Why Judge Holden is One of Literature’s Greatest Villains
Great piece on a great character.
In the long list of literary villains, Judge Holden, from Cormac McCarthy’s 1985 novel Blood Meridian, is among the most memorable. In this post derived from his article in our Postgraduate English journal, Ronan Hatfull explains how Judge Holden embodies the best (or worst) of antiheroes from literary and cinematic tradition.
At the start of your article, you quote a critic who suggests that ‘McCarthy’s diabolic Judge has the demerit of earning a place at the table with literature’s most mischievous malefactors’. For people not familiar with the novel, who is Judge Holden and what’s so bad about him?
Judge Holden is the principal antagonist of Blood Meridian. One of the most frightening things about him is his physical appearance: he is bald, well over six-foot and hairless.
Although few of his crimes are ever directly witnessed by characters in the novel, McCarthy heavily alludes to Holden being a paedophile…
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Us (2019) Film: Hands Across America Event Illicits a Strong Time & Place
Hands Across America was a benefit event and publicity campaign staged on Sunday, May 25, 1986 in which approximately 6.5 million people held hands in a human chain for fifteen minutes along a path across the contiguous United States.
Director Jordan Peele uses the time period of 1986 to show a younger version of the main character. Peele utilizes the famous Hands Across America event to bring us into the urgency of the moment.
It’s an oft-used but very solid screenwriting nugget to help flesh out and bring to life a scene: use some sort of promotional material from the recent past, such as when – for example – modern day films sneak in Bush-Cheney campaign posters in the background of shots in order to illicit a certain emotional response or bring up memories of said event.
Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood” did this well, utilizing a myriad of tools (including but not limited to presidential campaign lawn signs) to re-orient us into a particular time and place, a much-needed tool given the fact that the story moves through many years (decades) of time.
We remember really impactful presidential campaigns (if we were alive and self-aware enough to consciously live through and experience it). Every audience member isn’t going to have the same response to these tokens as the person sitting beside them but if the filmmaker picks a bold and memorable cultural artifact we should at least be able to recognize it and be able to identify where/when it was born into existence in relation to our lives.
It seems like an easy and super obvious storytelling trick to orient the audience to a time and place, but so often it is ignored, misused or underused as an effective filmmaking tool (especially in horror films). Too many movies go the dull and easy route, simply slapping white text across the bottom of the frame and labeling a time as 1976 or Twelve Years Earlier, as easy to pull off as just simply listing ingredients on the side of a soup can. Try harder…
The Last Jedi: Dissecting “Toxic Masculinity”
“The Last Jedi” has its defenders and supporters, but it has a lot more built-in messages than both of the two groups care to admit. Repeat viewings repeatedly reward; new touches and pecularities are spotted like butterflies swimming in the background. And while their are undeniably sections of the film that could have been cut without damage to the plot (the casino bit), and their are sections that one could argue, with reason, seem unconnected to the character’s stated mission, and that, instead of adding a new roster of characters to an already scrawling roster of names, and so choosing to down-size the main characters introduced as main characters in The Force Awakens, these particular criticisms in the end, to me, are more criticisms of the planning and direction of the franchise as a whole and not criticisms intrinsic in The Last Jedi.
As a hermetically sealed experience, as a single film and not as a so-called middle child, The Last Jedi holds up phenomenally well.
The film is oozing with tons of admiration for filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, constructed in a familiar mold and used by Rian Johnson to propel the characters into engaging, even suspenseful, action. It shows us a series of situations with multiple different characters simultaneously, constantly cutting back-and-forth in the middle of an inconclusive sequence.
We see Kylo as a general, Rey as a trainee, Finn as an adventurer, and Luke as a very doubtful/dejected man having cast himself out in isolation. The anxieties and concerns that Luke feels are very real, perhaps too real for a Disney flick in which the primary concern is identifying which scene will suddenly break out into rainbow-colored saber duels.
Poe Dameron is a cocky, surefire pilot with nothing to really lose. We don’t know for sure if he has a family but it does seem very apparent and obvious that he’s likely a bachelor. He’s Han Solo on steroids: passionate and motivated but very reckless. His desire to complete a mission, even if it would be more strategically advantageous to pull out and recalibrate, often puts the well-being of his fellow comrades at risk.
Jonathan McIntosh sums up the problem with Poe concisely and smartly here, so i’ll hand him the mic:
The character of Poe Dameron has a lot to do with both the subtle philosophical goals of the film as well as the pompous, overly hateful reaction that overflowed across the internet following the release of “The Last Jedi”.
I Don’t Understand the Love for Henry Cavill’s Superman
I’ve seen a lot of passionate people on Twitter grieving the loss of Henry Cavill’s superman role. The Hollywood Reporter released a fresh scoop detailing how Warner Bros. is allegedly releasing Cavill from his contract. It’s honestly not very surprising.
On top of the Mustache-gate debacle featured in Justice League, DC just simply took Cavill for granted. They thought he had a debt to them for building up his career in a major way with “Man of Steel” and that they could do no wrong. They mistakenly thought he was a team player, a DC-Lifer in the same way that Robert Downey Jr. is for Marvel.
The reality is that Cavill wasn’t that great as superman because the movies both weren’t very good and even, oddly, chose to use him as an uninspiring, emotionally void supporting character. “Man of Steel” was a subpar movie, poorly directed and slam-packed with so much corporate advertising that it felt sleazy and desperate.
The premise that Cavill has the “potential” to be a great superman if he were used properly is unknowable. He’s a stiff American Eagle model with the jawline of a God but the personality of an Olympic announcer. He says all of his lines clearly but there isn’t any real passion or character-building behind it.
It’s as if Henry Cavill had been built by James Lipton in a film factory that produces A.I. performers. The dialogue is written in a stilted and boorish manner, sure, but the choice in actor didn’t help, either. Let’s give our comic book characters personalities again, even if it means returning the diaper.
Why not give him a Kansas-style accent? Make him espouse American values, even if it’s slightly at odds with his morality or short term decisions/choices. The most engaging thing about superheroes is their imperfectness. The whole intrigue, at least for me, is the concept of ‘what would you do if you were suddenly granted god-like powers?’
People have always claimed that fame reveals or amplifies a person’s true identity. Multiply that by ten or a hundred if that individual not only instantly became world famous, but also had the power and ability to spite his enemies with no recourse?
That’s an interesting dilemma and the angst surrounding such an issue was not believably brought out or portrayed by Henry Cavill. He looked contemplative and thoughtful when he was supposed to feel hesitant and broken. Neither the character nor the actor ever truly understood the magnificent impact of their powers.
Ready Player One (2018): Out With The 80s Nostalgia, In With The Internet
“Ready Player One” wasn’t only directed by wizened whiz-director, Steven Spielberg; it also featured an organic creative process by way of the original author, Ernest Cline, who wrote the screenplay adaption of his beloved sci-fi adventure, along with veteran scribe Zak Penn. It appears that Cline was forced to make some compromises during his journey of bringing “Ready Player One” to the big screen.
The music in the film doesn’t reflect the obsessive admiration that the character of Halliday, the super-wealthy creator of the oasis, had expressed as his favorite band, specifically the group Rush. They didn’t use this important artifact or interest of Holliday’s to advance the hunt.
Ernest Cline may have helped buffer or subdue any fan feelings of the film being a poor adaption of the sci-fi novel. By co-writing the film with Penn, Cline takes responsibility for sculpting a script that he feels best encompasses the novel’s overall story, filled with cultural nods spanning back 50 or so years.
The mind-blowing exploration of living and speaking while acting scenes out as the host of a fictional movie character was an exciting part of the book that i would’ve liked to have been able to experience on the big screen. In particular, the book puts a lot of emphasis on Matthew Broderick’s character from the 80s classic film, WarGames, though it never ended up coming to fruition.
Whether or not it’s omission was due to technical limitations or the desire for more narrative clarity, it’s certainly a loss. It was an aspect of the book that was excitingly thought-provoking. There was some pretty high quality CGI effects used in creating a much younger Kurt Douglass for “Ant-man”; one would imagine that the “Ready Player One” producers could’ve given it a shot.
But, alas, they stuck to a formula that works fine for mainstream audiences but yet doesn’t challenge the industry in either a technical manner or through their patterned, oft-repeated modes of storytelling. All in all, the movie is a fairly flaccid semi-analysis of the modern digital landscape.
I read an excellent analysis of “Ready Player One” that dissects the repeated attitudes regarding young internet entrepreneurs and their desire to remain perpetually innocent, despite the fact that their companies are quickly becoming massive social and economic powerhouses. Very similar to the character traits of Holliday, who Mark Rylance plays as a hesitant, socially awkward, and very isolated human being tracking back to his childhood.
The attitude of creating something and then falling back on the nostalgia of working cheaply in compact family garages to build scrappy computers and change the world. But then once they’ve effectively altered the world forever, they fall back on their innocent intent to help the world and spread their honest, beloved creation, which, in this case, is the oasis.
It could also apply to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and many other young tech millionaires/billionaires. Simply because a tech prodigy didn’t intend to harm others with their software, apps, or other inventions, doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t help create a balance and a safer environment for all of us to browse the internet without the constant fear or concern over the safety of our personal privacy and data.
The characters are well played with strong gusto and energy, particularly the young group of enthusiastic gunters. The Parzival-Art3mis relationship had an emotional impact and appeared to be molded by genuine emotion, but their will always be complaints regarding the appearance of Art3mis in particular.
We meet Parzival early on – he’s the protagonist, the tourist for the film’s ample universe. But in the novel, Art3mis had shielded her actual appearance from him in fear of not being physically attractive enough in reality.
Other than a benign-looking birthmark on her face, she didn’t have any shocking or standout characteristics. It wasn’t a catfish story at all. The actress playing Art3mis, Olivia Cooke, is very, very pretty by all measures. But a blockbuster sci-fi film can’t really linger off into subversiveness and truly tackle some of the most complicated issues (?) of the modern internet world. It was just a regular old love story and I didn’t not like it.
The big bad, played by the deliciously sinister Ben Mendelsohn, who has acted the part of a scummy business man or greedy opportunist to great success in his last few films (particularly as Orson Krennic in “Rogue One”). He’s the unskilled partner out of the trio of former friends: Halliday, Morrow, and Sorrento.
Sorrento was never respected for his mental capabilities, often only serving up coffee and running errands for the busy minds behind the project – Morrow and, mostly, Holliday. He wants to reign in all of the clues and gain the fortune that his “friend” so devilishly left him out of. He maniacally chases after his goal for boundless power and fortune. It’s very entertaining to watch him chew up each scene he’s involved in.
The final battle is thrilling and entertaining in its scope and spectacle, but it doesn’t quiet reach the frantic heights that the novel set as the standard. The cultural nods are more modern and less related to the character of Holliday and his interests. As a character, Holliday is pretty one-dimensional. A lonely kid turned into a socially-awkward programmer and inventor. His story, the story of his childhood interests and his passions – that was the story of the book. Chasing after the empty memories and gems of Holliday’s past life.
“Ready Player One” was, essentially, an entertaining and diverting adventure through the spectacularly realized world of the oasis. it’s not the same cultural artifact that the book is – it doesn’t explore or expand on any of the very original, unique remixes of past stories and games.
It takes the basic story and accepts that its limitations are one of the best qualities about it, allowing director Steven Spielberg to sculpt the narrative by his own means. The adventure is enough, even if the journey itself doesn’t hit as many clever cultural speed-bumps as a fan of the novel may have hoped for.
Ready Player One articles that I enjoyed:
https://www.polygon.com/2018/4/3/17192508/ready-player-one-oasis-virtual-world
https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/19/17250892/ready-player-one-book-facebook-internet-dystopia
Justice League: Grading Character Introductions
The Avengers set a high bar when it comes to skillfully integrating a barrage of characters. They start with scenes of single characters and slowly evolve the cumulative situations in a natural way, where it feels right for the superheroes to be meeting, as the film’s title promises.
There’s a right and a wrong way to integrate characters into a universe, or a story, or a first film. And they’re all unique and require a certain sensitive, graceful directorial touch. It can’t feel like an inspection at the airport: you’re required to do this first before we can all get together and head towards our desired destination.
The way that these intros are put together can and often does determine the quality of the rest of the film. If the director treats the short introduction as a meaningless requirement and not a vital opportunity to show off a character’s personality and style, then the rest of the film probably won’t put much attention or emphasis on such details either.
Note: all members of the Justice League are included in the grading, not only the characters who haven’t had a solo film or been in any DC films yet. Superman’s inclusion is a bit of a technicality, but I counted his late-in-the-game arrival anyways. Also I decided to add a short bit on Alfred’s introduction – so he’s in there too.
Batman/Bruce Wayne
I definitely enjoyed the isolated scene introducing Batman in Justice League. He’s usually brooding as Batman or as Bruce Wayne at some party he doesn’t want to be at. Here, we see him perched on a building top in what seems to be a simple job: grab the thief, tie him up, hand him to the police; classic but unexciting Batman. Instead, he hangs the thief off the edge of the building.
“Fear…I can smell it,” he says, which in any other context would be a very corny line. But it has a very literal purpose in this scenario. The flying creature that Batman is tracking is attracted to fear like moths to a light. He pulls the man back onto the building top and jumps onto the flying creature.
It gets some exposition done while also showing off Batman’s great suit and overall look, almost demon-like. It’s just enough for a character that nobody needs to get more familiar with. We’re on board with Batman: we like him, we know him – he’s cool.
Batman/Bruce Wayne introduction: B+
Alfred
It might be a very small detail, but I really like how they bring Alfred into his first scene/moment. He doesn’t join the action with a funny quip such as, “You’re at it again, I see” or, “What a surprise, you’re out at night..”
Alfred, in the comics at least, is an essential character, not a comedic one. He’s in Batman’s ear, assisting him with information, radar, locations, etc. And that’s how Justice League introduces him. He makes a statement about the situation in a frank manner, as if he’s seen and done this a thousand times before, which he has.
Michael Caine was very good as a more fatherly version of Alfred, but Jeremy Irons’ no nonsense portrayal is just more fitting for Ben Affleck’s battle-worn, aging Batman.
Alfred introduction (albeit a short one): A
Wonder Woman/Diana Prince
Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman is arguably the best aspect of the DC film universe thus far. She’s magnetic yet filled with inner and outer strength. She’s opinionated and has a backstory that meshes well with interesting scenarios. And that makes it all the more disappointing that her brief introduction involves having to thwart the plans of this boring ass, hat-wearing terrorist:
Now, I understand that we know who Wonder Woman is and they just wanted to sweep through her intro and get to the characters that we haven’t met yet. But why even have a solo scene involving her if you’re going to phone it in like this? No creativity whatsoever.
A bomb. Hostages. Slow-motion (hi Zack!). Soldier-types with assault rifles. And a couple of corny lines to cap it all off: “I don’t believe it…what are you?,“. Ha. Ha. Heh. “I’m a believer,”. So she just repeated a similar sentiment back to him, but with added confusion: Is Diana saying that she believes in herself? That’s no surprise – she’s an Amazonian superhero; there’s no reason for her to not believe in herself. Thumbs up, screenwriters…Diana and Gal deserve better.
Wonder Woman/Diana Prince introduction: D+
Cyborg/Victor Stone
They handled Cyborg’s introduction really poorly. All exposition and brooding. How are we supposed to get attached to this vital member of the league if his first scene is comprised solely of him complaining about his “curse”?
It isn’t a compassionate father-son relationship: Victor yells at his dad and exclaims that he’s made him into a MONSTER! Sound familiar? Nervous scientist tries to calm raging man with confusing newfound abilities? It’s been done before. And this repeat of such a scenario doesn’t bring anything new to the table.
It only detracts from Cyborg’s arc or lack of an arc. If they could have added a little bit of character interplay, like a football game featuring Victor where his father shows up or doesn’t show up, either way. Anything that brings us into their relationship on some emotional level.
Or ignore the father, as they mostly did here anyways, and just show us what Victor is all about, walking through the city streets, going to school, etc. To just drop Victor, distraught about his “monstrous” condition, onto the audience’s lap is a shame and a bit of a disgrace to his comic book legacy.
Conflict should arrive after something good or at least authentic happens, writers. Otherwise why should we feel bad or care or feel pity for Victor? The only impression I got from his first scene is that he’s very dramatic, whiny, and pretty outwardly cruel to his father. What’s that one quote about how crisis reveals character? No revelations here..
If you didn’t know about his storyline from the comics, it would be easy to think that he was going to lash out at his father and become the villain, eventually meeting up and battling it out with the league.
One saving grace as a result of Victor being a smug, angry teenager in his introductory scene: it gives Diana the opportunity to breathe as a character and act as a sort of motherly figure. She has a sense of responsibility, the sort that’s required of her as a major leader within the league.
Cyborg/Victor Stone introduction: D
Aquaman/Arthur Curry
The problem with bringing Aquaman to the big screen has always been the fact that he’s Aquaman. He talks to fish, as Batman lightly quips in their first scene. The screenwriters desperately want to tread within that fine line of creating a serious, complex character while also somewhat acknowledging his silly origins. He doesn’t jump ten feet into the air and plunge into the water in a half-spin torpedo dive. He does this:
He flops backwards and slides underwater, disappearing. It’s kind of funny, really. The writers so badly want to avoid any form of mockery about the character and his abilities that they don’t really show them off much at all to begin with, and when they do, the shot is held for a total of .5 seconds. Blink and you’ll miss the back-flop into the water.
We see these cave-like drawings on the wall earlier in the scene:
The simple sketches create a mythic aura to the character. Batman doesn’t know who he is, apparently, even though he has a dossier on every other league member or future member. Curry doesn’t want to talk to or be a part of Batman’s plan.
It’s kind of meta: the character that the audience and Batman have never met is annoyed for having to explain himself, for having to give any form of exposition. They barely have a conversation before suddenly the shirt is off and he’s plunging down into the ocean. Aquaman doesn’t need to talk too much: his powers are very tranquil and highly visual in concept.
It’s not a thrilling or action-packed scene, but they don’t all have to be, especially considering the very friendly serving of it later on in the film. It’s teasing his potential, which is huge and awe-inspiring in scope. They got most of the cultural stigmas/comedic aspects of his character out of the way.
“Can you at least point me to Atlantis?,” Bruce Wayne asks, a sly, knowing look on his face.
Affleck delivers it perfectly: he’s not making fun of him, he’s just giving him a bit of a hard time. A quarter smile – he doesn’t even think it’s all that funny, just intriguing. If Bruce started laughing heartily, smiling ear-to-ear, slapping Arthur on the back in jest – then we’d have a problem. But that doesn’t happen.
Batman is the leader and organizer of the league, so logically it makes sense that he would be the one to make the trek to Arthur’s location and try to recruit him. It just happens to work out that Batman is the most well-known person in the league and in real life – he has the most movies, toys, everything – so it evens out nicely to have the comfort of the known confronting the new. The interplay between them is a give-and-take: Batman and his stoic stiffness and Aquaman with his pessimism and disinterest.
Arthur even has a slight ideological difference with Batman, creating conflict within the league, an important part of any superhero team-up movie; they can’t all get along the second that they lay eyes on each other. A solid, subtle introduction of a tricky, easy-to-fumble superhero.
Aquaman/Arthur Curry introduction: B+
The Flash/Barry Allen
Whereas Cyborg’s introduction had too little emotion, The Flash’s intro has a bit too much sappiness. It’s important to explore his past, but this scene right here shouldn’t be our first look at The Flash:
It’s a quick way to explain a general summary of his past and catch up on where he’s currently at in his life. They decide to cut straight to the prison, to this sad sequence of pure dialogue. Billy Crudup delivers an intense, authentic plea to Barry to stop visiting him and live his life. He speaks slowly and intently, as if he’s been thinking about this for a long time, practicing the words to perform for Barry and try to get him to move on.
The introduction is brief and only memorable for Crudup’s short but impactful performance late in the scene. It’s a huge contrast to Barry’s later role as the comedic relief, although there’s not much relief: he’s extremely unfunny. Bad timing, delivery, and some pretty awful writing, to be fair. The quips just fell really flat for me.
The Flash/Barry Allen introduction: D+
Superman/Clark Kent
Superman’s resurrection is a bit convoluted and overlong. It features a bit too much slow-motion considering the fact that the main catalyst in the plot/scene is THE FLASH.
The fight between Superman and the rest of the league is visceral and exciting, yet entirely pointless as well as contradictory to the premise of a team of superheroes. Superman can destroy them easily; he’s more powerful than all of them combined.
So basically the film is making the assertion that the Justice League is a group of back-up heroes in the event that Superman dies and isn’t there to swiftly clean up any mess. There is a league in the comics meant for those who apply to be a part of the league and aren’t accepted. I forget what the secondary group is called, but I know it’s not “Justice League”.
It’s admittedly pretty cool to see all of the heroes vulnerabilities come to light as well as all of Superman’s unlimited strengths. It’s a moment of bigness: I’m better, you know it, try to deal with it. It doesn’t add or continue any plot strain from Man of Steel or BvS: it’s an isolated, one time zombie-Superman break out.
It isn’t the worst way to introduce a major character late in a film, but it isn’t ideal for it to be unconnected to the past or the present in any meaningful way other than, “we can’t do this without him!”.
Superman/Clark Kent re-introduction: C-
And that’s all, folks. I don’t have anything to say about the rest of the film, both in the positive sense and in the sense that it’s been covered and dissected in every corner of the internet already. It’s not a bad movie; it’s got many good qualities and moments. But it also unfortunately falls a part many times, unable to withstand the pressure of juggling so many comic book entities in a single film.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri is a powerful look at tragedy and activism combining into something both uniquely right and wrong. Taken from any one single characters perspective, the billboards may seem rude, cruel, gross, untrue, unjust, or completely just. In the case of Mildred, played by Frances McDormand, the billboards are justified and needed; she organized and paid for the advertisements in the first place.
On the other hand, we have Chief Willoughby’s perspective, played by Woody Harrelson, whose name is plastered in big bold letters on one of the billboards, despite his good-naturedness and desire to find the victims assailant. The victim happens to be the daughter of Mildred, whose family and marriage has dissolved as a result of the horrific rape and death of her daughter. She lives with her son, Robbie, a young student in his late teens. He doesn’t understand the billboards and perpetually fights with his mother.
A curve ball is thrown into Mildred’s billboard plot when she learns that Willoughby has cancer. She’s stubborn, determined, and pretty narrow-minded, ignoring the sensitive angle of hoisting the terminally ill Chiefs name up in bold letters, slandering his name (which is a very good name to all of the local citizens), and insulting his young family.
The third major perspective comes from Dixon, played by Sam Rockwell. Rockwell demands your attention in every single scene, acting both loosely and intensely at the same time. Dixon has a history of beating up African-American people and just being an awful cop in general. He’s the first officer to discover the billboards, reacting dramatically and only raising the stakes in terms of his raucous behavior in every proceeding scene.
The most interesting part of the narrative is how it’s set up: the dominos are put in place and we just have to sit back and see how they fall, whether that be poorly, not at all, or completely. Morals are blurry and grey like real life. No one character is heroic or admirable. There are three billboards demanding justice for the rape and murder of Mildred’s daughter and three people demanding different things from each other.
Eventually, the story of the characters and their true personalities cause the plot to naturally unravel. The film authentically depicts how small town folks might respond to a bold and extraordinary action by a single citizen. They’re not always good, not always bad, but always filled with extreme passion.
A major theme of the film is misdirected hate. Dixon attacks citizens for no particular reason, mentioning past incidents and revealing his behavior on-screen through a violent encounter with the billboard salesman. The wife could hate the sheriff for his actions. The son could hate his mother, Mildred, for the billboards or for any other negative memory he has with her. The chief could hate Mildred like Dixon. Some people can choose to not hate and some just plain refuse to.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri is a fantastic moral and character study about personal vendettas. Its narrative swims together organically, each character’s motivations clearly defined. Engaging and thought-provoking, Three Billboards is a dark but rewarding experience that’s jam-packed with excellent performances.
The Shape of Water (2017)
One of my earliest Guillermo del Toro films that I’d seen and loved was Cronos, a small little flick about an ancient artifact that grants eternal youth. It featured a great supporting character, the nephew of an old wealthy man, played by a young Ron Perlman. Perlman really chews up the role and the scenery, bringing a sort of omnipresent, vibrant energy to the ancient mythology within the films narrative. The Shape of Water has del Toro returning to these character-centric roots, filling the frame with well-defined, and often funny, characters.
Set in the 1960s, del Toro uses the period as a lift to his films overall atmosphere, packing the mise en scene with mossy green highlights, narrow hallways, and plenty of gargantuan laboratory devices to house the creature in; each scene gives off a very steampunk-like vibe.
The film stars Sally Hawkins as Elisa, a mute cleaning woman working in a semi-secret government facility (how secret can it be if these cleaning ladies are flying in and out-of-doors as if they were working at a Holiday Inn?) alongside her friend, Zelda, played sympathetically by Octavia Spencer.
There may be a satirical effort being made for the reason that the two women have free range access to the labs, as if the men of the 60s felt that women were so puny and impressionable that it wouldn’t matter what they saw or heard.
Richard Jenkins, typically a terrific but minor character actor, brings a refreshing amount of depth to his character, Giles, a proverbial ‘starving artist’ whose only friend is Elisa. Given that he’s a gay man in the 1960s, Giles struggles to express himself or create meaningful relationships, making it either ironic or just very on-point that his best friend, Elisa, is mute and can’t speak at all. But that doesn’t stop him from rambling on about Old Hollywood musicals and the like.
The creature in The Shape of Water isn’t your typical one, though he may look and move a lot like Abe Sapien, the aquatic creature who happened to appear in del Toro’s Hellboy series. There is an espionage war over the ‘asset’, as they refer to him as, with the Russians infiltrating the facility by way of Dr. Hoffstetler, though Hoffstetler’s heart is more on the side of scientific ethics than it is with the goals of his government.
Michael Shannon plays the clear-cut actual “monster” of the movie, though even his character has an added layer of complexity. Director del Toro explores the values and feelings of an everyday American family man in the 1960s, fresh with a fancy teal car, a nice home and a cold, mentally unstable interior life.
The fact that The Shape of Water is critically acclaimed and earning del Toro a series of directing awards is a fitting cap to del Toro’s fantastic filmography and career. It wouldn’t feel like a lifetime achievement award if he ended up winning best director at the Oscars. The Shape of Water is a sensitive and highly imaginative piece of film art, drawing very close to the same incredible awe and gravitas of del Toro’s undisputed masterpiece, Pan’s Labyrinth.
https://twitter.com/LopaMills/status/951895394472091648
Lost Boy – Short Film Review
A visually stunning sci-fi short film that relies entirely on visual imagery to tell its story. The plot is rather vague and ambiguous, but there are several very clever cinematography tricks used against the backdrop of a desolate, dark landscape.
It seamlessly uses the pan across an object, swipe to a different character, pan, swipe, different character. The slow pans move in closer to the subject following each successive swipe, just like Spielberg did in Jaws as Brody watched the town folk swim in the water while he sat back and nervously watched.
In this story, the antagonist isn’t a shark, though, it’s a large android-like figure with a red band of light covering his eyes, like Cyclops from X-Men. He is chasing after a cyberpunk-looking figure, who’s often running in slow motion, the background a constant source of tension. The ‘cyclops’ weaves in and out of the frame horizontally, creating a demonic aura, though we don’t completely understand his moral position by the end of it.
Great world-building and production design, though it plays out more like a music video than an actual narrative. I couldn’t tell you the motivations of the characters if I tried, but whatever they are, they looked cool going after them. Personally, I would have liked the terminator-style chase sequence to be a bit more frantic and have a little less slow motion. The slow motion implies that we care deeply for this character’s livelihood, but we don’t. Speed it up and it becomes more energetic, intense, and engaging, instead of just simply pretty to look at.
Directed by Ash Thorp and Anthony Scott Burns
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