Robert Rodriguez doing Frank Miller sounds like a match in heaven: Rodriguez's comic-book style should provide the speed and motion and visual depth to enhance Miller's images while Miller should add the twists and wisecracks to spark Rodriguez's sometimes shaky storytelling (Rodriguez as seen in Once Upon a Time in Mexico, often doesn't know how to drive a plot forward; he needs a fairly good writer, which is why I think From Dusk Till Dawn with longtime buddy Quentin Tarantino (clever writer not much of an eye) may be the best work either have ever done (there's Jackie Brown-- but that's an Elmore Leonard film which I hear involves Tarantino)).
Miller's Sin City 'graphic novels' (I remember when they used to be 'comic books') are black-and-white pastiches, the distillation of classic noirs where hardboiled detectives and/or borderline psychotics uphold complicated codes of honor, authority figures are absolutely powerful and absolutely corrupt, women are either whores or innocents endowed with pneumatically enlarged breasts. Perhaps the most notable feature of the novels is Miller's determined manner of turning up the volume on the sex and violence, particularly the violence (the sex mostly happens offscreen and is often remarkably chaste, given the milieu (one character goes on a killing spree after just a single night with a hooker; another goes to jail for years successfully defending the purity of a young girl)). Miller packs as many variations on killing as he can into his pages, using everything from a .45 caliber cannon to razor wire to a samurai sword; he puts a spin on violence through black comedy-- a mordant comment or ironic remark as exclamation point on someone's often bloodspattered passing. The savagery and humor plays against an austerely monochromatic background-- like looking at a blood-drenched world through armor-plated shades.
Rodriguez's adaptation of Miller's work couldn't be more faithful-- may, in fact, be the most self-effacing adaptation of a piece of text in recent memory. He claims no scriptwriter credits, lifting all his dialogue from the novels; uses Miller's drawings as storyboards; consults with Miller so frequently he gives Miller co-directing credit (giving up his Director's Guild membership-- and several juicy projects, including the proposed A Princess of Mars movie-- in the process). Rodriguez's regard for Miller is so intense and absolute you'd think it almost pointless to go back and read the graphic novels, they've been so thoroughly rendered onscreen (four stories at least: The Hard Goodbye, The Big Fat Kill, and That Yellow Bastard, plus two brief bookend sequences from the short story "The Customer is Always Right"). All that's left after watching the film really is deciding if it (and by extension the graphic novel) is any good.
Not really.
Held in your hands, confined mainly to two dimensions, Miller's graphic novels are an engaging curiosity, quickly read quickly disposed of. In terms of hyperbolic violence and explicit sex it doesn't quite match his exuberant earlier work entitled (what else?) Hard-Boiled (eye-popping artwork by-- come to think of it Miller barely matters here-- Geoff Darrow); in terms of witty dialogue and clever reworking of classic elements it's no The Dark Knight Returns. Sin City is a minor albeit well-drawn work from an occasionally brilliant writer-artist, and it's hard to understand why Rodriguez would devote so much time money energy talent into bringing to the big screen what was sufficiently engaging on paper.
Not that Rodriguez does such a bang-up job, either. As filmmaker he should know the difficulties of adapting from another medium, however closely related-- that what seems like a nifty little exploitation piece sprinkled with wit and old-fashioned morality (but don't all noirs have that?) would feel ponderous on the big screen. That roles played by stars like Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, Nick Stahl, Benicio del Toro, Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Elijah Wood, Rutger Hauer, Devon Aoki and (in a tiny role) Josh Hartnett, would seem too unsubstantial to deserve all that talent. Worse, with not one but three major storylines plus a short story to tell, he's forced to rush through all three without building enough momentum to leave an impact. It's not just the pacing: his editing rhythm seems off, he rushes through fight scenes as if in a hurry to cram every last frame of Miller's novels into his overstuffed canvas. The effect is more dulling than shocking, more tedious than provocative; Miller's drawings have a better sense of timing, make better use of the dramatic pause.
What do Rodriguez and Miller ultimately hope to achieve? More wit and sexual oomph than Hawk's The Big Sleep? A more vivid figure of evil than Noah Cross in Polanski's Chinatown? A stronger sense of corruption and decay than in Welles' Touch of Evil? Violence stylized with cartoon color (the characters bleed not red but mostly featureless white, as if pumped up with milk) and cartoon sensibility has no weight if it can't serve a correspondingly intense drama, played out by fairly well-realized characters. Sin City for all its hyped-up brutality has as much depth as a sheet of paper.
(First published in Businessworld, June 3, 2005)
No comments:
Post a Comment