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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Which is actually known to have caused motion sickness in viewers. This is why I can't watch previews. They're all the same - flashing light and dark cuts less than a second, for 7 minutes.
The problem with the Jason Bourne character is that he is ridiculous. There's nothing wrong with movies about superheroes, but I would take the Bourne movies more seriously if they showed us a backstory where he was exposed to gamma radiation or bitten by a genetically enhanced dragonfly.
Wow, because of a great interview with Matt Damon that I read in my local paper yesterday, I'm posting a rare letter to Salon.
Thought I'd share an insightful, intelligent analysis he did of the 3 Bourne movies, and how they've evolved from the themes of Paranoia, Atonement, and finally, Anger, paralleling those emotions with that of the collective psyche of the American public post-9/11. Not so sure about atonement though ... I think that was perhaps wishful thinking on his part about the Bush administration's criminal and unapologetic actions re Iraq et al.
And I quote:
"For Damon, the Bourne movies work on many different levels at once. They're popcorn pictures, but they're also reflections of the times in which they're made.
"The first one came out in 2002 and it's definitely a post-9/11 movie," he says. "All of the paranoia is there."
"The second one came out in 2004, when things were starting to turn in Iraq. Jason Bourne, this iconic American figure, is apologizing and atoning for his misdeeds, for things that he's done. He's taking responsibility."
"Now you have the 2007 movie and Bourne is pulling a gun and putting it to the head of the person who lied to him all these years. Bourne's saying, `I see now that you've led me into something under false pretenses.'"
In my haste to post, I must add posthaste:
That aforementioned interview really led me to see Damon in a new light ... quite the intelligent, articulate and grounded guy, not to mention generous-hearted and in adoration of his wife and 1-yr old daughter. Luciana, you lucky gal!
As someone who appreciates good writing in all its forms, I want to say that I find Zacharek to be the best film writer today. Regardless of whether I happen to agree with her ultimate assessment of a film, she is thoroughly descriptive, and one senses a real intelligence behind the reviews. I guess I find most film reviewers to be a film geeks who taught themselves to write; Zacharek strikes me as first a writer who happens to write film reviews. She has none of annoyingly self-referential and whiny aspects that I associate with current journalism; to me she comes across as well-researched, and, again, just plain smart. One of the best of Salon's regular contributors. I like good writing.
Somebody a few letters back compared Paul Greengrass's directing style unfavorably with Kubrick's and Altman's, as well as with a directing style favored in Fred Astaire movies.
I find fault with your logic because Greengrass is an entirely different type of director from Kubrick and Altman. I would describe Greengrass's style as "You are there." I've seen three of his movies -- "Bloody Sunday," "The Bourne Supremacy" and "United 93." In all of those movies, it's as if the audience is a character -- we're in the midst of that peace march massacre, we're careening through the streets of Moscow with Jason Bourne, we're fighting with the hijackers on United 93. Greengrass is trying to tear down that fourth wall altogether and put us in the middle of the action.
So I think comparisons with Astaire, Kubrick and Altman movies are unfair. It's apples and oranges. Compare with, say, Michael Bay, and I think you'll find that nobody does action better.
You nailed it. Thanks for getting it right.
As a Republican (in the true sense, not in the crazy Conservative agenda sense), Salon can be a tough read sometimes.
But, I come here because the writing is great. And, I feel it's important to see another (often spot-on) perspective.
That said...
It's a MOVIE REVIEW. Did it really need to get the Salon We-Hate-Republicans treatment as early as the FIRST SENTENCE. A
Sheesh. At least wait a few paragraphs...
I love you, Stephanie. But, for shame!
Please. Do you realize how rediculous it is to compare Altman's and Kubrick's films with the Bourne films and the rest of Greengrass's work? Altman is my favorite filmmaker of all time, and Kubrick is a master, but when did either of them helm an action movie or even a film comparable to Bloody Sunday or United 93? Never.
I will grant you that comparing the choreographed action sequences with a Fred Astaire dance sequence is an interesting one. However, where Fred Astaire's dance is graceful, smooth and obviously choreopraphed, the Bourne fights are disjointed and rough in their nature. Thus Greengrass decides to film them as such. Matter and manner. Present the art in such a way that reveals what the art is about.
You even say, "you can't tell who's fighting whom, who's chasing whom and all you can remember are short visual images that don't connect; which is an apt description of the movie itself." I believe that's exactly the point.
I love the constant whining against this so-called "MTV school of filmmaking." It seems its detractors are offended by a style, not by the many incompetent directors practicing the style. Let's remember the shower scene in Psycho. The shots are extremely short and the cuts are numerous yet it is still hailed as a masterpiece of film.
Matt Damon is a master of blankness -- his best performances all revolve around that, whether in "Good Will Hunting," "The Bourne Identity," "The Talented Mr. Ripley," or "The Departed" -- that bland virtuosity that is Damon's stock in trade, where even when he's excellent at something, his cipherlike quality mutes it, diminishes it, like a lightly-applied eraser to a penciled line, blurring the details.
Nobody does affable blankness (for good, for evil, or for good and/or evil, as in Bourne) quite the way Damon does. In that blankness, a uniquely American hero resides, and, I think, is a big part of Damon's success as an actor -- maybe Americans find they can project themselves onto Damon's characters, and onto Bourne, a kind of superhero assassin -- but we're supposed to like him, to forgive him, for he knows not what he does. That is so utterly American, it bleeds red, white, and blue.
I loved the first Bourne movie, and wished the franchise would've stopped there, because there's something unsettling about the extension of that blankness over three movies; it makes American audiences complicit in it. The Bourne movies would've probably been impossible without Damon to carry them, but they'd have been revolutionary in the 70s or even 80s, when Americans could conceivably not know what we do as a nation, or what we're capable of being. In our imperial era, however, such blankness isn't even a luxury; it's a delusion.
Today, there's less of an excuse to have that kind of blankness, with the abrogation of responsibility and accountability that comes with it, and to see it trotted out again in "The Bourne Ultimatum" -- I don't know; it kind of creeps me out.
Bourne's both a victim and a perpetrator of violence (physical and psychological) -- gifted with superhuman talents that were intended for subhuman purposes, able to do amazing things, but unable to really understand why -- he's the enfant terrible of espionage.
People talk about Bourne's isolation -- and Damon's bland affability sells it, and that's true, but Bourne's truly a monster more than a superhero, with no real place in civil society. Or, if he has a place, then our society is no longer a civil one. That's Bourne's ultimatum to the rest of us.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
