Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
By the time you read this, KING KONG should be letting out of midnight screenings around the country, and many of you will finally have had the chance to see it. I’ve seen it twice already now, and I was still tempted to go out tonight to see it again. It’s that kind of movie crack, compulsively watchable, rewarding in different ways on each of the viewings so far.
Which is not to say it’s perfect, because it’s really, really not. In some ways, this is wildly undisciplined filmmaking, self-indulgent even, and I’m willing to be that six more months of post-production would have resulted in a radically different cut of the film, a tighter cut, one without quite so many narrative dead ends. Having said that, I’m happier with an uneven KONG than I have been with most other movies this year, and I suspect that most viewers will be, too.
My favorite thing about the movie is how clearly this is the work of pre-LORD OF THE RINGS Peter Jackson. For most of the mainstream, Jackson didn’t exist before the epic trilogy that won him his Academy Award. That was their introduction to him, and as much as I like those films, they’re absolutely atypical of his prior work. The Peter Jackson who won me over was the guy who made BAD TASTE, the excessive lunatic behind DEAD ALIVE, the diseased mind that created MEET THE FEEBLES. There was never any indication that subtlety was even part of his filmmaking vocabulary until HEAVENLY CREATURES, which I think I’d still call his best overall film. Still, that’s the exception, not the rule. The real Peter Jackson came out to play again with THE FRIGHTENERS, arguably the most important film to his overall development as a filmmaker. That’s the movie where WETA first stepped up to produce a large-budget FX show, mixing digital and practical on the same scale as a big Hollywood feature without ever leaving Wellington. It also got Jackson working in the studio system for the first time, which laid the groundwork for everything that’s happened since.
In many ways, KING KONG is a summation of everything that Peter Jackson has done so far as a filmmaker, his master’s thesis. Whatever he does next, he can’t possibly top the spectacle of KONG. He’s finally made the film he’s been revving up to for his whole career, stuffed full of ever fetish he’s ever hoped to indulge. Most importantly, all the technical wizardry he’s been learning over the course of his last four or five movies has been brought to bear in the creation of Kong as a character, and there’s one thing about the film that seems inarguable to me: Kong himself is the single most successful special effect in the history of cinema. He exists. He is real. You look in his eyes, you’ll see a soul, a genuine intelligence staring back out at you. Kong is a triumph, even when KONG is not.
Let’s discuss the already hotly-debated first act of the movie, everything before Skull Island. This is the most difficult stretch of the film, but it’s a mistake to dismiss it outright or to call it a chore. There are plenty of highlights here, starting with the opening scenes that introduce us to New York. Even if Jackson had an actual time machine, he could not have done a better job at transporting us back to a bygone era. His New York is amazing. I’m also a big fan of the way Jackson (along with his co-screenwriters Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens) reimagined Carl Denham, and Jack Black perfectly inhabits the character. He’s a filmmaker whose ambition outstrips his ability, and at the start of the film, it’s finally catching up with him. He’s got a vision for how to make an epic adventure film, and he’s got a great location chosen that no one’s ever used. He just doesn’t have the money or the movie stars to pull it off. He has to leave New York in a hurry, one step ahead of the law, which forces him to abduct his screenwriter Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody) and scramble to find a last-minute leading lady, Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts). The way the three of them are introduced all works for me, but I was far less interested in the crew of the Venture, the tramp steamer that Denham hires to take them to Skull Island. In particular, there’s a bizarre amount of attention paid to Jimmy (Jamie Bell) and Mr. Hayes (Evan Parke), attention that never pays off. None of their scenes further the plot or the film’s themes, and neither of them emerges as anything like a fully fleshed-out character. When people complain about the film’s first act, chances are, it’s these two characters that are at the heart of those complaints.
That’s not to say I hated everything on the Venture; I didn’t. I like the way Lumpy the Cook (Andy Serkis) and some of the other crew guys are etched with just a few lines here and there, and the same with the guys working for Denham. None of them seem overwritten, but they make enough of an impression to make us give a shit about them on the island. There’s also some decent comedy at the expense of Bruce Baxter (Kyle Chandler), the egotistic star of Denham’s movie, and one great scene that pokes some gentle fun at the original KONG by quoting some dialogue from it. Overall, though, I don’t buy a lot of what happens on the boat, and that’s a problem.
Of course, once they get to the island, not a bit of that matters anymore, because this is where Jackson cuts loose. From the moment the landing party hits the shore, the film rocks and rolls. The natives of the island are genuinely scary, and I love the way they’re revealed. Their first big scene is one of many in the film that are too intense for younger children, and I’m happy to see Jackson push the outer envelope of the PG-13 in a way that recalls the glory days of early ‘80s Spielberg and Lucas. Even better is the abduction of Ann and the introduction of Kong. You know that feeling you get when you saw a film one time as a kid and you loved it but for whatever reason you haven’t seen it since and then suddenly you see it again and it’s nothing like you remembered? Childhood’s eyes are the kindest for any fantasy film, and our memories do a lot of work on a film if we haven’t seen it for twenty years or so. Well, Peter Jackson’s KING KONG feels like he somehow reached into his head and put the film that he saw as a nine-year-old up onscreen intact, and being able to direct with that child’s eye is a gift that very few filmmakers are able to tap. It’s what makes Spielberg’s best movies so potent, and you’ll probably flash on the same sort of pure cinema joy you felt when you first saw RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK or (depending how old you are) JURASSIC PARK when you see the way Jackson’s built some of the film’s biggest set pieces. The dino stampede, the bug pit, Kong’s battle with the V-Rexes... these are classically built and executed sequences that leave you worn out by the end of them in the best possible way. They’re exhilaratingly inventive, and the energy is one of the things that makes KONG stand out from most of what we see at the movies.
But what really seals the deal is the way Jackson allows us to care about Kong without ruining him as one of the great movie monsters. He’s intimidating, ferocious, the best fighter on the island. He’s also almost childlike in the way he bonds with Ann, laughing and playing, throwing tantrums, getting moody or sullen over the smallest things. Kong’s the last of his kind, as we learn in a haunting sequence where we see the remains of the rest of his species. He’s alone. He connects with Ann not because of any sort of creepy inter-species love or lust. He connects with her because he finally has a purpose, something that drives him beyond pure instinct or survival. He has to protect Ann. He has to take care of her. And that drive seems to rekindle something vital in the brooding beast. Jackson knows that he’s stacking the deck, too. By making us care deeply about Kong, it hurts when he finally gets taken down by Denham and his crew. It hurts even more when he’s displayed in New York. It’s not about what they’ve done to him physically, it’s about the fact that they’ve broken his spirit. Denham emerges as the villain of the film in a way that he never did in the ’33 original, and it’s an interesting twist. He’s a liar, an opportunist, and ultimately, he seems willing to crawl over anyone’s body to get what he wants. The film’s final act, everything in New York, is marked with a tragic undercurrent that makes it difficult to watch. Many people have mentioned the moment that Ann and Kong share on the ice of Central Park, and the reason it stands out as one of this year’s best moments for me is because of what it does to the ending. We all know he’s going up the Empire State Building, and we all know how he’s coming back down. But that quiet moment of happiness that Kong enjoys just before the climb makes it even worse. Naomi Watts deserves praise for the way she seems to have invested in Kong completely. She makes you believe in him with her work, and Andy Serkis does such great performance capture work that you stop wondering how it was done. You’re too busy reacting to Kong on an emotional level to consider the technical accomplishment behind what you’re watching, a testament to the craft that WETA is capable of at the moment. One of my favorite scenes takes place as Kong is trying to escape from the theater. He recognizes Driscoll standing in the balcony, and a look of pure fury crosses his face. He leaps, and his weight begins to tear the balcony apart as he struggles to get to Driscoll. It’s a brilliant image, and a nice reminder that Kong may have a heart, but he’s still capable of real damage.
Not every single composite in the film works, and not ever single bit of CGI is outstanding. Again, another six months of post-production time might have made all the difference. As with MUNICH, this film was still being tweaked up to the very last moment before it started screening, and when you’re trying to finish this many FX shots, some things are bound to fall through the cracks. It’s precisely because so much of the work is so outstanding that the moments that don’t work stand out. It’s obvious that time is the culprit here, not ability, so it seems ungenerous to nitpick WETA too much. The film is beautifully designed, and Andrew Lesnie’s photography is excellent. I even liked James Newton Howard’s score, which I know was rushed, but which doesn’t feel like it. He uses quiet just as effectively as he uses music, and moments like the bug pit surprised me with some strong and unusual choices.
I referred to NARNIA as a pretty box with no present inside in my review of it, and KONG strikes me as the exact opposite. It’s a box that is splitting at the seams, falling apart because of everything that’s been crammed into it. If you can look past the places where it doesn’t hang together, KONG is a tremendous entertainment, as passionate a movie as any little self-financed indie film you want to name this year. I hope this is the end of giant-budget Jackson for a while, because I want to see what else he’s capable of. For now, though, he emerges as the eighth wonder of the film world, thumping his chest and howling with justified pride.
I’ve got a lot more coming this week, so I’ll see you with reviews of V FOR VENDETTA, SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE, MATCH POINT, THE PRODUCERS, and MUNICH in the next few days, as well as a big catch-up column where I’ll review some recent releases that I missed before they opened. Until then...
"Moriarty" out.
