Weekly Reel, August 25
News: Lord of the Rings Production, "The Green Knight" Review, "Godzilla" Retro-Review, and "The Truman Show" Essay.
(Not much non-Covid news right now, so I’ve included a double review instead.)
Amazon Studios is moving their Lord of the Rings series production from New Zealand to the UK for unclear reasons, either because of Covid restrictions or faulty multi-season negotiating. The first season was already filmed in New Zealand and is going into post-production there, but the pre-production for the second season will be airlifted to the UK in 2022. Big oops for New Zealand considering this will be the most expensive series ever produced, which would have pumped a lot of cash into the country’s film industry and future tourism profits.
Review: The Green Knight (David Lowery, United States, 2021)
The Green Knight is one of the first non-tentpole, non-Oscar-hyped films to be released in theaters during the Covid era after being delayed since its initial March 2020 premier at SXSW. Despite theater closures and delays, the film opened to better than expected box office results a few weekends ago, which is good for the independent distributor A24. The first reviews came in highly positive from critics but mixed among regular audiences, which for an A24 release (like with The Witch and Hereditary) aroused me into a proper theater outing (not counting last month’s Munich Filmfest).
The film is a modern telling of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a late 14th-century Middle English chivalric romance from anonymous. Sir Gawain was the nephew of King Arthur who had gotten into all kinds of post-Roman, pre-Norman Medieval shenanigans, enough so that he became a legendary character. Perhaps his most well-known solo story is his encounter with the Green Knight, which has been filmed before, but Gawain mostly just appears next to King Arthur and his famous chevaliers of the disc-shaped desk. There is nonetheless an aspect of Gawain that is timeless in order for his story to reach past both Shakespeare and Chaucer.
The film takes place in a medieval setting, which can be daunting for those not into that, especially after Game of Thrones and all the other contemporary genre spinoffs, but The Green Knight brings its own freshness to the saturated setting that rises above the swords-and-sandals tropes. It doesn’t rely on huge set pieces, massive CGI action simulations, or impossible/unrealistic tests of strength. Gawain (played by Dev Patel) simply wants to become a knight and the film deals with his socio-psycho-mythological journey.
Two aspects of this film stand out clearly enough to make the 700 year old story relevant: the conflict between ego and honor, and the motif of green/nature as destructive/retributive. At a Christmas feast held by the ageing King (Sean Harris), he pulls Gawain aside to tell him of his expectations in creating stories for others to tell through actions of greatness. Gawain takes this advice seriously and steps up for a typical medieval romance beheading game with a mysterious Ent knight (Ralph Ineson) that randomly shows up to the feast. The Ent allows the braveish Gawain to behead him but then picks up his head and reminds Gawain he will expect the same blow in return a year later at a green chapel. During this year, Gawain continues his life of drinking and hanging out with his favorite prostitute (Alicia Vikander) with his story making him famous among the people. But he isn’t all too easy with what will come by year’s end.
As the plot develops so does Gawain’s conflict between his ego in wanting to become a knight and honor he must uphold with the upcoming beheading. And from production design, conversations with a Lady (also Alicia Vikander), and the green knight himself, the color green becomes a life-draining force on Gawain. The Lady tells him: “Red is the color of lust, but green is what lust leaves behind, in heart, in womb. Green is what is left when ardor fades, when passion dies, when we die, too.” This indirectly answers the ‘honor at what cost’ question that Gawain blindly fails to answer earlier: “Honor. That is why a knight does what he does.” And the green remains with him until the end as he resolves the conflict between ego and honor.
To go into more detail from here would reach spoiler land, especially the ending, which I think is powerful and leaves a lasting impression. Besides the actors already mentioned, Joel Edgerton (who played Gawain in the 2004 film King Arthur but here plays the husband of the Lady) and Barry Keoghan (playing a scavenger; Keoghan is my second-favorite under-30 actor) provide strong performances. Daniel Hart’s chanting soundtrack pulses and haunts the viewer, and the combined work of Jade Healy’s production design and VFX from Weta Digital create a unique world on the Irish countryside featuring a fox, ghosts, and giants among backdrops that are oftentimes real, physical matte paintings.
I can solidly recommend to anyone interested in great storytelling and an ending that makes the whole film worth it.
The Green Knight is most likely playing in a theater near you.
Retro-Review: Godzilla (Ishirō Honda, Japan, 1954)
The Godzilla franchise was created and owned by Japanese film company, Toho, which since the first film in 1954 has led to 34 others, four being made by Hollywood, the most recent being this year’s Godzilla v. Kong. Over time the meaning of Godzilla changed along Japanese socio-cultural lines from being a destructive force into a protector of Japan from other monsters. I decided to watch the first one as part of my current Criterion Challenge and was pleasantly surprised to find that it still holds up in many interesting ways with national-reckoning, nuclear-apocalyptic themes still relevant today.
At the time of its release, the Japanese film industry was in the beginning of its golden age with internationally lauded heavyweights like Akira Kurosawa and Yasujirō Ozu. Their works deal with themes of time, memory, ageing, honor, pride, etc., which provides an interesting time for Ishirō Honda and Toho to create a kaiju (monster) genre film. Upon its release, Godzilla received mixed critical reviews in Japan and was favorable overseas. But the version of the film that was sent overseas to America was edited, dubbed, and stuffed with American actors. It wasn’t until the films 50th anniversary in 2004 that American audiences saw the original version for the first time.
With this official release, American film critics mostly favored the film because of its now timeless qualities. The lone denouncement came from Roger Ebert, who called the film idiotic and bad. He claims its post-Hiroshima/Nagasaki release is comparable to Fahrenheit 9/11’s post-9/11 release in 2004, which is probably why Godzilla was released that year in the US. Their comparability, he claims, is that they both “come after fearsome attacks on their nations, embody urgent warnings, and even incorporate similar dialogue.” Usually known for offering even-handed reviews, Ebert is clearly off the mark here if he thinks a parable about coming to terms with one’s own militaristic past and the dangers of nuclear testing by the world’s largest power that had just beat them in a war is similar to Michael Moore finding suspicious ties between influential Saudis, 9/11, and the American executive branch. Arguments against one’s own country is the only basic connection, but with Godzilla it’s handled with clever genre tropes and succinct arguments that effectively summarizes the mood of a nation’s people. Film critic Owen Gleiberman explained that “Godzilla is pop culture’s grandest symbol of nuclear apocalypse, but he is also the primordial spirit of Japanese aggression turned, with something like fate, against itself.” So then is Dick Cheney America’s Godzilla?
Godzilla was and still (unfortunately) is an affective film regarding nuclear weapons, which has a timeless quality because of its ability to look simultaneously towards the past and the future. Godzilla is awakened during nuclear testing in the ocean and starts attacking Japanese fishing boats and islands before moving to Tokyo Bay. We learn that the more Godzilla is provoked, the more destructive it becomes, which is the metaphor regarding (past) Japanese militarism coming back to haunt the country with two atomic attacks. By the film’s end, we’re left with a certain amount of sympathy for Godzilla as the main characters realize that (future) militarism, especially regarding nuclear weapons, must be kept in check; Godzilla was simply the mirror and personification of this danger. One could make a similar argument about the ecological, climate crisis in similar terms (similar to the nature as retributive aspect mentioned above with The Green Knight).
The special effects are of course cheesy today but is easily forgivable 67 years later. For those interested in seeing how the depiction of Godzilla has changed since its inception, the first film is an excellent place to begin.
Godzilla (1954) is streaming on The Criterion Channel and HBO Max.
Essay: In Focus: The Truman Show by Dominic Corry
1998’s The Truman Show is increasingly being discussed nowadays and especially since the proliferation of social media. When the lockdowns began and people en masse put their lives online, a kind of digito-paranoia took over, the themes of The Truman Show started looking real, and the film began trending on Letterboxd. The Letterboxd Editor-at-Large Dominic Corry wrote:
It has long been apparent that The Truman Show is an unnervingly prescient film. The story of a man who becomes aware that his superficially idyllic life is, in fact, a live-streamed television show has gone from being high-concept to every-day.
Thanks to the three Ps—the prevalence of mass urban surveillance, the proliferation of reality television and the pervasiveness of video in social media—the notion of cameras filming our every move is no longer a paranoid fantasy, but real life. The twist being that, for the most part, we all willingly signed up for it, and did all the filming ourselves. As Yi Jian saliently observes in his review:
Not to get all ‘we live in a society’ on Letterboxd but I know a person or two in real life that would actually give anything to trade lives with Truman, it do be like that sometimes.
It indeed do, Yi Jian.
These people that Yi Jian knows find themselves feeling like an off-screen protagonist; they feel the paranoia of being surveilled 24/7 but without an audience. It’s a kind of post-FOMO phenomenon if you will. This is why a film like The Truman Show became popular again during the lockdowns:
So it’s something of a cliché at this stage to point out how we are all living in some version of the The Truman Show, and you don’t have to be a member of the royal family to feel that way. Yet, somehow, the film has become even more pertinent over the last eighteen months. And it’s a pertinence reflected in the massive uptick in viewership for the film as seen in Letterboxd activity.
During the month of February 2020, the last moment of the Before Times, The Truman Show had a modest 1,235 diary entries. That number tripled in April of that year, by which time the seriousness of the pandemic had become clear. And by July, deep in the worst of the pandemic, Truman fervor peaked, with a further 178 percent leap over April’s numbers, firmly placing it in the top 200 films watched by our members in a year of lockdown.
Now in true democratic form, Corry digs into the more than 33,000 Letterboxd reviews to provide a rounder (and Letterboxd self-advertising) explanation from ordinary viewers:
Christian Torres boiled it down effectively when he wrote:
Now every movie I see seems to be related to my life in quarantine. I am Truman and I want to escape.
And Sonya Sandra eloquently captured the film’s increased contemporary significance in her review:
This is a real-life daylight horror film. The best kind. Even more relevant in 2021 than ever. We are all Truman, we all want to find what is real in our fake lives filled with media, capitalism and ideology. And it’s our job to fight the storm and get to the truth of it all. Nothing is real, everything is for profit, and everyone is selfish. Go out and find what is real, because it’s definitely not here.
A bit of Randian/Q theorizing, no?
It is always incredible to see how far The Truman Show was ahead of [its] time. In a world where celebs are monitored 24/7 and we are showered with unnecessary private information on the web, where talent-free wannabes become famous and where you sometimes [wonder] what kind of surreal show society you are in—Truman and his fake show life cleverly have anticipated all of this. Only Truman knew nothing of his luck and he was granted an escape from his glass prison. We don’t really have this possibility… Aren’t we all Truman? Sometimes even voluntarily…
I have always known that I really enjoyed this film, but I had no clue that it would hold up so well years later… Could this be because the strange world that he finds himself in is far more similar to our world today? Possibly, but the idea and themes are so much more relevant now compared to when this originally released.
We are all generally pretty aware of how ahead of its time The Truman Show was, but that doesn’t lessen its impact. Maddie’s review shows that there’s always some new angle to consider:
Imagine being an extra in this movie… You would be an extra, playing an actor, playing an extra. Think about that long enough and tell me that doesn’t make you want to walk into the ocean.
Watching other people watch somebody else while also watching that person while also watching the person watching over that person is a great reminder that watching is weird, and to be watched is to not own yourself. Don’t watch, don’t try to be watched. Just live.
Or perhaps Will encapsulates the film’s ability to present an ever-evolving message best, writing that
clearly, this is video proof that we live in a simulation.
Beyond mere prescience, The Truman Show is a telling mirror to whatever era it is viewed in. Its message will continue to evolve.
But this ideational evolution will only continue in so far as people allow themselves to willingly become Truman. And no matter if you find yourself becoming Truman or not, it doesn’t really matter, you’re fucked anyway.
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