Things I hate Most about Movies

Unfaithfulness: A few years ago, I went to watch Jackie Chan version of Around the World in Eighty Days. I should have known better than to watch a movie where a Chinese man is cast as immortal Passepatout. But none of the movie adaptations of Jules Verne’s classic novel was faithful to the book—not even Oscar winning and proverbially ludicrous David Niven version in 1956. If the director and screenwriters know the final version will be that different from the book, why did they even bother naming the movie after the book? Just to entice bibliophiles into two hours of movie hell? That is just not cricket.

Redundancy: Hollywood’s and writers’ creative abilities have dramatically fallen short in recent years. Sequels, prequels and remakes maybe magic words to dupe the movie goers into seeing a movie they have already seen, but they just don’t entertain. What is the point in going to a James Bond movie when you can imagine the protagonist defies all odds to save the world from some misanthrope in your mind? What is the point in seeing that green ogre and terrible talking donkey three, four or five times? First time is novelty, third time maybe the charm but twenty-first time is redundant.

Tenacity: It is sheer vanity (not tenacity) on an actor’s part to insist playing on his roles again and again. Twenty years from now, we will probably be seeing a Mission Impossible film, with septuagenarian Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt. That is exactly what they did with Indiana Jones, Rambo, Rocky and The Terminator, not to mention totally stupid Basic Instinct sequel. No matter what the hardcore fans say, combination of age and redundancy of yet-another-movie-we-have-seen-before genre makes the film terrible. It maybe just me, but I can’t imagine my grandfather as a secret agent—at least not with his receding hairline and prodigious belly.

Absurdity: That is of dialogue. The plots of all movies (by the commandments of viewers) are usually bizarre, absurd and laughable but some just go over the top. The plot of Notting Hill depends solely on a super-actress falling in love with a book-salesman. That’s it. What are the chances? It is particularly in “feel good” movies that we see the greatest absurdities. The popular movie Parent Trap (popular in the way that a remake followed later) is based on a twin’s efforts to reunite their parents who divorced “for the reasons they can’t remember.” Not only it is absorb, it is a slap in the face to everyone coming from the broken homes and everyone who took the course of divorce because of irreconcilable differences.

Cheapness: You know what is hilarious? Chaplin mocking Hitler in The Great Dictator. You know what isn’t? Powdering two black guys into facial whiteness and transforming them into girls (White Chicks). It is also racist and sexist. I am not talking here about a comedy of Shakespearean proportions. (I just hope Hollywood doesn’t try such comedy anymore either. Their last attempt, She’s the Man, totally ruined my reading of The Twelfth Night.) I am voicing my concern at movies that beguilingly has the title “Movie” at its end: Scary Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, Superhero Movie, etc. (and god forbid, their sequels). In old days, we would have been calling these cheap movies “vaudeville”, but it may not do justice even to the great vaudevilles.

Special Effects: Just compare the first trilogy of Stars Wars and the prequel trilogy. Spectacularly ‘awesome’ aspects of space battles distract the attention from the plot. Actors were acting in the green and blue rooms, talking to pillows or markers that can either be Jar Jar Binks or my middle-age aunt in Timbuktu. Their faces are digitally modified to resemble more ‘human’. But when a CG-Tom Hanks (The Polar Express) or CG-Angelina Jolie (Beowulf) is more human than the real counterparts, it is time for Hollywood to reconsider its priorities.

One and all, bag and baggage

“Let the Turks now carry away their abuses, in the only possible manner, namely, by carrying off themselves. Their Zaptiehs and their Mudirs, their Blmhashis and Yuzbashis, their Kaimakams and their Pashas, one and all, bag and baggage, shall, I hope, clear out from the province that they have desolated and profaned. This thorough riddance, this most blessed deliverance, is the only reparation we can make to those heaps and heaps of dead, the violated purity alike of matron and of maiden and of child; to the civilization which has been affronted and shamed; to the laws of God, or, if you like, of Allah; to the moral sense of mankind at large.”

The words that still reverberate was first penned by the British Primeminister William E. Gladstone, in his pamphlet, “Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East” (1876). The issue and rhetoric can still easily be substituted for the current Georgian crisis. Russians, one and all, bag and baggage, shall clear out from the province that they have desolated and profaned.

See: http://www.sos-georgia.net/ for the in-depth look at the conflict and sign a petition at http://new.petitiononline.com/557799/petition.html

Do films need a pyramid?

The straight-forward answer is no, they don’t. However, the critics and any member of the audience who wants to be savvy in the language of film need one to accurately judge the film and examine their values. I may have committed few faux pas in compiling the following pyramidal scheme (9th level being the most populated to the rare treats of the 1st level). One, I follow Hollywood movies primarily, and two, I have my own prejudices. What follows is just a handy guide, not a set of rigid rules.

9. The Cheap: This reviewer simply refuse to examine the 9th level, which probably includes 70% of movies being produced by Hollywood. Cheap thrills, sensational horrors and lackadaisical acting are just three most polite things I can think of when I went to see movies like Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Final Destination.

8. The Exorbitant: On the eighth level, we find the movies with the largest audience, which just don’t mean that they don’t have cheap thrills and terrible plots. In 2007, one magic word topped box office top-ten lists the entire year: threequal: Spider-Man, Shrek, The Bourne Ultimatum, Rush Hour, and Ocean’s Thirteen just to name a handful. And then there are movies based on toys (Transformers), amusement park rides (Pirates of the Caribbean), resurrection of old sagas (Rocky, Die Hard, Indiana Jones), and exploitation of every superhero envisioned on comics (Daredevil, Fantastic Four). They cater to the largest audience, young and old, but lack cinematic value (or any value what so ever).

7. The Simple: Some call the films in this level ‘guilty pleasures’ or ‘feel goods’. I call them ‘unrealistic’. Every teen movie put on screen, every Disney movie (animated or otherwise) falls into this category. They do cater to a smaller audience that level eight’s blockbusters and have some values but it is as if those values are seen through the eyes of a simplistic five year old. The struggle between good and evil and love conquers may fittingly belong to a toddler’s bedtime story cache, but on screen, they are just too simple.

6. The Limited: The Cult movies rarely achieve audience outside a small group of fans, but they do make a lot of noise, and even sometimes appear on the best movie lists. Such examples include Brazil, A Clockwork Orange, and Pulp Fiction. In the middle, we have movies like The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Big Lebowski, and at the opposite end, we have so-bad-that-it-is-worth-laughing-at movies like Night of the Living Dead and Showgirls. It is by far the most exhaustive category. Blockbusters (Blade Runner), simple movies (ET), animations (Fantasia) and classics (2001: A Space Odyssey) all can belong in this category and also in somewhere else.

5: The Borderline: The action is pleasurable to watch. The acting is to the point. The plot is perfect. The only thing that is wrong with the pictures that fall into this category is their overall lack of cohesion and themes. Movies that are adapted from novels usually fall into this category because the adapted screenplay truncates the small nuances that make the book great. Recently Atonement is a good example, but the great examples include early James Bond movies (latter ones are simply terrible) and critically acclaimed The Prestige. They are worthy of second or third viewings, but aren’t timeless.

4. The Pure: We are finally in the good territory. Small, yet complex and pure is how I will define the movies in this level. By my criteria, movies like Lost in Translation, Annie Hall and It’s a Wonderful Life are good not good matches for the movies we will see in further levels. Every Woody Allen movie and similar art and indie movies fall into this category.

3. The Novel: The word ‘novel’ is this category’s sense is ‘new, unexplored’ but its other definition as a work of fiction doesn’t seem far off either. The movies like Sleuth and Rebecca explore the hard-to-discern triangle between identity, integrity and love, but they are also based on stellar original scripts. These movies can stand in their own right as great movies but Hollywood just has to ruin them through terrible remakes and sequels. In Sleuth’s case, the remake ruined not only the original but also the play itself. (Incidentally, it is the second time Jude Law ruined a great Michael Caine movie; the first time was with Alfie.) Indeed, the first Star Wars trilogy and the first installments of Jurassic Park, Pirates of the Caribbean, Ocean’s Eleven (with Frank Sinatra), The Pink Panther (David Niven-Peter Sellers version) are great, their follow-ups not so.

2. and 1. The Great and The Exquisite: When it reaches to the pinnacle, the rankings matter a little. Other factors (a popularity contest) come into play. In apples to apples comparison, The Birds will be in the second level while The Rear Window will be in the first, because the latter relies on psychological provocation, while the former makes use of sensational and more physical elements. What makes a film more than great is its language. A film which is physically oriented tends to create an artificial approach towards the audience. A film that speaks directly to the audience’s mind plants a powerful idea which is spontaneous. That is what films like Citizen Kane, Casablanca and There will be Blood achieved and that is why they are not only great but also exquisite.

P.S. Some movies are exceptions and can’t be put into a specific category. For example, I am at loss with that terrible boat movie of James Cameron on whether to assign it to The Exorbitant, The Simple or The Limited. One thing I know for sure, it isn’t novel, great or exquisite. Oscar count sometimes belies too. Titanic and Lord of the Rings’ final movie both got eleven golden statuettes but they are not Ben Hur quality. A notable omissions is with the Biopics.

The Tragedy of African Commons

The age of the empires was long gone. Not much of their legacy remains, most of them being obliterated by despots and dictators who once again consolidated power into absolute rule and who oversaw the return of corruption and civil wars. Today, many colonized countries remain in the Third World list; it is not the fault of the colonial powers. When they gained their independence in the 1950s and 60s, most of them were on the right track.

In the 60s and 70s, the continent of Africa falls back into the darkness once again. The tragedy of Africa lies with the continent’s irregular geography. Water and rivers are scant in Africa, because of its uneven terrain which created numerous waterfalls in available waterways. Thus, various advances of the civilization were denied to the people of Africa, not because of some genetic makeup (as quasi-science suggested) but because the continent lacks the effective mode of communication and commerce. Commerce and direct relations with major European powers contributed to the bloom it experienced in the late 19th century. After the bloody struggles for independence, most of these ties were severed.

Newly independent African nations were indeed headed by those educated in the West. Espousing and preaching the values of democracy, they managed to whip their fellow countrymen into independence, but for economy and prosperity they cared not. Unlike India or other dominions, Africa was occupied by the powers for only a brief period, and the infrastructure for the new nations to stand on their own is simply lacking. It was not ready to walk without crutches on its own. In other words, independence was still immature.

Independence, they did get. What happened afterwards was tragic. In Ivory Coast, Houphouët-Boigny pursued lavish architecture projects culminating with a $300 million church. Central African Republic becomes an Empire under demented Bokassa. Julius Nyerere established anti-capitalist Ujamaa program, which transformed Tanzania from Africa’s largest exporter of agricultural products to its largest importer. Kenneth Kaunda established one-party state and a personality cult in Zambia. All of this pale in comparison with Uganda’s Idi Amam or Rhodesia’s Ian Smith and Robert Mugabe. Yet, caught in their own political struggles (post-war rehabilitation, Cold War), the former colonial powers has washed their hands off the troubles in Africa. The USA and the USSR found they have ample allies without having to poke their noses into this neutral African mess.

Colonialism, redefined

The term ‘colonialism’ has seen varying and gerrymandering definitions, no doubt as a result of a widespread smear campaign by those who fear effective governance. The term comes from the word ‘colony’, the enclaves the pioneers establish in the newfound lands for social, political or economical reasons. Before the Christian zeal entered the scene in the period between 1880s and the First World War, those colonies operated for solely economical gains.

Not unlike the mass exodus from the Third World to Europe and America today, the Europeans of the nascent days of colonialism saw their “manifest destiny” in the lands across the seas. Most crew members of early explorers and mercantile fleets don’t even know how to swim. To people like those, we owe success stories like America and Canada.

Through trading posts, these societies and colonies enjoyed good relations with the indigenous population. In Canada, for instance, the French and the Natives coexisted in a harmony that James Fenimore Cooper (and Hollywood) could not even dream of. In India, the early English merchants adapted and even intermarried into the native society. To this day, the global business success in places like Macau, Hongkong, Singapore and Shanghai owe their thanks to eclectic brand of talent and diversity that these empires brought together.

What today’s world doesn’t seem to understand is how these commercial ‘colonies’ became political entities and subordinate nations. However, colonialism was never political until the newcomers like Germany and Italy politicalized it in the first half of the 20th century. The British Empire was assembled “in an absence of mind”, and even the most imperialistic of all British Prime Ministers, Viscount Palmerston, hated the notion of having the political responsibility for the colonies.
By the 18th and 19th centuries, the colonies have become both a trend and a necessity. People also like to blame the colonialism for human exploitation. Widespread industrial revolution created by increasingly mercantile empires may have contributed to slavery, but slavers and privateers were individual brigands who operated without any approval from any Chancellery of Europe. In addition, British Royal Navy was almost singlehandedly responsible for abolishing slave trafficking and piracy in African and in the Caribbean. Naval ships patrolled the English Channel to prevent the slave ships from being built.

Sensationalism and rewriting history also contributed to typecasting colonialism and the age of progress as the forces of evil. Pirates, rapists, thieves, brigands and racketeers became the wronged heroes in literature, and on screen. On the contrary, the empires were forces of good. Jean Houdin in North Africa was exposing the fraudulent ways of native ‘witchdoctors’ and ‘magicians’. Ritual killings (thugee), wife burnings (suttee) and triads were being suppressed by the British in the Orient. Bloodthirsty native rulers like Kings of Dahomey, who offered frequent sacrificial murders and selling his captured prisoners to slavers, were gone. The rule of law, jurisprudence, education and sanitation were introduced to the areas which languished under absolute rulers.

In short, it was these much reviled empires, not some native Robin Hood or Joan of Arc that delivered the greater portion of the world’s population from oppression and inhumane rituals. It may not be so self-evident in retrospect, but the mere fact that the British were able to administer their rule of law to a subcontinent of 250 million people with their Indian Civil Service of a few thousand stood as the testament to the popularity and the efficacy of the imperial government.

Opium Wars

Instead of its other success stories, the opium wars with China were what people chose to remember in relation to Britain’s imperial policy in the Orient. It is written that the First Opium War (1840) as the result of Britain’s militaristic attempts to import the drug into a nation governed by an emperor who wanted to stamp out the opium addition. It sounds like a concise and authoritative summary for history texts but the truth is more complex.

In addition to the facts that India had grown opium and ten million addicts in China had been using it long before the British arrived, the Chinese Emperor’s attempt to curb the trade is less humanitarian than xenophobic. He was simply trying to monopolize the trade and levy taxes to fill his government’s coffers. The Emperor’s envoys demanded not the destruction but only handing over of the opium chests. Originally the foreign merchants in Canton (which was xenophobic China’s only foreign trading post) complied, but when the Chinese forces took all foreigners in Canton hostage.

Equally controversial was the Second Opium War and its aftermath (1864). The British forces under Lord Elgin burnt down the Summer Palace outside Peking, an act which is today condemned as barbaric. However, it was more symbolic than malicious. The Middle Kingdom in those days was not unlike today’s North Korea, which believes in its superiority over the Western powers. Only the destruction of such a symbol would have prevented another war. And it actually did.

Not many people know about the looting and burning of the Peking Summer Palace, but opium, on the other hand, has left a blemish on the history of imperial conquest. In all fairness, opium was the placebo of Europe at this time. Five in six Englishmen consume it; the doctors prescribed it for hysteria, aches, travel-sickness, toothache, neuralgia, influenza, cholera, hay-fever, ulcers and insomnia. The Prince Regent’s doctors prescribed it as a hangover cure; Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote Kubla Khan on it; Berloiz ate it to write ‘symphonie fantastique’.

Like debates on medicinal marijuana today, the debates on opium growing raged between the British East India Company and the two Houses of Parliament. However, as it will be with the certain South American nations a century later, opium was the sole crop the farmers can build their livelihoods on in South Asia. Also, the profits from its trading enabled the Governor General of India to fund much needed reforms, public works, education and other services in the subcontinent.

Opium growing is redefined as a malignant relic of the colonial times by the governments which like to blame the failures of their half-baked economic policies on the wrongs of distant past. During and after the Cold War, governments and rebel groups in the Golden Triangle and the Golden Crescent regions of Asia (where opium is still copiously grown) profited largely from the trade, making the region unstable and precarious. In a world where good and evil are rigidly defined, these ‘recreational drugs’ fall squarely into the latter category. However, the starving farmers in Indian Behar region or Columbian jungles who have to support a family of twelve couldn’t care less.