Wonder Woman (2017)

Wonder Woman (2017)

Director: Patty Jenkins

Cast: Gal Gadot, Chris  Pine, Danny Huston, David Thewlis

 I know Hollywood would have us believe otherwise, but for me, Summer Blockbuster Season begins with the summer and that’s June 1^st and so, to officially kick off this Summer Blockbuster Season 2017 we begin with the first big movie of the summer, Wonder Woman (2017). Here’s the thing with female laden Hollywood films, studios have little faith in them. More often than not, they tank at the box office. Examples of this are films like Supergirl (1984), Catwoman (2004), Elektra (2005), Barbwire (1996), Aeon Flux (2005) and most recently Ghostbusters (2016) to name a few of the ones that have underperformed. If you ask me, these movies tanked, not because they starred women, but because they were not very good, in fact, a lot of them are terrible. Which brought me to believe that Hollywood purposely made movies starring women terrible, because Hollywood is run by a bunch of chauvinist pigs and they don’t want female films to make it on the big screen. But that’s my conspiracy theory version of things. With Wonder Woman, it looks like things are changing for movies starring female superheroes. Could things be looking up for them?  

I applaud film studios who are trying to break with those old fashioned stereo types towards women. For example, I applaud Disney films because they are trying to break with these stereo types by putting female leads in the Star Wars movies. I applaud filmmakers like George Miller, for making Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) about Imperator Furiosa’s story rather than Max Rockatansky’s story. Point is, if you guys have been reading my blog for a while, you know I am against being gender biased, I believe men and women should be given equal opportunities in Hollywood. So yes, I am against female actresses being paid less than male actors, I am against the female prototype of the “damsel in distress” and I also believe that there should be more female voices in filmmaking, which is why I love the fact that Wonder Woman (2017) was directed by Patty Jenkins, the female director behind the Academy Award winning Monster (2003). So we have a woman, directing a film about Wonder Woman, the biggest baddest of all of the female super heroes. Is the movie any good?

There’s something really weird happening with this film, people seem to love it collectively even before seeing it. It’s like everybody has already decided that they will love it. I think it has to do with the fact that Wonder Woman was probably the best thing about Batman vs. Superman (2016), or it could be that feminism is at an all time high, or it could be that people want Hollywoods portrayal of women on films to change. Whatever the case may be, I went to see the film last night and all the shows were sold out. Reviews are calling it “the best superhero movie ever made”. The are also calling it the best DC movie to date. But was it really that good? After all the ultra positive reviews and buzz, of course my expectations were high. Did I enjoy it as much as I thought I would? 

Well, it’s not “the best comic book movie ever” but I did enjoy it. I do think it’s better than some of the films that DC has put out. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t mindblowingly good. It was just good. And that aint bad!  I am glad that it wasn’t directed by Zack Snyder, the guy who’s directed practically ever DC movie for years now. It’s not that I hate the guy as a director, but I just wanted to see someone else’s take on the DC Universe. On Wonder Woman, you feel exactly that. This is a female’s take on the super hero film, which is refreshing. Wonder Woman has a lot of heart to it, there’s romance, there’s compassion, Wonder Woman is driven by love. The film is as ‘girly’ as it should be. After all, this is the superhero film told from a female perspective, so of course, while Wonder Woman is a strong female character who kicks ass when she has too, she’s also very sensitive, she’s concerned about the importance of human life, she loves babies, she has a sensibility to her that’s sorely missing on male laden comic book films in which super heroes destroy whole cities without so much as flinching. It was refreshing in this sense.

What is most important about Wonder Woman in my book is that it’s making a statement for women across the world, and for women in cinema in general, so of course the film makes references to gender issues. It goes into how men think vs. how women think. The ladies in the audience will be pleased, the film switches the age old “lady in distress” cinematic trope, to the lesser seen “man in distress” situation. As it turns out, it’s the woman saving the guys on this movie. The men are the supporting characters, it basically takes gender roles we’ve seen in films for decades and turns them upside down and this is good. It’s not about man hating either. Wonder Woman falls for Chris Pine’s character, she finds him attractive, so it’s not about “Men suck! Long live women!”, it’s more about speaking up for women, changing mentalities, breaking with old paradigms towards women in society.

So these aspects make Wonder Woman an important comic book movie. Is it a good comic book film? Sure, it’s an origin story. It has action, it has good special effects. In essence it’s a fish out of water story, with Wonder Woman encountering society for the first time. Having been brought up in the mystical island of Themyscira, the real world is a new experience for her. She gets to enter the “world of men”, a world she immediately clashes with, having been brought up in an all female society. It’s a faithful translation from comic book to film, we get Amazonian warrior women, we get her magic lasso, bullets ricochet from her bracelets, this is Wonder Woman and she kicks as much ass as you’d expect her to. Gal Gadot owns the character and makes it hers.It’s a good beginning for the character. Here’s hoping subsequent films get bigger and better, but for now I’d say Wonder Woman is off to a good start. So finally, we have a good female laden super hero film! And it's name is Wonder Woman! Go see it, it's the movie of the moment for good reason.

Rating: 4 out of 5  

The Zero Theorem (2013)

Title: The Zero Theorem (2013)

Director: Terry Gilliam

Cast: Christoph Waltz, Lucas Hedges, David Thewlis, Matt Damon, Tilda Swinton, Peter Stormare

I hold director Terry Gilliam in very high esteem; he has been one my favorite directors since…forever. He and I have a kinship, we are on the same channel, we see the world in the same way, a world  filled with bureaucracy, big corporations and governments trying to feverishly stomp out what’s left of our humanity, our imaginations, our dreams. It’s this particular world view that is always mirrored in his films. There’s this theory in the world of cinema that says that every director keeps making the same film over and over again until he or she dies, this theory holds true for many directors. They don’t always tell the same exact story, but they do play with the same themes over and over again. For example, Gilliam’s films usually deal with characters that escape the horrors of this world by dreaming of a better one. In Gilliam’s films, the great escape is our minds. One of Gilliam’s first films, Time Bandits (1981), is about a little boy who avoids his dismal family life by escaping to the fantastic worlds he finds in his books, in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) the Baron helps an entire town escape the horrors of war by entertaining them with his tall tales and in The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (2009) Gilliam showed us how our imaginations are really a mirror of ourselves. How what he shows us in his films, is really a reflection of us, of humanity. And now we’ve got The Zero Theorem (2013), does Gilliam play with his favorite themes once again?

The man, The myth, The Legend, Director Terry Gilliam on the set of The Zero Theorem

 In The Zero Theorem we follow the life of Qohen Leth, a computer programmer, who works for a company called ManCom. The problem with Qohen is that he’s tired of the repetitive work; he hates to go out into the world, face the noise. In this way he reminded me of the man who turns into a cockroach because he doesn’t want to leave his home to go to work in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. In The Zero Theorem, Qohen believes he can be more productive working from his home, so he wants to meet with management to propose the idea to them. To his surprise, management says “yes” but on one condition, that instead of doing the usual work he does, he must instead attempt to solve “The Zero Theorem”. What exactly is the Zero Theorem and can Qohen solve it?

The original title for Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985) was ‘1984 ½’, this unused title referenced both George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece ‘1984’ and Federico Fellini’s  8 1/2 (1963), so from very early on in his career Gilliam had an affinity for Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece and Fellini's surreal film. In Orwell's 1984 the government has sucked the wonder out of life and people simply work to produce, to form part of the whole. In this novel, all individuality has been eradicated from society. All these Orwellian themes can be found in The Zero Theorem; for example, when Qohen talks, he refers to himself as “We” never as “I” which lets us see he is so oppressed by ‘the system’ that he has ceased to stop thinking of himself, he only thinks of the group. The Zero Theorem also echoes Federico Fellini’s 8 ½ because it’s a film whose main character is constantly dreaming in an attempt to escape the hectic demands of his life; Qohen escapes to the virtual world, the only place where he can find peace. So yes, this new film has all the usual Gilliam influences, with the added element that Gilliam now comments on the digital age we live in, in The Zero Theorem his characters don’t just escape to their dream worlds, they escape to virtual dream worlds. 

A lot of folks are referring to The Zero Theorem as the last chapter in Gilliam’s ‘satirical dystopian trilogy’ a trio of films consisting of The Zero Theorem, 12 Monkeys (1995) and Brazil (1985). The reason being that these films all share the same idea of man trying to survive in a crazy, out of control future where a totalitarian government has brought humanity to a horrible, lifeless end. For example, the main character in Brazil was Sam Lowry, an office dweller who works in a small cubicle, crunching numbers, not at all that different from Qohen, who feverishly works on his computer, without a second to blink. There’s a moment in which Qohen (brilliantly played by Christoph Waltz) is trying to solve the Zero Theorem and as he is almost there, he’s face lights up in ecstasy, like he was high on some drug, not all that different from when we plug into a video game and solve it. I’m sure Gilliam was commenting on this as well, we work hours in an office only to come home and unwind in front of a television screen, trying to solve a meaningless puzzle, called a video game. Every time we pass to the next level, we get this little rush, this feeling of achievement which amounts to nothing? This reminds me of how the film constantly reminds us that 100% = 0.

The Zero Theorem also explores the idea of religion and the existence of God; yes my friends, on this film Gilliam ponders the big questions. Why are we here? What does it all mean? Is God real? You see, throughout the film Qohen is always waiting for a phone call, a mysterious phone call that will give him an answer to a question that even Qohen doesn’t fully understand, yet he’s waiting for it. Kind of like those people waiting for God to talk to them, they spend their entire lives waiting to hear that voice. In the film, it is understood that Qohen is suffering from some type of insanity because of this illusion he lives under, not unlike your typical Jesus Freak, always expecting for God to talk to them, always waiting for God to solve their lives, to tell them what to do, to answer the big questions for them. Even though the film alludes to Qohen being insane, I wouldn’t say he is. He’s simply living a lie, slowly uncovering the truth, learning that he’s been taken for a fool. The truth is ‘the call’ is a delusion. No one is going to call you. You gotta take the reins of your life. It is sad to see Qohen under such mental stress over these matters, which is probably what the filmmakers want us to notice, the unnecessary mental struggle that religion puts you through. But still, those big questions remain unanswered. Who will answer them? Will they ever get answered?  

There’s so much more to The Zero Theorem than what I’ve mentioned here, it’s the kind of film that begs to be seen more than once. I for one need to give it a re-watch, I love it when a film does that to me. It compels me to watch it again, almost immediately. Last time this happened to me was with David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001). So yeah, this movie is like a puzzle, it’s a brainy film. It’s made for those of us who like to get all existential and philosophical, all others will probably end up scratching their heads, asking themselves what the hell this movie is about. Is it Gilliam’s best film? Not if you ask this Terry Gilliam fan, but I don’t blame Gilliam himself. The man is working with micro budgets when compared to the gazillion dollar movies he used to make during the 80’s and 90’s. Sadly, this is an ailment that many an auteur suffers from.  Big studios won’t give directors such as Gilliam the big bucks to make the big movies they could be making because artful films are risky, and studios hate to lose money on a film. So this is why we’re getting this ‘low budget’ version of Terry Gilliam, which as it turns out, is still amazing. Because it’s not the money behind the movie, it’s the imagination and creativity behind the camera that brings a film to life. And to be honest, films like this mean a whole lot more to me then the latest, brainless Hollywood blockbuster. Terry Gilliam remains the soul of true dreamers, fantasists and artists out there, a director who makes films against all odds, my hats down to you sir. You’ve won yet another battle and have given us another soul searching film.

Rating: 4 out of 5