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Kingdom of Heaven
May. 8th, 2005 03:10 amOf the recent batch of epics, Kingdom of Heaven comes closest to getting it right and manages in the process to show us why epics are so incredibly difficult to solve. The film also highlights some of Ridley Scott's little pet obsessions (apparently including wheat, children's toys and the burial of talismans), and is particularly interesting in that regard in the context of his other films.
There are two key problems with epics, both of which afflict Kingdom of Heaven. The the film is coherent enough for us to realize this is a genre problem as opposed to a script/director problem a la Alexander, Troy and to a lesser extent King Arthur (which wasn't actually sure it wanted to be an epic and suffered in an entirely different fashion and with a smaller budget than the other examples).
Problem 1: Epics tend to want to be about epics. Epics, like all stories, have to be about individual characters for us to care. Those characters can be places, if the places are deliberately made characters and it is the story of the place you are telling from the beginning to the end of the movie. Kingdom of Heaven sometimes thinks it is the story of Jerusalem, often to great effect, but this isn't actually what the movie is actually about it, it's not its emotional core -- and while one could easily argue it should have been -- ultimately some of the most poweful moments in the film are actually digressions from it.
Problem 2: Assuming we've gotten past problem one, the epic must be about a central figure who is the embodiment of the great struggle the film portrays. Unfortunately for much epic subject matter, these subjects are young men (this film, Alexander, Troy and also notable here -- Gangs of New York). Young men in films like this are Hot Guy of the Moment. And while Orlando Bloom has much more power and skill here than I would have expected, he jsut can't convincingly make the speeches that need to be made convincingly for an epic to succeed. Without that great booming timber of a voice, it just doesn't happen. I hate to be all "can no one other than Peter Jackson make an epic?" but look at the pre-battle speeches there, and then tell me why _no one_ _no one_ else seems to be able to cast their films to make that stuff work.
More general review stuff:
Liam Neeson is so great. I just always want to give him a hug.
The leper King of Jerusalem is the greatest thing I have ever seen (OMG, that was Ed Norton? I have to stop making fun of him, RIGHT NOW). I wanted the whole movie to be about him. I wanted to know his story, more about the childhood, the mask... everything about his moments in the film are just spectacular -- visually, performance-wise, the script. Utterly, utterly compelling. It also raises the question, that maybe the undiscovered approach to epics is the story of the boy next door -- by which I don't mean an Every Man, but the guy tangental to or preceeding the narrative who is so utterly critical to it -- the one who sets in motion or observes. I mean... what's Alexander's story through the eyes of Hephaistion -- not as some romance novel dreck, but as the war story epic it should be? What's it like to be nearly left behind, possibly carried along and to see your very significant place in an even larger tale? How do you remind yourself to breathe? Please, tell me about these men (and I have reason to suspect that if I ever make or write films from the nt-in-front-of-the-camera-side-of-things, it is this that will be my little thing I can't get away from in the stories I will feel compelled to tell).
Wow, Jeremy Irons, I haven't liked you in a long time.
Brendon Gleeson -- what was that little dance? You rock, man.
David Thewlis, I want to give you a hug too.
Martin Csozkas or however your name is spelled. The more over the top you are the better.
Hey, Dr. Bashir! You were really great. Who knew. Go you.
the cinematography -- OMG -- gorgeous gorgeous battle shots. Hello.... paging Oliver Stone, this is how you shoot a battle; note the lack of subtitles. There's also this great thing where shots go back and forth between clear and quickly cut and dusty and slow... and so the audience is shifted back and forth from the immediacy of the experience of the characters to the reminder that this is all stuff now in the distant memory of the world. One of the things that makes Ridley Scott films so great is how they say "this story is important because this story is trivial and ever happening".
Score -- good, but not the thing I wanted it to be.
the film is historically screwy, but at least manages to make the issues of religion murky and internally divided -- which is nice to see. However, in doing this, the film manages to have lots of bad guys, lots of good guys, almost no one who's right about pretty much anything, lots of people to root for and/or respect -- and while that's all lovely -- hi, it's an epic, and we need to feel the slaughter is so senseless that we root against that in and of itself (Black Hawk Down does this nicely), or we have to have actual bad guys to hate (Gladiator nails this). Here, we're just like "woah, fucked up."
I think in the wake of 9/11 we've become confused about how to tell the story of cities that have wounds; we believe, mistakenly, that the wound is the whole story, the only story. This film tries so hard not to fall into that mess, you can't help but notice it.
I know a lot of you guys don't like Gladiator, and I think the criticisms of the film as exceptionally made pulp are pretty valid, but that film does all sorts of stuff this film should have done and didn't. It gives us clear good guys and bad guys. It gives us a hero that has the physical and vocal weight to be a leader of men. And it makes us understand the emotional pain the hero is in a visceral way -- here all we get is a look at the source of the pain, after she's dead -- no insight in the relationship or her nature is provided, and the religious motivations attached to her death are at least 50% alien to anyone in the audience, if not more so. This is a grave mistep. I'm just not engaged with the emotional struggle of the film's central character.
Very well made film, certainly worth seeing, but I wanted more from it, and I think to have gone to any of the several places the film needed to go or could have gone to lay us on the floor would have been unthinkable in the face of subject matter and politics.
There are two key problems with epics, both of which afflict Kingdom of Heaven. The the film is coherent enough for us to realize this is a genre problem as opposed to a script/director problem a la Alexander, Troy and to a lesser extent King Arthur (which wasn't actually sure it wanted to be an epic and suffered in an entirely different fashion and with a smaller budget than the other examples).
Problem 1: Epics tend to want to be about epics. Epics, like all stories, have to be about individual characters for us to care. Those characters can be places, if the places are deliberately made characters and it is the story of the place you are telling from the beginning to the end of the movie. Kingdom of Heaven sometimes thinks it is the story of Jerusalem, often to great effect, but this isn't actually what the movie is actually about it, it's not its emotional core -- and while one could easily argue it should have been -- ultimately some of the most poweful moments in the film are actually digressions from it.
Problem 2: Assuming we've gotten past problem one, the epic must be about a central figure who is the embodiment of the great struggle the film portrays. Unfortunately for much epic subject matter, these subjects are young men (this film, Alexander, Troy and also notable here -- Gangs of New York). Young men in films like this are Hot Guy of the Moment. And while Orlando Bloom has much more power and skill here than I would have expected, he jsut can't convincingly make the speeches that need to be made convincingly for an epic to succeed. Without that great booming timber of a voice, it just doesn't happen. I hate to be all "can no one other than Peter Jackson make an epic?" but look at the pre-battle speeches there, and then tell me why _no one_ _no one_ else seems to be able to cast their films to make that stuff work.
More general review stuff:
Liam Neeson is so great. I just always want to give him a hug.
The leper King of Jerusalem is the greatest thing I have ever seen (OMG, that was Ed Norton? I have to stop making fun of him, RIGHT NOW). I wanted the whole movie to be about him. I wanted to know his story, more about the childhood, the mask... everything about his moments in the film are just spectacular -- visually, performance-wise, the script. Utterly, utterly compelling. It also raises the question, that maybe the undiscovered approach to epics is the story of the boy next door -- by which I don't mean an Every Man, but the guy tangental to or preceeding the narrative who is so utterly critical to it -- the one who sets in motion or observes. I mean... what's Alexander's story through the eyes of Hephaistion -- not as some romance novel dreck, but as the war story epic it should be? What's it like to be nearly left behind, possibly carried along and to see your very significant place in an even larger tale? How do you remind yourself to breathe? Please, tell me about these men (and I have reason to suspect that if I ever make or write films from the nt-in-front-of-the-camera-side-of-things, it is this that will be my little thing I can't get away from in the stories I will feel compelled to tell).
Wow, Jeremy Irons, I haven't liked you in a long time.
Brendon Gleeson -- what was that little dance? You rock, man.
David Thewlis, I want to give you a hug too.
Martin Csozkas or however your name is spelled. The more over the top you are the better.
Hey, Dr. Bashir! You were really great. Who knew. Go you.
the cinematography -- OMG -- gorgeous gorgeous battle shots. Hello.... paging Oliver Stone, this is how you shoot a battle; note the lack of subtitles. There's also this great thing where shots go back and forth between clear and quickly cut and dusty and slow... and so the audience is shifted back and forth from the immediacy of the experience of the characters to the reminder that this is all stuff now in the distant memory of the world. One of the things that makes Ridley Scott films so great is how they say "this story is important because this story is trivial and ever happening".
Score -- good, but not the thing I wanted it to be.
the film is historically screwy, but at least manages to make the issues of religion murky and internally divided -- which is nice to see. However, in doing this, the film manages to have lots of bad guys, lots of good guys, almost no one who's right about pretty much anything, lots of people to root for and/or respect -- and while that's all lovely -- hi, it's an epic, and we need to feel the slaughter is so senseless that we root against that in and of itself (Black Hawk Down does this nicely), or we have to have actual bad guys to hate (Gladiator nails this). Here, we're just like "woah, fucked up."
I think in the wake of 9/11 we've become confused about how to tell the story of cities that have wounds; we believe, mistakenly, that the wound is the whole story, the only story. This film tries so hard not to fall into that mess, you can't help but notice it.
I know a lot of you guys don't like Gladiator, and I think the criticisms of the film as exceptionally made pulp are pretty valid, but that film does all sorts of stuff this film should have done and didn't. It gives us clear good guys and bad guys. It gives us a hero that has the physical and vocal weight to be a leader of men. And it makes us understand the emotional pain the hero is in a visceral way -- here all we get is a look at the source of the pain, after she's dead -- no insight in the relationship or her nature is provided, and the religious motivations attached to her death are at least 50% alien to anyone in the audience, if not more so. This is a grave mistep. I'm just not engaged with the emotional struggle of the film's central character.
Very well made film, certainly worth seeing, but I wanted more from it, and I think to have gone to any of the several places the film needed to go or could have gone to lay us on the floor would have been unthinkable in the face of subject matter and politics.
