, the romanticization of misery strikes me as a particularly dangerous** style of kitsch, as it turns past, real-life suffering into spectacle. This becomes acceptable for some because this suffering is so far away from us: the film is a period piece in France with British accents and talk of Kings and lots of old-fashioned poverty. But the situation depicted is also oh-so-close, with the contemporary repetition of an increasingly wealthy and powerful elite towering over massive income gaps, while reinforcing their statuses through more and more drastic legal measures.
But such social commentary is beyond Les Misérables. Instead, such analysis is reduced to a simple "Be nice to those less fortunate, and Trust in God." The musical asks us to surge with some sort of pride or hope when we see good-doers do good-things, and empathy for those who are covered with lots of really really gross sores and dirty dirt.
"Strive for your dreams!", it seems to be saying in a kind of vague self-affirmation mantra. I, of course, find such proverbial affirmations to be misguided, ineffective and flatly irritating. Good intentions and a belief in a god are not enough to change the world, as Victor Hugo seemed to be slyly, faintly aware of as he sets his epic's climax the failed revolution of June 1832. Much like Baudelaire or Flaubert, I appreciate Hugo's attempts to highlight social problems, but find his crude sentimentality and aestheticizing to be misguided.
And thus enter Schönberg and company. The novel has proven a popular source for adaptations, but I have not seen or heard any of these other versions, and my familiarity with Hugo's material has been second-hand exposure to Les Miz through friends and a high school production of the score's "highlights" (a term I use loosely). I remember four songs: "Castle on a Cloud", "Master of the House", "Do You Hear the People Sing" and, of course, the power-ballad "I Dreamed a Dream".
I don't want to spend too much time analyzing the score, as there really isn't much to say about it. Let's all admit something: it's mostly forgettable. Kretzmer's English lyrics are an endless surge of rhyming couplets and recitative, bludgeoning the audience with easily digestible narrative cues and nary a clever phrase. How many of the songs end with a ringing final note, Jackman or Crowe or whomever belting out the piece's final lyric as if it's the most significant existential cry or a perfect encapsulation of the song's Theme? These criticisms have surrounded the musical for years, with most critics regarding the show as middle-brow popera.
As a film theorist, my problems with the movie are with its technique and its ideology. Much has been made in the popular press about Les Misérables' supposedly groundbreaking technique of live-set recording. It's a neat trick, I guess... that's been done before. (Notably, Bogdanovich's At Long Last Love from 1975 with Cybill Shepherd and Burt Reynolds, of all people.) And what are we supposed to take away from this stunt? A more raw emotional performance, as if the practice of dubbing isn't done in virtually every other film made since the 30s? Sorry, I don't buy it. I didn't get anything more out of Hathaway's performance if she had recorded her vocals afterwards. And maybe if they hadn't made such a fuss around this technique, they wouldn't have thought twice about re-recording Russell Crowe's vocals, which are often off-key, restrained and sound as if he's daydreaming. Big mistake.
Oh, but it's more "realistic" that Seyfried's sky-high notes are a bit strained, that Hathaway catches a few notes in her throat as she cries, or that Jackman occasionally falters? I see.
So what? Why are we so obsessed with pseudo-realism?
If the filmmakers were so keen on realism, why the shunning of deep focus? The rapid-style editing, which is as far away from DeSica as possible? The bombastic camera swoops through obviously-CGI Paris streets and ships? Hooper's auteurist stamps of canted and expressionist ultra-high angles? Realism and the musical form are often uncomfortable bedfellows, with the successful examples I can think of being those whose goals are near-Brechtian irony, or at the very least, some sort of edge. Pennies From Heaven or New York, New York blend gritty noir and some realist touches to create biting, jarring films that leave the audience deeply uncomfortable, and A Star is Born or West Side Story aim for touches of pathos amongst their beautiful, jazzy numbers. Les Misérables is utterly without edge, and any possible prickly bits are sanded down with bombast. Everything is ramped up to the highest level of superficial emotion, with only the Thénardiers (Helen Bonham-Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen) appearing as the requisite "comic relief". But the Thénardiers seem to have dropped in from a different movie (a French Sweeney Todd through kabuki) and just don't blend in with the attempts at realism and, in fact, are a jarring trumpet blast announcing realist failure. They also serve to remind us just how lacking in any humour the rest of the film is, which takes itself much too seriously.
And I'm not sure where to fit this, but one scene really struck me as gratuitous and... ugh. I speak of the romanticizing of shit. You know what I'm talking about it. The scene could have been filmed without this wonderful element, but instead we witness our characters swimming in it, emerging from the water with their faces caked in it, probably having swallowed some of it. I couldn't help but be reminded of Salo at this point. The petty bourgeoisies savour their meal of shit, just as we are supposed to watch this scene and gush "Oh, how horrid!"
"The misery! How delightful!"
I understand melodrama. I often crave the purging elements the form offers. But Les Misérables offers too much, and seems to be primarily designed --nay, constructed-- to be a big sob-fest. Instead of being sucked into its emotional sway, I found myself chortling. Rolling my eyes. Staring at audience members who were duped into becoming blubbering messes. And I'm the kind of person that will gleefully gasp, coo and "aww" at the most cliché-ridden Bollywood epic. Perhaps it's that Les Misérables tries too hard in its attempts to be "about something", its underlining of Hugo's Christian elements, and its hammer-blow emotional subtlety. Marius and his fellow young, idealistic men seem to me as sharing the same goals of the film: full of hopeful ideas, and relying on rousing people's superficial emotions to get them to join in the choir.
But who are these people, and why should I care? The eponymous "miserables" are archetypes drowning in period gear and slathered with mud. They don't strike me as real people. And as for the rest of the revolving-door cast, we have Éponine, played by Samantha Barks, as the insufferable child who somehow grows into a self-sacrificial lamb, for no apparent reason other than her capital-L love for freckled Eddie Redmayne's Marius. Some annoying blonde, blue-eyed boy whose name I don't think was even mentioned, foolishly playing with the big boys. Hathaway's Fantine, a hyperbolic martyr figure, is only in the first act. Valjean is just pathetic, Javert is too one-note in his conviction (WHY is he so obsessed with capturing Valjean, other than to be a representation of The Law?), and I've just stopped caring to continue or bother editing this more.
Oh, and Russell Crowe.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)