The Week That Was... or wasn't

I cannot bring myself to even think, never mind write, about the never-ending feeding frenzy the mainstream media has been engaged in for months on end. I don't give a flying fnyeh if Donald Jnr. interacted with a Russian, or if Donald Snr. has Russian business ties, a peculiar handshake, or...whatever. So, I shall concentrate on my personal week; it included a rare visit, one afternoon, to our local cinema.

Wonder Woman, or any superhero tale, wouldn't usually be our choice of fare, but a chance to get out of the house and into another cooled environment for a few hours was tempting. The film had gathered some good reviews, a quick read of its theme wasn't too disagreeable, so off we went. We were the sole audience members for a late afternoon showing of Wonder Woman. The movie is in its second, maybe third week here, maybe everyone else has already seen WW and moved on to Spiderman Homecoming, Transformers or Despicable Me 3.

Wonder Woman, we decided, on the way home, isn't bad, and it's message and heart is definitely in the right place. Too long, though - trimming around 20 minutes off its 2 hr 21 mins run-time would lose little of importance.

The film's first segment gets into some fairly shallow waters of Greek mythology, so as to "begin at the very beginning...a very good place to start" (as Julie sang in a long ago blockbuster). We meet WW, real name Diana, as a small child. We also meet WW's mum, Queen Hippolyta of the Amazons, and her mother's sister, General Antiope. They live on the mythical isle of Themyscira. The Amazons, all female, all gymnastically adept and A+ grade in self defence, were created by the gods of Mount Olympus, allegedly to protect humankind. Ares (aka by Romans as Mars) god of war, who we shall be meeting later, killed all the other gods, but was struck down by Zeus, his father. More at Wikipedia.

A couple of time jumps bring us to the year 1918, when Diana, by now a beautiful young woman, rescues American pilot Captain Steve Trevor from the sea, his plane having crashed off Themyscira's coast. And...we're off! Off to war - the one we know as World War I - and to find Ares who, Diana knows instinctively, has to be at its source.

There are some mildly funny exchanges, between WW and Steve the pilot, and others in the 1918 scenario at various points, as WW encounters human nature at its worst, but also at its best. Some more serious exchanges come later between Ares and WW, as he explains to her why humans must be destroyed because of their many and varied failings. They are a failed experiment, he declares. WW does not fully disagree but also points out that humans are capable of good things too, as she has experienced, and there is a choice they all make, some good, some bad - importantly not always bad. She adds that it's love, and only love, which will save them (us!)

So, you see, though this movie might be a tad shallow in places, a tad overdone, though cleverly and stylishly so, the message young (and older) audiences should receive is a good one - the best, in fact. Gal Gadot, as WW, was excellent by the way - I doubt there'd be anyone, anywhere, who could better portray the Wondrous One, in looks plus athletic ability.

Also this week, and staying with the movie theme, while returning momentarily to last weekend's
mention of the re-make of Robo-Cop. The original movie was said to have had allegorical links to the story of Jesus Christ. Having now watched the Robo-Cop re-make, via DVD, I'm convinced that any allegory has been either purposely smothered or lost in translation.

The basic re-make story in the 2014 film directed by José Padilha, remains as was, with detail adjusted for modern-day sensibilities, and census requirements. Producers did not want younger viewers excluded, of course - ka-ching! See this list of horrors from the 1987 original movie. Horrific events are not entirely cleaned up in the newer version, but there's more "at a distance" viewing, and instead of the brutal beating of the cop, upon which the story rests, in the new version we get a car bomb, and can view the scene only at a distance, in the dark too.

My somewhat hazy memories of the original are, oddly enough, pleasant ones. I felt engaged and I cared about the characters. In spite of the tale's dreadful events, I clearly remember coming away with a good feeling. Not so in the case of the re-make. Even Joel Kinnaman's face under the Robo-helmet couldn't engage me sufficiently to fully enjoy the film. He's such a good, nuanced, actor, far too good for this role, which basically entails an actor lending/renting his face to the show. Peter Weller did the same in 1987 of course, but back then the film's director, Paul Verhoeven, had managed to inject more warmth, humanity and eventual good feeling into the story.

For a good assessment of all the differences between the 1987 version of Robo-Cop and the 2014 version see THIS article at Screenprism.

Neither Weller nor Kinnaman could have driven the movie's "feel" one way or t'other from their swaddled-in-metal situation. I look forward to seeing Joel Kinnaman in future roles commensurate with his talent.

Saturday & Sundry Thoughts on Allegory as Side-effect

Allegory: we humans seem wired into it, a side-effect of human nature, encouraged and developed by early exposure to myths, parables, fables...and religion.

Allegory, as a concept, has been around since at least the days, and philosophers, of ancient Greece. I suspect that it was around but undocumented long before that. Its use and appreciation in matters religious, moral, political and general is accepted as another of our innate human characteristics.

Billy Collins' poem, The Death of Allegory, proposed that allegory is really a thing of the past. First verses are below, the rest at an archived post HERE.

The Death of Allegory
By Billy Collins

I am wondering what became of all those tall abstractions
that used to pose, robed and statuesque, in paintings
and parade about on the pages of the Renaissance
displaying their capital letters like license plates.

Truth cantering on a powerful horse,
Chastity, eyes downcast, fluttering with veils.
Each one was marble come to life, a thought in a coat,
Courtesy bowing with one hand always extended,

Villainy sharpening an instrument behind a wall,
Reason with her crown and Constancy alert behind a helm.
They are all retired now, consigned to a Florida for tropes.
Justice is there standing by an open refrigerator.........

It's a clever poem, nicely done, but in truth allegory is with us still, in literature, in art, in theatre, and in film.

A blog post is no place to be delving into every instance of recognised allegory. Blog readers, few as they may be in these Facebook-ridden days, are prone to ADD, as am I! That being so, I'm interesting myself here in just a couple of instances of allegory in movies, which had flown right over my head; perhaps I've not been alone in this.

A hat-tip to a piece at Taste of Cinema for this enlightenment. From the 14 examples of movies quoted - of those I'd actually seen - I found that the allegory in these two had zoomed right over my now silvery top-knot -

High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952)
The Plot: On the day of both his marriage to a pacifist Quaker (Grace Kelly) and supposed retirement, a town marshal (Gary Cooper) is given less than two hours to decide what to do about a gang of killers headed for his town – a conflict that, playing out more or less in real time, is complicated by his realization that none of his neighbors seem willing to help.

What It’s REALLY About: McCarthyism

Wait, What? To understand this one, one must take into account when the film was made. Shot in 1951 during the Korean War, the film’s plot is heavily influenced by events concerning the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Carl Foreman, the screenwriter, was called before HUAC as he was in the process of writing the script and refused to name names, causing him to be labeled an “uncooperative witness.” He was blacklisted shortly thereafter.

Watching the film with this background knowledge, it’s impossible to disregard the parallels between the town’s inaction in the face of incoming danger and the refusal of many in Hollywood to stand up for their persecuted peers. The film isn’t quite as blatant with this idea as other works about McCarthyism were at the time, such as the plays The Crucible (1953) and Inherit the Wind (1955), so it’s understandable how the message of this thoughtful Western could go over the heads of modern viewers unaware of the circumstances under which the film was made.

And

RoboCop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987)
The Plot: In a futuristic Detroit, Officer Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) is brutally gunned down by a gang of criminals, only to be brought back to life as a crime-fighting cyborg (justifying the film’s tagline: “Part man. Part machine. All cop. The future of law enforcement.”).

What It’s REALLY About: Jesus Christ (once again)

Wait, What? Director Paul Verhoeven has made no secret of his aim to portray the title character as a Christ figure. After all, Murphy suffers a cruel and painful death at the hands of laughing sadists, only to be resurrected and become a savior figure. The biggest visual clue comes at the end, when RoboCop walks through shallow water, appearing to almost walk on top of it. Of course, turning the other cheek isn’t exactly RoboCop’s style. As the Dutch director has stated, he’s “the American Jesus.”

As it happens, I've just this week ordered a used DVD of the Robo-Cop re-make starring, in place of Peter Weller, a new favourite of mine, Joel Kinnaman, whose performance in the TV series The Killing impressed me so much that we're watching the whole Netflixed series for a second time! I shall be watching the Robo-Cop re-make with yet another layer of added interest now!

A final thought, fitting for the 21st century, from Flannery O'Connor,
Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose :

“In any case, you can't have effective allegory in times when people are swept this way and that by momentary convictions, because everyone will read it differently. You can't indicate moral values when morality changes with what is being done, because there is no accepted basis of judgment. And you cannot show the operation of grace when grace is cut off from nature or when the very possibility of grace is denied, because no one will have the least idea of what you are about.”

Perhaps Billy Collins was right!