Some movies appear to have been made just to let the
audience have fun. I went to see Jack the Giant Slayer without many
expectations and found it an enjoyable experience.
Set in a nebulous fairytale land, Isabelle, the princess
(Eleanor Tomlinson) and Jack (Nicholas Hoult) both have been raised on similar stories of
the war between the giants and humans. As an adult, Isabelle wants
more to her life than she finds locked up in court, so she steals off to find
adventure. She ends up at Jack’s cottage seeking shelter from a storm. Jack has
traded his horse for some magic beans and they sprout during the storm. The
cottage is carried up on the stalks up into
the sky-world land of the giants. The film becomes a quest adventure trying to
save Isabelle and later save humans from the giants.
Jack joins a team of several knights, including Sir
Elmont (Ewan McGregor) and villain Roderick (a very funny Stanley Tucci) who has stolen the magical crown
which makes the giants subservient to him. By the time they finally locate Isabelle, several of the team have been killed by the giants and or Roderick. Elmont ends up
rolled in a puff pastry along with several pigs (pigs in a blanket, get it?). Jack finds his courage and ends up saving Isabelle.
When they try to return to earth, the giants realize the
bridge to the human world is open and they set out to conquer the human world.
The last part of the film is the battle between the two worlds.
The giants are a motley group of Brian Froud-type characters, funny, gross, menacing, but not really child-scary. The leader has two heads (one which looks a relative of Gollum). How Jack and the humans defeat them is a fun part of the film. The CG
effects in 3D were well done.
The Impossible (2012)is
not the first film to use the Asian Tsunami as the basis for a plot-line. Matt
Damon's Hereafter (2010) has one
character who has survived the tsunami. But the English-language Spanish-made
film, The Impossible, is based
on the experiences a real family from Spain who survive the experience. Many actual
survivors have seen the film and praise its use of detail to help the viewer
see life as it was for them.
For anyone who missed it, on December 26, 2004, an underwater earthquake in
Indonesia sent tidal waves across the Indian Ocean which affected many major
beach resorts. One of the hardest hit areas was in Thailand, particularly the
island resort of Phuket.
In all 227,898 people are believed to have died as a result of the Asian
Tsunami.
The film is not a typical disaster film where you can pick out who is going to
die and who will survive. Instead, the film becomes a personal testament to the
survival of the family. The film begins with the family arriving in Phuket for their
Christmas vacation. As they celebrate Christmas day, the family participates in
a balloon lighting ceremony that one survivor later mentioned in a blog,
specifically saying, “I was at the same ceremony. … I experienced the same
thing.”
The next day, December 26, proved a beautiful sunny day. At
10 a.m. the first wave hit the shoreline flooding all areas inland. Many of the
beach resorts never had a chance. A wall of water some 18-feet tall hit the
area killing thousands. In at least two assaults, the survivors had to battle
swift moving currents, broken glass and metal, debris, cars, power lines,
bushes, and bodies.
In the initial onslaught, mother Maria (Naomi Watts) is swept away with her
eldest son, Lucas (Thomas Holland). She is badly injured from all the debris.
As they struggle to come together in the strong currents, they are hit with a
second major wave. Their initial goal for survival is to climb a tree which is
still standing in the water.
One of the themes that the film develops is the idea of how others in a tragedy
must help each other. As the mother and son are trying to swim to the tree,
they hear a Swedish baby calling for his parents. While Lucas tries to convince
his mother that they must only worry about saving themselves, Maria makes it
clear to him that it is their duty to save the child also. "What if he
were your brother?" she asks. That act of charity replays itself
several times during the film as Lucas grows to learn that in the face of
tragedy one has a human need to help others.
After being rescued by the locals, the two end up at the hospital where bodies
are stacked in rows of bags and the resources are strained beyond rational
understanding. Another common thread throughout the movie is the vast variety
of people affected. Person after person struggles to communicate and we get a
sense of the Tower of Babel where no one speaks the other’s language. That need
to overcome language barriers becomes an important element to the disaster.
Maria, critically ill but trained as a doctor, sends Lucas off to help others.
He ends up becoming the legs for many survivors, combing the hospital for the
lost. Triumphantly he reunites one man and his son even though he cannot speak
their language. But he becomes inconsolable when he returns to his mother's bed
and finds her missing.
A third obvious theme of the film is the devastating effects feelings of
abandonment have on the survivors, a universal feeling of many of the families
who went through the tsunami. One survivor on a blog writes of how unusual it
was for an entire family to survive unscathed. That sense of being alone in the
world resonates throughout the film.
Back in one of the resort hotels, now looking like a bombed out war zone,
father Henry (Ewan McGregor), having saved his two youngest sons, continues to
search for Maria and Lucas. Another survivor with a cellphone allows Henry to
call his overseas family to give them news. Survivors spoke of the incredulity
people had believing how bad the situation was.
Constantly people looking like shell-shocked refugees (which they were), they try
to offer comfort to others--hands reach to touch and looks offer kindness in a
communal experience of suffering. At one point Henry decides he must leave his
sons behind in the care of a couple who say they will watch over his two boys.
When Henry tells his eight year old that he must take care of his brother, the boy
heart-breakingly pleads with him saying, "I've never looked after
anyone." But he learns to become his brother's keeper.
Henry eventually becomes separated from the boys and his search in the chaos of
the hospital trying to find his family becomes Dickensian in proportion.
"Why should I see a film about a devastating tsunami?" you might well
ask. The film is about the endurance of the human spirit in spite of adversity.
The film reminds one of how suddenly all we hold precious can be lost. This is
story of not just one family but representative of thousands of experiences,
and attention should be paid to all they went through. As people have said of
the learning about the Holocaust, attention must be paid and others must be
witness to what has happened.
Special note should be paid to incredible sound design of the film. While the
real tsunami lasted four hours for those who survived, the film compresses the
experience into a 10 minute devastatingly real sequence.
The filming of the tsunami involved model work with 1:3 inch scale model and a pool.
director Juan Antonio Bayona "wanted supervising sound editor Oriol
Tarragó to create a sound design that wouldn't have any music. After many
experiments, Tarragó came up with the concept of having a different sound for
each shot of the tsunami sequence."
"’Every shot has a different point of view, so I tried the idea of making
a contrast between every shot, like high and low frequencies and volumes,’ he
said. ‘We collected different sounds from waterfalls and underwater
recordings.’”
At some points as the film becomes highly subjective and tries to take the
viewer inside the character's reaction to things. For example, the film grows
silent suggesting the character's inability to process what was happening.
The real Maria Belon, on whom Naomi Watts' character is based, had told the
production team that when the water first hit, she didn't really know what she
was hearing. She thought it sounded like a bunch of low flying planes coming
inland.
"Tarragó also used 'sounds like a far-off plane flying when the water is
coming to the resort. We also used the vibration sounds of glass and animals
running and birds flying because they could feel what was going on.'"
The sequence proved real to Belon and many other survivors who write of the
details that give life to the film experience.
Maria Belon was described as shocked by the underwater sequence "because
for her that was the perfect metaphor of what was life, how you cannot control
your destiny. ... You are only dragged by the current."
Afterthought:
I read a review of the film where the reviewer was
criticizing the movie because it focused on a European family who survived. As
Roger Ebert once stated: “Criticize the movie you saw, not the movie that you
wanted to see.”
Dutch painting from 1678, could have been used as source material for the costumes.
I picked The Serpent's Kiss because I like the work of Ewan McGregor and I had never heard of the film.
Set in the William and Mary period of 1699, wealthy English landowner Thomas Smithers (Pete Postlethwaite)
brings in Dutch landscape designer Meneer Chrome (Ewan McGregor), who had been recommended by his wife's cousin, to create an
elaborate garden which will "tame nature" and showcase his
house. Early on we have clues that Chrome may not be who he pretends he is. But
he proves he knows plants and can name plant fragrance after fragrance even when blindfolded.
He also can recognize the different scents of the mistress's perfumes.
Daughter Thea or Anna (Carmen Chaplin) changes her name according to her mood. Thea seems quite mad
and dreams of being cut down by the handsome reaper using his scythe around the
estate. Under a doctor's grotesque 17th century care of leeches and heated cups, she longs to run wild in the estate's forest.
Wife Julianna (Greta
Scacchi) is dissatisfied with her life at the estate and welcomes the new
stranger. Julianna's cousin, James Fitzmaurice (Richard Grant)--an Iago in the
making--manipulates the building of the garden in an attempt to bankrupt his
cousin's husband and exact revenge--for what we are not certain.
Chrome's garden is filled with logic and symmetry.
When asked if there will be flowers in his garden, he explains it will be
filled with man-made creations--walls, gravel walks, statues, and metal
constructions. Later he even adds a large greenhouse for exotic plants.
When the garden is finished, Thea picks a
dandelion from a path and as she blows the seeds, the wind picks up and as it
building in a fury destroys the garden.
The film resolves itself in high 18th century
melodramatic fashion, with the villain ironically punished and order being restored.
The costumes are sumptuous and evocative of
period. And the mise en scene of the estate has the look of new money.
The plot reminded me of the
1982 film, The Draughtsman’s Contract, set in the same historical time period, where a cocky artist is hired by the
wife of a wealthy landowner to produce twelve drawings. As he produces them, he
realizes they may actually tell the story of the murder of the absent
landowner. The Draughtsman’s Contract, however, is much more cynical than The Serpent’s
Kiss.
In all, I recommend The Serpent's Kiss, especially if you like the work of Ewan McGregor and Greta
Scacchi.
