epic

THE ODYSSEY: epic filmmaking at its best

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Photo caption: Matt Damon in THE ODYSSEY. Courtesy of Universal Pictures.

It’s not surprising that The Odyssey is a superb film. After all, this is the work of a great filmmaker, Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer, Interstellar, Dunkirk, Inception, The Dark Knight, Memento), making full use of his considerable skill and imagination. The source material has been unsurpassed as a melding of adventure, romance and trials of human character for 2700 years.

Odysseus (Matt Damon) is the smartest and most devious of Greece’s warrior kings, the strategist who devised the famous ruse of the Trojan Horse, and facilitated the Greek victory at Troy after ten years of stalemate. Now Odysseus, with his fleet of ships, can sail back to his home island of Ithaca. Unfortunately, gods and monsters await.

For all of his courage and resourcefulness, Odysseus has the ability to annoy, and even enrage, enough of the gods to turn his return voyage into a ten-year ordeal. He will need to get by a 60-foot tall Cyclops, an island of man-eating giants, supernatural songstresses who lure mariners into shipwrecks, a giant whirlpool, a six-headed monster who snacks on sailors, and a witch who casts horrible spells. And then there’s the seven years as the sex slave to another witch. Fortunately, has the goddess Athena (Zendaya) on his side; she admires his intelligence, and helps him out of the worst jams.

Anne Hathaway and Tom Holland in THE ODYSSEY. Courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Back home in Ithaca, there’s another story thread. Odysseus’ queen Penelope (Anne Hathaway) has been running Ithaca in his absence, but he’s been gone for twenty years, and a hundred opportunists are sponging off Odysseus’ wealth while they pressure Penelope to marry one of them. Odysseus also left a baby son, but Telemachus (Tom Holland) is now only twenty, and he’s too callow to take on so many ruthless, grown-ass men. Will Odysseus return in time? Will anyone, especially Penelope, recognize him after 20 years? Can Odysseus battle the suitors to reclaim what is his and Penelope’s? Will Penelope take him back?

In The Odyssey, Nolan shows what a great Hollywood epic can look and feel like – in the best sense. Filmed in IMAX, The Odyssey looks and sounds great. Amazingly, Nolan did not use CGI or green screens – instead, he employed old-fashioned practical effects, forced perspective, animatronic puppetry and plenty of hoists, rigging, and stunt performers. The set pieces are wondrous, even for the monsters – Polyphemus, Scylla and the Laestrygonians. The sack of Troy was exactly like what I imagine the razing of a Bronze Age city would look and feel like. And it all looks better and more convincing than it would have with CGI.

Because of the genius of Nolan and his editor Jennifer Lame, who won an Oscar for editing Nolan’s Oppenheimer, the audience does not have the sensation of sitting through a three hour movie.

Matt Damon and Zendaya in THE ODYSSEY. Courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Nolan is pretty faithful to the source material, and, although he compresses some the parts of the tale , he captures Homer’s key elements. Nolan’s re-imagining of the ending is actually less of a slaughter than Homer’s, and Nolan plays down the sexual aspect of Odysseus’ sojourn with Calypso (Charlize Theron). Nolan does add some New Agey hokum about the “Code of Zeus”, but it’s harmless.

Nolan’s version is more nuanced than the 1954 Ulysses with Kirk Douglas, which emphasized the adventure aspect. Last year’s The Return, which covered the return to Ithaca, is a fine movie, but doesn’t have the epic scale of The Odyssey (not to mention the monsters). Similarly, the scale of Nolan’s The Odyssey overwhelms the star-studded, Emmy-winning 1998 mini-series.

Nolan, Damon and Zendaya show us the relationship between Odysseus and Athena particularly well.

John Leguizamo in THE ODYSSEY. Courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Hathaway is excellent as the resolute yet vulnerable Penelope, a woman whose wits could match up with even those of Odysseus. I like Tom Holland’s performance as a well-meaning kid who just isn’t ready for prime time. Everyone in the cast is good, including Robert Pattinson and Corey Hawkins as two of the scariest and most odious suitors. An unrecognizable John Leguizamo is outstanding as Odysseus’ one remaining ally, a blind swineherd.

Samantha Morton in THE ODYSSEY. Courtesy of Universal Pictures.

If there’s a best performance in this movie, it may be Samantha Morton as the witch Circe, filled with grievance, creepiness and craftiness.

The Odyssey is both a great barn-burner,and a great love story, and Nolan has made it into this summer’s Must See .

EPiC: ELVIS PRESLEY IN CONCERT: pure Elvis

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Photo caption: Elvis Presley in EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, Courtesy of NEON.

The appeal of the documentary EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert is that it’s pretty much just Elvis, and that’s both entertaining and insightful. The film focuses on Elvis’ ten-year residency in Las Vegas, where he performed 1100 shows, sometimes as many three in an evening. All we see is archival film (some never-before-seen) of Elvis performing, rehearsing, getting to and from shows and being interviewed. Other than the voices of interviewers, we only hear the words of Elvis himself.

There are bits where he reflects on his mother, his army service and Colonel Parker. The most revealing elements of EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert are:

  • His unfilled aspirations to make better movies and to perform in Europe and Japan.
  • His patience and generosity to the fans who want to inavde his personal space by touching and kissing him. Asked about the frenzy of crazed adulation, he says he accepts it as part of the job and that it doesn’t bother him. He reflects for a moment and then says that he thinks he would miss it. Wow.
  • Despite his reputation for being both simple and mercurial, his calm discipline when being asked the most ridiculous and provocative questions, and his refusal to take the bait and be trapped into controversy.
  • Elvis’ playfulness, both behind the scenes and on-stage, often referencing his own image. He seemed to deal with the grind with jokiness.
  • The unusual continuity in his band over a decade, which indicates that the musicians must have liked him as a person and found him easy to work with. His corny gags and goofiness seem to keep the work fun for the band.

EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert is the first documentary feature directed by the famed Baz Luhrmann, whose work over the past twenty-five years I have despised as shallow eye-candy. After starting with the sweet little Strictly Ballroom and the visually spectacular Moulin Rouge, Luhrmann has made garish, hackneyed crap like Australia and The Great Gatsby. Here’s my rant on his recent biographical narrative Elvis.

But Luhrmann really can’t add an excess of glitz to somebody who is karate-kicking in white bellbottoms, with his fringe swishing and his massive belt buckle gleaming.

So, what we have hear is pure unfiltered Elvis, not interpreted by someone else, except, of course, for Luhrman’s choices in what to put in and what to leave out. One of Luhrmann’s best choices is an extended segment near the end of the film – an epic performance of Suspicious Minds with Elvis teasing out one faux finale after another. This clip brings together many of the themes in EPiC – Elvis’s charisma and magnetism, his showmanship and relationship to a live audience, his command of performance and his playfulness.

EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert is streaming on Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube and Fandango.

MAGELLAN: slower than the slowest slow boat

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Photo caption: Gael Garcia Bernal in MAGELLAN. Courtesy of Janus Films.

The historical epic Magellan tells the story of explorer/conquistador Ferdinand Magellan’s interactions with people of the Philippines, and most of the movie is set in the Philippines. Magellan begins in 1511, a decade before his most famous voyage, with Magellan serving a more senior Portuguese conquistador. Then the film touches briefly on his life back in Portugal before, again, briefly showing him leading a Spanish-sponsored voyage back to the Philippines.

The strongest element of Magellan is the depiction of historical events from the points of view of both Magellan and of the indigenous Filipinos. I also appreciated Magellan’s equating the superstitious qualities of the Spanish Catholic veneration of religious objects and the indigenous tribe’s idol worship.

Most of us know that Magellan commanded the first expedition to sail around the globe. As Magellan shows, Magellan himself didn’t survive to return home. As Magellan does not point out, a surviving Spanish crew led by one of Magellan’s subordinates did complete the groundbreaking voyage.

Magellan also gets credit for discovering what we know as the Strait of Magellan, the safest navigable route between Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This is essential history, but it is only possibly referenced in Magellan in a scene where the sailors are all terrified of stormy seas and Magellan isn’t doing anything about it.

Many of the stills from the movie illustrate Magellan on a sailing ship, but I chose to post the image above because very little of this movie about the world’s most famous sailor is at sea.

Magellan is played by Gael Garcia Bernal, a fine actor and a magnetic presence, who isn’t asked to do much here. I doubt that the real Magellan was as passive as the character is written here.

Renowned Filipino writer-director Lav Diaz tells this story in two hours and forty minutes of intermittently interesting action. Diaz is an intentional practitioner of a cinematic style called slow cinema, which I am coming to loathe. I actually enjoy much longer shots and much more deliberate pacing than do most, but I just can’t take slow cinema, which feels to me like it is violating the rhythm of storytelling for no reason.

Magellan seemed longer than 140 minutes to me. I found the pace to range between insufferable and excruciating.

Magellan was the Philippines submission for the Best International Feature Oscar. It is streaming on the Criterion Channel.

NAPOLEON: but didn’t they name a complex after this guy?

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Photo caption: Joaquin Phoenix in NAPOLEON. Courtesy of AppleTV.

Of all living filmmakers, Ridley Scott would seem the most well-equipped to pull off a boundless EPIC, but his Napoleon, other than three spectacular battle scenes and a little sex, is boring, underwhelming and a little confounding. As The Wife said exiting the theater, it’s a slog, and she wasn’t referring to the winter retreat from Moscow.

For better or worse, Napoleon covers Napoleon Bonaparte’s entire public career – from his emergence in 1793 at age 24 to the beginning of his final captivity on St. Helena in 1815 at the age of 46. It’s kinda like a college survey course in the Napoleonic Era. Napoleon’s historical accuracy is solid, and, for a Hollywood movie, remarkably unusual.

Even with a running time of 2 hours and 38 minutes, there’s a lot of ground to cover. He did fight 61 battles, and it took the SEVENTH Coalition of opposing nations to defeat him. So, we get the briefest of glimpses of Napoleon’s mother, his second wife and other major figures in his life and times.

Here’s what is great about Napoleon – three extraordinarily spectacular battle scenes, depicting the Siege of Toulon, and the famous Battles of Austerlitz and Waterloo. They are amazing to watch, and the first two help us to understand Napoleon’s military genius (and the third, Wellington’s military genius). A segment of Austerlitz where Napoleon orders cannon fire to break the ice under enemy forces is one of greatest and most unforgettable battle scenes in cinema history.

Napoleon also does a pretty fair job with the the relationship between Napoleon (Joaquin Phoenix) and his first wife Josephine (Vanessa Kirby). It was a very uncomplicated one: he was utterly captivated by and devoted to her, and she just wasn’t that IN to him. Josephine was a survivor and an adventuress, who navigated through her misogynistic environment with a gift for canny manipulation. He finds that even making her an empress isn’t enough to quell her promiscuity. Phoenix and Kirby do a good job with this part of the story.

But, oddly for a biopic, Napoleon fails to help us understand Napoleon. Sure, he’s ambitious from the start, but why? And why does he need to keep conquering, at the risk of overreaching and losing everything? After all, didn’t they name a complex after this guy?

Joaquin Phoenix was so vivid as Johnny Cash in Walk the Line, as Commodus in Gladiator, and as Freddie in The Master; he was so original and authentic in Her and C’mon C’mon. But, in Napoleon, his performance doesn’t unwrap the package of Napoleon’s psyche. I can’t say it’s Phoenix’a fault, but the collaboration between Phoenix, Scott and screenwriter David Scarpa doesn’t pay off.

Scott does point out in an end title that 3 million lost their lives during the Napoleonic Wars, which raises the question, to what end? This guy with an insatiable appetite for power and conquest was starting wars with some twits who had been born into underserved monarchy.

Here’s a random digression from the movie Napoleon. Was Napoleon’s military prowess overrated? This is ironic, because Napoleon rose on his merits. But the forces he was defeating were led by royalty and aristocrats, who were given command of armies, not by their own training and demonstrated skills, but by the accident of birth. Alexander I of Russia, for example, started out as an immature, headstrong nitwit and aged into a fullblown nutcase. Maybe Napoleon was analogous to MLB Hall of Famers who never had to face black ballplayers. Hmmm.

Napoleon is now in theaters, and will stream on AppleTV on a date TBD.

Coming Up on TV: Lawrence of Arabia

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Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia

It’s time to revisit a spectacle. On April 29, Turner Classic movies is broadcasting Lawrence of Arabia. For decades, many of us watched this epic squeezed into tinny-sounding TVs. In 1989, I was fortunate enough to see the director’s cut in an old movie palace. Now technology has caught up, and modern large screen HD televisions can do this wide screen classic justice. Similarly, modern home sound systems can work with the great Maurice Jarre soundtrack.

Nobody has ever created better epics than director David Lean (Bridge Over the River Kwai, Dr. Zhivago). Peter O’Toole stars at the moment of his greatest physical beauty. The rest of the cast is unsurpassed: Omar Sharif, Jose Ferrer, Anthony Quinn, Anthony Quayle, Claude Rains, Arthur Kennedy, thousands of extras and entire herds of camels. The vast and severe Arabian desert is a character unto itself.

Settle in and watch the whole thing – and remember what “epic” really means.

Coming up on TV: Lawrence of Arabia

by

Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia

It’s time to revisit a spectacle.  On May 9, Turner Classic movies is broadcasting Lawrence of Arabia.  For decades, many of us watched this epic squeezed into tinny-sounding TVs.   In 1989, I was fortunate enough to see the director’s cut in an old movie palace.   Now technology has caught up, and modern large screen HD televisions  can do this wide screen classic justice.  Similarly, modern home sound systems can work with the great Maurice Jarre soundtrack.

Nobody has ever created better epics than director David Lean (Bridge Over the River Kwai, Dr. Zhivago).  Peter O’Toole stars at the moment of his greatest physical beauty.  The rest of the cast is unsurpassed: Omar Sharif, Jose Ferrer, Anthony Quinn, Anthony Quayle, Claude Rains, Arthur Kennedy, thousands of extras and entire herds of camels.  The vast and severe Arabian desert is a character unto itself.

Settle in and watch the whole thing – and remember what “epic” really means.