By Matt Zoller Seitz
I was heartened to learn that About.com movie critic Jurgen Fauth put "Revenge of the Sith" on his Top 10 list, in the number one spot, no less. He even encouraged people to revisit his original review -- the most thoughtful, non-condescending piece of writing done on this movie by any critic anywhere. What stones. In the increasingly hermetic world of American film criticism, there are certain things we all know for sure, and one of them is that saying George Lucas' movies have heft is a surefire way to get your Cool Film Critic credentials revoked. Fauth had better go down into a bunker and not come out until at least March. (The movie made my own Top 20; it probably would have made the Top 10 if Lucas had given Padme something to do, and if I'd been able to defend the dialogue some other way besides saying, "If it was in Japanese with English subtitles, you wouldn't be making fun of it.")
It is not socially acceptable, and certainly not cool, to defend the "Star Wars" films as anything but childhood obsessions or guilty pleasures. I found this out the hard way last year when I gave "Sith" an enthusiastic review, with some pretty severe caveats (I called it a "savant's masterpiece"), then spent the next three months vainly trying to convince people that I wasn't a fanboy reviewing my own 1970s childhood rather than the movie. I believed then that there was tangible artistic merit in Lucas' final "Star Wars" picture, and repeat viewings of on DVD have convinced me not only that I was right, but that perhaps even I, in my childhood-of-wide-lapels, benefit-of-the-doubt excitement, had failed to give Lucas proper credit as a mythmaker. (In my New York Press review, I wrote, "The mix of A+ technique and C- dramaturgy is nearly unique in American cinema; Lucas is the directorial equivalent of a prophesied sci-fi man-child who can levitate whole cities but can't master a knife and fork.")
I was wrong. Channeling Kurosawa by way of Genndy Tartakovsky, Lucas' dynamic, clean compositions are as sturdy as woodcuts and as resonant as Tarot cards. I now think anyone who reflexively dismisses that possibility that "Sith" is worth discussing AS A MOVIE is, in fact, a cinematic reactionary, a person who has unwittingly rejected the notion that a film's true worth resides in composition, camera movement and editing, rather than middlebrow notions of what's serious. (Critics are sheep; by and large, they like what they are told they should like.) As pop art, is "Sith" inherently less worthy of being taken seriously than ,"Howl's Moving Castle," "Steamboy" or "Corpse Bride?" Let's hope not. If melodramatic cliches, fairy tale tropes, broad physicality and elementary-school-comprehensible language render a film worthless, then those films, plus "War of the Worlds," "The Incredibles" and "Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit," are all blank-outta-luck.
No matter. I went back to see "Sith" twice in the theater with my eight year old daughter, who was thrilled and disturbed by it, and grasped the central conundrum of Anakin's fall much more clearly than the majority of critics who piled onto the Lucas-is-evil-and-stupid bandwagon -- namely, in the name of supposedly good goals (saving his wife from death, advancing his career as a guardian of the Republic and claiming the power and respect to which he believed himself entitled) Anakin allowed himself to be degraded and manipulated into becoming an evil, hated person. And then there was no turning back; the whole slippery slope thing.
Both "Attack of the Clones" and "Revenge of the Sith" are filled with rhyming situations and compositions that chart Anakin's slide into evil with mathematical precision and operatic flair. For instance, the scene in "Clones" where Anakin goes to rescue his enslaved mother from the sandpeople, watches her die in his arms, then massacres an entire encampment, including women and children. This chilling setpiece -- which starts with Anakin zooming across Tatooine on his hover-bike, looking like Ethan Edwards gone Hell's Angel, and ends with a shock cut image of Anakin laying into innocent bystanders, his lightsaber literally wiping his own face off the screen and getting us into the next scene -- isn't just one of most elegantly composed and edited action sequences in the series, it presages a pivotal moment in "Sith," where Anakin, who's helped kill his jedi brother Mace Windu and can't turn back from the dark side, marches into the jedi temple and kills a roomful of child trainees. Those who'd seen both "Clones" and "Sith" yet thought it unbelievable that Anakin would kill jedi children so soon after falling under the Chancellor's control mistook their own inattention for sloppiness on Lucas' part. They literally weren't looking at the images Lucas put onscreen and thinking about what they meant (or perhaps they thought Lucas incapable of producing an image that meant anything). Anakin had already killed children once before, an atrocity mentioned by the Chancellor during the opening setpiece of "Sith," and accompanied by a figurative sound cue: the anguished whine of a sandperson. No, it's not subtle. This is broad-stroke filmmaking, cinema as cave painting. But if David Lynch and Zhang Yimou can do it (and they have, many times) and be taken seriously, then Lucas is entitled to the same courtesy.
The exact trajectory of Anakin's fall was not the arc fans expected, and I know a few who really hated it. I think they hated the fact that Anakin, for all his murderous prowess, was essentially passive and weak, that he'd slipped into evil rather than rushed into it headlong, that he had become evil while pursuing good. But I think this makes the film, indeed the entire series, more interesting rather than less, more complex rather than less; the dynamics behind Anakin's fall from grace aren't muddled, they're just complicated, and if the story were set in, say ancient China or the Old West, and if it didn't have characters with snicker-snicker names like Dooku, that fact would be more widely recognized. "Sith" is "Macbeth" for elementary schoolers, a primally simple narrative comprised of tropes so exact and conscious that they might as well be pictograms. But while it's simple, it's not simplistic. Lucas' mitochondrial approach to characterization still admits more complexity than most supposedly "adult" Hollywood movies. In "Sith," Anakin does evil things for what he thinks are good reasons; his fate, and the Chancellor's certainty of his own rightness, remind us that no villain thinks he's a villain. That's a lesson, people, one that's aimed not at hip adults who are sure they know everything, but at children. Repeat: children.
Speaking of which: Lucas haters seem unaware of the fact that "Star Wars" was never supposed to compete with Antonioni or even Bob Rafelson. it always intended to appeal mainly to kids and people who are willing to re-enter a childlike mindset. The biography "Skywalking" has Lucas saying early on that he conceived the story to fill a niche, the live action, tech-heavy-but-family-friendly live action fantasy, typified by Walt Disney's production of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." He hoped "Star Wars" would satisfy those criteria while also teaching moral lessons to kids regardless of language and culture.
Lucas achieved that goal and more. I find it telling that the global response to the "Star Wars" series -- among adults as well as children -- has been much more embracing, and a hell of a lot less condescending ("guilty pleasures" and all that) than it's been in America. Artists are often despised in their home country. Lucas didn't just fill a niche, he invented one. "Revenge of the Sith" is not a guilty pleasure, just a pleasure.
Thursday, January 05, 2006
Fellowship of the Sith
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21 comments:
Wonderful post, Matt; really enlightening stuff. Welcome to the blogosphere...
"Sith" really makes the series look better as a whole... the first two prequels and particularly "Return of the Jedi" seem like much better movies with this puzzle-piece in place.
Wonderful. I made a similar point, in a much clumsier way, in a piece on the film recently, about how Anakin's turn to the dark side is much more powerful for being so gradual. Glad to have found the blog--I moved to Bergen Country a few years back from Morris and have been lamenting the inability to subscribe to the Ledger and read yours and your colleague's TV Stuff. All hail the Internet!
Jurgen here--thanks for the shoutout, Matt. I'm still flush with the praise, which was a nice reprieve from the hate mail I received over this. At the meeting of my film critics group, there was heavy snickering when I kept voting "Sith" for Best Film, Best Director, Best Cinematography and Best Screenplay (!). (I figured since your colleague Armond White was absent this year, somebody had to take up the mantle of contrarian.)
Still, I don't feel like I ever quite got down why "Sith" struck me as so extraordinary, and your entry here goes a long way toward rectifying that. Very well said. I've added you to my feeds & look forward to coming back.
Thanks, guys. The title of this post summarizes my feelings on this issue. I know there are a lot of smart people out there, some of them critics, who thought there was real technical and aesthetic merit in it, even if they didn't love every single aspect of it, but they've been bullied into stifling their enthusiasm by the aforementioned, truly middlebrow, reactionary groupthink. Remember, there was a time when a certain influential bunch of French film critics were ridiculed for saying that particular American genre films (gangster pictures, westerns, horror movies) could be analyzed as pop art even though they weren't outwardly respectable. History eventually vindicated them, and it will vindicate us, too.
Thank you. I happen to be the furthest thing from a fanboy, having never much liked the original three before, but I can't deny the beauty of these last three, even when the narrative and dialogue slacked. For me, they are as much computer animations as Pixar's films (though of lesser quality), with a few human actors thrown in. Seen at a theater equipped with digital projectors, the sharp colors, dense cityscapes, and Fordian vistas give them at least eye candy status. After watching them, why give credit to the drab literalism of Batman Begins?
Joel
"Cave paintings" is right on. Lucas isn't a deep artist, but he's an artist.
Tosy and cosh: the wonders of the Internet include the Star-Ledger on the web. The TV page is www.njo.com/tv/ledger. There's also a link on the main page of The House Next Door. Not that you necessarily need my thoughts on "Emily's Reasons Why Not," but occasionally my colleague Alan Sepinwall and I do get something worth sinking one's teeth into. Definitely check in Monday, when Alan runs his review of the PBS documentary "Country Boys," which I think is one of the finest pieces of criticism he's written.
Two more nominations for the fellowship: Steve Silberman, who interviewed Lucas for Wired, and Aidan Wasley, who wrote the Slate piece about Star Wars as "greatest postmodern art film ever."
Maybe we should all get together some time and record a new commentary track or something. I haven't seen anybody talk about the Mark Rothko influences on Mustafar yet....
Aidan Wasley's piece is terrific, but I have to take issue with two extremely minor points.
One, on Lucas' parable/myth/epic deployment of coincidence in the narrative, he asks what are the odds that R2 and C-3P0 would end up back on Tatooine. Actually, that part was not a conincidence at all. The droids went to Tattooine bearing a message from Bail Organa, specifically asking for the help of Obi-Wan Kenobia, who served Leia's dad in the Clone Wars. There are, however, tons of other examples that illustrate his point.
Second, in the part where Wasley identifies the digital-dominated prequels as being aesthetically/temperamentally aligned with the Dark Side (i.e., with design, order and control) he cites the shaky-cam shot from ATTACK OF THE CLONES as Lucas' acknowledgment that the prequels are missing an element of random artistic accident, and the best he could do was simulate that visually, with a "shaky handheld combat camera" effect. That might, in fact, be why Lucas made that particular creative choice for that one shot.
However, there is a very similar shot in the analog EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, in the Hoth battle sequence. The shot starts on a medium wide shot of a giant blaster dish with a rebel operator nearby, then suddenly zooms in, as in Vietnam era 16mm combat footage, for a tighter shot just as the dish fires.
Agreed on both points--I was aware of the droids, but hadn't noticed the shaky shot in EMPIRE. There is also a purposefully uncontrolled shot in PHANTOM MENACE, although not during a battle: on the landing platform on Coruscant, when Amidala announces her return to Naboo, Jar-Jar's cheering is cut off at the right edge of the screen, as if by accident. But I believe these moments are attempts at versimilitude, rather than veiled arguments about control. (On the CLONES commentary track, Lucas says as much when he talks about the "handheld" camera on Geonosis.)
I was grateful for Wasley's serious discussion of the series (and especially tickled by the comparison to CREMASTER), but I don't necessarily subscribe to his argument that "the Force" can be equated with "the Plot"; for that, I don't see nearly enough narrative randomness in Star Wars. Han Solo's "I know" might be the only documented moment of improvisation in the whole series. The repetitions and cross-references simply wouldn't be possible if control was considered "evil" and had to be balanced by randomness. You speak of "a primally simple narrative comprised of tropes so exact and conscious that they might as well be pictograms," and that's dead-on. The "rhyming situations and compositions" wouldn't work nearly as well if Lucas the storyteller really had turned off the targeting computer.
Incidentally, the tightly controlled structure is how I justified my vote for best screenplay (rather than the actual, on-the-nose dialogue: "Hold me like you did by the lake on Naboo.") Supposedly, Tom Stoppard worked on the SITH script.
If I wanted to use the term "postmodern" in this discussion, I'd apply it to the way the prequels undermine the characters and concepts of the original trilogy: here are three films that redefine the way we used to watch another three films. Suddenly the cold-hearted villain is revealed not only as a tragic figure but also as the true hero of the story. Darth Vader has been transformed from incarnation of evil to a miserable fuck-up worthy of our pity. Similarly, Yoda doesn't appear nearly as wise and all-knowing now--his sermons on Dagobah are now the hard-won insights of a little green man who used to have tremendous power but lost it all because of his short-sightedness and inability to adapt. This subversion of the previously dominant narrative is textbook po-mo, but the flip also contains a worthwhile lesson about the nature of evil.
I don't know of another series of films that pull off two similar interlocking story arcs (most franchises consist of remakes of the same movie.) It takes tremendous control, and I think that's one of the reasons why dialogue in Star Wars doesn't deal in subtlety. Everything has to be told directly so the plot doesn't get lost in ambiguities. Lucas has referred to Star Wars as essentially silent films; they are designed to be comprehensible without any dialogue at all. Cave painting indeed, but when you cave-paint an epic story this well, complexities and ambiguities arise in different ways--between the films, between the echoes and repetitions, and between the images, which we haven't really talked about yet at all.
MZS,
Cool, you have a blog.
I'll only say that however good Revenge of the Sith is, Lucas ruined it (the mystic of the Star Wars universe) by not delivering the same quality in the prior two movies.
PHANTOM MENACE pretty much sucked any way you slice it, though I have a certain affection for it anyway, due to its incredible visual density and the fact that it's STAR WARS. But if you watch ATTACK OF THE CLONES and REVENGE OF THE SITH back to back, they're a pretty amazing five-hour movie, all primal narrative and rhyming/reflecting scenes. Check out the Slate piece referenced by Muckster, above -- Lucas as narrative Lego master!
Since I don't have any Cool Critic Credentials left, I might as well go ahead and say this: PHANTOM MENACE isn't half as bad as it's made out to be. If we're going to properly embrace SITH as the final piece in an epic puzzle, we have to give each installment its due. First and foremost, EPISODE I is a fine matinee flick: it's candy-lit and superfun to look at, it's got the best race of the series, solid space battles, and great light saber fights. It introduces Naboo and Coruscant, and it's the episode where Portman gets to wear the most outlandish Queen costumes. At least on the surface, it's the most innocent of the series--and the most childish, which turned some people off (Jar-Jar), but seen in relation to the operatic tragedy of SITH, it's delightfully weightless. Seen by itself, it's a fun kid's space adventure.
I didn't like it at first, either. It's hampered by first-act problems throughout because it opens a six-film series and has tons of exposition to bear (the stopover on Tatooine seems to go on forever.) Jake Lloyd is miscast as young Ani. But if we're going to admire the structural precision of Star Wars, we can't dismiss PHANTOM MENACE. The title is the dark twin of A NEW HOPE, and most of the rhyming is between it and the original 77 film. But there are lots of connections to the other films, too: Anakin destroys the Trade Federation ship by hitting the same fuel cells he directs the gunship's fire to in CLONES. There's a shot of him and Padme on a riding creature (Eopee?) that is repeated in the arena of Geonosis. And of course, Obi-Wan's warning that "It's over, I have the higher ground" in SITH only makes sense if we have seen him kill Darth Maul with the same move Anakin is about to try on him. Etc. Etc.
It's not a perfect movie; in fact, it's the second-weakest film in the series after RETURN OF THE JEDI. But seeing it with the whole saga in place is a different experience than watching it in 1999. The celebration in A NEW HOPE is straight-up triumphant, but in PHANTOM MENACE, it's soured by the suspicion (now knowledge) that the villain won an even more important victory. To me, this dark undercurrent makes it a more interesting movie than Episode IV.
Holy shit. And I thought I was hardcore! I am slammed with deadlines today, but I will definitely cogitate on your post and reply soon.
Jeez, you guys have left me in the dust analytically, although I too am one who would stick up for REVENGE OF THE SITH; I was relieved, really, that Lucas pulled it off, and made me wonder if some of the more annoying casting decisions (specifically Christensen and Portman) weren't of a design of some kind — we've certainly see them do better work elsewhere, and it's not as if Christopher Lee, Ian McDiarmid and Samuel L. Jackson were compelled to perform badly. (Consider that the preposterous Jake Lloyd was chosen over Haley Joel Osment — we can only assume that Lucas knew what he was looking for.)
I don't think I've said this about any movie ever, but my favorite moment in THE PHANTOM MENACE is towards the end of the end credits ... John Williams' Anakin theme heard again, merging into a heartsick premonition of the Darth Vader theme, warning us what this poor kid is going to turn into. (I am not musicologist enough to go into great detail about how incredibly layered Williams' six scores for these movies are, but have read pieces examining in great detail how by the time of EMPIRE, Williams must have been let in on the secrets we'd learn in JEDI, because there are are already elements pointing forward to them.)
At any rate, REVENGE OF THE SITH also had my favorite final shot of any movie this year; yeah, I'm the Star Wars geek generation, although that didn't stop me from disliking JEDI and PHANTOM, but really, the emotional resonance of it was more than I even expected. (I saw this and WAR OF THE WORLDS, which I also quite admired, on the same day; talk about sensory overload. My brother asked me which of them I liked better and I found I had no real answer to that; apples and oranges, pineapples and kumquats, Sleestaks and Kilaaks, you get the drift.)
Sleestaks! I hear banjos in my head.
You know, LAND OF THE LOST could potentially be really TERRIFIC if the right people are put onto it. I just worry that it'll be a hack job that doesn't even recall what was cool about the original.
Being the wife of "Sith"-hater and excellent blogger Dennis Cozzalio, I have been spending the past year defending this movie in much the same way you describe-- as part childhood nostalgia and part self-professed geekiness. So I thank you for defending what I think is a wonderful movie in an intelligent, nonapologetic way. Now I feel like part of an elite group, rather than the ashamed nerd hiding in the shadows I felt like I was for a while there! Thanks again!
Matt,
You have a good point that anybody who couldn't buy Anakin killing the younglings clearly wasn't paying attention to the arc of the character especially after he takes out a colony of Sandpeople. However, I submit that Mr. Lucas wasn’t paying enough attention either.
How can we explain Padme, the only person we ever see Anakin talking to about the killing (a scene worth a blog or two itself) say to Obi-Wan that she didn't believe that he could ever kill younglings? He’s already confessed to having killed women and children to her. What did she think; it was just something he had to get out of his system?
We can't talk about the writing being dense and defend the picture on the basis of the audience not giving it the proper attention when the writer himself seems to fall into the same trap, multiple times. I feel sorry for Padme and the fans that didn't see it coming and just flat out let down by Lucas.
For the record I'm very conflicted about Sith. However the fact that we're all still talking about it I think proves that anyway you cut it, it's a powerful piece of filmmaking and no doubt a work of art. Flawed, but certainly a work of art.
What a fantastic post, even if I have come to the party two years late!
As a long-time Lucas defender it warms the cockles to read intelligent analysis of the prequels.
One thing that hasn't been discussed is how John Williams took The Emperor theme from 'Jedi' and played it note for note in a happy version for the closing ceremony in 'Menace' - sheer genius at play.
Perhaps a follow-up, 2 years on analysis of the saga is due? Here's hoping...
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