It's been said that the mark of a great actor is the ability to deliver even ridiculous lines with utter conviction. (It's often associated with Patrick Stewart, although I have never tracked down the originating statement.) It's true for movies too. I enjoy the wink-wink self-aware irony of ridiculous creature features like Sharknado, which are in on how bad they are. But one of the strengths of this new Planet of the Apes movie is that it isn't indulging in ironic distance. It isn't nudging the audience with a wink and a grin: "Hey, we're doing a movie about talking apes and isn't that RIDICULOUS?" It speaks, as Caesar does, with conviction. It is a great movie.
The signal that this movie takes all of its characters very seriously is that Andy Serkis finally -- and oh, so deservedly -- gets top billing as the movie's star. The apes, even more so than in Rise, are real characters here, intelligent and complex. Serkis's Caesar is once again imbued with a calm, deep intelligence and intense reflection, but there is also more raw power here than last time; he has been leader of the apes for a decade, and -- as he acknowledges -- apes follow strength.
Matt Reeves's direction allows people who go to the movies for big action setpieces to get their money's worth: the scenes in the trailer, of the ape village wrapped in flames and of apes riding to battle on horseback, do not fail to satisfy. But those of us who like our movies a little deeper will also get plenty to think about. One of the thoughts that struck me as I was watching this was "Wow, this is what Snowpiercer could have been if it had been more thoughtful and nuanced." I was disappointed by the broad strokes that movie painted with, how caricatured the characters felt. I have friends who assure me that this was intentional, and I mean no disrespect to those who got something out of the movie, but I didn't. I like my social commentary more subtle. Who would have thought a movie about machine-gun toting chimpanzees would have provided it?
But I'm not joking: this is a fascinating, well-written, nuanced examination of sectarianism. Of fundamentalism. Of reactionary politics. Of whom we choose to trust, and why we do so. Of what it means to be human; of what it means than humans are, after all, still apes.
Importantly, all the tribes in the film have good reasons to do what they do. This isn't The Dark Knight, where the villain "just want[s] to watch the world burn." This is a movie about survival and what it means, but it tackles that more intelligently than four seasons of The Walking Dead have managed. Each group knows they're in a fight for their lives, and each group is right in that knowledge. It's in how they choose to react to it that the movie's best commentary lies. There are characters -- it shouldn't be a spoiler that Caesar is foremost among them -- who are interested in mutual understanding and tolerance, even hard-won respect; there are characters who cannot abandon the dogma that years of trauma have embedded. What makes this movie great is that both groups have learning they must do.
Dawn clearly wants you to accept that the new apes and the humans are not that different, but it chooses to emphasize that through visual and narrative parallelism rather than having a character make an obligatory "Oh, apes, they're just like us!" statement. In fact, several characters don't believe that: Gary Oldman's character Dreyfus repeatedly insists that they're animals, and that belief guides all of his actions. But when the mob of angry human survivors scream in anger and fear, they don't sound too different from the family of apes; when Caesar looks at a photo of his first family, the shot is framed the same way as when Dreyfus does it.
What is perhaps most fascinating to me is how the movie presents characters who embrace an uncertain future and characters who cannot leave the past and yearn only to return to it. When Dreyfus looks at photos of his family, we understand why he is so insistent that his little colony get back to how things used to be -- but we also understand that that past is irrevocable and cannot be recaptured. When Koba angrily reacts to Caesar's assertion that the humans must be allowed to do their "human work" to survive, he points to the scars he bears from his past: "Human. Work. Human. Work. Human. Work." It's hard to argue with him.
To say more might damage some of the delight of experiencing this movie without knowing what exactly will happen. It has an epic feel to it at times that reminded me of Peter Jackson's great battles in Lord of the Rings, but there are also intimate, reflective moments too. I would be very surprised if this movie doesn't get several Oscar nominations, as the special effects and cinematography are incredibly impressive. I hope that a way to honor digital performances is figured out soon, as Serkis deserves an award for the depth and power he brings to Caesar, as do the artists who translated his performance into the features of a digital chimpanzee. Go see this immediately. You won't regret it.
No comments:
Post a Comment