The Closet

One of the most puzzling things about adolescence is the division between the in-crowd and the rabble. Puzzling, I should add, only when you are a confirmed member of the latter grouping; the popular and the admired comport themselves as if their unquestionable status were captioned by this famous motto. The more attentive among the uncool, however, quickly notice that the difference lies in not what is said and done but in the actor himself. The silliest pun can become a shibboleth, the stupidest gesture a signal, the cruelest prank an indication of superiority. What is particularly remarkable about adolescence and its conspiracies is how uncompromisingly bland the stratagems behind them seem once we reach adulthood. Not one joke, not a single sadistic moment will be worth a farthing to a mature and confident twentysomething who sees through cliques and clucks as any of us now should. How odd then that so many of adolescence's wicked games continue undeterred well into our greying years, and how many poor saps remain the subject of their colleagues' scorn. Which brings us to this charming film.

Our hero is François Pignon (the perfectly cast Daniel Auteuil), even if his heroism should be immediately questioned and harpooned. Though a cognate with "pinion," there is a certain contempt with which his surname is pronounced that English does not quite contain, but which suggests a cross between an irritating clink and an onion. Pignon is divorced from a loathsome shrew (Alexandra Vandernoot), whose one good deed in her entire existence may very well have been the birth of their son, Franck. The problem is that Franck, like the rest of humanity apparently, is convinced his father is an incorrigible loser. For his part Pignon definitely provides him with ample evidence. His job at a rubber factory in the accounting department has been for twenty years his only steady beam in a life of avalanches and cave-ins, if one considers his daily parking and coffee debacles to constitute a success. Nevertheless, it is not hard to detect that Pignon is a kind man, as are most pariahs if only because they cannot afford or do not know how to effectuate any other type of behavior. Pignon grins and bears his cruel fate because he has never really managed to succeed at anything. Were he in some isolated, underdeveloped village in an impoverished or war-ravaged nation with little hope of escape, we would hardly begrudge him his despair; but with a fine income, a modest but nice apartment, and a healthy existence in one of the richest countries in the world, the problem lies to a great extent with him. 

Why does Pignon come to the office every day and succumb to his co-workers' sneers and taunts as if he deserved them? Why do all the men at his job think him unmanly and all the women think him boring? Perhaps because when one is insecure but wishes to conceal such misgivings and fears – and most of us huddle under that large circus tent – nothing makes one more liverish than a fool who accepts his insecurities and does nothing to combat or hide them. In other words, we hate this person because he comes off as the worst and most cowardly manifestation of ourselves. Pignon draws the ire most readily of the neckless thug Félix Santini (Gérard Dépardieu). Santini mysteriously holds the position of head of personnel, something akin to a human resources director, even though his hobbies are rugby and the belittlement of lesser beings. Since sports and cruelty are the time-honored pursuits of all high school jock bullies, Santini fulfils a stereotype that allows us to despise him and gravitate towards Pignon. While Santini smashes in his co-workers' teeth in another bone-crushing practice session, Pignon finds and adopts an adorable kitten who turns up one day on his balcony – just as, I might add, he was considering an unforgivable sin. And why such self-loathing? Because Pignon just discovered that, after twenty servile years, his neck is slated for the guillotine. 

The kitten will be traced to a new neighbor, Jean-Pierre Belone (Michel Aumont), who just so happens to be a retired labor psychologist. For some people, work and its associated routines are coterminous, in which case retirement results in complete severance from the tasks of yesteryear; for others, of course, they will always practice what they have practiced until their last, wheezing breaths. Belone is someone who likes listening to people's problems because he truly believes there is no quandary he cannot solve. He understands Pignon's predicament all too well, having likely sat through months of such twaddle in humoring whiny patients, but this time something about the misery of his neighbor summons the altruist from within him and he offers Pignon a very odd piece of advice: spread the rumor that he is gay. The reasoning, in our politically correct days, might be obvious enough; but a rubber factory by definition boasts a clientele that, well, likes its rubbers: firing a man who has just outed himself would then be nothing less than a public relations nightmare. Belone goes one giant step further when he recommends that Pignon anonymously send touched-up photos to his workplace (Belone already has a template in mind). The gambit is taken, the pawn sacrificed (Pignon also has some affinity with the French word for this least powerful of chess-pieces), and Pignon goes into work not having changed a hair on his pointy head yet having assumed a shift of mythic proportions. The women at work, especially the dishy Ms. Bertrand (Michèle Laroque), are irrationally drawn to the clandestine Pignon as if he were an island to be discovered. Santini's transformation is even more radical and provides the film with some of its most impeccable humor, as does a certain parade that Franck happens to catch on television, imbuing him with newly-found respect for his father – and further complications need not be mentioned.     

The Closet exploits one of the great premises of fiction: that the person so easily pigeonholed might be playing a master role. In past times, the secret involved subterfuge and espionage, but we have moved on from such undeservedly romantic notions of what lies in the heart of men. Now the secret may be sexuality; it may even be, as a metaphor for the wickedness of the twentieth century, that the person in question is actually of another religion, whose revelation would transform his public image irreversibly. A literary critic might underscore the need for any ambitious work to sustain at least two wholly plausible readings to be memorable and worthwhile, yet to the skeptical mind another question surely arises. Is not every human form a mixture of multiple themes, multiple vices, regret and joy, or are we all just simple beasts consigned to simple boxes for future filing? How about the erstwhile cool cats that all too often seem to have peaked during those same dominating years? Filed away in a factory closet that, presumably, no one would ever find.

Terribly Happy

This film may initially strike us as little more than a compost of noir elements, yet we will be proven wrong. It begins with a cow legend, a half-beast, half-child tale of parturition with elements that once might have suggested a demonic presence and are now only translated by computerized minds as a provincial kind of sexism. Some cleansing acts are carried out and then we are assured: "Since that time there has been no trouble with cows or women." After this odd introduction we are subsequently informed that the story is based on true events. If this is so, gentle reader, let me be the first to cancel any future trips to southern Denmark. True enough, I don't really mean that last part (Denmark has always been for me a heaven on our brittle earth), so maybe I can simply eliminate a few select swampy patches on the Jutland map.  

Our protagonist is Robert (Jakob Cedergren), a handsome, lonesome, still youngish Copenhagen cop with a broad suggestible streak. Suggestibility implies a certain absence of self-confidence, common enough in someone attractive (perhaps his appearance has long since masked his foolishness; perhaps he has pursued his sensual privileges and neglected his mind). Nevertheless, we tend to think that his looks emerged well after adolescence, which explains why he has never really exited that period. In keeping with noir prototypes, Robert is introduced to us with a checkered past that no one, he least of all, wishes to talk about. His infraction will be clarified to some extent much later in the film, but his penance will be as a small-town bailiff. "Nothing really happens here," says his superior as he drives Robert to his temporary new home, "and if something does happen, you just report it to me." Robert gives that nervous nod endemic among people who tend to talk themselves into trouble and lets the comment sit. Importantly, the village in question also lies next to a hateful bog – a pit of sin in more than one sense – although one wonders whether any bog has ever enjoyed a glittering reputation.   

Ah yes, southern Denmark. As a long-time speaker of what may be termed rigsdansk (standard Danish), I am still astounded by the panoply of dialects in such a snug little place. Robert's shibboleth is the squeaky greeting "morning" (møjn), a noise which at one point even the cat seems to produce. And certainly, a conspiracy of noir circumstances seems to be afoot: suspicious locals on every corner stare at Robert as if he were a pink elephant; his bike is almost run over more than once by a determined truck; the stillness of the always-deserted streets screams western with, in good western tradition, Robert as both lawmaker and outlaw; and, of course, the appearance of the requisite femme fatale Ingerlise (Lene Maria Christensen). Ingerlise is walking and talking bad news; she is also, by Danish standards, not particularly fetching. Yet she is alluring in that way that some women have of being able to be completely enthralled by what a man is saying. Ingerlise seems to confirm our fears of genre compliance with a litany of femme fatale characteristics: the implication that she is undersexed; the further implication that she is misunderstood, if not reviled by the community (Ingerlise is from Åbenrå, and thus also an outsider) for her sensuality or other careless lusts; and the very direct declaration that her bloated boar of a husband Jørgen (Kim Bodnia) batters her whenever he thinks she deserves it. Scars suggest this might be a weekly event. Just when Robert, who is very intrigued despite his better judgment, asks for more information about a certain bicycle dealer who disappeared a few years back, Ingerlise overtly pauses then lets her bike tumble to the ground for Robert to retrieve (in romances past, this may have been a glove or handkerchief). We now know for certain that Robert will eventually possess Ingerlise, that the boar will eventually learn of their little escapade one way or another, and that all this could have been rather easily avoided if Robert weren't so predisposed to cutting corners.

Which brings us to another dirty little secret. It is no spoiler to reveal that Robert has a wife in Copenhagen, as well as a beloved daughter whom he hasn't seen in months. "And why haven't you," asks a perfectly logical Ingerlise, who also has a daughter in the eight-to-ten-year range. That would be because Robert's daughter believes her father to be in Australia, "the farthest possible country," and also very much a symbolic southernmost purgatory. As our film skids down some curious slopes, we cannot but notice Robert compensating for his own estranged family by seeking to aid another wife and child in need of a good father (one could even imagine Ingerlise's daughter's ubiquitous red jacket making Jørgen into more of a wolf than a boar). Jørgen, a natural-born bully, senses the fear and vulnerability in the newcomer and pushes him to the usual lengths of oneupmanship until one incredibly unfortunate (and improbable) night almost leads the men to join forces. Ingerlise finds every public meeting place possible to carry on their intensifying flirtation, and tongues wag because this is some of the juiciest scandal in, well, perhaps weeks now. The details and double-talk propel the players to the middle of the film and the turning point in everyone's existence. I can't remember the last time I ever saw anyone withdraw ignition keys from a moving car, but the thoughtful viewer might wish to consider the vehicle and its driver with similar empathy.

There is also a quack of a doctor who "barked up Ingerlise's tree" a while back, a store owner who has a special storage area for his long-fingered clients, and a priest who can be identified only by his frilly collar. In a town this small, however, the intervention of any one of the characters cannot be considered anything less than formulary. Terribly Happy plays as the best type of western, that is, the kind that forsakes the silly invincibility of isolation that informs most films of that genre for the ravenous despair of noir. And while the twanging nonsense of its soundtrack jangles the nerves and earns it a half to three-quarters demerit, the tone is correct: Robert has been shipped to a zone of amoral actions and players. It will become his task to determine whether these persons are immoral, which involves consistency, or whether they do actually propone an ad hoc understanding of human motives and words. If they are structurally evil, they can be judged and, in principle, reformed; on the other hand, should they be merely anarchic hoodlums ready for a scrap to the death at any given moment, then there is little Robert or anyone else can do for them. The worst part about this type of noir is not that you cannot know the truth, but that no one wishes you to know it; you are not an initiate into the global conspiracy, and this little village might as well be its own planet orbiting our greater realm. Even if its main inhabitant and actor might be a large pool of slime.

The Master

Man is not an animal. We are not a part of the animal kingdom. We sit far above that crowd, perched as spirits, not beasts. You are not ruled by your emotions. It is not only possible, it is easily achievable that we do away with all negative emotional impulses and bring man back to his inherent state of perfect.

                                                                                                                       Lancaster Dodd

It is August 1945 and the worst has happened, but not the very worst. Several parts of the world, specifically those parts that have controlled time and history's recording of time, have almost obliterated each other, only to decide that life in whatever form was superior to an endless horizon of death. America, that paladin of democracy and initiative, will take credit for saving the world from fascism; yet America itself played only a limited role. America, you see, is the sole country on this nearly-destroyed earth where anyone can become anything; history is not as important to us as opportunity; and truth, to a certain type of American, will not be vitiated by philosophy or even basic ethics. Truth, like history, like life itself, is simply another opportunity. And a very American notion of truth informs this fine film.

Our title character will comprise a chapter in the rather sorry existence of a man called Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix). The war was won and Freddie, young and unsung, was on the most winning side, that of America; yet early scenes indicate that while his physical well-being was more or less maintained, his psyche was irreparably damaged. Freddie may also be familiar to anyone who thinks that alcoholism is a disease and not a choice, but that small point is ultimately irrelevant. What his tattered mind requires is something to distract him long enough for him to drink himself to death. For Freddie Quell no other option remains. His trinity of violence, sex, and drink would interest even the most casual psychologist were it not for the fact that he is not by any measure an interesting person. Subjected to those fake ink blots of fake minds with fake symbols (a blot even cameos in one of the film's posters), he does what any hard-core alcoholic would do when confronted with one of society's innumerable banalities: he contemplates his next drink. Still-frame the shots from this interview, and you see that Phoenix reverts to the same expression again and again, much like a soldier standing in position. That look is one of somewhat timid disbelief, because that is precisely what he is, a timid disbeliever, which could mean that within his soul lurks profound and unexplored spirituality – or perhaps simply profound and unexplored emptiness. "I suffer," he says, attempting a romantic rebaptism of his addiction, "from what people in your line of work call nostalgia," but he doesn't quite complete the story. So when a discharged Freddie Quell moves on to postwar work as a department store photographer, we cannot take our eyes off his skinny back, curved inward like a hollow shell, or a sail to be blown by the wind. And the wind will come in the plump and stately shape of Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman).

Who is Lancaster Dodd? He presents himself like many charlatans, as a man of broad, Renaissance-like talent and titles, so you may never quite answer that question to your satisfaction. Which is precisely Dodd's intent: to persist as an unfinished mystery. The promises that writers of suspense foist upon their readers, premonitions of danger, hints at a nobler past, memories of childhood and of loss, all these blossom amidst Lancaster Dodd's variegated gardens. Perhaps appropriately, then, it is after farm worker Freddie runs through field after lush field (in a spectacular scene that would have been even greater had it been protracted) that he finds the boat Alethia. Alethia, of course, is Greek for truth, yet that fateful evening, Alethia is occupied by one of those fancy, footloose boat parties that are supposed to celebrate life but really end up celebrating the owner of the boat. We see the boat in profile, almost like a blueprint, as Freddie climbs aboard to be awoken later and told by a pretty young girl, a guardian angel, "you're safe, you're at sea," which is usually where one is not safe. Yet the telltale line is Dodd’s own greeting: "You seem so familiar to me.” Freddie chuckles because he does not understand what Dodd is really saying: make me into whomever you need – a father, brother, lover, friend, or priest – it matters little. His claims of having met Freddie in a previous life will find closure, if such closure is truly possible, in the film’s last scenes which are perfectly logical and glorious in their restraint. But until then, it is Dodd’s self-appointed task (one of his books is subtitled, “A gift to Homo Sapiens”) to show Freddie and other malleable sorts that the truth promulgated by The Cause – a suitably vague name for a hopelessly vague organization – is, if not wholly true, then more interesting and revealing than any other truth floating about. He achieves this end through séances the likes of which would not persuade many educated people, as well as recordings such as the one quoted (in full, although it repeats interminably) at the beginning of this review. The psychobabble we witness – and it is most assuredly psychobabble of a very destructive kind – has a narrator, Dodd’s wife Peggy (Amy Adams), who speaks in that slow, deliberate tone reserved for certain foreigners, pedants, and those of waning mental health. If Lancaster Dodd is the face of The Cause, then Peggy Dodd is its treasurer, chief executive officer, and, as aspersed hints indicate, perhaps even the real "master" (she remains pregnant throughout, as if a new world full of ideas were about to hatch). So when she declares that "we record everything through all lifetimes" (at this time a "hypnotized" patient is recalling her parents having sex after she had already been conceived, an embryonic epiphany), we know we have stumbled upon a cult. The only question, of course, is who is really running the show.

Anyone with a fair knowledge of post-war American religious trends will likely identify the most obvious paradigm for The Cause, a topic I will not belabor because, as it were, it doesn't really matter. That is not to say that Dodd's loosely-knit band represents every cult at every time, but rather, should it be forced to percolate through allegoristic filters, every cult in the wake of an unfathomable and horrendous ordeal (according to the director, the film was partly inspired by the theory that religiousness spikes after a war). As such, while The Cause certainly seems like a huckster's paradise, we are not particularly convinced one way or the other. All we can say for sure is that its adherents do not agree on what the Cause really is, in no small part because Dodd does not allow for any degree of what trendy minds like to call 'demystification.' Three examples should suffice: Dodd's initial interview of Freddie, dubbed "informal processing," which may be the film's strongest scene; the very middle, when Freddie, who is obsessed with womanly charms like so many a teenage boy, is beset by a sort of vision; and a later scene in which the two men are jailed overnight in adjoining cells, and Freddie cruelly tells Dodd what he thinks of his labors. The last scene seems like a watershed, but because the participants are drunk and rowdy, it is dismissed shortly thereafter as a misunderstanding; the initial interview likewise suggests that we are going to get to know Freddie Quell very intimately, but Freddie Quell is a talented fibber; which leaves that odd mid-film scene. Especially odd, because if we are to understand the vision as emanating solely from Freddie's mind, then he has already given up on the cult's promise to feed, clothe, and house him, not to mention provide him with a surrogate family. Considering how little he has in life, this abandonment might seem very rash indeed – unless Freddie Quell is not quite the simpleton he appears to be.      

Although released to much critical acclaim, The Master has endured from its scattered disbelievers one uniform complaint: that of dullness and uneventfulness, an assessment both rash and predictable. Anderson’s film certainly has few events, if by events we mean explosions of human bodies inwardly or outwardly, or of historical happenings, of which the film makes little fanfare because Freddie Quell is not Freddie Gump. He has no symbolic agenda as an everyman or holy fool; he is simply a cipher who may merit redemption, but whose main aim is to extend the mortal pleasure of drunkenness. As such, the film is intentionally opaque because the movement it depicts is intentionally opaque, and The Master is mesmerizing, hollow, and well-acted and crafted just like the Dodds appear to have scripts for every occasion. The film's genius resides, however, in Freddie Quell's unconventional transformation. Instead of evolving, as would befit almost every other tale, from a sad sack into a fervent acolyte who will be disappointed with the cult's shortcomings, try to escape, and be confronted with his priests' mercilessness, Freddie undergoes a completely different change: he reverts to the person he was before the war. Since I have purposefully not described the pre-war Freddie, nothing is spoiled by this revelation. Phoenix manages by some technique hitherto unknown to man to cloak his natural wit and vibrancy in a dull glaze without either overacting or underacting, rendering this shift not only believable, but the best possible resolution. And if Freddie's final interlocutor is any indication, then there will always be opportunities for the Lancaster Dodds of the world. For even if we cannot recall any predecessors, we can surely imagine them.

Kontroll

There is much to be said for the notion within a film that anything can happen, but there is even more to be praised in a work that can achieve that effect in a very narrow context. Some of the greatest dramas have benefited from their very form: as stage productions, they are necessarily limited to the feeble mechanics of deceiving or astonishing a live audience. That we may enjoy as a play the downfall of a Scot amidst the surfacing of a realm of hell suggests that its eventual filming in glorious computer-generated magic – and yes, such a beast may be growling in our vicinity soon enough – might be even more extraordinary. So we should not commit the rather unforgivable sin of equating the adage "anything can happen" with "there are no laws." Laws exist either deductively or a priori, and I will leave it to the astute reader to guess which set would be more welcome on these pages. While he's pondering the matter, we will turn to this rather entertaining film. 

The opening sequence features a man and a prepared statement, which may also be understood as the general definition of a script. Our man in Budapest claims to be the head of the city's subway system and is appearing on camera for the sole purpose of informing us that the conductors portrayed in the film do not reflect the actual enforcers floating about the rails that transport "more than three hundred million people every year." Yet honeycombed in this disclaimer are a few offbeat comments regarding the film's artistic purpose – surely the first time in cinematic history that the purported head of a metro system has acted as a preemptive film connoisseur. The film is both "symbolic and fictional," which means that it can be distinguished from a documentary only by its commitment to ludicrous nicknames and overdrawn characters, and here we should permit ourselves a gentle aside. Given the format of what follows, we care nothing for the likelihood that the person speaking is also an actor, nor that the film may or may not have been shot on location, nor, as it were, that Budapest even has a system of onboard enforcement as opposed to turnstiles and greater pre-boarding impediments. Can you imagine an action film preceded by a similar disavowal? If the tactic is one of national protection, it is a mild measure; if, however, a surreal film becomes more surreal by the inclusion of another layer of doubt, then we truly have a masterpiece.

The masterpiece in question will have many aspects of an action film. It has a hero Bulcsú (Csányi Sándor), who was once an architect, and it has what all heroes deserve, a loyal band of confederates: Muki, a mammoth narcoleptic with a very bad temper; the Professor, an older and meticulous gentleman; Lecsó, an elfish sidekick; and Tibor, the proverbial new kid on the block (in a classic hazing ritual, Tibor even gets to vomit at the sight of his first dead body). The red armbands they sport unfortunately suggest another police unit from more hideous times, but an executive decision is made early on to switch to black leather coats with pockets for both badge and band. This motley quintet work as ticket conductors, although only Muki can really defend himself against the seemingly endless stream of aggressive non-compliers. While the film threatens at times to devolve into an overlapping collection of vignettes, each highlighting the eccentricity of a different band member, these threats prove to be quite hollow. The only one accorded significant depth is Bulcsú, but the other all evince enough humanity to make them real (Tibor, for example, vacillates wildly from afraid to overconfident to frustration to panic). They clash with another conductor band, whose self-assured leader Bulcsú bests in a rather dangerous late-night contest and their internal disputes are thankfully kept to a minimum. As is, it should be said, the interference of the management at the top of the metro pyramid, who has been having an appalling time with the large number of opportunistic suicides or "jumpers" in the last few weeks. One such incident begins the film; yet a second incident about fifteen minutes later reveals that all these suicides were unknowingly assisted by a man in a leather jacket and black hood.

Unlike the bangs and scratches of most movie heroes, Bulcsú's scars accumulate. He becomes bloodier, paler, and more fatigued; he also becomes gradually estranged from the reality that he chooses to limit to the underground network, a sort of Frankenstein's monster with his every struggle clearly demarcated on his person. And in a great scene towards the end, Bulcsú even does two things protagonists normally are not allowed to do: he runs for what seems like ten minutes and, during those ten minutes, he loses steam and ambition, his muscles almost giving way to the rest they never properly receive. Despite his increasingly freakish appearance, he attracts a young woman, the daughter of an alcoholic metro driver who has always been friendly and kind to Bulcsú's team. The woman is, however, not without her quirks. Most notably the ubiquitous wearing of a teddy bear suit (perhaps inspired by this film) and her absolute refusal to buy a ticket, a right granted by her father's job. They eventually agree to go to the masked ball held in the metro and advertised very early on by an inconspicuous poster, but not before Bulcsú's past is broached in a wonderful dialogue just at the film's midpoint. His interlocutor is a former colleague, a man that in lesser films would be far less average or passionate. The man praises Bulcsú's work and genuinely misses him, having obtained the team leader position by virtue of, he implies, Bulcsú's departure. It is here that our protagonist reveals his very human fear of failure and the excuse that so many use not to harness their abilities to the maximum. He admires the man's tie and is astonished to learn that the man has kept "every scrap" of his old projects in the hope of his return to the firm. They part in a tacit expression of mutual respect and affection that simply could not occur in Hollywood productions, where every emotion is exaggerated to its puerile extremes. 

And what of our, ahem, assisted suicides? The film also does not resolve its mystery in an expected way, although it betrays nothing to mention that the killer shares a certain gesture with another character – and I will leave the matter at that. In view of the strict rules of train schedules, tickets, and government funds, one could claim that public transportation is the segment of our existence in which we are most bound by social etiquette – in no small part because of the need of collective safety. But while the metro never becomes a hell, even when an owl, a classic harbinger of very bad things, is seen perching below, there is a reason Bulcsú tells the paramedics scraping up one of the "jumpers" off the tracks, "I never thought there was a job worse than ours." Perhaps that's also why, at one point, all the escalators are going up.

King Kong

Around Christmas thirty years ago, for reasons that in retrospect make little sense, I nagged my father into taking me to see this sequel. The film was appalling enough, even to my untrained tastes; but the most notable part was that we comprised two-thirds of the audience, the only other moviegoer ensconced in the front row in a gorilla mask (that theater in northwest Washington D. C. is long since defunct, even if memories such as mine are probably not uncommon among local thirty- and fortysomethings). How odd then that it was the 1986 disaster and fugitive pieces of the 1976 movie, which I found in any case hopelessly dated, that formed my notions of the most famous giant ape in cinematic history (and if you think for one moment that I as a teenager could have endured the 1933 original, I have some seafront property in Bern that you'll just love). For that reason and a few others did I welcome the newest and best version of the Kong.      

We begin in the worst of times in 1933 New York, mere weeks into the most decisive presidency the United States has ever known. The feeble and malnourished often coincide with the beautiful and talented, such as Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts), a vaudeville actress whom we first see playing to an almost empty theater. That she will be unemployed by the next couple of scenes is hardly a secret; yet a hint as to her future comes in the casual mention of a play called Isolation. The playwright, Jack Driscoll (a starry-eyed Adrien Brody), has long been admired by Darrow, so much so that she has no qualms about buttonholing an obnoxious, well-fed theater producer and begging him for a part in Driscoll's play. Ann's eyes blench at the Italian restaurant at whose threshold she and the producer will have to part, and in a brief moment of pity he gives her a name and an address ("You're not bad-looking. A girl like you doesn't have to starve"). An implication is made about what Ann would have to do at that address, and the matter is smartly never rehashed. Instead, we turn our gaze to the morally and financially bankrupt world of Carl Denham (Jack Black).

Denham is the prototypical B-movie director, which means that he greatly resembles one of his own stock characters. While success has eluded Denham, he has also done his part to avoid it. We first meet him as he insolently abuses the investors for yet another preposterous jungle adventure featuring a live lion and a rather lifeless lead (Kyle Chandler), and the comments made in his absence befit a charlatan or a madman. A more socially aware reviewer than I would note that his witticisms ("Defeat is only momentary"; "Dammit, Preston.  All you had to do was look her in the eye and lie"; "There's nothing officially wrong with it because technically it hasn't been discovered yet") reflect the desperate torpor of the times – but readers of these pages know my destination for such nonsense, i.e. the circular file. B-film directors and their relentless pursuit of profitable mediocrity have always existed in the form of pulp writers, street buskers, and anyone who has an iota (and often not more) of artistic talent and an excellent nose for commercial demand. Denham wisely senses that the average consumer does not want to consider his own morbid situation too closely; films about poverty, while touching and necessary, do not entice the human imagination to create and soar. As such, he aims for the blockbuster that could not possibly be a blockbuster since that level of marketing domination had never before occurred. But then again, no one before had had a map of an unknown Pacific isle called Skull Island.

It is never revealed how Denham acquired this map, nor does such a contrivance affect our enjoyment of the spectacle. A common solution in movies of this kind is the fateful stroll by an antiques stop window, where the eye of our ever-curious protagonist is inexorably drawn to some bibelot containing a love letter or other long-concealed document. Denham is introduced with the map already in his possession so that we are spared the character development and misgivings that so obviously will not take place. His investors, already cash-strapped by their standards, haven't the slightest interest in funding a project to be filmed literally on the other side of the earth. Since minor obstacles – debt, disgrace, physical threats – have never stopped Carl Denham, a trip around the world may appear to someone of his relentless greed as simply commensurate with the eventual payoff. He coerces Ann to join the cast in a scene out of many other movies, with the difference being that Denham is not really a pimp (Ann ultimately signs up because of the chance of working with Driscoll, a man she will be destined to love, providing us with a foil to the later love story that I think you might already know), and Ann approaches a docked ocean liner with the assumption that this must be "the moving picture ship." But of course that honor is reserved for a rusty battered tramp steamer christened the SS Venture whose voyage out concludes the first act.

The legend of Kong has offended many because of the racial implications, and Jackson's film goes out of its way to make the swarthy Kong-worshipping inhabitants of Skull Island look like "no other people on earth." That said, one never has the impression that the predominantly white crew members of Denham's mission contemn the natives for being evolutionarily closer to their idol. And while one of the crew members is reading this very controversial novel, madness and colonialism have little sway in the world of Kong since he exists in an ecosystem preserved from human interference. It is no coincidence that Ann shares a surname with someone who had a great affinity for the link of man and ape, and that the damsel in distress is as refined and Aryan in feature as Kong remains a dark, amorphous hulk. But as opposed to prior Kongs, this beast is granted hegemony in a realm of equally gargantuan monsters (the famous fight scene with the Tyrannosaurus Rexes has to be seen to be believed), not just godhead among the primitives. Not that we could possibly revere anything that would want our destruction.