Category / films

by flares

Incredulity Towards Metanightmares

Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (Wes Craven, 1994)

Popular culture relies on repetition with difference and there is perhaps no subgenre that is quite so repetitive as the slasher — the crime in the past, the discrete/isolated setting, the gender ambiguous and curiously mobile villain and their double the gender ambiguous final girl, the increasing number of unmissed teen victims… none of whom go to the cinema to see slasher films. Craven, finally, is allowed to visit his idea of a Pomo slasher and puts Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund and John Saxon at the heart of a movie about making an Elm Street style film, with a real Krueger going after the cast and crew. Alongside actors playing themselves, we have Craven as Craven and Robert Shaye as Robert Shaye and no doubt best boys playing best boys. As far as one can see, Langenkamp is better as Langenkamp than as Nancy, and Englund plays affable character actor troubled by nightmares.

Yes, it is clever and we have some more spectacular deaths, as well as further cameos from actors we probably last saw in the franchise. John Saxon as father figure melds into Thompson’s father and the original footage of A Nightmare on Elm Street is folded into the film. There is a sense of biting that hand that feeds them — dangerous with those metal nails — and possibly those actors would have gone to greater things than most of them did without the Elm Street resume. 

To the extent that Pomo is radical rather than neoconservative it is fun and interesting and at least foregrounds the cynicism of film franchises, but now the final girl is the final mother, kicking slasher butt because she is the lioness protecting her cub. We’ve neatly been prepared for the denouement by the telling of Hansel and Gretel, and the script plays into the generic  imperative of the open ending. 

by flares

There’s No Place Like Elm Street

“Welcome to Prime Time, bitch.”

Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (Rachel Talalay, 1991)

Popular culture relies on repetition with difference and there is perhaps no subgenre that is quite so repetitive as the slasher – the crime in the past, the discrete/isolated setting, the gender ambiguous and curiously mobile villain and their double the gender ambiguous final girl, the increasing number of unmissed teen victims… and every so often one has to find a new set of teens to slash and eventually decided that an origin myth is needed. Or another origin myth.

What’s new about this film? It’s directed by a woman. This shouldn’t be an issue but there aren’t a whole lot of female directors for some reason. There’s an unfortunate almost collision between the bitch allusion title screen and this being A Rachel Talalay Film. I’d noticed the b-word being thrown around in the previous film and the language here is sweary. Talalay had been production manager on the first two Nightmare films, went on to Tank Girl (1995) and has reached the giddy heights of directing two Doctor Who episodes.

So, all the teenage kids of those who killed Freddy being killed, Krueger has now gone after all the other teens in town, with only one left in Springfield (was the town named before? I’m not sure.) The last teenager is escaping by plane, John Doe (Shon Greenblatt, how about that for Renaissance self-fashioning) and finds himself sucked out through a hole in the roof before awaking in a house that is in midair á la Wizard of Oz. Never knowingly underplaying a reference, Krueger (Robert Englund) does his wacky witch impression. Doe, having left the house next to the Thompson’s, in knocked out and amnesiac on the outskirts of town. Just as the manner of the killings in inexplicable save in terms of spectacle, so his survival is inexplicable, although this lacks spectacle.

Doe is taken to that other space that ideology send those who have not fitted into bourgeois family, the children’s home, home to the hearing impaired Carlos (Ricky Dean Logan), the drug-using Spencer (Breckin Meyer) and the sexually-abused Tracy (Lezlie Dean). One of the case worker, Maggie (Lisa Zane), with nightmares of her own, takes Doe back into town with the three teens stowing away. It turns out that there are no teens in town — the children’s home has missed this somehow — and, even worse, Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold cameo.

Freddy is back, clearly, with thus four more potential victims, but it is a sign of the depths to which the series has sunk that Carlos being stalked without hearing aid is played for laughs rather than menace. Johnny Depp, cameoing from the first film, gets to do an anti drugs message, the height of hypocrisy on the part of the film on acknowledging its post-Craven conservatism. Back at the home, no one seems to have heard of the three teens and Yaphet Kotto brings a much needed gravitas to the film as someone who tries to control his dream.

Unmentioned in the earlier films, it now turns out that Freddie had a child who was taken away from him and is part of the reason he is behaving so badly. Talk about over determination. The answer is to travel into hell and 3D effects and bring him back into reality where he can be killed. But by now we know that that second death is impossible — any death is temporary when it suits the plot. Or the studio, for that matter. Watch this space for daddy’s return.

by flares

Alice Doesn’t Sleep Here Anymore

A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (Stephen Hopkins, 1989)

Popular culture relies on repetition with difference and there is perhaps no subgenre that is quite so repetitive as the slasher – the crime in the past, the discrete/isolated setting, the gender ambiguous and curiously mobile villain and their double the gender ambiguous final girl, the increasing number of unmissed teen victims… By now we’re onto a new generation of teens — Alice (Lisa Wilcox) has been handed the baton — and since the opening sequence is a blue-tinted* sex scene with Dan (Dan Hassel) you can do your own double entendres. You’d think this would mark her for death and when she jumps in the shower that seems to be her fate, only she becomes part of a more complicated dream sequence.

There’s this thing in Jacques Lacan about being between two deaths and the impossibility of the second death. It’s a variant on what is called the death drive, although the death instinct is a better translation. Nature, according to Sade according to Lacan, demands a total anihilation. Everything must return to dust. Lacan discusses Antigone, who is bricked up alive for the crime of burying her dead brother when this was expressly forbidden (and also she’s being made to carry the can for her dad Oedipus’ shenanigans). Bro had not had the proper rites read and thus his soul cannot rest — he needs the right rites. Antigone is a kind of Schrödinger’s heroine.

Think of all those horror films when characters have been buried alive or put to death with some kind of curse or rite. Some idiot comes along and reads the rite and brings them back — the undead being then seeks revenge. The only way to sort things is out — having read the wrong rites — read the right rites, right? But you never know when someone else will come along and read them again.

So here, as the cast point out twice, Freddy Krueger has murdered children and been burnt alive, without a proper burial. His spirit cannot rest and seeks revenge until the rites are read — in Part III. Of course, Jason the dog comes along and pisses on the corpse — writing being much the same as pissing*** — and brings him back until the rites are read again in the form of the climax to Part IV. But that second death remains impossible. Freddy continues to go after Alice’s friends in baroque ways and has Dan in his sights.

Of course, he’s not the only one unshrived. Agnes Krueger, his nun mother, had been raped by lunatics at the asylum and sought peace through the end of her son in Part III. We see her haunting — even though we’ve also seen a gravestone. There is still unfinished business clearly. The mother — a distant relation of Mrs Vorhees, one assumes — is now the double to Alice as the latter finds herself pregnant with, presumably, Dan’s child. Paradoxically this makes her safer, as Freddy is using her foetus’s dreams to come back. Abortion is rejected as an option, however. Meanwhile, in dreams, Dan/Freddy seem to merge and the transformation of Freddy from bogeyman to father figure continues. (The following year, of course, Edward Scissorhands emerges as tragic hero.)

Theory aside, the film is visually impressive — with some of the dream sequences channelling M.C. Escher. The comic geek Mark Grey (Joe Seeley) seems to have reacted to nominative determinism by wearing rainbows — which one might assume was indexical of his sexuality, but for his desire for supposed potential supermodel Greta (Erika Anderson). Before we can say, “beard”, we can admire the transition from live action to comic books, but the duel rapidly turns silly. But then, of course, most of this is about the spectacle.

[I’ll paste in the Lacan reference later]

Notes

* Or white/gold.**

** This “joke” will make little sense sooner or later. It’s something about a dress and colour perception.

*** Especially when snow is involved. Cf. the excuse “I’m writing my name in Narnia.”

by flares

And What She Found There

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (Renny Harlin, 1988)

Popular culture relies on repetition with difference and there is perhaps no subgenre that is quite so repetitive as the slasher – the crime in the past, the discrete/isolated setting, the gender ambiguous and curiously mobile villain and their double the gender ambiguous final girl, the increasing number of unmissed teen victims… except here one of them notices that they’re dropping like flies.

Of course this begins with spoilers — three of the original children of the parents that killed Freddy survive from Part III — Kincaid (Ken Sagoes), Joey (Rodney Eastman) and Kirsten (Tuesday Knight — replacing Patricia Arquette, who has presumably gone off to solve the civil rights problem) — and these three have to be removed for the plot to develop. I wonder if this was an inspiration for David Fincher and Alien3? Meanwhile Robert Englund gets pushed to top of the bill and given more lines. Here he is on the turn from evil villain to Arnie-style quipping antihero. He’s brought back to (un)life by a dog pissing on his skeleton — there’s an allegory there if you look for it. The dog is called Jason, because we can do intertextuality.

This is more clearly a 1980s film — big hair, pounding rock soundtrack, rap interjected into the closing credits, ray bans, nods to Jaws and motorbikes, as well as calls backs to the 1950s and a diner with a jukebox and Reefer Madness on the neighbourhood cinema. In the scripting corner we have to blame William Kotzwinkle — a novelist who had done an ET novelisation and sequel — Brian Helgeland, who is showing none of the talent you’d imagine would produce LA Confidential (Curtis Hanson, 1997) and Scott Pierce (Jim and Ken Wheat, hiding under pseudonym). Apparently Helgelund wrote the script in a week. That long? They are clearly pushing the dream logic, as the characters’ deaths become more and more extreme. Kincaid is killed in the car graveyard where Krueger was buried, whereas Joey is drowned in his waterbed, seduced by a woman of his dreams, having not learnt from the seductive nurse monster of Part III.

There are plenty more teenagers Krueger can go after — an asthmatic moped rider, a sexy boy, a female weightlifter with big hair who turns into an insect… And then there’s Alice (Lisa Wilcox), Kirsten’s new best friend since she returned to the school from the asylum. Having watched or sensed her friends die, she finally fights back by breaking her way through the mirror; “Welcome to Wonderland!” cries Freddy, because by now we’re too brain dead to spot the reference. Having collected mementoes of her dead friends, she can imbibe all of their skills and fight back — and at last we have girl kicking demonic ass, in an anticipation of Buffy (whose filmic introduction was four years away). She (spoiler) wins…

… but the generic imperative wins out and we see a familiar reflection.

Lots of the teens here smoke — marking them for death — and there’s plenty of gratuitous nudity and more swearing here than the other films put together. Teens sneak out of upstairs bedrooms as if the film is parodying the genre. I suspect it is — clearly well enough to gain the highest box office of the sequence until Freddy vs. Jason (Ronny Yu, 2003).

by flares

The Dream of Solidarity

A Nightmare on Elm Street Part III (Chuck Russell, 1987)

Popular culture relies on repetition with difference and there is perhaps no subgenre that is quite so repetitive as the slasher – the crime in the past, the discrete/isolated setting, the gender ambiguous and curiously mobile villain and their double the gender ambiguous final girl, the increasing number of unmissed teen victims… A Nightmare on Elm Street Part III (Chuck Russell, 1987) sees Wes Craven’s return to the franchise, along with Nancy (Heather Lagenkamp) and Donald Thompson (John Saxon). Craven’s initial suggestion was for the film to be about a supernatural menace on the set of a slasher movie, but clearly that would never fly. Instead the scene shifts to an asylum.

As the first two films in the franchise show, the most significant ideological crucible of youth is the family home, followed closely by the school. For those who don’t conform there is a fate worse than death — the army, the police station (and cells), the prison, the hospital, the asylum. In the construction of the norm as sane, law-abiding, healthy, clean, heterosexual, there are heterotopias to which the abnormal may be exiled. Here we have a group of traumatised teens, all children of Krueger’s killers, fearful of sleeping lest he come after them. Nancy arrives to help them, suggesting they band together to fight back.

Each of the teens has their own secret identity, their ego ideal to fight against Freddy’s id, and at times it is unclear whether the film is laughing at or with them. Meanwhile a doctor (Neil Gordon (Craig Wasson)) and an ex-cop (Saxon) act as policing forces to give Krueger’s corpse a proper burial with what will pass for a proper rite.

There’s a moral here about collectivity and solidarity, although perhaps this can still be seen as trumped by patriarchy, whether in the form of the good doctor or the bad father who needs to be redeemed.

by flares

Heteronormativity Strikes Back

The politics of such films as Near Dark, The Silence of the Lambs, Hellraiser (I, II, and III), and Bram Stoker’s Dracula may be understood in part as emblematic of capital’s ongoing attempts at refurbishing its democratic facade by acknowledging the cynicism of the population while simultaneously emphasizing an ersatz liberalism, and by making use of a variety of progressive discourses current in academe that inevitably appear transmuted within the commercial entertainment industry.
Christopher Sharrett (1993) “The Horror Film in Neoconservative Culture”, Journal of Popular Film & Television,  21(3), p. 100.

A Nightmare on Elm Street Part II: Freddy’s Revenge (Jack Sholder, 1985)

Popular culture relies on repetition with difference and there is perhaps no subgenre that is quite so repetitive as the slasher – the crime in the past, the discrete/isolated setting, the gender ambiguous and curiously mobile villain and their double the gender ambiguous final girl, the increasing number of unmissed teen victims… A Nightmare on Elm Street (Wes Craven, 1984) postdates the Halloween and Friday the 13th franchises and adds a degree of the supernatural or fantastical which is not in the other franchises in the same way.*

Craven didn’t want to work on a sequel so we have a new director depicting a new family who have moved into the Thompsons’ house, including a teenaged boy, Jesse Walsh (Mark Patton). The slasher film tends to have a female protagonist — although it can take a while for her to act — on the one hand resisting the Mulveyan male gaze structures of identification, on the other hand feeding a male sadistic gaze for violent spectacle. But here — although we do sort of get a Final Girl — there’s a male protagonist who is a Jesse.

Coughs.

Freddy Krueger is clearly an equal opportunity sadist, as happy to play with Jesse as he was with Nancy; the temperature rises in the Walsh household, their pet birds pay homage to Hitchcock, a party catches fire and a swimming pool boils. Krueger increasingly seems to be an uncontrolled id, his sadism clearly sexualised. The worrying thing for Jesse is his increasing sense that he is Freddy, that he is causing the murders.

The big set piece of the film is a nocturnal wander or dream where Jesse ends up at the town’s gay bar (with a large lesbian clientele) and bumps into the bullying Coach Schneider (Marshall Bell). Schneider then forces him to run laps of the gym and take a shower; meanwhile the coach is attacked by a load of balls in his office, dragged to the shower by skipping ropes, strung up and slashed to death. Jesse finds Freddy’s glove on his hand. What is Jesse’s dark secret?

The whole is homoerotic, seasoned with BDSM and homosexual panic, with Jesse clearly as a confused teen. Frederik Dhaenens suggests that “the film deconstructs how heteronormativity
disciplines individuals who experience same-sex desires, [but] it depends upon its audiences to read this film in terms of queer resistance. Furthermore, by victimizing the potentially gay boy, it reinstates the heterosexual male as the real hero” (p. 110). Perhaps this is being over generous to the film — of the three non-normative characters one is a sadist who preys on boys, one is a serial killer and one is a teen who may be killing people or fantasising about doing so. Certainly the plot rescues the latter from the horrors of homosexuality — in the early years of the HIV crisis homosexuality is equated with death even more than usual.
Note

* As I watch/rewatch the rest, we’ll see how true this is.

Sources

Frederik Dhaenens (2013) “The Fantastic Queer: Reading Gay Representations in Torchwood and True Blood as Articulations of Queer Resistance”, Critical Studies in Media Communication, 30(2).

Christopher Sharrett (1993) “The Horror Film in Neoconservative Culture”, Journal of Popular Film & Television, 21(3).

by flares

Tintin and the Tintinnabulating Tinternet

Blackhat (Michael Mann, 2015)

  1. No coloured hats were worn during the making of this film.
  2. This film had four editors — one more than Fifty Shades of Grey.

The best part of the film is a pan across a cell wall of the lead character, Nick Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth), who has two books on his shelf: The Postmodern Condition and The Animal that Therefore I Am. Hathaway is a hacker, imprisoned for getting caught, who is briefly released to help good coder Chen Dawai (Leehom Wang) track down the Evil Coder who has sent a Chinese nuclear power station into meltdown and stolen money on manipulated soy bean futures . Along for the ride, seemingly, is Dawai’s sister, Lien (Tang Wei), whom Dawai had been all-but-pimping to Nick. (When they get together, Dawai is all older borther possessive of her.) She does have computer expertise, but her job is look pretty and to be the reward for the hero.

For all its next three months futurism, this is old school, it’s Heat (1996) but less cool — and I still say L.A. Takedown (1989) was the better movie. We have phone calls arranging meets, we have corpses showing up when we go in search of suspects (and no one gives a fig about forensics), we have hails of bullets making holes in walls but fairly rarely the whitehats, we have devices placed on the bottom of cars, we have helicopter shots of men standing in half completed tower blocks. We have — dear Cthulhu no — the zoom-in on the pixels that takes us into the screen and along wires and down into the mean streets of the circuit board.

None of it makes any sense — this is a film that begins with a volcano but fails to work up to a crisis. The set piece finale felt more early seventies Bond, but with poorer acting. Our computer genius had to go to the spot in Malaysia to work out what the cunning evil plan was rather than using Googlemaps. We have no motivation for the Big Bad — I’m not even convinced we have more than a username. And he isn’t — spoiler — wearing a hat.

by flares

Fifty Shades of Hamearis lucina

The Duke of Burgundy (Peter Strickland, 2014)

Towards the start of the opening credits of The Duke of Burgundy, I spotted the name of executive producer Ben Wheatley. He directed the genre bending Kill List (2011), the rather baffling A Field in England (2013), a couple of episodes of NuWho and he’s working on High-Rise. I couldn’t help but see that there was an uncanny film at work — a hidden film. On the one hand, there’s the Peter Greenaway version, which would need a Michael Nyman score, more camera tracking and an organisational system (by genus of butterfly?). On the other hand there’s the horror film,  possibly sf. Clearly the credits sequence is meant to invoke 1970s low budget movies, a sexploitation or two, maybe even a hint at Hammer. In a recurring scenario — this film is so about its repetition — the camera pans along a crowd watching a talk on butterflies and moths and, among all the woman, there are a couple of shop dummies. Autons? Cheaper than  extras? A nod toward the artificiality of it all? Or do we have a body snatchers scenario and they’re all insects? As  Evelyn (Chiara D’Anna) locates and opens a body-sized chest in the house, I wondered what horror we were to find in it. Later, briefly, there was an answer (as well as a longer answer).

So Evelyn (there’s an echo of Angela Carter there) arrives at a house, knocks and is admitted, being told off by Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen) for being late and for sitting down without invitation (I confess my first thought was she had not been given permission — a Pavlovian training from my own childhood).  Evelyn is set to work, cleaning the study — a space full of dead butterflies and larvae — and doing the laundry. When, as is inevitable, she fails to please her mistress, she is punished, behind a closed bathroom door, and possibly by a method that the British government recently criminalised on streaming video. If the acting seems a little off — well, think of the acting and dubbing in Dario Argento films if you haven’t (as I haven’t) seen Jess Franco films, and the fact that it is All More Complicated than you think it is.

It is obviously less explicit than that other film, Fifty Shades of Grey (2015), for the most part at least, and we would do well to avoid falling into an old value judgement about pornography and erotica. Here’s Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian:

Peter Strickland’s new film, The Duke of Burgundy, is different: it is a labour of love, whereas Fifty Shades of Grey was a labour of money.

Whilst clearly a budget of some significance was thrown at the other film, it has made pots of money and the original texts were bestselling adaptations of bestselling novels, this rather begs a question about Sam Taylor-Johnson’s artistic intentions in making the film alongside all the other crew members and the cast. Strickland, presumably, didn’t get a fee? Srsly? Whilst clearly I wasn’t a fan of that better known film, it is very easy to be snide about materials that a large female audience has enjoyed.

Obviously there are ambiguities to navigate. I’m inclining to the sense that it’s an exaggeration of the kind of materialistic relationship that many straight women enter into in capitalist society and that it isn’t necessarily endorsing it. This is not quite the same as suggesting that it’s a dramatization of the kind of abusive relationship that too many women (read: any non-consenting abusive relationship) are in or that women have the freedom to choose their sexual activities even if these are masochistic in nature (and, indeed, that’s so none of my business). Whilst clearly we could say the words Internalised Misogyny, we have a novel by a female ur-writer transformed by a female novelist adapted by a female screen writer filmed by a female director. Compare, say, Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976), where a male novelist is adapted by a male screenwriter is filmed by a male director. It’s not my place to label, but which one seems more likely to be feminist? One of them is a female vision of (some) female fantasies and the other is a male vision of (some) female fantasies. The fact that both characters are female makes a difference.

So, whilst it has to be noted that the entire cast of The Duke of Burgundy appears to be female, Peter Strickland, director and screenwriter, is a bloke. The BDSM scenario may be a representation of female empowerment, but it’s a male vision.  Clearly the film passes the Bechdel Test, but that’s no guarantee it’s feminist. (I note, again, I have no authority to issue such a label.) At points I found myself pondering whether entomology is part of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (1955) and the problem of a narrative in which the abuser has apparently been “seduced” by the victim. (“She made me do it.”)

I was particularly disturbed by the sequence when the camera zooms in on the darkened crotch of Cynthia and goes on an extended fantasy riff — in both the sexual and non-realist sense — before pulling back again. Is this, I wondered, a misogynist fear of what all those women get up to when men aren’t around? Perhaps not even women, but Insect Things? Where are all the men? Victims of preying mantises?

But the actors do what they do well, and it is beautifully shot and designed the hell out of — there’s a perfume credit, a long list of butterflies and very detailed annotations of the field recordings used in the film. It deserves to do well so that BFI and Film Four investment can be repaid. To say this is a better film than Fifty Shades, however, is probably not a useful judgement; I’m not even sure that I’d be more likely to rewatch it. I do want to seek out Katalin Varga (2006) and  Berberian Sound Studio  (2012) though.

by flares

The Real Thing, Or: Love is Strangled

[I wrote this some time ago, but it didn’t seem to be published at the time]

 

Love is Strange (Ira Sachs, 2014)
Gay movies always seem to be about death. Well, maybe that’s an over statement but male gay narratives partake of a gothic that seems out of statistical probability. If it’s not HIV related, it’s suicide or a violent end. One reaches for the Kleenex far too often and not in a happy ending way. Living happily ever after is a fantasy too far, it often seems, although – I know, I know – for drama to happen bad things have to happen to good people. (But see Der Kreis)

File Love is Strange under bittersweet. Ben (John Lithgow) and George (Alfred Molina) have lived together for thirty-nine years, one a talented if unsuccessful artist, the other a talented music teacher for a catholic school. But the marriage means that the school can no longer turn a blind eye to George’s sexuality and he is fired – meaning that they can’t afford the mortgage on their appointment. Whilst there is the option of moving to Poughkeepsie, the two stay in spare rooms (or spare bunkbeds/sofas) of friends and relatives whilst they sort themselves out.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Molina – he was Kenneth Halliwell in Prick Up Your Ears Stephen Frears, 1987), was a hoot as a habitual liar in Trust Me (Tony Dow, 1992) and is in the film of The Normal Heart (Ryan Murphy, 2014) – and Lithgow I first saw as transgendered Roberta in The World According to Garp (George Roy Hill, 1982). The relationship is absolutely beautiful, utterly credible, with a real sense of a shared history between them. The awkwardness of being put up – which rapidly turns in being put up with – is convincing, although I think Kate (Marisa Tomei) is given a bit of a thankless rôle as overly keen host and self-centered if put upon writer. The direction is leisurely, braving the chance to hold a shot for ten seconds longer than comfortable. It feels – not to be critical – that it wanted to be a theatre play. Unlike most New York comedy dramas or sitcoms this is a multiethnic New York.

At the same time as the leisurely pace we are left wanting to know more – one family crisis seems unresolved, George’s letter to the school parents is more political speechifying than plot development, a positive twist is too far in the fairy tale wish-fulfilment territory and the resolution mechanics seem unfocused. The epilogue is positive, a story arc pays off, diversity seems to thrive. But it is a sunset.

Meanwhile, I recognised John Corbett from Northern Exposure, and the face I knew but couldn’t name belongs to Ed (Darren E. Burrows) from the same programme. Game of Thrones gets a product placement, and I’m not sure I’ve seen a Dungeons and Dragons consultant credited before on a film.

All of this is certainly worth a look, although I noted this is another example of how every five years “Hollywood” notes that there is a mature audience as well as teenagers of all ages.

by flares

Uranus Descending

Jupiter Ascending (The Wachowskis, 2015)

There is no tail.

Once upon a time, there was a suitcase full of money, which was in the wrong hands, and kept falling into the hands of two lesbian lovers – and it was gloriously of its kind and sui generis and said oddly interesting things for lesbianism for two male writers and directors and was ludicrously over designed. But once Bound (The Wachowskis, 1996) was released, the directors opened the suitcase and took the money and made The Matrix (1999) and it was of its kind and soi disant and was ludicrously over designed. It kind of worked as long as you didn’ttake its sexual politics too seriously and got het up over Trinity. And because the film left us wanting more, for once we got this and the conceit of storing humans for energy just fell apart. And so, after produced films and adaptations of manga Speed Racer (2008) and of novel Cloud Atlas (with Tom Twyker, 2012), they put their bid in for either a Star Wars sequel or Marvel adaptation with Jupiter Ascending.

What we have is a fabulously overblown Cinderella cross bed with Beauty and the Beast. Jupiter Jones’s dad (James D’Arcy) had a hilariously inadequate telescope in Russia and is killed in a random burglary before Jupiter (Mila Kunis) is born. Relocated to Chicago, she is forced to clean toilets and sell her eggs in order to buy a slightly less pathetic telescope. This brings her to the attention of the Brassica family – Tightass, Kale and Bok Chou – who own vast swathes of the galaxy and have seeded Earth as a source of anti-ageing cream. Jupiter, it turns out, has exactly the same DNA as the Brassica’s dead mother and thus owns Earth.

A Marvel-style diverse posse (Africa American with Mohawk, one-eyed cigar chewer (I may have imagined the cigar) and blue haired Japanese girl with poorly invisibility cloaked flying motorbike)) are after her, as is half-dog, half-man fallen angel Caine Wise (Channing Tatum). He’s there to protect her, sort of, but he’s being paid, and half of Chicago is temporarily destroyed although no one seems to notice (the humans can be reprogrammed, you see). They seek refuge with Chicago-based Sheffieldian bee keeper Stinger Apini (Sean “marked-for-betrayal-and/or-death” Bean), and before you know it, Jupiter is in the planet Jupiter, dealing with the threatening threesome who for some reason want Earth above all other planets, and can achieve this by marrying her, or something. Jupiter has to be rescued, repeatedly.

Eddie Redmayne has just won a BAFTA for being Stephen Hawking, and frankly his whispering simpers won’t trouble the academy for next year. I’m reminded of his curious performance in Savage Grace (Tom Kalin, 2007), a troubled bisexual teen who may or may not have sex with his own mother. The Freudian reading of that film writes itself, even down to a convenient dog collar of disavowal, and I guess in Jupiter Ascending we have an absent daddy to explain why the Brassica siblings are closer to barking than Caine ever is. As the Jupiter base, the scenery and the plot fall apart bit by bit, the jeopardy is both cranked up (we have a toilet cleaner trying to climb an endless ladder!) and reduced (have these get out of jail free cards). Beneath CGI and possibly the odd bit of latex we have a frustrating number of British accents and Torchwood refugees, who were presumably cheap to buy when the film was in the UK. We have an elephant as a pilot who appears to be called Ganesha, settings which would have John Martin received for his oil paints and a redressed Ely cathedral to Keep It Real.

So Jupiter is great because of her natural genes and Caine is great because of his spliced jeans and we have an sfnal family melodrama where meritocracy never comes into it. Earth as a means of recharging batteries makes as much sense as the Matrix set up, and would make an average episode of nu-Who.

I’m actually depressed to dislike this movie – it’s kind of obvious it’s going to be pants and I was genuinely hoping to be able to make a case for it as the next masterpiece. It’s a film with a female actor at its heart – although it gives short shrift to and forgets about the other women. The sisterhood of her family is under developed, as is the discourse about the sale of her eggs (and Redmayne’s speech about capitalism). I might even have been sold by the Groundhog Dayness of her daily grind, but frankly Shaun the Sheep Movie (Mark Burton and Richard Starzak, 2015) did it better.

ETA: I read this and this as they appeared, obviously, and both are clearly sound points of view. I didn’t reread them until after I wrote my piece. Unconsciously, I evidently channelled the punch line of the second blog. I regret not finding a Michael Caine joke (and since Caine is not a member of the Abrasax clan I was spared the need to find a vegetable joke riffing on his back catalogue) or being snide at the character being called “Wise”.