John Carter

I was all set to give John Carter a fair shot.  I like and respect the previous work of its director, Andrew Stanton, I’m always up for a science fiction adventure, and the love interest is pretty.  For its part, John Carter did its best to wow me.  It had all the elements of an exciting story, it introduced cool creatures and civilizations, and it ended in a rousing battle of good vs. evil.  Unfortunately, the film felt flat.  It put me off right at the beginning, and I never could bring myself to invest in what was happening onscreen.

John Carter begins with two false starts.  They make sense by the time the closing credits roll, but they made me hesitate to commit once the main story got underway.  Once the story does get moving, we’re introduced to the eponymous Carter, realize it’s a year or two after the close of the Civil War, and learn that Carter was a Confederate cavalry officer in that war.  Judging by his conduct toward the U.S. Army officer who wants his help for something, we gather that he has a deep hatred for the Union and the soldiers who fought for it.

Ok, you lost me right there.  The Confederate cause, which they labeled “states’ rights,” was actually the right of states not only to choose to enslave human beings, but to extend the Peculiar Institution to newly chartered states and territories.  Screw anyone and everyone who was on board with that program.  [Personal aside #1: I have children in Florida public schools.  The Ellermann family position on the Civil War does not go over well.]  [Personal aside #2: I can’t wait to leave.]  John Carter didn’t bother to give its protagonist exculpatory dialogue, so I began the story in opposition to him.  When he finds himself on Mars and clapped into chains, I thought, “Serves him right.”

Dominic West, whom everyone who has seen ‘The Wire’ thinks is a great guy, plays the antagonist.  He’s a Martian warlord who’s supposed to be really evil, but is no more evil than any number of other conquerors in history.  Had John Carter allowed him to Rickman it up and have some fun, we might have enjoyed him.  He plays the material straight, however, which made our only grounds for opposition the fact that he meant to unify his planet. 

Unfortunately, I never had a reason to oppose his conquest beyond a general sense of “conquest is bad.”  The “good guy” city-state, led by the great Ciaran Hinds and represented by the remarkably attractive Lynn Collins, didn’t show me why it was better than Westville.  In fact, it was led by a moron and had a princess who was willing to sacrifice untold numbers of her subjects’ lives to avoid marrying someone she didn’t like because “that’s no way to live.”  Sure thing, lady.  Tell it to the widows and orphans of the men you sacrificed on the altar of your quality of life.  The other sentient race we met, which also feared Western domination, was brutish and nasty and could have used a little Baltimore justice.

And away we go, I guess.  John Carter does a fish-out-of water thing when Carter first arrives on the planet, then kicks over to a reluctant hero narrative with space monsters and a princess whose costume design could have used a little more Frazetta and little less drapery.  It has sword fights and laser beams and betrayals and heroics and all the hallmarks of a grand adventure, but I never had a dog in the fight.

I’ve seen Stanton run rings around stories like this in Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and WALL-E. Next time around, here’s hoping he returns to form and gives us heroes we can root for, villains we can love to hate, an adventure we can get into, and some depth of meaning.  Unfortunately, John Carter simply does not deliver.

Synecdoche, New York

SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK made me want to jump off a cliff. A 50-footer, with a sheer face standing against the swell of a royal blue sea. It made me want to stand on the precipice, feeling the sun on my face and the wind on my body. It made me want to leap forward, chest out, arms back, and feet together, and fall a perfect arc through the air before clasping my hands above my head, tucking my chin into my chest, and entering the ocean like a knife into butter. It made me want to relish the sharp contrast of warm air to cold water, revel in the sharp forces of momentum and buoyancy when I arch my back to change my body’s direction and stroke the two short meters back to the surface. It made me want to live, to revel in being alive, to bask in the joy of simple existence. And it did it because SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK doesn’t understand what it means to be alive. Not at all.

This film is so consumed with death, so focused on the existential dilemma, that it forgets what makes life valuable in the first place. Its protagonist ignores his family in favor of obituaries, which he reads not as celebrations of lives but as harbingers of doom. When his family chooses to ignore him, he wallows in self-pity. He feels stunted and frustrated with his career putting on the theatrical Standards for the people of Schenectady. When given the freedom create his own original work, he puts on nothing for nobody, wallowing in his sense of importance but refusing ever to actually put his work out there to succeed or fail. He wants, he wants, he wants, but he gives so very little. He doesn’t get it: he never does. And the film wants us to take this journey with him, wants us to find meaning in his lack of such, wants us to feel the existential dilemma for ourselves.

But there is no dilemma. We live. We die. We like to tell ourselves that there’s more to come but, in our heart of hearts, we doubt it. We do some good, we do some bad. And we have a choice. We can run away from life in contemplation of death, or futility, or the inevitability of physical and mental decline. Or we can embrace life, embrace everything about it, do the good we can and avoid the evil we can. We can laugh and cry and love and hurt and run and fall. We can succeed spectacularly and we can fail miserably and, occasionally, we can touch a higher plane that we think does not exist but, in our heart of hearts, we know really does. And we’re gonna die. You’re gonna die and I’m gonna die. Even the Sun is gonna die, a blink of an eye on the galactic timeline. But while we’re here, while we have minds to think and bodies to feel, we can revel in the joy of existence.

SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK doesn’t even know that joy exists, so I’ve got no time for it. I’ve got living to do.