The first film I saw is a personal favorite of mine: LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, the 1962 David Lean masterpiece that swept the Oscars that year. I saw it in a stunning 70mm print at the Lightbox, and if they ever play it again, I will pay for your ticket. I'm serious. You need to see it.
Here's what it won that year: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Sound, Best Color Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Art Direction, and Best Score. It was also nominated for Best Writing (Adapted), Peter O'Toole should have won for Best Actor (Gregory Peck won for TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD) and Omar Sharif was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Of course, all of this means nothing. We all know how stupid the Oscars can be, and how great BENJAMIN BUTTON was (more on that later).
In this case, though, the awards are justly deserved. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA will continue to survive the test of time because it's about some very complicated issues while also tapping into some really primal stuff. Because while you could argue that LAWRENCE is about culture clash, or colonialism, or even celebrity, it's really about water.
Not in the way POSEIDON or even CHINATOWN is, of course. It's about what water means to us, as people. How we all need it, and how that need defines and divides us. Some of the strongest moments in the film revolve around how thirst motivates and drives the characters. Consider the following line, one of my favorite in all of cinema:
AUDA ABU TAYI: I carry twenty-three great wounds, all got in battle. Seventy-five men have I killed with my own hands in battle. I scatter, I burn my enemies' tents. I take away their flocks and herds. The Turks pay me a golden treasure, yet I am poor! Because I am a river to my people!
or the following:
SHERIF ALI (after killing a man who has stolen water): He was nothing. The well is everything.
And finally:
LAWRENCE: He likes your lemonade.
Humanity is defined by what it does for survival. In those three lines, it defines a man as part of a community, it justifies a murder, and it shows how we separate and persecute each other (the third one would take way too much context to explain, but trust me, it does). Some of this stuff is on the surface, and some of it is only really clear upon contemplation, but there's one thing you're really conscious of for the whole film: you want a drink.
Really, really bad. It's the kind of thirst where you go to the concession stand and the only drink they have is Fresca and even so, you're like, "Give me a large."
A lot of that is attributable to the stunning desert photography, some of it might be due to subliminal Coke advertising, but I think a lot of it is due to the fact that the film really asks you to consider the basics of human survival.
The second film I saw was Danny Boyle's 127 HOURS, which has similar considerations at heart.
In this case, though, the awards are justly deserved. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA will continue to survive the test of time because it's about some very complicated issues while also tapping into some really primal stuff. Because while you could argue that LAWRENCE is about culture clash, or colonialism, or even celebrity, it's really about water.
Not in the way POSEIDON or even CHINATOWN is, of course. It's about what water means to us, as people. How we all need it, and how that need defines and divides us. Some of the strongest moments in the film revolve around how thirst motivates and drives the characters. Consider the following line, one of my favorite in all of cinema:
AUDA ABU TAYI: I carry twenty-three great wounds, all got in battle. Seventy-five men have I killed with my own hands in battle. I scatter, I burn my enemies' tents. I take away their flocks and herds. The Turks pay me a golden treasure, yet I am poor! Because I am a river to my people!
or the following:
SHERIF ALI (after killing a man who has stolen water): He was nothing. The well is everything.
And finally:
LAWRENCE: He likes your lemonade.
Humanity is defined by what it does for survival. In those three lines, it defines a man as part of a community, it justifies a murder, and it shows how we separate and persecute each other (the third one would take way too much context to explain, but trust me, it does). Some of this stuff is on the surface, and some of it is only really clear upon contemplation, but there's one thing you're really conscious of for the whole film: you want a drink.
Really, really bad. It's the kind of thirst where you go to the concession stand and the only drink they have is Fresca and even so, you're like, "Give me a large."
A lot of that is attributable to the stunning desert photography, some of it might be due to subliminal Coke advertising, but I think a lot of it is due to the fact that the film really asks you to consider the basics of human survival.
The second film I saw was Danny Boyle's 127 HOURS, which has similar considerations at heart.
127 HOURS works best when it's focused on the nitty-gritty of human survival. For those unfamiliar with the story, it's based on the true story of one Aron Ralston, who got trapped while hiking and eventually had to sever his own arm in order to escape.I've had major problems with director Danny Boyle's work in the past, and 127 HOURS is no exception. Traditionally, I've found that Boyle's stories take extremely divergent turns in the third act (I'm looking at you, 28 DAYS LATER and SUNSHINE) and are never really resolved in a satisfying way. That's not a problem here, as the story has a fairly obvious structure, but Boyle won't let the desperation of the situation play itself out. He wants to make this more than just a survival story.
It's clear that Boyle sees Ralston's situation as a larger metaphor for human connection and isolation. It's that old no-man-is-an-island chestnut, and Boyle drives it home in some very effective ways. There's some great fantasy/flashback/hallucinatory sequences that emphasize the need for other people in our lives, and the ways in which we shun it. The problem is that these scenes actually take away from the situation Ralston is actually in.
Boyle uses a lot of visual flair in the flashaways, using split-screens, heavy contrast and saturation, and layered images to evoke the reflective and/or hallucinatory state of the protagonist, but for me, the most exciting shot of the film occurs in the canyon as Ralston runs out of water. Boyle sets up a great device by having a camera inside the water bottle every time Ralston takes a ration. Shooting through the water, we get a murky and distorted view of James Franco's face, but every time we come back to the shot, and the water level drops, Franco is a little clearer to the audience. The last time Boyle comes back to this shot, it isn't Franco's face we see, but just a set of teeth and a tongue desperately crammed into the lid of the bottle, frantically trying to get some more water. It's a viscerally human shot, evoking the fragility and terror of human survival. It's not as dramatic as the amputation, but it's just as effective.
There's an amputation (sorta) in TRON LEGACY as well, the third film of my triple feature, but it doesn't carry any of the power of the one in 127 HOURS.
The major difference is that when the amputation comes in 127 HOURS, you've been dreading it, and the film makes you pay for watching it. When the TRON amputation comes up, you're thinking, "Thank God something finally happened."
Rarely have I seen a film with so little happening. Actually, that's not quite fair. I've rarely seen a film with so little new happening. I've read a few defenses of TRON that seem to boil down to, "You guys don't get it. It's all about Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth and the 7 Steps of the Hero and bio-digital jazz."
Guess what? We all get it.
I'll freely admit I've never read Joseph Campbell. Or Jungian archetypal theory. I honestly don't think I have to anymore. Because every childhood story I've seen is based on it. TRON LEGACY is more than happy to just plug its characters into the world's most basic formula and sit back and let the story tell itself. This is a film that desperately wants to be about "everything - science, medicine, religion", but only has the soul of a computer - endlessly outputting data from code. It's that exciting.
That tagline on the poster is quite apt - "it's not just a game anymore" perfectly distills how not-fun this movie is. There are occasional action beats that look cool and have clearly been designed with the idea of "This'll be a killer trailer shot", but these moments only serve to remind you of how hollow the rest of it feels. In fact, what this really feels like is a fanboy trailer, expanded to two hours and given $200 million dollars, with little regard for plot or character or purpose.
Maybe I'm just bitter. But when I think of a new generation of fanboys growing up on this kind of drivel, it's like going to a pop machine on a hot summer's day only to find out it's full of Fresca. And I just want to tear somebody's arm off.
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