Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by clarkjohnsen (R) on July 19, 2004 at 10:10:34

Hollywood's blockbuster new idea: Give big films to brilliant directors

By Wesley Morris, Globe Staff

Unlike a lot of towns, Hollywood has a pretty good recycling program. Plastic formulas get reused. Tin dialogue won't go away. Paper-thin concepts come back again and again. But here's an industry trend I can actually get behind: farming out seasonal blockbusters and would-be megafranchises to brilliant directors. It's good for the Hollywood environment and for us.

Sam Raimi has superbly done both "Spider-Man" movies. Alfonso Cuaron gave "Harry Potter" new life in the third installment, and Paul Greengrass has been given the reins to the latest Jason Bourne movie, "The Bourne Supremacy," which opens Friday.

None of these guys is what you'd call industry-bred, and early on none of them had anything you'd call a big commercial success, so there's no reason to think they've gotten these movies as rewards for their box-office clout. Until a few years ago, Raimi specialized in B movies. Cuaron is a sort of magic-realist who places his emphasis on realist. And in 2002, Greengrass made "Bloody Sunday," a searing and politically bleak reenactment of the 1972 Derry, Ireland, massacre. And yet each man has been hitched to a major summer movie that could've been given to the latest enrollee in the Jerry Bruckheimer action academy (no offense to

Antoine Fuqua, director of "King Arthur") or a proven workhorse like Wolfgang Petersen, who made "Troy." Is it crazy to think that Hollywood has turned a corner since Peter Jackson made a ton of money, won a lot of awards, and turned both snobs and skeptics into Hobbit lovers? Before "The Lord of the Rings," Jackson was merely the slovenly schlockmeister responsible for puppet grotesques, "Heavenly Creatures," and that Michael J. Fox vehicle "The Frighteners." Now he's an indomitable auteur -- and one with hundred million dollar budgets.

Other clever filmmakers seem to be following Jackson's lead. Among them is Christopher Nolan, the director of "Memento" and "Insomnia," who's working on the new "Batman." It's worth noting that this auteurs-doing-blockbusters business is traceable to the director of the "old" "Batman," Tim Burton, who, at his most inspired and least inhibited, cleverly outfits mainstream movies in his idiosyncrasies.

The results this summer have been especially good. Movie ads turn up something you rarely see during this time of year: studios bragging about all the critics who love their movies. Not just for a gem like "Before Sunset," which might be the most adored movie of the season so far, but for breadwinners such as "Spider-Man 2" and "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban."

Both are soulful films and would be exceptional regardless of when they were released, but both bear the imprints of their makers -- as opposed to their studios -- in ways rarely seen. Both are character-driven affairs wedded to stories rather than to a series of speaker-bruising action sequences that happen to contain people. In other words, it's hard to see either picture making a direct donation to the country's theme parks, unless the Peter Parker-Harry Potter Existential Crisis Coaster sounds like the ride for you.

In the last four years, somehow the film industry as a whole has caught on, turning over big-deal movies to men (female directors seem to be on the bench on this one, and the guys, for the most part, are white) who seem willing to do much more than just gratify the lowest common denominator. For example, Bryan Singer made "The Usual Suspects" and the overlooked Nazi-next-door thriller "Apt Pupil" before giving psychological and political depth to the two "X-Men" films. Who can say if the movie's mutant heroes and villains and its social themes would have had the same resonance with a different director?

In a sense, it seems moot to wonder. A competent director will get the job done every time, but a visionary one can do more than meet the bottom line. Raimi, with this second Spider-Man movie, has rekindled the cheeky schlock part of himself that's been dormant for the better part of a decade. But more important is that he's found a way to fuse his splatter-flick roots with both the movie's demand for digital effects and its character-driven story. This is that rare adventure movie whose action sequences are of a piece with its character development. Only when stopping a speeding subway does a self-questioning Peter Parker realize that he has to be Spider-Man; it's the only one of his many jobs that he's any good at.

"Competent" is the word to describe Chris Columbus's handling of the first two installments of the Harry Potter movies. Yet it's easy to see why someone would think Columbus an easy fit for a movie about a kid fending for himself against recurring villainy -- that's the basic script for his "Home Alone" flicks. But could any old experienced director have done "Harry Potter"? Probably, but if you're going to pump millions of dollars into a movie, wouldn't you want someone more than merely competent to spend it?

Cuaron made two highly interesting Hollywood pictures -- "A Little Princess" in 1995 and, three years later, the "Great Expectations" that starred Ethan Hawke as Pip. In 2002's "Y Tu Mama Tambien," Cuaron turned two boys, one woman, and their road trip across Mexico into a work of eroticism and emotionalism. What his movies share is an urgent modernity and strong sense of mature enchantment. If anyone was qualified to make a third volume of "Harry Potter" seem contemporary while avidly believing in J. K. Rowling's spells and magic, it was Cuaron.

"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" is alive in a way the first two movies weren't. Columbus bulldozed the kids into baroque set pieces that felt detached, like stages of a video games. With Cuaron, the characters seem more like feeling, yearning real-world teenagers. In "Azkaban," Cuaron's somber tone is established early, but he's upbeat enough to keep things spirited. His directorial flourishes -- I'm thinking of that sublime sequence in which Harry and Hermione double themselves and hop into a parallel universe -- are bonuses for people who'd like more movies to play with time and space.

Of course, hooking up artsy filmmakers to expensive blockbusters doesn't always excite everybody. I still feel like the only person who thought Ang Lee and James Schamus's treatment of "The Hulk" last summer was formally inventive and thunderously emotional. The movie brought out an aggressive, almost fun side of Lee. Who knew he even had an id?

Real directors have the power to give a film an identity greater than its mere brand, presumably because they care more about ideas and emotional and psychological complexity than hacks do. The brand has an opportunity to expand in more human ways: Spider-Man is more than a dude in a mask. Harry Potter is not simply a wand-waving nerd. And Jason Bourne isn't some mindless assassin. Maybe they're still action figures, which means they're still required to stop runaway trains, cast spells, and snipe targets atop distant roofs. But if boys have to be boys, it's a huge relief to know that their directors are confident enough to keep them conflicted about it.

Wesley Morris can be reached wmorris@globe.com.