BROWSE
ARCHIVES

Back in the mid-90’s, there was some buzz that Terry Gilliam was to helm his own adaptation of this classic graphic novel of the 1980’s.  Famously, Gilliam proclaimed that to be true to the source material, a 12-part mini-series was in order.  Needless to say, no one financed this aforementioned effort.  Cut to two years ago: the great Zack Snyder, fresh off his “victorious debut” with 300 is deemed the brilliant mind capable of turning this complex character drama into a mainstream action movie.

Before I start to really pick apart this film, I must say that I am a huge fan of Alan Moore’s original graphic novel.  It is brilliant, revolutionary, visually stunning, brimming with mind-bending complexity, and above all an absolute joy to read.  I’d like to say that a tremendous amount was lost in its translation, but in reality, the problem is more that so little was lost in translation.  Snyder has proved to us that he fundamentally doesn’t understand the point of adapting source material for the screen.  Rather than creating a film that can stand on its own, he has sowed this 2.5+ hour monstrosity so filled with references to characters and events developed far more fully in the book, that this movie is nearly impossible to follow.  I hear the director’s cut might reconcile this, but at the cost of making the unfortunate viewer sit through an additional hour of previously unused footage.

Watchmen takes place in a universe where superheroes are real.  That concept needs a large amount of explanation.  Snyder gives us a title sequence of “stills” that are meant to bring the viewer past the rise and fall of the superhero (a period of about 40-50 years).  There are a few more allusions to these past events as the movie goes on, but never is the audience specifically told: this is why super heroes are real; this is why their world is different than ours; this is why you should give a damn about what is happening on-screen.  The audience is thrust into a world they can’t possibly understand, almost entirely in medias res.  The effect is an unfortunate one.  Who are these decaying characters that claim to be the superheroes of old, but only spend fleeting time on-screen, with little or no reference made to anything that happened to them prior.  Who can care when one of them dies or cries or lies or has an affair?  We know nothing about these people.  If Snyder didn’t have the screen time to develop characters, then why did he instead opt to stick them into a scene or two, and just assume his audience could surmise that in some way they must be important, even if he has not taken the courtesy to indicate why.  Yes, if you read the book, everything would make sense.  But should reading the source material be a prerequisite to watching the movie?  Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of adapting it in the first place?

Mr. Snyder, you need to make changes, “adaptations” if I might be so bold, if you wish to successfully “adapt” a book for shooting as a movie of any reasonable length.  A literal adaptation could not possibly fit within Hitchcock’s classic rule that the length of a film need by directly proportional to the endurance of a human bladder.  Gilliam understood this when he said it would take 12 hour long parts to do Alan Moore justice.  Snyder would have been better suited to take a cue from Victor Fleming and suitably change the story into that of a self-contained movie, as opposed to an abridgment of an un-adaptable source material.

Few things made this film watchable.  (Here’s a hint: it definitely wasn’t a bizarrely long sex scene, or the soundtrack, which seemed to come from a CD titled “Greatest Hits of Hollywood Soundtracks: 1990-2008.”)  Billy Crudup, Jackie Earle Haley, and Patrick Wilson make their characters the only really believable things in a terribly unexplainable world.  These three acted as if even though their histories were never addressed on-screen, they still existed as complex human beings nonetheless.  Everyone else was mediocre, with the exception of a certain Miss Malin Akerman, to whom I attribute a new depth of mediocrity.  Her scenes might have been more believable had they been played by any of our great deceased leading ladies of the 40’s and 50’s (their present condition withstanding).

In conclusion, this is a bad movie.  If you really want to experience Watchmen, put your ticket price towards a copy of the 1987 original.

-Paul Brinnel

Imagine Steven Soderberg coming up to you and asking for upwards of $60 million to make his next movie.  Now imagine him telling you that it’s a four and a half hour bio-epic about Che Guavera.  Who knows how this movie got made?  It was obviously doomed from the onset to have negative returns for its investors.  That said, this movie is unlike anything I have ever seen.  It accomplishes everything it sets out to do from the beginning, chronicling the last 13 years of this man’s life using a variety of cinematic techniques, which all complement one another beautifully.

The first part of the movie starts in 1954.  Guavera and Castro are sharing dinner with other revolutionaries in Mexico City.  Probably one of the most important realizations comes here when we see a few casually dressed individuals planning the fate of an entire country over dinner and a few beers.  The movie takes off with the onset of their campaign in Cuba.

It’s difficult to say what exactly this movie is trying to say.  Sometimes it follows slowly developing, mundane events, sometimes it brings us into the heart of a battle.  All of this is done cutting back to an interview with Guavera from 1964.  This creates an incredible perspective, allowing us to hear all about the passion of these guerrillas as the hardships and barbarity of their campaign takes place on screen.  This voiceover allows the first half of the film to have a fantastic contemplative feel.  Conversely, there are no real opportunities to study the internal conflicts within these characters.  They are constantly in situations where there are more important things than actualizing the class struggle taking place around them.  This ongoing internal monologue makes up for a lack of real time spent alone to focus on the overflowing emotions of the characters.

In order for the characters of this movie to be sympathetic, one needs to understand what oppression has brought them to the point that they’ll sacrifice their life just for the chance that other’s will be able to live in a more humane world.  There was virtually no exhibition on-screen of any such government oppression, leaving viewers to their historical knowledge in making up back stories and motivations for these characters.  It was a bit odd that the antagonist was constantly exhibited as simply “the bad guy” with no exhibitions of the bad things that he has allegedly done.  We are forced to assume that the choreographers of the revolution are intelligent, ambitious, moral, and most importantly, trustworthy.  Looking back on the movie, there was never any justification for any of these assumptions.  There was never any harm displayed on the screen that seemed to warrant the tremendous foul called by the likes of Castro and Guavera.  We are left with Che’s contemplations via voiceover instead.  We believe this man is good, because he talks with such charm.  Soderberg assumes that is all the audience needs to know to eat out of this man’s hand.

The second part of Che takes place over the course of just under a year, starting in 1966.  Che has achieved international fame, but feels that in keeping with his revolutionary ideals, must now turn his eyes inland and orchestrate the start of a similar revolution in Bolivia.  Slipping into anonymity, changing his name, initially even using disguises, Guavera becomes an odd sort of spectre.  His mere mention seems enough to excite any freedom-craving Bolivian, but his actual presence seems to do very little to bolster their struggle.  This portion of the film aims to suck the viewer into that exact feeling of doom that the actual Bolivian guerrillas felt in 1966 and 1967.  This portion of the film is shot in a less wide aspect ratio, and utilizes a much less saturated color palette.  There is all of the violence of the first half, with many scenes playing out very similarly, but something is missing.  Gone is that incredible voiceover!  We are left very much in the dark in terms of what any of the characters are thinking.  Of course we can surmise when something scares them or makes them happy or more likely, sad, but that complex internal debate is sadly missing without any deliberate reflection of the events unfolding on-screen.  It is certainly tragic to watch Guavera’s plan’s unfold, unfurl, and generally go to shit, but this is only because we grew to know so much about him in the first two hours of the movie.  The second part simply cannot stand on its own.  It felt like this latter half was more about going through the motions, and attempting to repeat the first half, but this time with a different result.

I wholeheartedly recommend Che, as it is one of the most ambitious movies of the last several decades.  Del Toro fits into the role so naturally, that it is easy watching the movie to forget that you are watching anything but original footage of Che, himself.  Soderberg has created something that approaches the life of an impactful man, and chronicles it without drawing any conclusions as to his morality.  The comprehensiveness of this movie is what is truly to be commended.  It is at heart, great filmmaking.  The only enduring question is how on earth this movie ever got the financing to be made.  Does it even have a target audience?

-Paul Brinnel