Friday, May 22, 1998
Screenscene
FILM
"Godzilla"
Directed by Roland Emmerich
Starring Matthew Broderick, Hank Azaria, and Jean Reno
Well, what good is size if you don’t know what to do with it?
It’s a question the creators of "Godzilla" never once consider, and
so like bumbling oafs, they whip out their big green lizard only to
slap it against various parts of the earth, no doubt making a dirty
mess before the movie falls dead asleep in its own spent
imagination.
For many that will be enough to satisfy – they’ll let themselves
be seduced by the movie’s shamelessly one-track mind – and likewise
there’s a corresponding approach to certain movies these days which
places special effects and set pieces above characters and plots.
It’s a perfectly legitimate approach, especially for the popcorn
season ahead of us, but the problem with "Godzilla" is that Steven
Spielberg has already demystified the spectacle of the dinosaur –
and that’s what Godzilla basically looks like – and the movie’s
adamant redundancy is actually quite annoying. (There’s a bunch of
baby Godzillas running around too, which look exactly like
velociraptors.)
With an erect reptile no longer a reliable source of diversion,
we have nothing else to do but to take a few glimpses at the story:
a nerdy biologist played by Broderick (apparently Jeff Goldblum was
busy) is asked to examine the trail of devastation left by
Godzilla, from French Polynesia to America’s eastern seaboard. When
Godzilla starts caramelizing the Big Apple (though he only wants to
lay his eggs in the city), not only does the military try to stop
the monster, but the French Secret Service (led by Reno) also takes
a crack at it. Because of their nuclear testing in the South
Pacific, those naughty French are responsible for unleashing the
beast.
"Godzilla" doesn’t get much more complicated than this and,
true, neither did the slew of other "Godzilla" features before it.
But at least the Japanese primogenitor of the ’50s had a
personality: throwing temper tantrums, laughing at the humans,
jumping up and down whenever his pudgy ego got the best of him.
Instead, director Emmerich (who, with "Independence Day" as his
other pompom, has proven to be a fascinatingly obsessed cheerleader
for the military) has merely created a sleekly designed scarecrow –
utterly lifeless and dull, bullying its size on the screen as it
goes embarrassingly limp.
Tommy Nguyen
Grade: C-
"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
Directed by Terry Gilliam
Starring Johnny Depp and Benecio Del Toro
"It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times," is what
Hunter Thompson said of the 1970s.
In many ways, this is what most socially conscious Americans
were thinking as the radical, hopeful 1960s turned into the
desperate ’70s, when an entire generation of young people watched
their carefully constructed plans for love and peace crumble around
them in orgy of excess and anarchy. Most people at the time found
solace in the "real world," joining the work force and starting a
family, and leaving their wild youths behind them.
Thompson, however, and some of the more romantic radicals
refused to let the ’60s go. And they let themselves sink into a
period of depression and severe drug abuse. This is the setting for
Thompson’s 1971 novel "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," and the new
film based on the novel and directed by Gilliam.
Depp plays Thompson’s alter ego, sports writer Raoul Duke, sent
to Las Vegas by a sporting magazine to cover the Mint 500
motorcycle race.
However, Duke immediately decides to skip his actual assignment
and, along with his friend and attorney Dr. Gonzo (Del Toro), spend
his weekend in Las Vegas snorting, sniffing, injecting and inhaling
any substance he can find.
That’s pretty much all the film has as far as plot, but the
actual circumstances of the story are of peripheral importance
anyway. The film is really about the depths of depravity which Duke
and Gonzo allow themselves to reach because of their
disillusionment with the nation and its direction.
These are people that marched on Washington, wrote about the
evils of Vietnam and of big business, and thought that all the
experimentation of the 1960s would add up to more than just a group
of teenagers acting immature. When they realized their dream would
never come to fruition, they acted out their frustration and anger
by abusing their bodies with chemicals.
The film is not, however, merely an academic exercise. It is a
lively, spirited and very funny series of misadventures in which
the audience, through the warped perceptions of Duke and Gonzo,
sees a collection of twisted, surreal landscapes filled with people
and creatures unimaginable without the use of hallucinogens. It is
a world in which lounges are actually filled with lizards, and bars
take on the appearance of merry-go-rounds.
Gilliam does an exceptional job with this material, never
allowing the film’s outlandish sets or psychedelic special-effects
overshadow the characters and their attitudes toward these events.
As well, Depp’s performance here as the fiercely intelligent and
yet somehow child-like Duke is one of the actor’s best ever, making
us feel for this character even as he acts boorish, self-centered,
or out-of-control.
It is this tendency toward excess that provides "Fear and
Loathing in Las Vegas" with its major obstacle. Admittedly, it
cannot be easy to make a film about characters who purposefully are
taking their behavior to extremes without the film itself taking on
this sort of excess, and "Fear and Loathing" consistently refuses
to hold back anything at all. As a result, Gilliam’s film is a bit
too long and too jumbled in parts. A little restraint here and
there could only have made Duke’s saga more powerful and
emotional.
These faults aside, the film is truly a memorable experience and
quite an achievement for Gilliam, Depp and Del Toro. Though it
often gets side-tracked into elaborate set pieces and special
effects, at heart the film is a glimpse into a time that has
passed, and the methods in which emotional people deal with the end
of an era.
Lonnie Harris
Grade: A-
"Beyond Silence"
Directed by Caroline Link
Starring Howie Seago, Emmanuelle Laborit, Tatjana Trieb and
Sylvie Testud
If interpersonal communication is difficult for all of us to
master, the task is perhaps impossible for Martin (Seago) and Kai
(Laborit), the deaf parents at the center of "Beyond Silence." But
though this German-language (and sign language) film is about deaf
people, it looks at its leading couple through the eyes of their
hearing relatives.
Particularly through the eyes of their hearing daughter Lara.
Though only eight-years-old at the outset, she is already old
enough to harbor mixed emotions about her parents’ disability.
Young Lara (Trieb) is sorry for her parents, but she is also
resentful at having to share the burden of their disability,
serving as their translator to the German-speaking world.
Then there’s Martin’s sister Clarissa, who harbors nothing but
resentment for her brother. She helps bring Lara’s resentment to
the forefront by giving Lara a clarinet (nothing corrupts youth
like a clarinet). When the situation frustrates Martin, he has to
try to communicate that to his daughter without alienating her. The
result is a touching father-daughter dialogue, carried out in sign
language. "Beyond Silence" is at its best when this dialogue is
taking place, but it lags in its latter half when an older Lara
(Testud) moves out of the house and away from her parents.
"Beyond Silence’s" score brings beautiful melodies to the
audience’s ears – bittersweetly highlighting the characters’
disabilities. While many movies about the disabled feature
disabilities being overcome, "Beyond Silence" focuses more on the
reality that we’d rather not be deaf. In our society we so often
invoke the ideal of a level playing field, and here we are served a
reminder that perhaps the field cannot always be leveled.
And so we see Martin at the family dinner table, thoroughly
bored as his extended family converses in German. We see Kai
learning to ride a bike, almost being hit by a truck coming at her
from behind. And, most memorably, we watch as Lara blows a trumpet
into the ears of her newborn sister and, when that makes the baby
cry, Lara picks the baby up and declares triumphantly, "She’s not
deaf! She’s not deaf!" It may not be uplifting, but it is worth
seeing.
Mark Dittmer
Grade: B+
"Godzilla" proves that size doesn’t always equal excitement,
with its lackluster plot and lifeless
characterizations.