January 7, 2006

• The Man in the Suit ... and the Man in the Mirror

  So I stole some time for a belated first look at "The Revenge of the
  Sith" last night.  And what is my one-word impression of this much-heralded,
  thirty-years-in-the-waiting, massively high-tech, high-cost final
  knitting-up of the saga? 

  I really do hate to say this, but:  DREADFUL. 

  Huge wars
  without context, vast exotic landscapes breathlessly passed by, odd
  creatures inappropriately used (Obi and his shrieking blue-ruffed
  lizard; yikes), endless high-tech battles interspersed only
  occasionally by
  inexplicable twists of tale and missed opportunity.  Amidala sits
  muttering sadly into her clasped hands, as Palpatine takes over the
  Senate:  "This is how liberty dies:  to thunderous applause." 
  Hello?  Leap up and give an impassioned speech, Senator! 
  We've seen you do it before ....... oh, sorry, I forgot.  You're
  pregnant.  Probably that's what's rendered you completely hapless
  (and speaking of pregnant:  with all this uber-technology and
  super-mental capacity surrounding you, no one got an inkling that the
  perfectly healthy full-term birthing that came 'prematurely' out of
  your tiny belly were actually twins?  Sigh. Never mind).  "Oh,
  and Obi," calls Yoda near the end (stammering in his haste to get
  his say in before reaching that 30-second limit on actual plot
  development), "You know while you're hanging out on Tatooine guarding
  the baby?  Well, I've figured out how to channel dead Jedis, so
  you can get some training in with your old master while you're waiting."  What, what,
  what??  Oh, never mind, never mind. 

  I hadn't, until this viewing experience, completely bought into the
  premise that even a good actor can't salvage a bad script, but after
  watching the well-credentialed Ewan McGregor stumble unappealing and
  unconvincingly around in his great unsplintering coffin of wooden
  dialogue nailed with unbreakably unfunny humor -- I'm there.  It
  can't be done.  And had I not also taken a look at the "Making Of"
  disk, I would have left Hayden in my personal dustbin labeled "Bad
  Actors Who Unfortunately Also Grew Up Not To Be Particularly
  Cute," much like his predecessor in the hero/anti-hero role, Mark
  Hamill, but then I found myself unexpectedly riveted by the mini-documentary "The Chosen
  One."  Not only does Hayden suddenly come pleasingly alive, when
  asked to chat extemporaneously on the philosophical underpinnings of
  his character (maybe there's hope for him after all, paired with an actual
  scriptwriter), but hearing Lucas and his team talk about what they meant to
  do, and why, definitely brings a much deeper degree of appreciation,
  even if what they finally achieved in no way measures up.

  "The day I first came out in the Vader suit," says Hayden, "There
  was -- awe -- on the set.  It was amazing, being inside
  that suit.  There was a real sense of..." he pauses,
  word-searching, face lit up, "...empowerment." 
  He smiles, relaxed, pleased.  "I won't forget that for a long
  time."  One feels, watching this decent young man speak so raptly of
  the power of the vestments of the Dark, an echo of the gut-wrenching
  emotion (the only real emotion this viewer extracted from the whole
  movie) when Anakin goes in to kill the Jedi
  children, and then again when he strangles Padme from afar; feelings that mirrored my long-ago, horrified adolescent
  double-take, in the darkened theater, when Luke learned that Vader is his
  father. 

  

  "No, no, no!" cries the well-trained modern psyche raised on a rich multicultural panoply
  of morality myths and fairytales.  Good men can't do evil
  things!  Absolute evil
  can't father good.  There is Light, and there is Dark.  There
  is Good, and there is Bad.  There is God, and there is Satan. 
  They are equal, and opposite, and noninterchangeable.

  But of course, as Hayden charmingly and Lucas lengthily explains, the
  key to this entire tale is not only the redemption, but why redemption
  was necessary at all.  Good men do commit unspeakable acts. 
  And evildoers can't admit to themselves that what they do is evil,
  because
  there is indeed purpose to their madness; a purpose that the rest of us
  not only understand -- but have, in our own personal moments of evil,
  absolutely
  and utterly shared. 

  If young viewers manage to wrest these ideas from the morass of improbable androids, space
  battle, inexplicable politics, heavy-busted aliens, and unconvincing dialogue -- then it all will
  have been worthwhile, after all.

  • 7:05 am
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