Cinema
It's here and it's spewing fiery vengeance from every pore, thrashing life into foul distortions with one sweep of its diamond-studded tail. Raised on a diet of suppressed fantasy and cocaine abuse, it's no wonder the beast is eager to get on. Too much time has been lost already - there's work to be done. So hand me that megaphone, write me the check, buy some explosives and a bag of the good stuff and let's get to it. Saddle that beast. I'm going for a ride.
There's no getting around it - Pearl Harbor is just an apalling film. Those people who defend it by saying its fine because it is what it is, simply don't understand how effective good cinema can be. Bruckheimer defends his creation by virtue of the fact that a lot of people have been to see it. Aggressive marketing and a deep rooted public lust for the 'freak show' would seem to come somewhere closer to the truth.
In the hack pack we were handed at the screening, Bruckheimer is noted as calling the film "a serious piece" made to capture "the essence of that time in hopes of honoring those brave people". Nothing could be further from the truth. The film makes a mockery of real life, turning historical fact into the personal playground of a man, who, by his own admission, thinks that if he's entertained, then the audience will be entertained too, a man who always 'fantasized' about how he would react in a wartime situation. A man who was never quite fast enough for kiss chase. A man who has "issues".
The crux of the problem is that you just don't care about the characters. A good third of the film is spent building up an impossibly sweet coating of sugar white smiles and plastic candy faces which glaze themselves onto the action with such permanence that even when the Japanese try to blast through into some core of reality, all we can see are the shards of splintered confectionery as they leap out from the screen and we gobble them up until we're sickened.
Ben Affleck's obsessively heroic character is played out with a knowing accuracy. Never once does he falter. Even after a 300ft crash into the English Channel, Affleck never loses sight of the job in hand. This is the stuff that dreams, or better, perhaps, nightmares are made of. So when we see that Spitfire dive modestly into the pool green water we know that no sudden descent from the sky is going to shake this man's resolve. 'No sir'. 'A trifling'. I may have been down here for a good hour but, you see, all I have to do is push up on this hatch (if only Goose had had such luck) and, with the thoughts of my new, true love (Beckinsale) swirling around me, I'll just float on back up into the arms of that beast, into the warm embrace of cine-life again. All hail Randall Wallace for he is truly a master of his trade. Producing scripts of such tiresome improbability as to test the very resolve of even the most committed popcorn stuffer amongst us.
The overt references to Top Gun make you physically reel in amazement as scene after scene threatens to boil over into that goiter grown, testosterone fuelled male world we've all known and loved. It's all here. Erotic teeth gnashing from Baldwin. 'Bogey all over me' chat from Affleck. "God, I miss him", from the long-suffering Beckinsale. But this was a first love - the stuff of agitated teen fantasy, and it should not be repeated, if only for the sake of the dignity of a large section of the now twenty-something population of the country. If there is to be a campaign of civil disobedience over this film, as one broadsheet reviewer has suggested, then let it begin here - for it is to us that the greatest harm has been done. For now we know what fools we were.
Admittedly, the actual bombing scene is a spectacle to behold. Rumors abound that it cost more to film the sequence than it did for the Japanese to actually launch the attack, and it is an epic piece of cinematography. But what do we actually feel? When one of the gigantic battleships begins sinking and the camera swings round to capture the overhead shot of the last survivors clinging onto the railings as they sink into the bubbling froth ....... ? Resigned exhaustion. (You can almost hear Bruckheimer whispering feverishly to himself through numbed lips and a strangely clear nose ... 'I'm the king of the world ...I'm, ah, ... yea get that close up ... sniff, sniff ... yea, yea, ... I'm a king ... ha ha ... yea ! ... sniff ... I'm a winner at last ...) Countering these dark forces, Hartnett and Beckinsale glow radiantly, pout and fill the screen with simple good-hearted honesty. But for every seemingly innocent turn of phrase spilled from their brimming complexions, you get the unnerving feeling that somewhere across the Atlantic yet another stars and stripes is being raised and saluted by men and women with slightly less perfect features. Behind it all is the impossible love of the American Dream. The wish of heroes. The belief that a handful of courageous American airmen could kick start the end of the war. History tells a different story. The beast is certainly an ugly one, but not untamable, as Spielberg has shown. In the hands of this team, however, it's finally been driven into a corner from which it should never have escaped. Let's hope it never does again.
Martin Scorsese - the greatest director to have never won an Oscar - has created a cinema of savagery, male frustration and blood-thirsty fetishism in thirty three years of film-making. His first work, The Big Shave, pictured a young man lacerating his face while shaving, but continuing unperturbed in hisself-mutilation. This "anti-Vietnam" work started a career characterised by visceral, disturbing yet enticing images that have pushed the boundaries of cinema and hi-jacked twentieth century consciousness.
A paranoid, aggressive Joe Pesci pushing for an answer, "So you think I'm funny like how. Like I'm a clown?". Travis Bickle reaching his peak of righteous, lonely, delusion, posturing in front of the mirror, "You talkin' to me ". Jake La Motta taking a blow, nose gushing in slow-motion to the melancholy strains of Pietro Mascagni's opera. A young De Niro as "Johnny Boy" swaggers into a bar, a girl on each arm cockily glancing around to the ballsy guitars of "Jumpin' Jack Flash".
All these scenes have become iconic to the point of self-parody; it's hard to watch the "You talkin' to me scene" and feel the full impact of Bickle's latent, explosive anger. I've seen many a Scorsese fan resisting an urge to "posture" away with Travis as one would to an Arnie film. But no-one would dispute that
"You talkin to me" as delivered ad-lib by De Niro is a more powerful and emotive line than "Leave enough room for my fist 'cos I'm gonna ram it into your stomach and break your goddam spine".
Scorsese grew up in Queens, living for cinema but aspiring to be a priest. Violence and Catholicism were prominent features of his neighbourhood, wiseguys and priests being the only people to receive respect from the whole community. Scorsese embraced this moral ambiguity in many of his best known films: the "avenging angel" Travis Bickle uses violence to "clean up the streets" and stamp out "venality; Charlie (Keitel) in Mean Streets is fascinated by Francis of Assissi yet associates with an anarchic psycho. Scorsese has always had good bad guys and bad bad guys. The Last Temptation of Christ shows Scorsese's interest in Catholic iconography rather than doctrine. It was intended as an exploration of his own personal Christianity not a reinterpretation of Scripture, but a backlash was unavoidable. Yet out of the controversy emerges a heartfelt work addressing Christ's acceptance of his divine nature. Willem Dafoe as Christ was another bit of canny casting from Scorsese.
All this is not to say that the little Sicilian genius is narrow in his scope. His adaptation of Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence is masterpiece of historical detail portraying an oppressive society. The Colour of Money and Cape Fear proved that anything a big-budget can do, Scorsese can do better.
New York, New York follows the career of a jazz musician and questions whether a personal relationship can also exist as a creative partnership. His first feature Who's That Knocking At My Door has Harvey Keitel shaking off the shackles of Catholicism while also struggling with women, money and peer pressure.
Recent efforts have been accused of treading over old ground. Casino : well it's just Goodfellas with gambling. Bringing Out the Dead : Taxi Driver in an ambulance. Scorsese saw Casino as completing a gangster trilogy with Mean Streets and Goodfellas making up the other two thirds. He actually wanted continuity. And Bringing Out The Dead........well it's probably just Taxi Driver in an ambulance.
Toby Roebuck
8th Jun 2001