I saw two films back-to-backon the big screen yesterday:
Apocalypto Mel Gibson 2006 USA Gibson's films are all seemingly based around the notion of life as freedom and death as slavery…or something like that. In order to show what is at stake in terms of freedom, in terms of life, he makes his films as gory as possible, so that when a character dies, he does not leave the world peacefully, but has his heart ripped out by an evil savage. For Apocalypto, Gibson has toned down the slow-motion that killed Passion and is more interested in getting one with events. If the events themselves are ludicrous, and we don't really care for any of these horrid people, then at least it has its moments of noteworthy action (the chase scenes through the forest are wonderful). And the scene in the middle of the movie, at the Mayan temple, shot in large amounts of dusty, sandy yellows and bright reds, with the captives being escorted to the top of the temple itself painted in blue, is wonderful and scary.
Babel Alejandro González Iñárritu 2006 USA / Mexico Less fragmented and more episodic than 21 Grams, and if it avoids the sags in interest found in Amores perros, it also fails to reach that film's emotional heights; it's probably because the familiar narrative technique isn't nearly as vital this time round - the novelty has worn off since the 2000 film, and it was vital to 21 Grams's meaning. Here, it's very solid without ever really needing to be present (other than perhaps to bind several events which happen to span several days into one consumable narrative), though an argument in defence might arise, and hopefully does, upon a second-viewing. Iñárritu confirms himself not only as an interesting artist, but also as an incredibly confident craftsman familiar with form and film language - his cutting between the various scenarios, and between various shots in those individual scenarios, is well controlled and effective; the first of these cuts between plot strands happens to involve children, as two brothers in Morocco scarper from the scene of a crime, and then a brother and sister run excitedly from their maid on a different continent; there is one moment where one character suffers a crescendo of screams as she lies in pain, and, just as we reach the peak in decibel, we cut to a POV of a deaf-mute in a completely different environment altogether; and the deaf-mute scenario offers the most interesting editing technique to produce meaning, in a Tokyo nightclub scene in which we cut between loud shots of drunken dancers and then to silent POVs as we watch on with only flickering lights. Great stuff. The scenes in Morocco are - or should be - the most tragically intended; the scenes in Tokyo the most aesthetically convincing; the scenes in Mexico the most arbitrary in view of the wider scope of the film; the scenes in Tazmarine the most emotionally intense. Also of note is the acting, and one of the performances in particular: it is often overlooked in Iñárritu's films because it is difficult to judge the pitch of an actor whose character's narrative arc is all out-of-sync, but Brad Pitt's effort here is very impressive indeed.
Last edited by Capo de La Cosa Nostra; 01/23/0703:22 AM.
...dot com bold typeface rhetoric. You go clickety click and get your head split. 'The hell you look like on a message board Discussing whether or not the Brother is hardcore?
