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Film

Cinema's Season of Revenge

Hollywood's heavily into payback lately. Now comes the remade 'Straw Dogs.'

Dorothy Woodend 2 Sep 2011TheTyee.ca

Dorothy Woodend writes about film every other Friday for The Tyee. Find her previous articles here.

It's grim out there at the moment. I mean that in a couple of different ways. This past summer was witness to some genuine drama. Hurricane Irene sauntered off after causing massive damage along the Eastern Coast; the Horn of Africa is locked in a drought so dire that things show little hope of change until next year, and in the U.S., Rick Perry and that woman with the crazy eyes are calling for a return to the days of Christian insanity.

All of this and there is nothing to see in the movie theatres.

With no means for taking one's mind off the current realities of the world, it's easy to feel a little unhinged. In the dog days of August, when all of the summer big-ticket films have come and gone, and only the dregs remain, it's natural to cast one's mind back and think about the summer that was. If you look at it in overview, some deeply curious trends emerge.

With a few notable exceptions, I was staggered by how incredibly disappointing these extravaganzas were, but Cowboys & Aliens takes the proverbial cake as one of the worst things I've seen in ages. It is a rare film that can take two icons of toughness, namely Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford, and make them into laughing stock, but Cowboys & Aliens managed this feat repeatedly. It was a film that also gave me the singular thought, right in the middle of the action, "Did Hollywood forget how to make movies?"

Apes and their hindquarters

Watching the patchwork of ludicrous clichés, roped together like so many mangy ponies, all I could do was titter hysterically. Really, what can you do with a film in which the best thespian moments were demonstrated by Daniel Craig's buttocks? Tucked up tight into leather chaps, as perfectly round as green cantaloupes, it was hard not to take your eyes off the damn things; they owned the screen with complete authority.

The rest of the summer fare didn't ever quite rise to that level, although there was a bright patch here and there. The Rise of the Planet of the Apes succeeded simply by being entertaining. That's all you really need from a summer movie, a little excitement, a dash of anarchic joy, and if you have one actual idea, well, that's just icing on the cake. Terrence Malick's family photo album, The Tree of Life, for all its bombast, was at least pretty to look at. Bridesmaids was genuinely funny, a quality so rare in cinema these days that it's almost unrecognizable. Documentary was the only genre where genuinely interesting things were taking place, whether it was Werner Herzog descending into the depths of time in Cave of Forgotten Dreams, or Senna reinventing the sports documentary.

Deja viewing

But fictional film was something of a desert this summer. The dearth of new ideas, any idea really, became increasingly apparent as the months tripped by. The number of times that I went to see a film on opening night, and walked into a theatre as sparsely populated as a Siberian wilderness was curious, but not surprising. The lack of audience for a great many films may be partly explained by the seeming pointlessness of the entire enterprise. It was easy to think in the midst of seeing a film, "Haven't I seen this before?" Because, indeed, you probably had, to wit: Friends with Benefits or No Strings Attached. The difference between the two films was papery thin, which pretty much sums up everything else about them as well, plot, acting, and impact.

The pack of super hero films that charged into theatres at the beginning of the summer are now slinking away, capes between their legs (Captain America, Thor, Transformers, Conan, X-Men). So too, the horror film sequels and remakes (Final Destination 5, Fright Night, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark). If you strike the last word from Crazy, Stupid, Love you have a pretty much summation of I feel about the endless slough of romantic comedies. It's enough to make me want to never entertain the idea of relationships ever again.

Whether it was skinny women packing big guns (Columbiana meets Le Femme Nikita, Hanna, etc.), or giant man babies (Our Idiot Brother, The Change-Up, 30 Minutes or Less, The Hangover: Part 2), the song remained the same. One can be forgiven for not wanting to actually step foot inside a movie theatre and spend good money to simply come out 90 minutes later feeling like you'd be taken for a ride, then dumped beside a stretch of lonesome highway wearing only your underpants.

Get the bastards

After a while, one's thoughts turn naturally to revenge. The one theme that popped up again in film after film, cutting across genres, comedy to horror, was this most basic of plot devices, the need to exact a toll. It popped up big in The Help, a revenge drama writ small against the backdrop of larger things. The film divided critics and ordinary folk. I couldn't quite believe that it was deemed appropriate to make yet another film in which white folk lend a helping hand to black folk. If I were a person of colour, I might be sorely tempted to take that hand and bend the fingers back one by one, till whitey squeaked.

Revenge also came whirling out of the darkness with glowing eyes and teeth in Attack the Block. This time it is the angry aliens' turn to get some payback on the nasty humans. You have to admit that humanity is deeply deserving of a firm hand on their collective backsides, which helped explain the curious pleasure that came from watching the downtrodden apes in The Rise of The Planet of the Apes, finally get their turn at the wheel. Down with humans, up with apes!

Revenge is nothing if not hardwired deep inside the mammalian brain, so deeply, as to be almost inextricable. Perhaps that is why revenge works so powerfully as plot point. There is no denying the ability of revenge to move mountains.

'Straw Dogs,' again

Which brings us to the current release one of the most disturbing of revenge dramas. The remake of Sam Peckinpah’s '70s violent extravaganza Straw Dogs hits theatres in a couple of weeks. Infamously deemed by film critic Pauline Kael as "the first American film that is a fascist work of art," Straw Dogs is a strange film to remake, seemingly because elements of it have popped up in films again and again, everywhere from Gaspar Noé's Irreversible, to the dizzying number of horror films that take as their premise the thin divide between yokels and civilized folk.

The remake is set not in a bleak corner of England, but in Texas, fittingly enough, since that seems to be where the real crazies are emerging from lately. The original film was infamous for its depiction of violence, sexual and otherwise, and watching Susan George and Dustin Hoffman again, it's the long preamble that is almost more disturbing than the actual bludgeoning and boiling oil that marks the culmination. The small cruelties that the couple engage in get under your skin, and fester there.

I'm not really all that interested in seeing the remake of Bloody Sam's masterpiece. It's probably better to stick with the original. Really, could there ever be another Peckinpah again? Would anyone ever give the man the money to make a film?

A Latin American autumn

Thankfully, one of the blessings of autumn is that it is the season for film festivals. The Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) strides into town at the end of September. And starting yesterday, Sept. 1, the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival (VLAFF) runs for 10 more days, with a bevy of excellent films on offer.

So, with the turn of the calendar page, it's time to say goodbye to summer cinema. We had our time together. Goodbye 3D Sharks and 3D Smurfs -- perhaps you could work something out, so that you get to collaborate on a project. Goodbye Daniel Craig's melons, we'll meet again in the next James Bond sequel. Goodbye Captain America, really, and good luck, you have your work cut out for you.

Goodbye summer, until next year.  [Tyee]

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