Let's start at the ending: Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) follows the evil witch and deadly step-mother (Cate Blanchett), down the throat of a wolf, and only one of them escapes the deserted fairytale land (a hauntingly beautiful abandoned amusement park in Berlin). An army of disenfranchised illegal immigrants fights back against a bloodthirsty and racist politician, a vigilante gang of self-declared border control officers and a Mexican drug lord. An aged programmer (Jeff Bridges) who has been trapped in his own creation for the better part of his son's life sacrifices his own freedom for the sake of the world he tried to improve, which is now endangered by his own creation, and for his son and an unlikely self-created new life form that has taken the shape of a young woman (Olivia Wilde), who only has a vague idea of the world that is awaiting her outside the confines of the virtual world.
On the surface, Hanna, Machete and TRON: Legacy couldn't be more different, but they share some simililarities beyond the subjective observation that they have all not entirely succeeded in whatever they tried to accomplish. All three rely on stereotypical villains (a programme gone rogue and inherently unable to make ethical choices, the aforementioned ruthless with, who seeks the support of a brutal German assassin willing to do things that her agency isn't, and the number of opponents Machete is met with, all of who are motivated by a deadly ideology or an equally violent hunger for power and profits). The clear distinction between good and evil is one of the main features of fairytales - and all of these movies are fairytales to a certain extent. Hanna explicitly weaves the imagery of fairytales into its narrative: the girl growing up outside civilization, with only her father (Eric Bana) selectively telling and teaching her about the world beyond the wilderness, relies on the tales she reads obsessively to make sense of the world, and the patterns she finds once she does collide with that world do resemble the tales.
Machete is about the importance of myths in political struggles for enfranchisement - and the titular character (played by Danny Trejo), along with some of his comrades-in-arms (especially Michelle Rodriguez' "She") function as heroes and martyrs to lead and inspire the masses previously unaware of their own power. At the end of the movie, Machete declines the papers which would make him a citizen because he is part of the struggle for those who don't have the rights that come with citizenship, and knows that a myth is more powerful than one individual (ideas are bulletproof).
TRON: Legacy is probably the weakest example, but there are some elements that do fit. Olivia Wilde's Quorra is a naive and humane (despite not being human) heroine dreaming of becoming real, a dream that ultimately comes true when she sees her first sunrise. Her approach to life and her only theoretical knowledge of the other side ("Do you know Jules Verne? How is he?") resemble Leeloo in The Fifth Element - perfectly adapted to a specific task and a specific environment (she is the native inhabitant of the world the movie spends most of its time in, and navigates it better than any other character in it), but naive in all things that don't relate to what she knows - the same thing could be said of Hanna, who was "programmed" by her father to become the perfect fighter, but not prepared for a world that relies on electricity for most of the tasks she had to painstakingly do by hand (also, television). TRON: Legacy is more of a modern fairytale, the story of the sorcerer's apprentice who couldn't control the spells he cast, the tale of the scientist who created a monster that wouldn't remain in its cage, the fantasy of artificial life becoming sentient and demanding to be heard (even though the execution of this idea is so half-hearted that it barely counts as an interesting thematic point, sadly).
The aspect that makes these movie so unlikely for a comparison is also, in a way, a shared feature: all three have a very distinctive look, a specific aesthetic created for the particular story they tell. In fact, their visual style (and the music) are probably more interesting and captivating than anything else they have to offer. Hanna is beautifully designed, uses stunning images and sceneries (from the Moroccan desert to the eerie Spreepark), and the soundtrack (by the Chemical Brothers) is an example of an extremely effective use of music in film - Hanna works better as a very long music clip with beautiful symbolism than it does as a movie with a conventional (remnants of an old regime hunt down the last artifact of a world that no longer exists) narrative. There are several stories in the film that are only hinted at, that might have been more interesting than what Hanna actually bothers to tell (the question of whether friendships are possible without truth - sadly, the relationship between Hanna and an English girl that kind of adopts her disappears in the second half of the movie), and the two main villains remain stereotypical caricatures instead of truly engaging characters (the evil German is a particularly saddening example, since the movie relies on the idea of "sexual deviation" to illustrate his lack of moral boundaries and exceeding violence - a stupid cliché that should have remained firmly in the early 1990s and movies with Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster). Director Joe Wright also subtly hinted at the fact that he wanted to make a movie about an empowered female that didn't objectify the body of its protagonist - which is a valiant enterprise (and one that succeeds - the costume department of Hanna actually did a really beautiful job), but I found the link between empowerment and sexual self-determination in Sucker Punch, which was probably the aim of Wright's criticism, more interesting on a theoretical level than Hanna's approach, especially because the relationships were barely developed (but then, I seem to be in the vast minority in my defense of Sucker Punch, so take that with a grain of salt).
Rodriguez' Machete visually and thematically references -ploitation cinema (both blax- in regard to its politics, and ex- with its usage of excessive violence and scantily clad female characters), and it is the most explicitly political film of the three, especially since its release coincided with Arizona's new immigration law. Only time will tell whether the movie succeeded - continued relevance is possibly a good way to judge politically activist movies - but there seems to be a disconnect between the message of the movie and its target audience.
Finally, TRON: Legacy arguably had the most difficult job of all: when the original movie came out, William Gibson was still writing about cyberspace on a typewriter. 29 years later, the idea of virtual space has changed radically. TRON: Legacy has found an individual and innovative look for its virtual world, but it completely misses the opportunity to say something even remotely relevant about humanity and how it is changed by computers - there is a half-hearted message about free availability of information at the beginning of the movie, but it is presented as the lost dream of an old man who has built his fortress in the virtual world, a man whose other invention is threatening the fabric of the real world because programmes can not be taught how to behave ethically (T:TSCC might disagree, or at least make a similiar point in a more intelligent fashion). TRON: Legacy is visually stunning, but beyond that, it's an empty box - Quorra and her examination of the real world that she only knows from the tales and books she was told and given might make for a more fascinating and resonant story than the quarrel between barely examined creation (creepy computer generated Jeff Bridges) and remote, vaguely drug-fuelled happie, vaguely yoda-like maker (old Jeff Bridges).
Hanna (2011), directed by Joe Wright, starring Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, Cate Blanchett, Tom Hollander, Olivia Williams, Jessica Barden, Martin Wuttke.
Machete (2010), directed by Robert Rodriguez, starring Danny Trejo, Michelle Rodriguez, Jessica Alba, Robert De Niro, Steven Seagal, Jeff Fahey, Cheech Marin, Don Johnson, Lindsay Lohan.
TRON: Legacy (2010), directed by Joseph Kosinski, starring Garrett Hedlund, Jeff Bridges, Olivia Wilde, Bruce Boxleitner, Michael Sheen, James Frain, Cillian Murphy.
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