Avatar, Hurt Locker, and Steve Brendell in the London Marathon

by Parsley on Mon, 2010/03/15 - 2:58pm Post to Twitter

PARSLEY’S COMMLOCK
Film Reviews : Avatar 3D and The Hurt Locker
By sheer fluke I got to see both of these films before their performance at this weekend’s Oscar ceremony. Caught Avatar in a local 3D cinema at a sparsely populated ‘Orange Wednesday’ screening. I’d managed to not think about it much before I was in the cinema seat, and at first I thought I’d accidentally stumbled onto a major science fiction epic, as long space flight scenes very reminiscent of 2001:A Space Odyssey filled the screen. However, as time went on it occurred to me that the film was spanning several major genres in the one go, as Matrix-style technology was used to put humans into alien form, the aliens lived in an alternate world to rival the Dark Crystal, and then future war hit the fan as if it was Robocop or an episode of the recent Battlestar Galactica.

Of course, the effects were stunning, and at the cutting edge of the form creating a highly plausible and beautiful alternate reality. It was particularly clever to use not quite human creatures, to get the best out of virtual reality creatures without showing up the fact that the technology can’t quite do human yet. Apparently cinemas have ‘invested’ in 3D technology, but I’m not altogether sure what this was supposed to involve, as aside from watching a projected image through glasses there was just one moment where something seemed to be dripping down the side of the room. I can’t really say that was a great success, as we all just thought the central heating had broken. Similarly unimpressive, but again still in keeping with the encapsulating of Hollywood styles, was the stereotypical ‘corporate men in search of huge profits no matter how wrong what they’re doing is’ bit. Jurassic Park, in fact.

But despite the occasional weakness the film held my interest for its entire considerable length. In the same way that H.G. Well’s parodied Victorian colonialism in ‘War Of The Worlds’, the plot was almost parodying the founding fathers creation of the United States over the heads of its indigenous native American population, albeit giving them better abilities to fight back. The film’s projectionist was obviously a little non-plus-ed by the cinematic landmark he’d just shown us, as he switched the credits off before they’d been shown.

4 days later in the more mature surroundings of the Watermans Centre, Hounslow, I caught up with The Hurt Locker. The screening was sold out, and I bumped into a couple waiting for ‘returns’ as I picked up tickets. The Watermans is a comfortable place for our senior citizens and people of delicate frame to watch films, and it was quite a spectacle to have a cinema filled to overflowing eagerly awaiting the film. There was a slight queasiness that began before the film, when the trailers shown – presumably reflecting the content of the film we were just about to see – portrayed some of the most unnecessarily gruesome end of the film genre, and I was staggered at the thought that anyone currently in the cinema would have the slightest intention of seeing anything like these.

I confess I haven’t ever seen some classic war films like Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter, but even the oblique name The Hurt Locker was to me an attempt to create a concept of a thoughtful and deeply engaging film. Showing a quote at the start highlighting that ‘war is a drug’ made me suspect we were into war obsession territory.

We joined Jeremy Renner as William James, a pretty psycho bomb disposal expert, who played shoot-em-up video games for kicks in his spare time. Several almost totally detached ‘adventures’ ensued, as he and his 2 team members met up with improvised explosive devices and tried to disarm them. These episodes were introduced with a caption detailing the number of days they had to survive this nightmare till they went home. The action was all filmed in hand-held realism, with us very rarely seeing more than the team themselves.

Watching it my mind, and indeed eventually that of James, kept looking for the bigger story, only to find that there wasn’t one. That could be a perfectly valid realistic portrayal of the situation in Iraq, but to be honest it just made me feel that this was superficial rather than inciteful film making. Yes it was in Iraq, yes people were dying, but to be honest it was to surprisingly little dramatic effect other than shock value.

I grew up in the sixties and seventies and the music and film of that time ‘does it’ for me. I can’t imagine feeling the same about the music of the eighties, but some people do. Similarly I view this film as a pygmy of war film compared to the black-and-white ones I used to watch with my Dad, but maybe some people will feel moved and inspired by it, particularly when someone tells them it won lots of Oscars.

The Oscar best film shortlist is now longer so that commercial films are in there with the worthy esoteric. Apparently The Hurt Locker has made very little money, and so it is almost amusing that it beat Avatar, the highest grossing film of all time. However, it wasn’t for me the deeply thoughtful or inspiring film that its award success might suggest.
Overall Review: thumbs up for both, but much more for Avatar. Avatar is an ambitious and largely successful pushing of the cinematic form to its limits. Hurt Locker is a good but wildly over-hyped drama-documentary-style modern war film.

Charity News : Steve Brendell in the London Marathon
Just time to plug my friend and original Ruperts People drummer Steve Brendell in his efforts to raise money for the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) at this year’s London Marathon on 25th April. Steve has many claims to fame, including wearing open-toed sandals in a mock-up picture for the Abbey Road album cover that then inspired Paul McCartney to go barefoot! He’ll be using his feet to a different purpose in the Marathon and you can make donations/show support for him at www.justgiving.com/SteveBrendell

parsley.L at virgin.net [http://freespace.virgin.net/alpha.moonbase/garden.records]