21st
Looking to the Future
2 different films watched this weekend, both heralding new directions in cinematography: the first being Public Enemies by Michael Mann which was circulated in the cinemas earlier in the year, and second, the movie of the moment, James Cameron’s Avatar. The aesthetics of the former, derived from its HD format, made for an uneasy but thought-provoking viewing experience, while the latter’s 3D cinematic scope made a tried-and-tested plot formulae come to life.
Public Enemies received a favourable film review from the New York Times which raised my expectations of the film, but my friends said they didn’t think much of the film when they watched it. I didn’t ask them why, but their pronouncement continued to linger on while I watched the film for myself. At the end of it, I didn’t think the film was terrible; it certainly wasn’t beautiful, but it was interesting. I suspect the HD format presents the film as problematic for many people because it strips away the visual textures that we’re accustomed to in viewing 35 mm film, especially when it comes to Hollywood blockbusters; people expect a film like Public Enemies to follow in the genre conventions of the Western, epic historical drama and gangster film, which have almost always been gloriously displayed with the richness of film stock. I suspect HD, while seeming the harbinger of filmmaking, is often regarded as the poorer cousin to actual film, the option you use when you don’t have enough money. I admit that film stock does add a more expensive, competent sheen, though there have been films which have been beautifully shot in the HD format, like Lav Diaz’s epic Death in the Land of Encantos.
HD, in Public Enemies, has been used to create a particular effect which undermines the glamour associated with the gangsters from the Prohibition period. Going beyond the mode of realism associated with documentary and the video image, the high video resolution renders the actions and the exchanges of the actors as almost unnatural and staged; at times, the characters feel like they are going through the motions on a film set. These aesthetics present a conscious comment on the work of both the criminal and the FBI as playing to an audience (the notion of “public” is emphasized throughout the film), at the same time, showing how operationalised and mundane their work is (the gangsters keep breaking out of banks and jails; the police keeps failing — both sides keep going through the motions again and again). The motif of photography is highlighted in the film; the bright blinding flashes and the plumes of smoke mark the beginnings of the spectacle that motivates an image-saturated hyperreal celebrity culture; the reference to “Manhattan Melodrama” (which Depp’s Dillinger watches in the movie theatre before he gets gunned down by the FBI after he walks out of the theatre) poses as a scene of self-reflexivity where the gangster watches a reflection of his own myth performed by Clark Gable on screen, blown into heroic proportions. Mann’s Public Enemies is a terse, understated piece of filmmaking which offers some food for thought to the viewer in place of a visual feast.
Avatar, on the other hand, was a 3D ride of amazing sights and sounds. Immersing the viewer in the comprehensively rendered world of Pandora, the film takes your breath away by the ambitious scale of its project. While the plot is pretty much the same plot which drives most fantasy/sci-fi epics (it could have been Lord of the Rings but with Catlike people) — the hero’s journey to save a world from evil encroaching forces — it leaves the audience to savour the sumptuous life-like detail of the flora and fauna and follow the quick, fluid and sometimes, death-defying movements of the protagonists. The danger with 3D is that it becomes a box of fancy tricks revealing an empty shell of a story, but Cameron’s hero, Jake Sully, a crippled Marine who is unexpectedly given a new lease of life through his Avatar form, is emotionally compelling enough to carry it through, and Cameron deftly paces the action, such that the duration of nearly 3 hours melts away. One can criticise the film for the many cliches it evokes, however, its technical triumph is indisputable.
