By D.K. Holm
December 13, 2005
[nota bene: The following column, by necessity, contains some spoilers! If you don't want to know the ending of the movies mentioned, don't read on.]
The Frightener
KING KONG
Peter Jackson's KING KONG opens, after its monolithic title card, with a close up of a small example of the monkey family, whom we soon learn is in a cage. From that shot, Jackson moves briskly to further animals — a lion roaring, an orangutan covering himself up, all caged. From these zoo-bound wild animals Jackson transitions to a Hooverville, a mud bogged city of portmanteau shanties inhabited by the poorest of the poor.
So who's really in a cage?
The animals probably have it a lot better. The economic prison is as bad as the bars that cage the animals, if not worse, because the human beings carry them where ever they go. Almost everyone in this movie is motivated by either money or hunger. Except Kong, that is. He's about the only person who does anything for love.
Carl Denham (Jack Black) is the filmmaker of quasi-documentary tales, a sort of louche Robert Flaherty. He's seeking backing for his latest epic, which, as KING KONG unfurls, we learn entails penetrating the mysterious Skull Island where a mythical beast is said to live (in the original KONG, the biggest resident lived on Skull Mountain). There is a trace element of idealism to this madcap director. Denham is willing to do anything to get his film made. But foremost is his desire to make cash.
Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts, more luminous than ever) is an aspiring actress, trapped temporarily in a vaudeville house, while yearning to appear in the plays of one Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody). But when her theater is shut down, Ann's only option is starve or work in a girlie theater. She can't quite bring herself to take that plunge, however, and Denham happens to spy her outside the theater at a crucial moment, when he is looking for a replacement actress to cruise with him to Skull Island.
Jackson's KING KONG (in an extension of both the 1933 version by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, and John Guillermin's 1976 version of Dino De Laurentiis) is divided roughly into four parts. The first hour is all set up, back story, character development, and era-establishing, in Manhattan, then on the Venture. Rarely has a commercial filmmaker since James Cameron spent so much time making you feel the reality of his characters and where they are coming from.
The second part is all aboard the Venture. Here there is yet further character development and the introduction of a whole new batch of characters. Suffice it to say that this section is much more fleshed out than Cooper's.
The third part is Skull Island, which is, as everyone will say, a Jurassic Park for social Darwinists. But Skull Island has other inhabitants besides Kong and the dinosaurs. There are the indigenous natives, who live on a spit of land between the rocky coast and the huge wall of China that protects them from the jungle, and through which they pay obeisance to Kong with the occasional morsel of a human snack. Liked the caged animals in the Central Park zoo and the denizens of Hooverville, the indigenous tribe is debased, the lowest of creatures, not really racially pegable, and made even more horrendous by their taut skin, their yellowed teeth, and the ghastly crystallizing that the rain does to their hair.
Finally, the last 45 minutes takes place in New York, portraying the incarceration and the long drawn out demise of Kong, after terrorizing the city and finally meeting back up with Beauty.
After the worldwide success of his LORD OF THE RINGS adaptations, Jackson chose to re-enter the realm of digital animation, treks, and big monsters, instead of doing something "small," that constant grail of directors naturally attracted to the big. But if, like me, you sort of signed with disappointment to hear that Jackson was going to do another KONG, which sounded like a crudely commercial choice, it soon become evident in the film that Jackson has a real fascination with and feel for the material, and in fact Jackson has been obsessed with the original KING KONG all his life (as a kid he tried to film his own version, likes those teens who remade RAIDERS). Jackson even recreates the original tree bridge famous from the first film.
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It's easy to assume that Jackson identifies to a certain degree with Denham. As the film begins Denham is talking to uncomprehending producers about his grand vision for a film. Surely, this bears witness to some of Jackson's own experience. Denham may also embody certain unsavory aspects of himself that Jackson might recognize privately but also knows he must have in order to succeed in the tough world of filmmaking.
But there is also some of Jackson in Driscoll. Driscoll is perhaps the most idealized and idealizing figure in the film. A cross between Barton Fink and David Shayne (from Woody Allen's BULLETS OVER BROADWAY), he is a guy slumming in the world of movies while waiting for theatrical inspiration, yet who ends up writing a popular comedy instead of a serious drama. Might this reflect competing pulls in Jackson's soul? (And maybe there is a bit of wishful thinking, a residue of adolescent in that the world's most beautiful woman has a crush on Driscoll.)
There is even some "Jackson" in Darrow. Her attempt to "repay" or befriend Kong on the island by doing her burlesque act is the equivalent of a little kid thinking that he can befriend the monsters in the movies he is obsessed with.
But there is also Kong.
In moments of animal repose, Kong gazes out at a beautiful sunset, of a type which Jackson himself may have seen a thousand times in his own hometown of Wellington. But he is also big, strong, and crafty, never at all a "villain"; rather, more like Frankenstein's monster, a tragic figure, and thus a source of pity and identification for teenage mentalities (One might guess that a motivating factor in Jackson's remarkable recent weight loss is a desire not to be compared physically to the behemoth in magazine profiles and reviews.)
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If you are like me, you probably read the early draft of the KING KONG script on line. It's clear, and Jackson has said so in interviews, that he learned a lot from making the RINGS cycle, and he thoroughly dumped that version to do something more fleshed out, detailed, and emotional. He also dropped a prologue set among pilots in WW1. Most important, the second time around he took the original film seriously, more seriously than it took itself, wagering that the audience would be way ahead of him in terms of loyalty to the 25-foot beast, of being invested emotionally in the bizarre love affair between human being and ape. The lengthy set up of Jackson's KONG is essential if we are too find the love itself at all plausible.
By the way, the early trailers contain a scene that is not in the finished film, in which Denham is shooting a reaction shot and a scream from Darrow, during which they hear the roar of Kong. This scene will probably be in the second, three disc DVD of KONG, next fall.
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If Jackson's KING KONG has a flaw it is only that Darrow hugs Driscoll on the roof of the Empire State Building after Kong's demise. The love between Darrow and Kong is so much more powerful and emotional than that between the two human beings that Driscoll's presence in the last 30 minutes is something of an afterthought. For me, the greatest moment occurs right in the middle of the film, just before yet another of a series of bravura action scenes on Skull Island. You've seen part of the sequence in one of the trailers. Darrow turns a corner and there's a dinosaur ready to eat her up. She backs up and here's a huge thud, and there's Kong, leaving her frailly between two sources of painful death. But sensing that Kong will protect her, Darrow backs up between Kong's legs. The succession of expressions on Watt's face, from, first, chagrin that threat (Kong) has been piled on threat (dinosaur), to defiance at the dinosaur as she seeks shelter from Kong, is wonderful. It's one of the best non-verbal moments in cinema this year, if not so far this century.
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And incidentally, if you are interested in KILL BILL, you might find my new book, KILL BILL: AN UNOFFICIAL CASEBOOK useful. It is now available in fine bookstores everywhere, or from Amazon.
I've got a new book out on an aspect of film noir I call film soleil, titled simply FILM SOLEIL. It is sure to alter film criticism as we know it to its very core. Order it now!
And if you are interested in what I sound like, I can be heard on KBOO radio (90.7 FM) the second and the fourth Wednesday of the month, at 9 AM in the morning (Pacific Standard Time) on Ed Goldberg's show MOVIE TALK along with Dawn Taylor. It's available via streaming audio (in 20 Kbps Stereo). The next broadcast is Wednesday, December 14, at 9 AM.
COMING SOON:Numerous Alfred Hitchcock films, the 3rd Annual DVD Tray of Terror, FLIGHTPLAN and REDEYE, DEAD AND BREAKFAST, REMINGTON STEEL and other TV mystery shows, many STAR TREKS, and more!
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