The Odyssey

Writer-director Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is, as expected from the creator of the temporal pincer movement, a non-linear telling of the ancient poem that is steeped in queasy memory and elided thought. As with the director's own Oppenheimer, this Odyssey hinges on an individual who seems, for all appearances, to be an emissary from a forthcoming, dreadful new era of human extermination. Where J. Robert dreamed of quivering, sub-atomic galaxies, the lost king Odysseus chats candidly with the cosmic entities that bridge the hemispheres of his brain. Their faces are anchored in his own failings, while the thoughts they prompt demand consideration of his unholy ingenuity. Both Oppenheimer and Odysseus' visions relate to the application of an original but fundamentally terrible new thought, ideas that have rolling consequences; waves that crash and echo far beyond the sand on which they were plotted. The equivalent here to Oppenheimer's fission-based nuclear weapon is The Trojan Horse itself, a deception that works so well because, we are told, it undermines the most basic tenants of human decency. 

The sacking of Troy then isn't organised as a great or ingenious victory; it's a crime that damns mankind. Somewhat of a piece with the director's breakthrough film Memento, in that the present for Matt Damon's mislaid monarch is a fog of unconscious, reflexive action (he scours a blasted beach for signs of his ship or crew) and winding conversations with a woman, Charlize Theron's bronzed Calypso, in which critical information is deliberately withheld, prolonging his agonies. While Tom Holland's Telemachus steps away from a household packed with seditious suitors to brave a trip to Sparta, in the hope of hearing word of his absent father (finding little to nothing), a stirred Odysseus answers his child's queries but only for our benefit. Odysseus giving detail to a horrifying voyage premised on a desire to physically split with the ungrateful allies who share their wrongdoing. By straying from the shipping lanes, Odysseus inadvertently abandons himself and his crew to the Gods and the elements they personify: Zeus in the ferocious thunderstorms above them, Poseidon in the churning waves beneath. 

The light of knowledge that prompted Odysseus to pack himself into a holy object - apparently a gift for petty Gods, intended to curry favour - is absent on this expedition. In this section mankind's brightest, most devious mind is confronted with how much he doesn't, cannot know. Nolan's film then taking the island-hopping form seen previously in Don Chaffey and Ray Harryhausen's Jason and the Argonauts, only absent the certainty or good-natured bonhomie that kept the Argonauts from Jason's throat. In Nolan's telling Odysseus meets the men he has failed, including Elliot Page's Sinon, and is then cursed to know, by figures who emerge from black sands, how events can play out. The decisions he will be pressed to make and how lives will be lost on each path. Forced to treaty with powerful supernatural forces - from Samantha Morton's Circe, a witch who can remake men in the slovenly image of beasts, or a massive, one-eyed man who is Francisco Goya's Saturn Devouring his Son rendered in, as behind-the-scenes images would have us believe, Royal de Luxe-style puppetry - horror in Nolan's Odyssey is not just the unknown but the unknowable. All around them are thought and method that exceed the grasp of these pillaging sailors. 

Finally returned to Ithaca, Damon's king prospers again by deception, breaking another siege - this time of his own palace - by exploiting the social norms of the day. He enters his household as a beggar, a disguise that we are told is beloved of earthbound Olympians. Telemachus, desperate for any connection to a father who has been transformed into contemporary myth, repeatedly voices entreaty that acknowledges that the person he is speaking to has displayed some aspect, so beyond the norm, that it raises suspicion that they are Godly. Odysseus, again, uses this human reverence for something beyond themselves to his advantage. Anne Hathaway's Queen Penelope may weep at the straining sound of an unstrung bow; Odysseus tearing apart the challenge he has conquered only to clatter the jerry-rigged debris against the fleeing bodies of his enemies but the lasting impression of Nolan's film is its description of hubris. Damon's Odysseus as a man arrogant or foolhardy enough to consider himself in terms that are not instinctively beneath Greece's vengeful pantheon. Odysseus as an agnostic in the age of antiquity who, when judged against governing Gods who personify aspects of human life, makes a case for himself as a new deity of deceit. A line drawn from Prometheus, the fire-giver, and the failed sculptor Dolus to Odysseus. A figure so powerful he can even deceive himself. 

Dunkirk

Action-adventure films unfold as a series of waves, setting up characters and situations before introducing a trickle of intrigue to keep their viewers interested. Levity is important too, a smile here or there helps to keep the characters feeling human, extra necessary if a writer is pushing too hard in a structural direction, exposing the on-screen action as a series of ruthless data points. A well-written character then will allow a viewer to simmer in their company, charting a growth in their gradual response to the unfolding mayhem.

This is, in part, the strength powering television streaming's current golden age - personalities are afforded the space, time and storylines required to simulate evolution. Running a scant 106 minutes, Dunkirk doesn't have the luxury of time, it isn't able to slowly pick its characters apart to see what makes them tick. Instead it takes a series of easily understood archetypes - the teenage soldier, the father, the ace - then endangers them. With not a second to spare, writer-director Christopher Nolan explores his characters in their minute-by-minute response to this sustained, mounting terror.

Heroism, if and when it manifests, is not expressed through triumph. Success is measured only in the decision to continue struggling, to stare directly into calamity and keep heading towards it. The rout at Dunkirk and the subsequent evacuation are the perfect scenarios to draw out these kind of details. Running time doesn't need to be dedicated to any kind of overarching exposition, beyond a clipped opening brief. Likewise characters aren't required to do anything more complicated than survive. Dire situation in place, Nolan can knuckle down on the finer, more expressive moments that a locked on-spec cinema experience can provide.

Nolan's thundering insistence that his film be viewed under very specific conditions makes more sense when we see how he uses the verticality provided by IMAX's 1.43:1 frame. With The Dark Knight the effect was perfunctory, arriving infrequently to stress the towering, monumental scale of the city at the centre of Batman's mission. On Dunkirk Nolan uses the elevated ratio to create images that expand in every direction, depicting unconquered, threatening space above and below his subjects.

These shots, working in concert with gun reports that hit like cannons and Han Zimmer's clattering approximation of a heart-attack, congeal into an ever-present sense of doom. Death can come from any and every direction. This effect is further accentuated by Nolan's decision to fold the Nazi menace into the environment itself, never breaking from his subject's limited, blinkered perspectives. The presence of U-Boats, for instance, isn't established through miniature coverage or a prowling, CG effect, that would break the carefully calibrated illusion.

Viewers are quickly conditioned to expect the promenade strafing runs, to know that making it on to a fleeing boat does not guarantee safety. Dunkirk pulses with this anxiety, a film primed to cascade into full-on horror at a moment's notice. The scope for danger is exacerbated by the tall frame; a towering expanse primed to overwhelm and consume the tiny, vulnerable figures limping across the frothing, voided landscapes.

If the pace ever threatens to slacken or, God forbid, provide a gasp of breathing room, the film hurtles off to another temporal point where jeopardy can be piled on until the next natural break. The three stories - The Mole, The Sea, The Air - collide and interconnect frequently, working in service to their own individual dramas and a wider perspective on the unfolding nightmare. Nolan doesn't hold back these convergence points either, we often see disastrous results long before any of the boys summon up the courage to instigate them. These shifting, even clashing viewpoints are another tool used to express the terrifying indifference of collapsing, ruptured machinery.

The Dark Knight Rises

Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy hasn't been shy about kicking the shit out of its hero. Batman Begins tracked the inception of the bat-identity, from the crime alley mugging that made him an orphan through to an L-train showdown with the false father that shaped and tempered his vigilante impulse. The Dark Knight broke his spirit by killing his beloved, maiming his successor, and nuking his reputation. What anguish does this franchise closer heap on everybody's favourite fascist? It makes Christian Bale's billionaire detective older, lonely, and infirm. His brief stint punishing criminality has left a permanent mark. The Dark Knight Rises ratchets up this torture by giving Bruce Wayne an opposite; an opponent that is both his mental equal and physical superior. An anti-Batman.

Bane is the idea that Wayne rejected at his ninja graduation; the dedicated disciple who happily acts out the extinction ideals of Ra's al Ghul's multiracial mujahideen. Where Bale's Batman has placed his faith in technology, augmenting his broken body with electronic leg braces and metal rending slash hands, Tom Hardy's Bane has cultivated an armour of muscle and swagger. He operates in daylight, dressed in a shabby football manager's coat and surrounded by scurrying generics. Contrary to his comic book antecedent, this Bane does not mainline glowing super-steroids. His bio-mechanical mask does nothing other than add an electronic inflection to a voice that sounds like Sean Connery essaying a bare-knuckle boxer. As well as this impenetrable accent, Bane is a horrifying physical presence. He towers and growls, tugging at his own neckline. His are fingers restless, desperate to snatch at something then break it. 

Bane's interactions with other human beings are short, stunted exchanges that usually end with his hands darting to their throat. His power is absolute. Bane is a fully realised, focused individual - the perfect foil to a caped crusader who is desperate to be unnecessary. Unlike a Batman that prefers to whisper to his ruling class associates from shadows, Bane surrounds himself with derelicts and has them build the means to level Gotham. In this sense, Bane in The Dark Knight Rises is as much the Mutant Leader from Frank Miller, Klaus Janson, and Lynn Varley's The Dark Knight Returns as he is Knightfall's muscular luchador. Like the former character, Bane is (eternal?) youth, ferocity and an equally pulverising rhetoric. Qualities that have all but deserted a Bruce Wayne numbed by eight years eating soup in an empty castle. Although equipped with a variety of new toys, Batman is quite incapable of standing toe to toe with Bane. When first they clash, Batman rains blow after blow down on his opposite, barely able to stagger him. 

The Dark Knight arrived somewhere abstract and lawless during a protective custody sequence in which Harvey Dent's SWAT van came across a burnt out fire truck whilst invisible electronic insects buzzed on the soundtrack. The Dark Knight Rises does something similar with a sustained close-up of Batman wincing as Bane relentlessly hammers down on his skull. Teeth clenched, praying for it all to stop, he looks like a child. Batman, shrunken and utterly beaten. It doesn't last. Bruce Wayne finds motivation down another well, and Bane's position as ultimate evil is retconned on the fly by an unsatisfying twist straight out of The World Is Not Enough. Bane and Batman's rematch is inconclusive too. Bane's momentary wobble after Batman starts focus striking his breathing equipment leads straight into a rage power-up that allows him to put dents in marble. Bane is too big for this film. Too capable, too dangerous. Its heroes cannot stop him, he must be circumvented at a conceptual level. Reduced to an idea, and subordinated by a deeper, more personal threat to Bruce Wayne's psyche, Bane becomes docile. A few moments later he's being dismissed, decisively, by Anne Hathaway's Catwoman. Bane isn't broken, or really even beaten. He simply leaves the frame, and the film, after he comes under artillery fire. 

GOTHAM ROGUES

A 13 minute hype reel for The Dark Knight Rises that stresses the raw physicality of the production. Christopher Nolan's trilogy capper looks to be obsessed with vertical scale - corpses of planes dangle nose down beneath bigger planes, and Bane's terror cell abseils down a set that looks like something out of a DW Griffith picture. All these plunging action lines likely existing to better accentuate the height and endemic squareness of the 1.44:1 IMAX frame. Elsewhere, Batman 3 promises several riot scale scenes featuring clashing hordes formed from either side of the law.

BAT-SHAPED JUSTICE GOD

This latest ad for The Dark Knight Rises seems to tease an early, decisive victory for the League of Shadow's muscle-bomber, Bane. With Gotham in the grip of a fallout winter, and Bruce Wayne lumped up in a one percenter gulag, the Batman idea passes into folk myth, whispered between sick children and exhausted cops. Fuck yeah! 

BREAK

In a world of photshopped, float-head atrocities, teaser posters seem to be the last bastion of stark, singular images designed to hype movies. Warner Bros continues its run of classy, idea based one-sheets with this ad for The Dark Knight Rises. Last year we had a burning, ruined Hogwarts. This year we get Tom Hardy's Bane prowling away from the remains of a Batman.

Via

Dark Knight Triumphant?

Calamity! Batman's gone, Gotham crumbles, and James Gordon lies broken. A brutal, mutated young upstart rules the night, necessitating the Dark Knight's return. The Dark Knight Rises has more than a whiff of Frank Miller's masterpiece about it, doesn't it? It's also interesting that attention is referred back to Batman Begins; is Ra's al Ghul narration contextualising Batman or Bane? Both are unwavering super-identities locked into abstract extinction arcs. I wonder if it'll turn out that Bane's American adventures are sponsored by the League of Shadows? His reliance on psychotropic psychosis enhancers is certainly consistent with their MO.

Inception

Inception is an absurdly expensive flight of fancy. Christopher Nolan's film jumps off from a big-lie idea of there being a whizz-tech powerful enough that it allows people to break into each other's dreams. We are lead slowly through sequences that establish and demonstrate the various mechanical laws that allow interlopers to dabble around in foreign subconscious. Naturally, this wonder science is used, primarily, as a tool for industrial espionage. Machine established, the film then becomes a launch-pad for weaving together a series of clashing action sequences, each one set at a distinct simulation level of the quarry's dreamscape. These action plains intersect and distend, spinning in and out of each other at a frequency close to parody. Inception invents a behavioural rule-set, premised on complete fantasy, then gleefully vandalises it. It's not in love with characters; instead it finds joy in establishing a new idea, then gleefully kicking the chair out from underneath it. Inception is, in this sense, joyous; a piece that may move with the familiar beats of the blockbuster - staffed by mission-focused experts who deal in broad, cool strokes - but isn't constrained by them. It's a heist film where everything goes wrong and these professionals have to think on their feet. Their central task quickly becoming wildly irrelevant when judged against the action of performing these feats. Along the way enough details are left nagging to undermine all of the reality we have witnessed; micro-details and spectral figments take on alarming meaning the deeper we tumble into our players.

The Dark Knight

I'm sitting in front of an 8 storey high screen. It's formatted for a 1.34:1 display - I'm watching a television the size of an office building. It swamps my vision. I can barely see anything but it. A blue glass building bursts into view, filling every inch of the canvas. We hurtle towards it. I'm crashing into it. Windows shatter and clowns take flight. I feel dizzy. IMAX. Unlike it's hero, The Dark Knight is a film that seems utterly without restraint. People die, buildings burn, and whole sequences are scored with nothing but a buzzing electronic reverb - a giant mechanical fly struggling to get out of a jar, twitching and clawing as a world implodes. Heath Ledger's one-man Al Qa'eda piloting Gotham towards extinction. Events steer down dark alleys into dangerous, upsetting territory. All this, despite the usual Summer baggage: July release date. 12A rated.

Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan and Christian Bale's Batman catches a glimpse of light at the end of his tunnel - rising lawyer Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) is cleaning up Gotham within the confines of the law, one swaggering disarmament at a time. Gangsters squabble and cower while Batman brutally ties up a loose-end from his previous outing. He's close to getting out. Grasping at a relationship with childhood sweet-heart Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal). It's nearly over. Bruce Wayne can step down as The Batman. He can make himself a life. Then all fucking hell breaks lose. The Dark Knight is almost a half-billion dollar remake of Dirty Harry, a maverick law-man shedding rules and process to track a terrifying criminal. Like Scorpio, Heath Ledger's Joker is in it for the kicks, not the cash. He kills then cackles, holding an entire city to ransom. At that films' conclusion Callahan tracks and murders Scorpio, blowing a fist sized hole clean through him. Batman allows himself no such luxury. He will allow himself to punish, break and maim his foes, but not go as far as killing them. 

This note of personal temperance is what carries The Dark Knight; the abstract that simmers away as three scarred men clash and battle in a boiling hell. Unlike Batman Begins, were this code is callously jettisoned for a finale in which Liam Neeson's ninja terrorist is, more or less punished, The Dark Knight obsesses over Wayne's promise, and all that it implies. This line, that cannot be crossed, becomes an Achilles' Heel to be exploited by knowing enemies; a procedural blemish that can be ruthlessly stripped apart and used to undermine the potency of a figure premised on fright. Nolan makes text of the most basic (rational?) objection to costumed superheroics: why don't they just kill their colourful, murderous quarry? Why would a Superman suffer the indignity of Lex Luthor? Why wouldn't Batman just erase Joker? After decades of muscled-up monsters exterminating anything that raises an objection on the big screen (and with proxy war oil grabs looming large outside, in the real world), how do you examine the make-up of a hero? You give him a pledge, something he'd rather die than betray, then you dangle every single reason imaginable for him to break it. You tell lies about him. You reimagine him as a slathering beast. And in the end you chase his battered, fleeing body screaming and shooting. Then, hopefully, you make another film just like it. 

The Summer Films Came Blowing In...

As promised, here's a snidey little rundown on the Summer Blockbusters. Many have been omitted for issues of being not-interesting.

Iron Man 1

Already seen this, that's how late this piece is. No doubt I'll write something soon. No matter how many films come out this summer, I can't see Iron Man being trumped for sequel baiting. There are allusions to future threats, side-kick team-ups (or even a spin-off), a separate film starring a cameoing Sam Jackson, and an all Marvel imprint battle royale. Phew! Marvel really know how to flirt. After years of being dicked around in development hell they've opted out and are self-financing (with a Paramount distribution deal). Good for them. Who needs Hollywood script hacks diluting half century old characters, because Poppa Studio can't get an angle on them ("I'm worried because it's not exactly like something that made money last week!"). Who knows? Ten years down the line we could have two or three solo Marvel flicks a year, with a huge cross-over event for the summer. We'll be burnt out fans the world over as heroes routinely die and return dressed in black with a sports metal cob-on. Hooray! We might even get a decent Punisher film out of this. Incredible Hulk's going to have to work hard to out theoretical sequel this.

Indiana Jones 4

Crystal Skull! Looks like your classic grey alien head on the poster doesn't it? Cosmic phenomena in an occult series seems a bit iffy. We should be well set-up for this, and Mike Mignola pulls it off routinely (and with considerable panache) in his Hellboy series, but still I am troubled. Either way it looks like Mr Lucas is further plundering 70s mythicism tropes for financial gain. Good for you George! Harrison Ford looks suitably stumpy and cranky, and he tells off Ray Winstone in the trailer! If you've any sense you're wishing pixie hard for an 18 certificate so Big Ray can go Nil By Mouth on the dastardly evil-empire threat - this time portrayed by the Soviets and Cate Blanchett. I have to admit, with this new sci-fi leaning I was hoping for some gone-to-ground Nazis operating out of Argentina with techno-cosmic super weapons. Oh well. Transformers Twat Shia LeBeouf is along for the ride, and looks to be doing a Dad-disappointing impression of a young Marlon Brando. It's pretty cool to see Indy concerned with an explicitly American (or Mesoamerican if you want to get right, or even faked rather recently by European master forger if you want to get current opinion extra-super-right) artifact for a change, the continent is long accused of having no history when it patently has loads, just none involving the current landlords.

Doomsday 1

Neil Marshall's latest appears to be a loving tribute to Mad Max 2 post-apocalyptia and Escape From New York suicide missions. Starring former Lara-Croft-for-trade-shows, and Ali G alumni Rhona Mitra, it would be very easy to get snotty about the Scotland set Doomsday. The trailers have been pretty uninspiring so far, looking more like an 80s Italian schlock flick crossed with Channel 5's Kiwi schedule-filler kids programme: The Tribe. Doomsday sank without a trace at the US box-office in March, a fact that means basically nothing. I like Mr Marshall though, his last film The Descent (when viewed with the UK / Unrated ending) was a tense, claustrophobic nasty. He has repeatedly demonstrated a knack for creeping, choking tension and a propensity to opt for a practical effect wherever possible - reason enough to have faith. How many decent horror films have been stopped dead the second they unveil a shiny CG shitpiece? Loads! Anyway, if this love-letter to John Carpenter turns out a bit wobbly, I'm sure he'll bounce right back. Hopefully with Conan. I'd love another decent Conan film. I deserve it.

Batman 6 (or 7 if you include Adam West's efforts)

In an environment primarily concerned with getting people breathing heavy for sequels, (Batman) The Dark Knight is a bit of an anomaly. The Dark Knight looks quite happy to tear everything apart and leave nothing for the money Jackals. Director Christopher Nolan is well quoted as saying he took part in the sequel mainly because he didn't want anyone else ruining his Joker tease at the end of Begins (from Frank Miller's Batman: Year One, with a touch more sizzle), not to mention the passing of an above-the-title actor and the disturbed city-in-meltdown narrative direction. Gadzooks! You ain't coming out of this one cheery. The Dark Knight looks positively apocalyptic - the latest trailer hinting at multiple main character deaths / mutilations. There's also the tease that the climax will be a three-way broken-man clash. Everybody loses! According to free-roaming Internet plot quotes Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne wants out too - in a move similar to 1993's animated movie (masterpiece) Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, Wayne is beginning to mourn the life he never had, and is pinning his happiness hopes on getting a relationship going with his (currently taken) childhood sweetheart. If Nolan et al can wring even even half Phantasm's heroic misery out, we're on to a fucking winner. The real life death of Heath Ledger, who plays agitator No.1: The Joker (hopefully with not even a hint of backstory implied), hangs heavy over this sequel. It's a role that he quite apparently put everything he had into. The evidence is mounting, the trailer footage and that IMAX six minute flash point to an outstanding portrait of super-psychosis. Mr Ledger's Joker is an uber Droog. Excitable ghouls are already predicting an Oscar. There's word that test-screenings are finding his performance deeply uncomfortable / disturbing. Good. Can't wait!

A few more to follow.