Monthly Archives: June 2021

Editorials

Bad and Fabulous – How Hollywood Queer Coding Turned Disney Villains into Gay Icons

It’s Pride Month again, and each year we begin to marvel more and more at the lessening resistance to devoting a whole month to celebrating queer rights and the achievements of the LGBTQ community.  While resistance to queer rights still exists out there in the larger culture, those roadblocks are growing fainter, and the rights of the Queer community becomes more and more affirmed with each successive generation.  We are thankfully in a turning point in our culture where queer representation is no longer a taboo, as many fields that were closed off to gay people for years are now no longer off limits, and are in fact becoming more inclusive than anyone ever thought that they’d be.  This has been especially true with fields that were distinctively defined in the past by outdated notions of gender norms.  It was believed in the past that in order to be a part of something like the armed services or professional sports, you had to adhere to the strict masculine ideals that were perpetuated in the culture, and that anyone who had a same sex attraction would be breaking that norm.  For years, homosexuals were barred from military service, or were threatened with expulsion if they made their sexuality public (Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell).  And the idea of anyone gay playing things like professional football would’ve been laughed at.  And yet today, LGBTQ service members now serve openly with the full support and approval of top brass, and just this week a Defensive Lineman for the Las Vegas Raiders came out of the closet, with the NFL, sports media, and fans almost unanimously embracing it.  So what’s changed?  For the most part, the outdated notions of masculine and feminine ideals have fallen away as people, particularly young people, are finding more fluidity in what it means to be a fully rounded individual.  A football jock can be gay and masculine; a straight man can enjoy typically feminine things; a woman can do any job a man can do, and deserves an equal amount of pay in return.  The old norms that used to unfairly marginalized queer people are thankfully receding into the background and as a result, representation that was impossible years ago is becoming more and more the norm in our society.  But what is interesting about the societal norms that had previously existed is that they were perpetuated through the filter of Hollywood, long believed to be a safe haven for the queer community.

Hollywood, in general, has an interesting place in the long struggle for gay rights in America and around the world.  For decades, even as the gay community was being harassed, marginalized and terrorized in other parts of the country, Hollywood itself was for the most part a place of refuge, as long as it remained hidden.  People still lived in the closet in Tinseltown, but the threat of violence and even imprisonment for living as your true self was much less of a problem.  Internally, the Hollywood community treated the homosexual community as an open secret, as many queer artists thrived and became part of the framework within the industry, while at the same time having to still live by the hetero-normative standards that their industry was helping to perpetuate.  The reason why Hollywood couldn’t allow for full queer representation in the greater society despite the flourishing of it behind the scenes is because of a long standing roadblock called the Hays Code.  Enacted as a pact between church leaders, government officials, and movie executives as a means of regulating morality in the movies, the Hays Code restricted anything coming out of Hollywood that was seen as an affront to the “moral decency” in American culture, which included among other things any mention or support of homosexuality on screen.  Though Hollywood was hush about it before, the Hays Code made it all but impossible for there to be any mention of homosexual behavior in movies, and if there was, it had to be condemned wholeheartedly; otherwise, the Code would allow for more government crackdowns on Hollywood.  For a lot of queer people who worked and lived in Hollywood, it became a tight rope of having to conform to industry standards, while at the same time trying to be honest with one’s self.  For many in Hollywood in the Code years, this had the unbelievable effect of making queer entertainers and filmmakers work on films that perpetuated gender norms and moral standards that increasingly forced them further into the closet.  But, even with all the limitations that many of them worked under, some queer filmmakers found ways to work around the Code restrictions by hiding representation under a different guise, through something that we now view today as queer-coding.

Queer-coding is a practice in different types of media where characteristics of a LGBTQ individual is placed within the persona of a character without ever explicitly stating whether or not that character is definitively queer or not.  It’s using subtext to get a general sense of an individual’s possible queer identity, without ever stating explicitly that it’s the case.  This was a trick that queer filmmakers used to allow some representation within their movies while still adhering to the Code’s guidelines.  The only problem is that in order to make it work, the portrayals of characters with queer-coded traits were often ones of two types; a sissy comic relief or a sadist, morally deviant villain.  Primarily, these characters had to stand out against the idealized, confidently heterosexual main hero, and their contrary, deviant traits had to always fall behind those of the protagonist.  But, even as filmmakers had to sustain the status quo set by the Hays Code, they often managed to cleverly work around that by making these “deviant” queer coded characters more interesting than the hero himself.  Even hetero filmmakers who bristled at the restrictions under the Code embraced these subtle little subversions.  One of the earliest clear examples of a queer coded character leaving an impression in a Hollywood movie is the character of Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon (1941), played by Peter Lorre.  The character, through today’s eyes, is unmistakably queer coded (with an odd oral fixation around his walking cane), but as presented in the movie by writer/ director John Huston, it never overtly states him as so, which gives the filmmaker deniability under the Code guidelines.  Hitchcock also utilized this trope in his movies, like with the two murderers in Rope (1948), Ms. Danvers in Rebecca (1940), and less subtly with Norman Bates in Psycho (1960).  Though intended to be negative, these queer coded characters often took on a life of their own beyond their place in the film, and remarkably found a following in a community that they were meant to deride in the first place; among LGBTQ audiences.

So, why would the gay community embrace coded characters that were meant to demean them in the larger culture.  Because, it’s all that the gay community had for decades.  For a community that silenced for so long by society at large, any representation, even negative, was better than no representation.  Whether they were stereotypes set up for ridicule, or deviant villains hell bent on causing chaos and challenging norms, the queer community celebrated these characters, because it was the only way they could see themselves presented on film.  Once the Hays code finally dropped in the mid 1960’s, and counter-culture finally blossomed, subtext about sexuality also was cast aside and we were finally allowed to see movies made that more honestly dealt with queer representation.  However, because of the long standing restrictions of the Hays Code, expectations of the queer community remained entrenched even during this period of sexual awakening.  Because many queer people grew up with their community represented on film through these reductive stereotypes, most of them ended up just adhering to how society viewed them already without actually challenging it.  That’s why for many years after, queer men were still portrayed as effeminate queens while queer women were relegated to tom boys or aggressive predators.  So while homosexuals were no longer invisible, they were also still being pigeon-holed as an “other” in the culture.  Queer coding continued to persist even as the Gay Rights Movement began to march in the streets demanding to be heard.  It was by this point too entrenched in the make-up of Hollywood, and movie studios were not quite ready to shake away the homophobic audiences that they were catering to.  So even as the counter-culture gave way to the regressive Reagan Era and the queer community was decimated by the AIDS epidemic, the only way representation could be possible in American culture was by still leaning into the stereotypes that had defined them prior.

But by embracing even negative queer coded characters, the LGBTQ community was at that same time also showing a bit of defiance in the face of oppression.  To them, it was not about embracing the crimes committed by queer-coded villains in the movies, but instead it was about embracing how these villains defied the moral standards that the heterosexual “morality police” were trying to force upon them.  In a sense, it was about disobedience in the face of what people, particularly those with power, define as “normal.”  If society saw them as monsters, then they’ll act like the monsters they see in the movies.  But it wasn’t any kind of movie villain that the queer community embraced; it had to be the operatic, over-the-top kind that demanded that the world recognize them for who they are.  And there was no better place to find a strong queer coded villain than in the world of Disney Animation.  Even going back to the Walt Disney years, you could see queer elements baked into the villainous character of their movies.  The Evil Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937) displayed some subtle queer vibes in her operatic, commanding personality, leaning very much into the domineering female stereotype of that period.  There’s also the foppishness of Captain Hook in Peter Pan (1953), or the butch aggressiveness of the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland (1951).  Some of these character traits probably flew right over the heads of us when we were little, but are easily identifiable to us as adults, and it is surprising how frequently it reoccurs in Disney movies.  I never really see it as Disney purposely pegging their villains with negative queer traits, but more so relying on them because they make the villains far more entertaining and memorable.  And indeed, the formula works because you will honestly find a no bigger fanbase for the Disney rogues gallery than the LGBTQ community.  I’ve been to the conventions and the Pride events; you’d be amazed by how much Disney villains are represented at both equally and proudly.  And it’s something that overall is a positive despite the fact that it’s an embrace of characters who are meant to be the villains.

For one thing, part of the reason why the queer community has turned these Disney villains into icons is because in some cases, they were authored to be so.  This was the case in the Disney Renaissance period, when the studio began to rev up again with new classics like The Little Mermaid (1989) and Beauty and the Beast (1991).  At the forefront of the creation of these movies was an out and proud gay man named Howard Ashman, who as a multitalented songwriter and producer began to push Disney in a direction that embraced the glory of it’s past while still having a eye towards the future.  Along with his writing partner Alan Menken, he crafted some of the most beloved songs ever in the Disney canon, including “Under the Sea,” “Be Our Guest,” and “Friend Like Me,” just to name a few.  But in addition, Ashman pushed the studio to create stories and characters that embraced more contemporary themes of tolerance and acceptance, and living the way that you choose to live.  Even if it still conforms to certain hetero norms of the day, many queer audience members can still recognize themselves in Ariel’s desire to “part of that world,” or Belle refusing to conform to feminine norms in her “poor provincial town.”  But even more so, Ashman wanted to make villains that were unapologetically confident in who they were, and that meant not only leaning into villainous queer-coding, but full heartedly embracing it.  You can definitely see it with characters like Jafar from Aladdin (1992) and Scar from The Lion King (1994), who seem to relish in their own flamboyance.  And with Ursula from The Little Mermaid, her inspiration actually came from a real life inspiration out of the gay community; the drag queen Divine, who was part of the Baltimore counter-culture scene that spawned filmmaker John Waters, as well as Ashman and Menken.  And the Ursula/Divine connection is less a caricature and more of a tribute in the long run, because it’s clear that Ashman knew the unapologetically trashy Divine would’ve embraced that persona too.  It showed queer authors turning something that had long been a weapon against them into something they could call their own, and that in turn made these Disney villains icons for a whole new generation.  Indeed, the best Disney Villains known today came out of this period in Animation, and it was because more often than not they were better characters than the main heroes they were facing.

It’s interesting to see just how much the gay community today continues to cling onto the classic Disney villains of yesteryear.  Whether it is in art, fashion, or just role-playing for fun at events, there is a strong presence of Disney villains being celebrated in the queer community.  It even goes back to the early days of the queer cinema.  The aforementioned John Waters has included multiple references to Disney villains in his movies, with Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty (1959) being an especially noticeable inspiration for some of Divine’s more outrageous looks.  But, what is interesting is that as Disney villains began to move away from these obvious queer-coded stereotypes, they also became more boring.  The later Renaissance Disney movies featured more villains that fell more in the toxic masculine side, like Clayton from Tarzan (1999), or Shan-Yu from Mulan (1998); villains who felt like an afterthought instead of integral to the story.  Remember Rourke from Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)?  Of course you don’t, because there was nothing interesting about him, or anything in that movie to be honest.  And why is this the case with these villains rather than the ones everyone loves.  Because there was something about the push back against norms that the queer community loved about the classic Disney villains, and likewise identified with.  The boring, toxic masculine villains of later Disney films represent more of the power structure that the gay community was trying to fight against, and in turn, found nothing to self-identify with them.  What is disheartening now is that Disney is seeing their flamboyant villainous characters as something that they shouldn’t be embracing anymore.  In the live action remakes that have come out these last few years, the villains have either seen their flamboyance downplayed, like Jafar and Scar in their respective movies, or they are being rewritten as misunderstood anti-heroes, like with Maleficent (2014) and Cruella (2021).  It shouldn’t be that surprising, but none of the changes to these characters have made them any better, and in turn, they are not being well-received by queer audiences either.  These characters that were unashamedly flamboyant in the past seem to be getting neutered for no other reason than the possibility of Disney viewing them as problematic, or more dubiously, self-censoring them so they can play better in homophobic international markets.  If so, it’s a betrayal for an audience that has reliably embraced what Disney has created over the years, and even more so for the queer artists that have been responsible for taking Disney to where it is today.  The queer community’s embrace of Disney villains is not a sign of a problematic connection between gay audiences and their villain’s bad behavior, but instead a loving recognition that Disney has long been inspiring a generation of out and proud fans who wouldn’t have been so comfortable to be themselves had it not been for the confidence that they saw in their villains.

Queer coding has a long, often problematic history in Hollywood, but it’s one that has allowed queer artists and audience members to be able to subvert the institutional roadblocks that have been held them back for so long.  Now as times are changing for the better in fields that were almost unheard of only a short few years ago for members of the LGBTQ community, we are starting to see even the use of queer coding evolve with it.  Now, it’s not just the villains that are coded as queer in animated movies, but the heroes as well.  One clear example of this is Elsa from Frozen (2013) who has been very heavily hinted at being a lesbian in both movies from the franchise.  In fact, Disney faced backlash for not fully committing one way or the other with stating Elsa’s sexuality, with the queer community especially voicing their frustration.  Another Disney heroine, whose sexuality is also ambiguous in the movie, Raya from Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) received a bit more confirmation when her voice actress (Kelly Marie Tran) just outright stated that she viewed her character as queer when she voiced her.  It’s weird that Disney is actually at the point now where they are both queer baiting and denying queer coding at the same time.  They want you to pay attention to these inconsequential openly queer characters in the background, while at the same time ignoring possible queer mains, even though the actors playing them are clearly leaning towards that in their portrayals (see Finn and Poe in Star Wars).  Eventually, as attitudes change with each new generation, this kind of non-committal strategy is not going to work anymore, and we’ll get that unapologetic queer lead in one of their movies.  In the meantime, Disney should really revel in the fact that their Villains have taken on a life of their own in the queer community.  There’s a camp appeal to these characters that is irresistible, and can be enjoyed by anyone gay or straight.  The gay community found it’s way into the culture through the flamboyance of Disney villains, so it’s only natural that they are embraced so wholeheartedly within the community.  That’s why you’ll see the likes of Maleficent, Cruella, Scar, Jafar, the Evil Queen, and many more represented at Pride events and sprinkled within the everyday identity of so many LGBTQ people.  When the world has forced hardship on you in the name of a moral “good,” why not find pride in yourself by embracing a little good-natured “evil.”

Movie Reviews

Luca – Review

It’s been a rough pandemic year for the Pixar Animation studios.  The Emeryville, California based animation giant has set a high bar for the industry over the past quarter century, and 2020 was set to be a big year for them.  They had two highly anticipated animated features lined up that were set to continue their hot streak at the box office.  The first of the two, Onward, made it to cinemas in early March of 2020.  And then the whole world came crashing down.  Movie theaters were shut for an indeterminable amount of time, which would end up being over a year in the end, and every movie playing immediately before the shut down suddenly had their box office returns cut short.  Onward, the last major studio film released before the shutdown, wound up with the lowest box office totals of any Pixar movie to date, but it was clear that it was not the films fault.  Like everything else in the 14 months that followed, Hollywood had to gauge a whole new way to measure success under the new pandemic affected conditions.  Would Onward had performed better if the pandemic hadn’t gotten in the way?  We’ll never know.  However, once the pandemic hit, parent company Disney made the controversial decision to accelerate Onward’s  streaming debut on Disney+, foregoing the usual 3 month exclusive theatrical window, just so that people who missed out on seeing it in the theater would have a chance to watch it at home.  Though the movie theaters were worried that this would change the dynamic of the exhibition market, they at the same time had little say in the matter.  Onward made it’s debut and for all accounts it performed well enough for Disney to do the same with a couple other films waiting in the wings.  Frozen II (2019) and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) saw their streaming premieres also accelerated, though they benefitted from full box office performances beforehand.  And movies that Disney didn’t mind skipping theaters all together with (Artemis Fowl and The One and Only Ivan) were also brought directly to Disney+.  But the question remained, what was Disney going to do with the other highly anticipated Pixar animated film for the year 2020; that being the Pete Doctor-directed Soul.

Soul was undoubtedly the more ambitious of the two 2020 movies, dealing with heavier themes than Onward and with a more ethereal canvas of design and concept.  It’s also clear having seen it that Soul was a movie made for the big screen, with it’s widescreen presentation and ambitious scale.  But, with the pandemic shutdowns extending well beyond what anyone thought was possible, Disney and Pixar needed to make a hard choice.  Do they continue to keep pushing Soul back on the calendar, or do they skip theaters all together.  Soul did move a couple times off it’s original June 2020 release date.  It first landed in late August, and then again moving to Thanksgiving weekend.  With theaters still closed all the way to the holidays, Pixar ultimately made the tough choice to put Soul out exclusively on Disney+, without a premium fee to offset lost box office.  It was determined that Disney would benefit with the extra boost in subscriptions by having a Pixar title premiere on their platform, and given the previous success over the year with other premieres, and the fact that any more delays would work against other movies in the pipeline, the tough choice had to be made.  It must had been hard especially for Pixar head Pete Doctor, since Soul was his own baby.  But, despite missing out in theaters, Soul still found it’s audience, and led to Doctor winning a record third Oscar for Best Animated Feature.  But, the precedent set by putting Soul out on streaming led to Disney feeling more comfortable with the model, and it was announced soon after that the next Pixar movie in line, Luca, would also be skipping a theatrical release in favor of streaming.  This left a lot of people at Pixar rightfully upset, especially by the fact that it was not getting the hybrid streaming/theatrical release that Disney’s own Raya and the Last Dragon received.  And with movie theaters finally reopening, and showing signs of a quick recovery, it seemed like Disney was making a shortsighted choice, robbing a movie that would play magnificently on the big screen a chance to prove itself.  But, as it stands, Luca is making it’s debut this weekend in living rooms across the world rather than the cinema, and now we can determine for ourselves whether or not Disney’s choice was a sound one or the wrong one.

Luca takes place on the picturesque Italian Riviera, near and within a small little fishing village called Portorusso.  Unbeknownst to the fishermen who sail the coastline of the their village, there is a whole other community beneath the waves; one made entirely of sea monsters.  In this community, we find Luca Paguro (Jacob Tremblay), a timid young sea monster who is afraid of what lies beyond the water’s surface.  However, curiosity leads him to discover a bunch of artifacts from the human world, which he discovers are being collected by another young sea monster named Alberto Scorfano (Jack Dylan Grazer).  To Luca’s surprise and amazement, he watches Alberto carefreeingly leaving the ocean and walking on land.  Alberto forces Luca up with him and the newcomer soon discovers that his scale-ly skin transforms on land to human like skin when it’s dry.  Alberto helps Luca learn more about the human world and the two form a friendship, though it’s kept secret from Luca’s protective mother Daniela (Maya Rudolph) and father Lorenzo (Jim Gaffigan).  When Luca’s parents learn of his deception and threaten to send him to live with his deep sea Uncle Ugo (Sacha Baron Cohen), Luca runs away and convinces Alberto that they should pursue their shared dream; riding across the world on a Vespa scooter.  They make their way to Portorusso, in the hopes of getting a Vespa of their own.  There they meet a young human girl named  Giulia (Emma Berman), who is obsessed with winning the Portorusso Cup challenge, especially if it means besting the town bully, Ercole Visconti (Servio Raimondo).  Giulia takes the two in with the hopes of helping them train as a team.  At Giulia’s home, they meet her father Massimo, a one-armed fisherman and cook who’s got his eye on slaying the rumored sea monsters in the area, as does his suspecting cat Machiavelli, whose got his keen eye on the two outsiders.  Meanwhile Daniela and Lorenzo search the town for their lost son.  For Luca and Alberto, the challenge becomes whether or not they can keep their secret safe and achieve their dream in the human world, and more crucially, can they keep themselves dry in a town where water is literally all around them.

Regardless of how it makes it’s way to the audience, there is no doubt that the bar is always high when it comes to Pixar.  They are one of the standard bearers in Animation, in a class that is only matched with sister studio Disney and few others; possibly smaller players like Laika and Studio Ghibli.  Especially coming off the heals of a beloved movie like Soul, there is a lot of expectations about what Pixar can bring to the table next with a movie like Luca.  So it is with great relief that Pixar not only clears the high bar with Luca, it does so in spectacular fashion.  Luca is an all around triumph from beginning to end.  The movie was directed by Enrico Casarosa, a long time story artist at Pixar making his directorial debut.  Luca clearly is a love letter to the director’s native homeland, where he spent his childhood growing up in the coastal city of Genoa on Italy’s majestic Portofino coastline.  Though not the first time that Pixar has infused such a cultural presence into one of their stories (see also 2012’s Brave and 2017’s Coco), Luca takes on an especially personal touch, with so much attention to detail put into the world of this story.  The movie is set in a particular time and place, that being Italy in the late 50’s and early 60’s, which I’m sure is a very intentional choice on Casarosa’s part.  The movie is heavily inspired by Italian New Wave cinema, and in particular, the movies of Federico Fellini.  You can feel the influence of Fellini throughout the movie, from the colorful characters to the lush coastal setting, to even the music choices.  Casarosa even throws in some charming Easter eggs for cinephiles out there, like movie posters for Roman Holiday (1953) and La Starda (1953) plastered on the walls.  Other cinematic influences are plentiful as well, like Machiavelli the Cat who I swear is designed exactly to be nod to the animation style of Hayao Miyazaki.  Suffice to say, the movie is a feast for the senses in the best way that Pixar knows how to do.

But on top of that, it also features a wonderful story built upon an intriguing concept.  Essentially, it’s a story about breaking free of barriers, both internal and external.  Luca begins his journey unaware of the larger world around, and the potential for adventures that he may have.  One of the crucial things that he picks up with his experiences with Alberto is to push against those inhibitions that cause him to be fearful of the world.  In a funny explanation, Alberto calls that inner voice that tells Luca “no” about everything Bruno, and he instructs Luca to repeat to himself, “Silencio Bruno” as a way of moving past his fears.  Over time, “Silencio Bruno” becomes a mantra for the two boys and it enables them to grow bolder over the course of the movie.  It’s a very uplifting element to the story, and as we see, Luca is far more brave than he ever thought he would be, which enables him to move beyond the limits that others have forced upon him.  Though Enrico Casarossa insists it was never intended this in his original story, and perhaps it might be my own self reading too much into the movie as well, but I sensed a subtle queer subtext in Luca’s story.  Trust me, the friendship between Luca and Alberto is strictly platonic, but there is something very familiar in how both of the boys overcome societies barriers in order to find acceptance for who they really are, especially in a town that views them first and foremost as monsters.  It’s also a story about Luca discovery his true self by finding friends who encourage his adventurous side, and help him to break free from a sheltered life where he might not have known what he was really capable of.  To many LGBTQ people in the audience, this will ring true with many coming out journeys that each of them have had.  Though it wasn’t intended to be the message, I still think Pixar wouldn’t dismiss such a reading either, as Disney has at times leaned into the many different queer readings of their own films like The Little Mermaid (1989) or Frozen (2013), without ever discouraging it.  It’s not quite a PG-rated  Call Me By Your Name (2017), but I think there might be something worthwhile there that many queer people, especially the youngest one, will find uplifting in Luca’s story.

The movie’s characters are also uniformly excellent.  Luca is an especially endearing lead, as his curiosity to discover new things is delightfully entertaining.  Jacob Tremblay brings an especially exuberant vocal performance to the character, bringing out all the different angles of the character in a joyful, heartwarming way.  He deftly manages to capture Luca’s timidness perfectly early one and as he grows more bolder, we feel that growth within the character  through that performance.  His vocal work is also equally matched by Jack Dylan Grazer’s Alberto, where he perfectly embodies that identity of that kind of older “bad influence” kid that we all know.  Like Jacob, Jack also perfectly finds that fully fleshed out character inside, managing to make the character hilarious but also vulnerable when he needs to be.  Emma Berman’s Giulia rounds out the trio with a wonderfully exuberant performance as well.  I especially like how she slips into Italian frequently whenever she grows frustrated, like she’s using it as a substitute for cursing.  Her tomboyish personality really works well off of the personalities of Luca and Alberto, especially with the fact that the two often don’t know how to respond around her sometimes  unexpected personality quirks.  The always reliable Maya Rudolph is perfect here in the role of the mother, and Jim Gaffigan is hilariously subdued in his role as the father.  We also get a quick but hilariously demented cameo from Sacha Baron Cohen as Luca’s bottom feeding Uncle.  If the movie has a weak link, it’s the villainous Ercole, who in many ways is just an afterthought in the story, as the filmmakers believed that the movie needed a more definable antagonist.  He’s serviceable, but not much else; a far cry from some of Pixar’s more memorable baddies like Syndrome from The Incredibles (2004) and Lotso from Toy Story 3 (2010).  I also want to specially point out the cat Machiavelli, who is a straight-up scene stealer in Luca.  Some of the biggest laughs I had were the glaring stares he gives to Luca and Alberto in the movie.  Overall, another beautiful cast of characters to add to the growing Pixar family.

It should also be said that this is one of the most absolutely beautiful movies that Pixar has ever made, and that’s saying a lot.  The real life influence of the Italian coastal setting was no doubt instrumental in creating the world of this film.  It evokes a definitive time and place, but also imbues it with a storybook like feel.  That is also true with the designs of the characters as well.  These character models are far more stylized that what we see with most Pixar characters.  The character’s features are fare less contoured and more rounded out, with Luca’s head almost taking on a tomato-like shape.  It perfectly mixes with the different designs that Luca and Alberto go through as they transform between sea creature and human, allowing the audience to never get confused about who they are seeing on screen at any time.  I also like that the quirky character designs extend to the humans as well, like they are pulled out of a story book as well.  The way that everyone is animated is also more cartoonish and stylized than the average Pixar movie, which more often tries to go for realism in their character movement.  Even so, this movie is still unmistakably Pixar to it’s very core.  You’ll especially find it in how they still manage to convey deep emotion, even through the exaggerated character models.  Though it doesn’t quite tug on the heartstrings as hard as say Up (2009) or Coco (2017), there are still some beautifully emotional moments in this movie, especially in the closing moments.  It may not be a tear-jerker, but it will make you feel especially warm inside as you see the characters find their place in the larger world, and in some cases, find that they must leave something behind.  It pretty much delivers everything that you want from a Pixar movie, but it does so in a way you don’t quite expect.  I wouldn’t be surprised if more Pixar movies in the future adopt a more stylized look like what we see in Luca, because this movie certainly showed that the studio can still deliver no matter how much one of their movies breaks the mold.

I certainly feel like Luca stands as one of the better Pixar movies overall.  It may not be in the top flight, but it is certainly not far behind and many lightyears beyond what most other studios are making.  It just really saddens me that most people are not going to be enjoying this movie on a big screen, which it should honestly be playing on right now.  Living in Los Angeles, I fortunately managed to see it the right way as one, and only one, theater in town has this playing on a big screen; that being the historic El Capitan on Hollywood Boulevard (owned and operated by Disney, of course).  Seeing the movie that way probably helped me to appreciate the movie even more, and it is absolutely worth the effort if you live near Hollywood and there are still tickets available for it’s lone, single week engagement.  For anyone else, please watch this movie on the largest television that you have.  Watching it on anything smaller or handheld will really rob you of the majesty of this beautiful film.  It’s just too bad that a worthy animated movie like Luca is being relegated to streaming while a mediocre film like Dreamworks’ Spirit Untamed is getting a wide theatrical release.  Yeah, sure, Spirit’s lackluster box office is not something to instill confidence on a box office that is still in recovery mode.  But had Luca been given a shot, it might have ignited the box office in ways that other movies have failed to.  This may end up being a tale of a missed opportunity on Pixar’s part, and I hope that this is not the preferred mode of release for all Pixar movies moving forward.  It was a hard pill to swallow for Soul too, but the conditions were understandable.  It makes less sense now as times are changing, and Disney has already proven success with movies already released through their hybrid model like Raya and Cruella (2021).  In any case, Luca should not be missed.  It’s another triumphant original for the legendary studio, with a heartwarming story, which may also resonate with subtly with LGBTQ audiences who recognize a coming out story when they see one, even if it’s young sea monsters leaving the ocean instead of a closet.  Regardless of it’s intended message, it’s a beautifully constructed crowd pleaser that everyone should see.  And given that it’s about venturing outside of the comforts of a sheltered life, it’s a story that gives us more hope in a post pandemic world.  Without a doubt, a certifiable win for Pixar and a movie that deserves more than the circumstances it’s been given.  Silencio Bruno!!!

Rating: 9/10

Movie Reviews

In the Heights – Review

It’s amazing to think how much the stage musical has had in forming the soundtrack of our culture over the last century.  You may be listening to or singing a song that is omnipresent in our everyday lives, and not even know that it had it’s beginnings on Broadway.  For many years, musical theater was the premiere form of entertainment until cinema came along.  After the advent of the talking picture, musicals found a new venue, and it wasn’t long before Hollywood began pooling in talent who normally would be writing music for the stage.  But, Broadway didn’t dissipate in the face of this change.  Instead, it evolved and became even more ambitious over the years.  And after a while, Hollywood began to take notice and spent millions to bring these blockbuster musicals to the big screen.  These lavish musicals brought out the best in Hollywood, as it turned out to be a good way to promote these new technological advancements like stereo sound and widescreen.  Through the 50’s and 60’s, it became a symbiotic relationship between these two coastal powers; Broadway would produce a certified hit on the stage and then Hollywood would bring it further to the masses on the big screen.  And it propelled the people who made these musicals for the stage into household names: Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner & Lowe, Stephen Sondheim, Tim Rice, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and many more.  Though the musical is resilient, it nevertheless has gone through many changes in order to survive the varying shifts in the culture.  Sometimes that even includes compromising between art and commerce, such as favoring something with a built in audience over something experimental for investment.  This has been the case when we see musicals brought to the stage that are either based on an already established franchise or are delivered by a major studio like Disney or Universal instead of an independent theater troupe.  But still, each generation does see a gamechanger rise out of the industry and pushes the artform to a whole different level.  And that man of the moment for the Broadway musical today happens to be a multi-talented performer named Lin-Manuel Miranda.

New York City native Miranda was raised in the shadow of Broadway all of his life and he’s certainly brought a lot of his own upbringing into his work.  The son of Puerto Rican Americans who emigrated from one island to another, he was raised in a culturally diverse setting that exposed him to a variety of sounds that he would over time fuse together in very interesting ways.  He was schooled in the melodies of the latin beat, hip hop, rap, and yes of course, Broadway show tunes.  And being the unashamed nerd that he is proud to proclaim he is, he even cites stuff like Star Wars and Saturday morning cartoons as inspirations for his art.  And all of it has made him one of the most exciting and innovate voices in the world of theater in a generation.  Thus far, he has written and starred only two musicals for the Broadway stage, but both have been blockbuster hits, making him two for two for Best Musical at the Tony Awards.  The latter of the two, Hamilton, in particular has been the show that has turned him into a household name.  It’s ingenious mix of music styles (with a strong emphasis on hip hop) infused into a story about the American Revolution, and in particular it’s central figure of founding father Alexander Hamilton, just blew everyone away when it first premiered on Broadway in 2015.  And even six years after it’s premiere, it is still a high in demand show, with post-Covid return dates already selling out fast.  Miranda, of course, has not slowed down since.  He immediately launched into a successful transition into Hollywood, gaining a strong collaborative relationship with Disney, writing new songs and even appearing on screen in stuff like Mary Poppins Returns (2018).  And just this year, he’s got a whole bunch of new projects lined up, including his directorial debut, Tick, Tick…Boom (2021) for Netflix, as well as musical scores for two animated films, Vivo for Sony Animation and Encanto for Disney.  But, what is eagerly anticipated right now is a big screen adaptation of the first musical that put him on the map, long before Hamilton.  It’s the semi-autobiographical In the Heights, and people are eager to see if Lin-Manuel Miranda can successfully bring something he made for the stage to the big screen without it loosing any of it’s original charm.

Like Miranda’s own life story, In the Heights is a story about the people who live in the closely knit neighborhood of Washington Heights.  The Heights as they call them sits at the very northern tip of the Island of Manhattan, across the Harlem River from the Bronx, and it has always been a traditionally immigrant neighborhood in New York City.  In the few square blocks of the Heights, you’ll find people who have emmigrated from or are descendents of people from all over Latin America; Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans, Mexicans, etc., all hoping to achieve a piece of the American dream.  But despite all the differences between them, the community acts like a family, all looking out for each other.  At it’s heart is Usnavi (Anthony Ramos) a bodega merchant whose store is a hub of activity for the neighborhood.  His clientele, and extended quasi-family, includes his friend Benny (Corey Hawkins), a dispatcher for a local cab company; Mr. Rosario (Jimmy Smitts), Benny’s boss and father of Benny’s crush, Nina (Leslie Grace), who has returned home from attending college at Stanford; the salon girls Daniela, Carla and Cuca (Daphne Rubin-Vega, Stephanie Beritz, and Dascha Polanco) who work with Vanessa (Melissa Barrera), who Usnavi has a crush on; and finally, “Abuela” Claudia (Olga Merediz) the neighborhood’s adopted matriarch.  Though each of them are there for each other, the characters also have their dreams of moving beyond their hard-knock lives in a neighborhood that is increasingly starting to price them out through gentrification.  For Usnavi, he is right on the verge of making his dream come true.  He’s secured a lease on the old bar that his father used to run in the Dominican Republic in the hopes of revitalizing it and upholding the legacy his family had to put on hold in order to live in America.  Within a matter of days, he’s moving out of the neighborhood and leaving the Heights behind.  But a confluence of events with the people he loves and lives around makes him start to question his future.  By the end, he must decide if El Suenito (or “Little Dream”) is more important to him than what he leaves behind in the Heights itself.

When watching In the Heights, you can definitely see the beginnings of what Lin-Manuel Miranda would later build upon in Hamilton.  His mix of traditional Broadway and hip hop is a style that is uniquely him, and it’s definitely a major part of the musical make-up of In the Heights.  The movie version of this releasing this year is certainly a wealth of riches for any Miranda fan out there, but it is interesting that it wasn’t originally set to release so close to everything else he has in the pipeline.  This was one of those 2020 exiles that had to be pushed back because of the pandemic, and surprisingly in it’s place, we got an unexpected Lin-Manuel placeholder in the middle of that summer season.  Disney+ pushed ahead a planned release of a filmed version of the Hamilton musical on stage to give everyone something exciting to watch while we were all stuck at home.  This was both a blessing and a negative for the uprooted Heights, because one the accessibility of Hamilton now increased awareness of Lin-Manuel’s artistry and made that musical even more popular, but at the same time, it was raising the bar higher for a movie that was supposed to be seen first.  Now that it is finally making it to theaters, in a hybrid release with HBO Max, does In the Heights hold up well to the hype.  I’d say so, though I do feel like it falls short of all-time greatness.  As an exercise in adapting a stage musical for the big screen, I’d say that it does it’s job spectacularly well.  Director Jon M. Chu, who cut his teeth making music videos and dance movies like Step Up (2006) certainly knows how to stage a musical number and with a lot of panache.  You can see inspirations from Busby Berkeley to Jerome Robbins throughout each show stopping musical number, which all works to the movie’s favor as it tries to translate what worked on the stage into something that will work on the screen (which is not as easy as it sounds).  What’s more important is that it compliments Miranda’s music perfectly, matching the energy of the melodies with the flourish of the visuals.  Even if there are things that the movie may fall short on, it at the very least remains entertaining.  And there are plenty of moments throughout where the movie really does soar and takes your breath away.

Unfortunately, the musical moments may be a little too good in this movie, because it ends up minimizing everything else in between.  Whenever the movie goes into dramatic, dialogue driven mode, it does kind of deflate, and you are just hoping that another musical number will bring it back to roaring life.  The non-musical moments are not necessarily bad; they have some genuinely nice moments of humanity strung about.  But, it becomes very clear that most of the effort in this movie went into the musical numbers.  The in between moments don’t have a visual bombast that the musical numbers do.  They are just filmed like a standard movie.  It probably derives from the fact that much of the movie is shot on location, which is a plus, but it also means that it takes on a basic feel whenever the music isn’t filling the scene.  It’s hard to know what they could have done better.  Musicals of the past benefitted from the stylized, closed environments of the movie studios, like Mary Poppins (1964) and My Fair Lady (1964), or an amazingly picturesque place like Salzburg, Austria in The Sound of Music (1965).  For In the Heights, whenever it’s not out in the streets, the movie is in the interior of someone’s rundown apartment, and it’s hard to bring visual excitement to that.  Not that it can’t be done, but when you see the effort put into the musical moments in this movie, those interior scenes really do come off as an afterthought.  It doesn’t ruin the movie as a whole, but it does seem to hold things back a bit. Overall, the movie is lively, but uneven.  At least the heavy duty work is performed by the musical numbers, and they do carry the movie.  Two numbers in particular, “96,000” and “Patience and Faith” may be some of the best musical sequences ever put to film. It’s in those musical numbers where you feel both Chu and Miranda really trying to match their cinematic predecessors and for the most part the movie does emulate the best of the movie musical. I really think that’s what most people are going to take away from this movie in the end, and they’ll be largely pleased by it.

It’s interesting how the movie chose to cast it’s characters as well. Lin-Manuel originated the role of Usnavi on Broadway, something he would later do as well when he played Alexander Hamilton at the center of his own musical, but for this movie, the part went to Hamilton alum Anthony Ramos. Clearly Ramos was someone who Miranda could trust in the role, and Ramos doesn’t disappoint. In fact he brings a little bit more to role than Lin-Manuel likely could’ve on film. Miranda is admittedly an okay singer, with his strength found more in rap. You can forgive him for being a little subpar in something since he excels in so many other fields. Ramos on the other hand not only carries every tune, he is accomplished at rapping and dancing as well. He may not spit fire with as much precision as Miranda, but he keeps up with the man’s complex beats pretty well. The movie’s ensemble is also perfectly suited in their roles as well. It even makes good use of Jimmy Smits, whose a bit of a novice to musicals. The general great chemistry with the entire cast particularly sells the idea of this community as a family, and you’ll find yourself hoping for all of them to find their happy endings. A special mention should go to Olga Merediz, whose Abuela Claudia is the musical’s beating heart. Her performance is absolutely going to knock people out in the theaters, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she is shortlisted for a nomination at next year’s Oscars. Like the best Broadway musicals, it’s the strength of the ensemble that separates the great from the mediocre, and In the Heights has an excellent ensemble that does the musical justice. And those missing Lin-Manuel in the lead will be happy to know that he’s still present in the movie, playing the smaller role of Piraguero, who has his own pleasant story arc in the movie.

I also want to point out the incredible way that the neighborhood of Washington Heights becomes a character within the movie itself. Lin-Manuel, from the outset wanted to tell the story of his childhood home, and help the world discover this little slice of a New York that most people didn’t know that much about. Like I stated earlier, shooting this movie on location in the real Heights gives it this authenticity that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible on a studio lot. What is especially impressive is that the real locations are worked beautifully into the lavish musical numbers, and each helps to make the Heights feel like this special, magical place. The title number in the opening puts a chorus line of dancers in a busy intersection, “96,000” sets an epic dance routine in a community pool, and “Patience and Faith” in a subway car. You really do see an image of the world this neighborhood creates for itself that sprung from the childhood imagination of Lin-Manuel Miranda. And it does for on location shooting the same same kind of cinematic flourish that we saw in musicals like The Sound of Music and La La Land (2016). I’ve never seen the actual Washington Heights, and I’m sure that it’s probably not 100% like it is in this movie, but you can tell this is a story from someone who wants to give back to the place that reared him up, and it’s presented with a great amount of love. It pleases me that the effort to bring that to the big screen brought the filming right into the neighborhood itself, which I’m sure was a boon to the local economy. And in that respect, it does exactly what the best musicals always do, which is transport the audience into its own unique world.

The strengths of the musical, In the Heights, do outweigh the faults, but the shortcomings do bring the musical down a bit from all time heights. It is a long movie (2 1/2 hours) which is on par with most stage productions, but quite a lot for a cinematic experience. And the deflated dramatic moments do make you feel that length. At least when the musical numbers kick into gear the movie doesn’t disappoint. What I especially appreciate is the fact that director Chu was thinking about what would look best on the big screen when staging his musical numbers. Oftentimes, this is something that sinks most musical adaptations for the big screen, as the directors tend to think that you just shoot what worked on the stage. These are two different mediums entirely, and making musicals work for the big screen requires a different visual perspective. It’s something that other adaptations like The Phantom of the Opera (2004) and Les Miserables forgot and took for granted, and ultimately both of those musicals failed to live up to their stage bound counterparts. In the Heights thankfully understands what it’s supposed to be, and it even does a few things different to help it stand on it’s own. As a musical experience, it is interesting to see finally the musical that put Lin-Manuel Miranda on the map. It’s ambitious, but also a humble start, and something that he certainly would build upon when he moved on to his mammoth sophomore effort; the industry redefining Hamilton. I almost wish I had seen this one first last summer, so that I didn’t have Hamilton to judge it by. It’s a little unfair, considering Heights existed in a pre-Hamilton world and was never judged based on this before. Who knows, I may have been a little more forgiving of this movie. In any case, I’m happy this movie is finally out now, and it is very much well worth seeing, especially on a big screen. As Broadway and Hollywood begin to rebuild themselves in a post-COVID world together, it’s hopefully musicals like In the Heights that helps audiences remember what makes musicals so special in the world in the first place.

Rating: 8/10

What the Hell Was That?

What the Hell Was That? – Pearl Harbor (2001)

I remember hearing a quote somewhere about the extent that a healthy amount of religion and patriotism should be injected into our own personal lives, and the one who said the quote commented that both are great things to have in one’s life as long as they are done in good faith and with a sense of humor.  Essentially, it is not a negative thing in life to be religious and patriotic, just as long as you remain humble and respectful about it.  Unfortunately, in our culture, we do not live such subtle lives, and in many cases, people either show too much or too little of either, which are both corrosive to society at large.  Too much patriotism, for example, can lead to jingoistic and exclusionary nationalism, which has led to some dark periods in world history.  A severe lack of pride in one’s home and society can also achieve the opposite effect and lead an individual down a nihilistic route towards anarchy.  Both are dangerous, and it’s a fine line that our culture constantly has to balance in order to function for it’s citizens.  As is often the case, cinema has been an effective tool for pushing forward national agendas, with the intent of promoting exactly what the country expects of it’s citizenry.  Propaganda films have been a part of cinematic history ever since the invention of the medium itself, and has been used throughout the 20th and 21st century to drive national efforts that otherwise would have been hard to manage without the broad reach that movies can provide.  In many cases, propaganda has propelled some terrible political movements in the past, but not all of it’s applications have been negative.  During World War II for example, the combination of wartime propaganda and the talents of Hollywood actually helped the nation come together behind the war effort that eventually saw victory for the Allied forces; something that might have seen a different outcome if our nation had been more divided on the war.  There are good uses of propaganda, but there are also bad uses as well, particularly as the quote says above, when someone uses it in bad faith.

When we look back on the experience of World War II, as we lose more and more people who experienced it first hand every progressive year, what we understand becomes more and more reliant on the artifacts that are left behind.  The personal accounts, as harrowing as they may, from the soldiers who lived it begin to not be as captivating as the propaganda that has endued beyond the war.  A soldier’s story presents the ugly side of war; the sleepless nights, the panic in the thick of battle, the wounds both external and internal, and the many, many defeats that made victory seem unreachable at times.  Propaganda presents the glory of victory, and for many people, including the soldiers who eventually came home, that’s the thing that they wanted to promote in a post-War world.  Unfortunately, it also had the effect of making the culture at large falsely believe that it was invincible, and that led to an unhealthy amount of patriotic fervor in the decades that followed.  It’s the kind of thinking that led to a proliferation in the armed forces despite being in peacetime, which then President Eisenhower decried as a “military industrial complex.”  This also led to a period called the Red Scare where people tried to use patriotic fervor to silence those whose ideologies didn’t line up their own agenda, and it prematurely ended the careers of many people, especially in Hollywood with the infamous Blacklist.  Over time, as attitudes shifted back the other way due to the quagmire of the Vietnam War, the wartime film began to fall out of favor because they were viewed as propaganda tools of a dangerous militaristic view of the past.  However, as the years past, and more soldiers who served in World War II were reaching their twilight years, many people wanted to find some way to respectfully honor the service they gave while not appearing to promote the necessity for armed conflict.  In 1998, Steven Spielberg released Saving Private Ryan, a movie that managed to bridge that gap, portraying an accurate picture of the atrocities of war while at the same time honoring the sacrifice of those who fought in it.  And with Private Ryan, Hollywood found that special movie that balanced patriotism and realism, revitalizing the war film with a modern sensibility.  But, as we know about Hollywood, once one movie succeeds at something, it’s only inevitable that someone else is going to try to replicate it.  And unfortunately, this is where the good faith patriotism of something like Saving Private Ryan gives way to the bad faith exploitation of a Pearl Harbor.

Pearl Harbor’s production came about in a confluence of different factors at the turn of the millennium.  Like I previously mentioned, Saving Private Ryan was a major influence on getting the movie greenlit, but it had less so to do with the message behind the movie and more so to do with it’s substantial $217 million gross at the box office, as well as the 5 Oscars it picked up (including Best Director for Spielberg).  The movie was greenlit at Touchstone Pictures, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company, with uber-producer Jerry Bruckheimer behind it.  Bruckheimer had brought his action movie centric sensibilities to Touchstone and produced two back to back hits for them with a rising star director named Michael Bay, which were The Rock (1996) and Armageddon (1998).  What Bruckheimer, and especially the executives at Disney, liked about Bay the most was that he could deliver big, expensive movies on time and on budget, which was valuable to bottom line conscious investors who wanted to get the most for their money.  Both The Rock and Armageddon, despite mixed to negative reviews, managed to make a healthy profit for the studio, and that gave the Bruckheimer/Bay team more sway over future projects.  When the success of Saving Private Ryan proved that their was an audience for gritty, R-rated war movies out there, it convinced Disney CEO Michael Eisner to jump on the bandwagon and approve development for a big wartime epic of their own.  Pearl Harbor was coming on the heels of a decade that saw a brief revival in the historical epic genre.  With movies like Private Ryan, as well as The English Patient (1996), Braveheart (1995) and the biggest of them all, Titanic (1997), Hollywood was suddenly finding that people were happily consuming big, large scale films that ran 3 hours long or more.  Up to this point, Disney was one of the few studios that had yet to have their own historical epic, and they were now poised to jump into the fray in a big way.  Unfortunately for them, the gamble would not pan out like they had hoped and instead, Pearl Harbor was one of the movies that effectively killed off the historical epic as a viable genre in Hollywood.

Though I have talked mostly about the influence that Saving Private Ryan had on Pearl Harbor’s development, I should also point out that it has a fair amount of influence it owes to the movie Titanic as well.  And in particular, the piggybacking of Titanic is where the movie really becomes an embarrassing misfire.  At the center of the film is a love triangle, between two hot shot pilots (played by Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett) and the army nurse that they both have affection for (played by Kate Beckinsale).  To show just how uneven the movie is as a whole, the love story takes up the first 70 minutes of the 3 hour runtime before the attack on Pearl Harbor actually happens.  It’s roughly the same amount of time devoted to the build up to iceberg strike in Titanic, but there’s a huge difference between how the two movies use that time.  In Titanic, director James Cameron does devote the first half of the movie to bringing his two ill fated lovers together and endearing them to us as an audience.  But, their whirlwind romance also takes the audience on a tour of all parts of the ship itself, which itself is on an ill-fated collision course.  So, while the love story is central, it also functions to build the atmosphere, with scenes like the juxtaposition between the banquet on the upper decks and the party in the lower decks putting us on that ship with the characters themselves.  No such care is given with Pearl Harbor.  It is an achingly shallow love story that feels unconnected with anything of real importance with the actual event.  The characters of Rafe (Affleck) and Danny (Hartnett) do not go on a self-discovery journey like Kate Winslet’s Rose does in Titanic.  They are already pre-set archetypes just fighting over a girl, who herself is barely distinguishable as a character.  What makes this love story so insulting is that it takes precedence over the actual build up to the attack itself.  The movie keeps cutting to intelligence officers learning about advancements of the Japanese navy, with Dan Ackroyd (for some reason) cast in the role.  We also see brief glimpses of the Japanese themselves preparing for battle, in a half-hearted attempt to appear even-handed on their portrayal, which doesn’t work because again, they are merely archetypes.  But all this just seems like Michael Bay spinning plates for an hour so he can get to what he really wants to do; blowing shit up.

Truth be told, when the movie does get to the actual attack itself, it does finally start to come alive.  Michael Bay, for all his faults, is an expert craftsman, and he manages to depict the attack on Pearl Harbor with an impressive sense of scale.  But even here, the movie doesn’t work as well as it thinks it does.  While there are some really impressive moments captured on screen, including actual pyrotechnic explosions ignited on real battleships, it at times feels more exploitative of what happened than actually presenting a genuine portrayal of the day’s events.  In particular, the movie features one too many indulgent Bay moments, where the director just ends up showing off.  One of the most famous of these is the famous falling bomb shot that was featured heavily in the movie’s trailer.  Using heavy amounts of CGI, this shot in particular starts off from the sky showing one of the Japanese war planes releasing it’s payload.  Instead of cutting away, the camera then follows behind the bomb as it drops down to it’s target below, either the USS Arizona or the USS Oklahoma, one of the many that sank that day.  It’s a big epic shot that director’s like Michael Bay believes as a shining example of their talents as a filmmaker.  But the problem is, that shot shows an actual moment that happened in real life, and it just comes across as exploiting real tragedy for the sake of artistic indulgence.  Going back to Titanic, James Cameron makes you feel for the hundreds of unknown faces aboard the ship as it sinks, because we see the terror in their eyes, helping us to see the reality of their situation.  No such care is given to showing all the soldiers, pilots, and sailors coming under fire from the hailstorm of bullet fire in Pearl Harbor.  They are just pawns in greater scheme of things within the movie.

Though I don’t think it was the intention of Michael Bay or Jerry Bruckheimer, but their lack of attention to the actual bravery of those who were there at Pearl Harbor in many ways is as disrespectful to the memory of the people who died that day than anything else.  In the movie, we get big swooping shots of the mayhem, but the people caught underneath the action are just faceless extras, that the movie almost seems to delight in slaughtering throughout.  Again, this is not what Bay intended and I’m sure he wanted to go in respectful of those who died.  But the fact is, his strengths as a director is ill-suited for this kind of movie.  He is best suited for escapist entertainment, where stakes are nowhere near as high.  But, when he applies his indulgences to a real tragedy, it belittles the true history in a way that just feels wrong.  It’s compounded by the fact that the movie really has no direction in it’s story.  The aforementioned love story really just hits pause so the attack scene can play out, and then the movie awkwardly tries to restart it again thereafter.  It also doesn’t help that the characters are so thinly drawn that you end up not caring who lives and who dies by the end.  And this includes a cast with a lot of actors who would go on to better things, like Michael Shannon in an early role and the future Mrs. Affleck, Jennifer Garner, in a blink and you’ll miss it supporting role.  Perhaps the most egregious example of wasted casting is in the inclusion of a real life hero named Dorie Miller, a low ranking African-American naval cook who broke ranks and commandeered artillery aboard his under siege battleship and managed to successfully shoot down a couple Japanese planes, saving countless of his fellow officers.  He was awarded the Navy Cross for his act of bravery, the first African-American to receive the honor.   Private Miller’s story is worthy of a movie on it’s own, and Pearl Harbor did cast the part well with Oscar-winner Cuba Gooding Jr.  Unfortunately, his presence in the movie is miniscule, and it almost feels like Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer put it in there merely as window-dressing.  Pvt. Miller and many other soldiers like him deserved better than to have their true life heroism and sacrifice take a back seat to fictional love triangle that we care nothing about.

It goes back to the question of why exactly did this movie need to be made.  It doesn’t honor the people involved in the actual “day of infamy.”  It’s love story is shallow and unimaginative.  And it offers no real message about the nature of war itself and America’s role in fighting in it.  It’s not even good as a piece of propaganda.  Michael Bay, for one thing, sure is trying hard to connect his movie with some patriotic fervor.  I can’t tell you how many shots there are in this movie where the Stars and Stripes are clearly visible, but it’s a lot.  Granted, it takes place at a time when such a thing would have been normal, as patriotism was strongly connected with the war effort, with the Uncle Sam “I Want You” posters plastered seemingly on every wall.  But, Bay also throws in a lot of glory shots of the flags and the soldiers and the weapons of war throughout the movie, almost to the point of parody.  As the film goes along, these glory shots feel hollow, with a significant tendency towards pandering.  The reason why it doesn’t work as well as Michael Bay seems to think it does is because it’s just spotlighting the artifice of what the movie actually represents.  Even when the movie first came out 20 years ago, audiences immediately sniffed out what it was trying to be.  It was a major studio trying to capitalize on a trend and not understanding that it’s a formula you can’t replicate.  Titanic worked because it didn’t try to show off it’s artifice  to the audience and instead focused on bringing everything to life in stunning detail.  Saving Private Ryan worked because it put us in the life of a soldier without trying to sanitize a thing, and showed us the real graphic cost of war.  Touchstone, and by extension Disney, only saw the potential for profit with Pearl Harbor, and didn’t even consider how it would reflect on the legacy of the actual event.  Strangely enough, Pearl Harbor came at a time when such a brazen cash grab wouldn’t be viewed as something problematic.  It came out on Memorial Day weekend in 2001 to mild box office success and mostly poor reviews.  A couple of months later, the 9/11 attacks occurred, with carnage and horrific imagery eerily reminiscent of the Pearl Harbor attack.  Suddenly, America was reminded of what such an event feels like, and it ended up refocusing Hollywood on what the right approach is to depicting a horrific national tragedy on the big screen.  In particular, Pearl Harbor stood out in this new atmosphere as an example of how not to portray a tragedy on screen.

Overall, the biggest failure of Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor is that it teaches no lessons about the events of that day, and instead just stands as another mindless action spectacle.  Like the case of Pvt. Dorie Miller, there are so many fascinating stories that could have been told about the events of Pearl Harbor, and instead, the movie just panders an easy to swallow story and message to it’s audience.  One thing that I am happy about in the long run is that Pearl Harbor is such a universally reviled movie that nobody is going out of their way to turn it into a propaganda tool for their own agenda.  I’m especially glad that the movie came out before the events of 9/11, because if it came out after, you might have had a lot of bad faith propagandists latch onto it and proclaim it falsely as a bright example of American patriotism, thereby using it as a tool in the ever increasingly vapid “culture wars.”  Imagine right wing pundits suddenly saying if we don’t like the movie (which most people don’t, left and right) than you hate America, like so many of them have done over the years to a variety of cultural hot buttons.  I often hear the claim that movies like Pearl Harbor recall back to a time when America had pride in itself, like the movies made during the war.  I’m not saying propaganda movies of the war era are not valid works of art (Casablanca for example).  It’s just that many reflected the times they were in and culture is not set in stone.  Pearl Harbor‘s jingoistic patriotism works as a detriment and not a positive, and it’s a clear example of how improperly patriotism can be used in the culture at large.  I think that it is interesting that in the same year that Pearl Harbor made it to the big screen that Jerry Bruckheimer made another war film starring Josh Hartnett that was more true to the wartime experience; that movie being Black Hawk Down (2001).  In that film, the movie focuses solely on the experience of soldiers caught in the middle of a losing battle (a little remembered skirmish in Somalia in 1993), and more accurately depicted the terror or war while at the same time honoring the fighters who were in it.  It probably helped that legendary filmmaker Ridley Scott was behind the camera on that one.  But like Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down doesn’t revel in it’s cinematic indulgences, and instead presents what happened unvarnished.  Pearl Harbor failed because it was trying to please everyone with an easy to digest, PG-13 presentation, and in the end just ended up dishonoring the memory of those who lived through it.  Cinema is a powerful propaganda tool, but it’s only used at it’s best when it is built upon honesty and done in good faith.  Pearl Harbor was just a dud of a bomb that neither improved the world nor set it on fire.