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Yo Ho Ho and a Tube of Mascara
So. Pirates of the Caribbean. First (local) showing on opening day. I was there. And what did I think?
Okay, turn off the part of your brain that wrote papers on Fassbinder, Kurosawa and Angelopoulos back in Film Studies. You love the oeuvre of Jean-Luc Godard? That's wonderful. Don't think about that right now. Your life would be complete if you could only meet Atom Egoyan, Wong Kar-Wai or Jim Jarmusch? I don't doubt it for a minute, but that won't help you enjoy Pirates of the Caribbean any more. It may even get in your way. Instead, remember back to when you wanted to be Grace O'Malley the Pirate Queen, or Robin Hood, or Zorro, or hell, even Xena. Relax. Forget how smart and analytical you are (I'll remember, honest), and just wallow for a while in big, silly, romantic gestures. Remember wanting nothing so much as a treasure map, with monsters slithering around the edges and a big black X marking the spot under Skull Rock. Ready? Okay then. Onward!
A couple of previews first- I finally got to see a preview for Hidalgo, and it looks much better than I had expected (not that my expectations had been low, exactly, but still, it was reassuring). Lots of fierce Arab men on gorgeous horses, lots of sweeping desert shots, lots of Viggo looking intense or somewhat goofy, lots of snazzy action scenes, very handsome title horse... overall, it looks like a good bet. Won't open until fall though. Also looking better than expected is The Last Samurai. It was a very early, dialogue-free teaser (the film doesn't open until December), but it had some gorgeous battle shots and a good bit of that "Ooh! Pretty! Epic! Old Japan!" feel that one would hope for. Pity about it starring Tom Cruise though. When did he decide he wanted to be Richard Chamberlain?
On to the pirates. Well, the Orli Factor was hard at work in the audience, which had an average age of about fourteen and was overwhelmingly female. I felt downright old.
Nicely creepy prologue gets things moving before we jump ahead to Port Royal, Jamaica. Of course. Was there ever a pirate movie that avoided Port Royal? Here we spend some time with the colonial governor (Jonathan Pryce, looking rather stouter than usual) and his daughter, our heroine, Elizabeth Swann (Kiera Knightley). She looks like the standard pampered princess and I was prepared to tune her out, but that was a mistake. Don't discount the girl for all that her role is too often a thankless one in these movies. She's much better than the average. We also meet the stalwart, snobbish military fellow Daddy would like Elizabeth to marry, and Will Turner, the blacksmith's apprentice, the fellow whom Elizabeth favors. That's Orli, natch. He has to be the skinniest little blacksmith in the history of fiction, but he looks very pretty in the period clothes. There are some funny bits, some touching bits, blah blah blah... then Jack Sparrow appears. S'cuse me, Captain Jack Sparrow.
Johnny Depp is the reason to see this movie, as far as I'm concerned. His performance is so funny, so clever and so... just... weird, that it kidnaps the entire movie and holds it in its thrall. I loved it, but I can imagine that if his performance doesn't work for you, watching this movie will be endless and possibly painful. He has the oddest body language, including a walk that's part roll, part flounce, and part caper, and hands that sort of drift around on their own from time to time. He does tend to mumble a bit or strangely emphasize certain words or syllables, so I did lose a few lines (nothing a rewatch won't fix). And his costume... well, you've seen it in pictures. It's even more so in motion, trust me. Overall it's a fascinating and very funny performance, and Johnny's obviously having a blast. His tangible enthusiasm pulled me right along with him.
You know, it's almost a pity that Johnny Depp was born in the modern film era, because he would have been a great silent movie actor. It's just fascinating to watch him move in this film.
So Jack gets a great entrance (funny, strange and physically deft), which shortly leads to some derring-do and swinging around... well, not from the riggings, because he's still on land, but that same general idea. Jack's first action scene is a throwback to Fairbanks in The Black Pirate or maybe Lancaster in The Crimson Pirate (or Flynn as Robin Hood, if you want to stay on land), and it really works. They can do amazing things with computers nowadays, but I'll always be a sucker for some poor stuntman actually flying through the air. Nicely done, guys.
Plots, action, stuff happens- Jack and Will meet and there's a bit of swordplay, and here's my big (eternal) complaint. The fighting is good, not Golden Age quality or even as nice as the swordplay in The Mask of Zorro, but good. But it's filmed and edited so messily that you can't really see that. God forbid we should just give the characters some swords and let them battle it out- noooo, we have to have cuts and jumps and spinning cameras. Drives me up the wall. I can't enjoy a good swordfight (or even an indifferent one) if it's edited like a Baz Luhrmann musical number. Knock it off, Hollywood.
Will/Orlando is very pretty, very brave, very noble, very dumb (okay, not very. But kinda dumb), but not as fun to watch as Elizabeth or Jack. Elizabeth is like the even more hoydenish niece of Olivia de Havilland's Arabella from Captain Blood- if she needs to, she can be the proper genteel lady, but she really blossoms under adversity, like when she single-handedly faces down a shipful of accursed pirates with only her wits and a trinket (a plot point trinket, but still). She's tossed from peril to peril with barely time to breathe, and she spends a good part of the film in one layer of her underthings or another, but she's smart and brave enough to come through it all intact, and even stronger for it. I liked this girl. She got scared but she never simpered, and that's what I want from my swashbuckling heroines. Olivia's legacy wasn't besmirched. Brava, Kiera!
The cursed pirates' first arrival at Port Royal reminded me of a combination of Captain Blood and that old Garfield Halloween special. Remember the one where he and Odie were trapped on an island with a creepy old dude who'd once been a pirate ship's cabin boy, and the treasure was buried there and the ghost pirates came back to get it, and then they chased Garfield and Odie for a while, and it was actually a little creepy if you were a kid? I loved that episode. Still have it on tape, somewhere.
Where was I?
Geoffrey Rush. Captain Barbossa. The man was born to be a pirate. He has a nice rollicking gait, a cruel sneer, a dubious twinkle in his eye, a heart as black as the deepest depths, and all of the other necessary elements for a good (well, evil) pirate captain. He and Johnny have a duel at the end of the film where they dance around, bounding over piles of treasure and ducking in and out of moonbeams, that is so much better than anything I expected from this movie. Rush might attract Oscars for "uplifting"-type films, but in this film he's pure swashbuckling villainy, a Basil Rathbone long gone to seed. He and Johnny grab this film by the neck and haul it over the slow parts (and there are a few of those, although generally it sweeps along quickly enough that you don't notice how long it is). And speaking of that last duel- there’s a great moment during it where Johnny does a trick with a coin, and the sound guys really make it work. It was just... neat!
Um, what else. There's an... interesting glimpse of the pirate island of Tortuga (of course they go to Tortuga. See earlier comment about Port Royal). The score is a good one, big, sweeping and not at all subtle (no reason why it should be). It has a few elements that are reminiscent of Hans Zimmer (unsurprising, since composer Klaus Badelt is his protege) and a few others that reminded me of Howard Shore's work for LotR. It's not anything truly new or unique, but it's wholly satisfying.
In fact, that fits the movie as a whole. It never met a pirate cliche it couldn't steal, it never goes for one sidelong reference to past greats of the genre when it could go for three, and its cast devours entire fleets of scenery. But the result is an affectionate, rollicking, wholehearted romp of a throwback of a film, the likes of which hasn't been done since... well, since the last cape-swirling, sword-flashing, eye-twinkling, swashbuckling resurrection, The Mask of Zorro. All the desirable bits are there. The handsome, brave hero. The beautiful, spirited heroine. The hissable pirate captain. The noble, stiff English military and the dastardly pirate crew. Ships, lovely ships, sweeping over the water and pummeling each other with broadsides and boarding parties. Feats of derring-do, bitter duels, rum and wenches, deadly peril and a bawdy sense of humor.
And Jack Sparrow. Captain Jack Sparrow. There's never a dull moment when Jack's around. He's the weirdest, funniest, most interesting pirate I've seen in... too long. Much too long.
Okay, turn off the part of your brain that wrote papers on Fassbinder, Kurosawa and Angelopoulos back in Film Studies. You love the oeuvre of Jean-Luc Godard? That's wonderful. Don't think about that right now. Your life would be complete if you could only meet Atom Egoyan, Wong Kar-Wai or Jim Jarmusch? I don't doubt it for a minute, but that won't help you enjoy Pirates of the Caribbean any more. It may even get in your way. Instead, remember back to when you wanted to be Grace O'Malley the Pirate Queen, or Robin Hood, or Zorro, or hell, even Xena. Relax. Forget how smart and analytical you are (I'll remember, honest), and just wallow for a while in big, silly, romantic gestures. Remember wanting nothing so much as a treasure map, with monsters slithering around the edges and a big black X marking the spot under Skull Rock. Ready? Okay then. Onward!
A couple of previews first- I finally got to see a preview for Hidalgo, and it looks much better than I had expected (not that my expectations had been low, exactly, but still, it was reassuring). Lots of fierce Arab men on gorgeous horses, lots of sweeping desert shots, lots of Viggo looking intense or somewhat goofy, lots of snazzy action scenes, very handsome title horse... overall, it looks like a good bet. Won't open until fall though. Also looking better than expected is The Last Samurai. It was a very early, dialogue-free teaser (the film doesn't open until December), but it had some gorgeous battle shots and a good bit of that "Ooh! Pretty! Epic! Old Japan!" feel that one would hope for. Pity about it starring Tom Cruise though. When did he decide he wanted to be Richard Chamberlain?
On to the pirates. Well, the Orli Factor was hard at work in the audience, which had an average age of about fourteen and was overwhelmingly female. I felt downright old.
Nicely creepy prologue gets things moving before we jump ahead to Port Royal, Jamaica. Of course. Was there ever a pirate movie that avoided Port Royal? Here we spend some time with the colonial governor (Jonathan Pryce, looking rather stouter than usual) and his daughter, our heroine, Elizabeth Swann (Kiera Knightley). She looks like the standard pampered princess and I was prepared to tune her out, but that was a mistake. Don't discount the girl for all that her role is too often a thankless one in these movies. She's much better than the average. We also meet the stalwart, snobbish military fellow Daddy would like Elizabeth to marry, and Will Turner, the blacksmith's apprentice, the fellow whom Elizabeth favors. That's Orli, natch. He has to be the skinniest little blacksmith in the history of fiction, but he looks very pretty in the period clothes. There are some funny bits, some touching bits, blah blah blah... then Jack Sparrow appears. S'cuse me, Captain Jack Sparrow.
Johnny Depp is the reason to see this movie, as far as I'm concerned. His performance is so funny, so clever and so... just... weird, that it kidnaps the entire movie and holds it in its thrall. I loved it, but I can imagine that if his performance doesn't work for you, watching this movie will be endless and possibly painful. He has the oddest body language, including a walk that's part roll, part flounce, and part caper, and hands that sort of drift around on their own from time to time. He does tend to mumble a bit or strangely emphasize certain words or syllables, so I did lose a few lines (nothing a rewatch won't fix). And his costume... well, you've seen it in pictures. It's even more so in motion, trust me. Overall it's a fascinating and very funny performance, and Johnny's obviously having a blast. His tangible enthusiasm pulled me right along with him.
You know, it's almost a pity that Johnny Depp was born in the modern film era, because he would have been a great silent movie actor. It's just fascinating to watch him move in this film.
So Jack gets a great entrance (funny, strange and physically deft), which shortly leads to some derring-do and swinging around... well, not from the riggings, because he's still on land, but that same general idea. Jack's first action scene is a throwback to Fairbanks in The Black Pirate or maybe Lancaster in The Crimson Pirate (or Flynn as Robin Hood, if you want to stay on land), and it really works. They can do amazing things with computers nowadays, but I'll always be a sucker for some poor stuntman actually flying through the air. Nicely done, guys.
Plots, action, stuff happens- Jack and Will meet and there's a bit of swordplay, and here's my big (eternal) complaint. The fighting is good, not Golden Age quality or even as nice as the swordplay in The Mask of Zorro, but good. But it's filmed and edited so messily that you can't really see that. God forbid we should just give the characters some swords and let them battle it out- noooo, we have to have cuts and jumps and spinning cameras. Drives me up the wall. I can't enjoy a good swordfight (or even an indifferent one) if it's edited like a Baz Luhrmann musical number. Knock it off, Hollywood.
Will/Orlando is very pretty, very brave, very noble, very dumb (okay, not very. But kinda dumb), but not as fun to watch as Elizabeth or Jack. Elizabeth is like the even more hoydenish niece of Olivia de Havilland's Arabella from Captain Blood- if she needs to, she can be the proper genteel lady, but she really blossoms under adversity, like when she single-handedly faces down a shipful of accursed pirates with only her wits and a trinket (a plot point trinket, but still). She's tossed from peril to peril with barely time to breathe, and she spends a good part of the film in one layer of her underthings or another, but she's smart and brave enough to come through it all intact, and even stronger for it. I liked this girl. She got scared but she never simpered, and that's what I want from my swashbuckling heroines. Olivia's legacy wasn't besmirched. Brava, Kiera!
The cursed pirates' first arrival at Port Royal reminded me of a combination of Captain Blood and that old Garfield Halloween special. Remember the one where he and Odie were trapped on an island with a creepy old dude who'd once been a pirate ship's cabin boy, and the treasure was buried there and the ghost pirates came back to get it, and then they chased Garfield and Odie for a while, and it was actually a little creepy if you were a kid? I loved that episode. Still have it on tape, somewhere.
Where was I?
Geoffrey Rush. Captain Barbossa. The man was born to be a pirate. He has a nice rollicking gait, a cruel sneer, a dubious twinkle in his eye, a heart as black as the deepest depths, and all of the other necessary elements for a good (well, evil) pirate captain. He and Johnny have a duel at the end of the film where they dance around, bounding over piles of treasure and ducking in and out of moonbeams, that is so much better than anything I expected from this movie. Rush might attract Oscars for "uplifting"-type films, but in this film he's pure swashbuckling villainy, a Basil Rathbone long gone to seed. He and Johnny grab this film by the neck and haul it over the slow parts (and there are a few of those, although generally it sweeps along quickly enough that you don't notice how long it is). And speaking of that last duel- there’s a great moment during it where Johnny does a trick with a coin, and the sound guys really make it work. It was just... neat!
Um, what else. There's an... interesting glimpse of the pirate island of Tortuga (of course they go to Tortuga. See earlier comment about Port Royal). The score is a good one, big, sweeping and not at all subtle (no reason why it should be). It has a few elements that are reminiscent of Hans Zimmer (unsurprising, since composer Klaus Badelt is his protege) and a few others that reminded me of Howard Shore's work for LotR. It's not anything truly new or unique, but it's wholly satisfying.
In fact, that fits the movie as a whole. It never met a pirate cliche it couldn't steal, it never goes for one sidelong reference to past greats of the genre when it could go for three, and its cast devours entire fleets of scenery. But the result is an affectionate, rollicking, wholehearted romp of a throwback of a film, the likes of which hasn't been done since... well, since the last cape-swirling, sword-flashing, eye-twinkling, swashbuckling resurrection, The Mask of Zorro. All the desirable bits are there. The handsome, brave hero. The beautiful, spirited heroine. The hissable pirate captain. The noble, stiff English military and the dastardly pirate crew. Ships, lovely ships, sweeping over the water and pummeling each other with broadsides and boarding parties. Feats of derring-do, bitter duels, rum and wenches, deadly peril and a bawdy sense of humor.
And Jack Sparrow. Captain Jack Sparrow. There's never a dull moment when Jack's around. He's the weirdest, funniest, most interesting pirate I've seen in... too long. Much too long.
no subject
Heh, indeed. And Zimmer isn't really at the top of the heap of movie composers. (Incidentally, does one of the bits from Mask of Zorro get used as placeholder music in every other period action flick trailer now? I swear I noticed it in the Sleepy Hollow trailer, and in PotC. Of course, you might not have noticed, or I may be delusional....)
no subject
Nope, you're not delusional. Mask of Zorro seems to be the new Orff of period flick trailers (though I've heard Gladiator and the lighter bits of Fellowship of the Ring a couple of times recently, too). I keep hearing Little Women too, in trailers for family-type films. I'd think TPTB would get tired of using the same music time after time, but I then guess they're hoping for happy associations with films past (among all five people who even notice the trailer-music, that is).