24.filmfeatures
Monday 24 February 2014
The Courier
Film Editors: Muneeb Hafiz and Jacob Crompton-Schreiber
World War II much?
Editor’s George Smith ponders why there are so many WWII films out there Word ith the recent release of Monument plify, but I suspect you’ll agree with (their version of Defiance if you must) Come and
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Toys II Men
ith the recent release of The Lego Movie it is apparent that the idea of adapting beloved toys and best-selling board games into blockbuster films has come roaring back into frame over the past few years. Three Transformers films, with another due this year, two G.I. Joe films and Battleship have all released in the recent past and most have done really well commercially, though not always critically. Even the notorious bomb Battleship made over $300m worldwide thanks to a solid foreign performance; though hopefully we won’t be seeing a sequel anytime soon, or ever.
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Men, it has suddenly occurred to me that there are rather a lot of Second World War movies. Perhaps I should have noticed sooner, but I simply took for granted the fact that if I was going to see a movie about war, there is a good chance that it was set 80 years ago. Since that is how long it has been since the outbreak of the conflict, many of those that lived through the war are now pushing up daisies and since then we have had numerous conflicts with numerous countries about numerous issues resulting in numerous deaths. But year after year, films are set out to the public which concern
themselves exclusively with the Second World War and now having said I’d do this article, I have to think of reasons why. Not to over sim-
me that everybody loves a film where there are goodies and baddies, so clearly distinct from one another so that we don’t have to think about morality. We don’t want this all the time but it is often pleasant. What is peculiar, even unique to WW2 as a conflict is that it gives us that. No sane person would say that the Nazis had the moral high ground or that the allies should have stayed out of the war altogether. As a result, Christoph Waltz can play the villainous Jew hunter to a largely unanimous audience, hating ourselves for liking him; we are all brought together to see the triumph of good over evil, one of literatures most potent agendas. Subsequent wars are simply not as clear cut: The Vietnam, Iraq and Falkland wars can all be debated on grounds of legitimacy but not the Second World War. That makes for cracking cinema. Yes, its true to say that WW2 has pretty much universal relevance. Once glance at the Wikipedia entry on countries concerned with the war will expose the fact that there were so very few neutral countries. Filmmakers can therefore stick a nice fat WW2 label on their movie and assure themselves that even in some re-
mote Brazilian village, people will know what they’re talking about. I would actually recommend giving foreign World War Two films a watch. I know, its very hard to read subtitles and Russian cinema is just the right mix of art house and pointless staring into the distance to make often painful watching, but it is very rewarding. I recommend the Russian film about the Partisans
See and a Japanese animated classic called Grave of the Fireflies to see how countries outside our Western veil deal with cinema about the conflict.
“We will never see an end to the reels and reels of WW2 movies”
But will we ever see an end to Second World War movies? I doubt it will happen in any of your lifetimes (it may happen in mine but I’m immortal so I don’t count). The last time we were truly threatened as a nation to the same level as we were during the mentioned conflict goes very far to identify us as a country. We need stories of the Second World War because it reminds us to be grateful of how peaceful modern Western Europe is. Apart from Switzerland’s accidental invasion of Liechtenstein in 2007, I can’t think of any other conflict to shake these borders since the 1940s. Until the day comes (and come it will) when our borders are again threatened, we will never see an end to the reels and reels of WW2 movies.
Let’s talk about tech, baby
It is important to stress that this phenomena is by no means a novelty, in the 1980s there was the well-liked Clue film in 1985, based on the Cluedo board game, as well as a My Little Pony film, starring Danny DeVito, and a Care Bear film, both which spawned various sequels over the years. We seem to be living in the ‘golden age’ of toy and board game based films as the studios now have the necessary visual technologies, which allows for Optimus Prime et al. to be brought to life on the big screen, without using dodgy puppets or animation. The Transformers films get a lot of hate but everyone, some begrudgingly, will admit the robots look realistic – as much as huge, transforming robots can look real – which would not have been possible a generation ago. This phenomenon seems like the case in point where studios had to wait for the technology had to catch up with the ideas. The films in question are usually not particularly good – Bratz, Battleship, Transformers 2, et cetera – but they are unique as they allow people’s childhoods to come alive, literally. The toys that occupied many a child’s days no longer need imagination to come alive, they’re now on the screen walking, talking and probably shooting. With Lego blocks you could build anything and this notion translates perfectly to the screen where in these times of Life of Pi and Avatar, nothing seems impossible. A living, breathing Lego metropolis is now ‘real’ on the silver screen and no longer requires a ton of cash, bricks and an avid imagination. With Transformers 4, a Hot Wheels movie and a Monopoly movie all on the way, and with a Lego sequel now looking likely after its stellar opening, it is apparent that we are in the midst of our childhood being catapulted into Hollywood, lets just hope it doesn’t get too damaged along the way. Jacob Crompton-Schreiber
Robots vs. humans, is there a difference anymore? Film editor Muneeb Hafiz discusses
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n a recent, rather awkward, interview with Emily Maitlis of BBC’s Newsnight, Spike Jonze insists on our longing for intimacy as the profound core in his latest offering, Her. As opposed to the simple narrative of a man falling for his remarkable operation system, the advanced, techno-gloss of future Los Angeles, or rather a “heightened version of our world” today as Jonze eloquently phrases, exists as merely a setting for the love story that unfolds on screen. However, whether it was Jonze’s intention or not, there appears to be a not-so-covert commentary on the evolving and ever-expanding importance of technology in, not simply the physical and material facets of our existence, but the spiritual and emotional spheres too. Can we and will we inevitably fall in love with the operating systems of the slight future? Who knows. But what is abundantly clear is that Jonze does not care too much for the interplay between man and machine, however seductive and sensual its voice. Instead, he asserts the universality of love and the necessary obstacles and blessings of it.
“No matter the fuel of the character, be it a battery cell or chicken noodle soup, intimacy is the fuel of life”
Yet, in narrative terms at least, there has been a relatively recent transformation in our perception of machines and how they relate to our consciousness, and Jonze sparks an engaging dialogue here. They exist not so much as the mechanical ‘other’ or the superior foe, while these of course continue to persist, but more poignantly there has been a blurring of the line between ‘us’ and ‘them’. No matter the fuel of the character, be it a battery cell or chicken noodle soup, intimacy is the fuel of life. The robot, the operating software, the machine is as much a human character as it is a hunk
of microchips, circuit-boards and wires. Rachel of Blade Runner (1982), the endearing replicant who steals Deckard’s heart; David of A. I. (2001), a highly sophisticated boy yearning to be real to regain the love of his human mother; even Arnold Schwarzenegger of Terminator (1984) exhibits facets of human emotion and motives While our perceptions, on the big screen at least, may have changed and will probably continue to change within our ever-evolving social, technological, and political contexts, there are interesting dissimilarities between male and female bots. Gender stereotypes, it seems, manifest themselves in highly intelligent operating systems as much as they do in ‘real’ human characters. This phenomenon of falling for technology, is not brand new one as we’ve seen. But, most interestingly, 2002’s Teknolust in which a female cyborg is impregnated by a human has remarkable parallels. Jordan Larson of The Atlantic comments “male artificial intelligence programs are more often portrayed as machines for disseminating knowledge… and even when the programs display some
sort of consciousness, they are far from being objects (or subjects) of desire.” But in Samantha’s character what we see has been engineered is essentially the perfect housewife. Servile, intelligent, attentive and never ever tired. This is the ‘perfect woman’, right? Wrong. What is to be said about the pervasiveness of stereotypes across physical/human and technological/robotic consciousness and existence. So is Her really that new? As the heightened future is a backdrop for what is a love story in Her, is intimacy between guys and gadgets perhaps a vehicle for reinforcing certain ‘appropriate’ roles and behaviours in an alternate dimension? The likelihood is this is a reductionist reading of Jonze’s latest work. In human-human companionship, conflict and compromise are inevitable and necessary, and are constituent parts of Theodore and Samantha’s relationship. Yet if intimacy with technology must continue as an inherently male to fembot nexus, maybe we can move away from the persona of the female OS defined by her subservience and domesticity.