ANGELS & DEMONS **
DIRECTED BY Ron Howard
STARRING Tom Hanks, Ayelet Zurer, Ewan McGregor, Stellan Skarsgard
US 2009 138 mins.
“What a relief, the symbologist is here,” says the head of the Swiss Guard (Stellan Skarsgard) mockingly when Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) walks through the doors of his Vatican office. Clearly, Supercilious Stellan has no idea what being a symbologist entails. Not only is Tom soon expounding on Church history to the surprisingly clueless Vatican staff – “Jeez,” he marvels, not unreasonably, “you guys don’t even read your own history” – but he also has the knack of solving puzzles by finding precisely the right clue, and just in the nick of time. If he notices a statue holding an arrow, it’s because the arrow’s pointing in the direction he needs to go to find a lost chapel, or a Cardinal in danger (all the other statues holding arrows are presumably irrelevant). If he turns the pages of a book, he can’t help but notice a tiny (but vital) watermark that holds the secret to the whole puzzle. If he sees a drawer, it reminds him of a key he found hours earlier, and of course that’s the key that will open the drawer. On the evidence of Angels & Demons – the follow-up to The Da Vinci Code, based on a Dan Brown novel – symbology is the art of doing exactly what’s required by the plot (however phoney and contrived) for 138 silly-but-amusing minutes.
Tom needs all the symbology he can get in Angels & Demons, because the Catholic Church is in mortal danger: its old enemies, the Illuminati – a cabal of scientists repressed by the Church centuries before – have returned, using Science to threaten the very existence of the Vatican. A vial of “anti-matter” has been stolen from the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland and it’s primed to explode at midnight, taking a large chunk of Rome along with it. Even worse – just to add insult to injury – four Cardinals (the so-called preferiti, those in line to succeed the recently-deceased Pope) have been kidnapped, and the baddies plan to kill one Cardinal per hour in the hours leading up to the explosion. What this accomplishes isn’t clear, since the whole of St. Peter’s is going to go up at midnight anyway – but it makes for a puzzle, and that’s what’s important. (I often get the sense that Dan Brown fans only pick up his books because they’ve run out of crosswords and sudoku.)
Like Da Vinci Code, this new film is a chase movie with occult mumbo-jumbo and an educational streak (it’s a lot like National Treasure, studding its action with informative asides for the Younger Audience). Thus, for instance, we learn that December 25th was chosen for Christmas because it was already a pagan holiday, hence easier for new converts to accept – and, though Angels doesn’t feature anything as daft as Audrey Tautou saying “Why, the Mona Lisa is right over here” when she and Tom are in the Louvre, we do get a scene where Tom and new girl Ayelet Zurer tell each other (and the audience) all about Galileo’s theories of cosmology. Tom’s sidekicks are now Italian rather than French, but still prone to funny-foreigner absurdity: since your past exploits, “you have-a become, what is ze word, formidabile,” says a local cop. “Formidable?” guesses Tom correctly.
None of it makes sense, of course. Why are the Cardinals being killed? “To create panic,” we’re told – but then why is the first victim murdered in such an obscure location it takes Tom two strokes of luck, three changes of direction and a twist of a crooked floor mosaic even to find the body? The point is to reach the Church of the Illumination – the Illuminati stronghold, where presumably the bomb is being kept – but Tom and Ayelet get there only to find another clue leading them somewhere else entirely; then, when the film seems almost over, it pulls the rug in yet another twist, this one so implausible it’s downright ridiculous.
Does it matter? Obviously not. Brown’s books are insanely popular, so there’s clearly something to enjoy in this malarkey (to be fair, it’s seldom boring, and one scene – the one involving Water – had me on the edge of my seat). The real mystery isn’t why Angels & Demons is a hit, but why the Catholic Church doesn’t like it.
Ron Howard (who directed both this and Code) has publicly accused the Vatican of trying to sabotage the shoot and making his job difficult – yet, at a time when the Church risks appearing rigid and antiquated, Angels gives it a much-needed vote of confidence. Like Code – and despite the glimpses of behind-the-scenes Vatican intrigue – its thrust is basically moderate and reverent, not just asserting that “Science and Religion are not enemies”, not just assuring that “if the Church is flawed, it is because men are flawed”, but even getting its hero to supply a qualified endorsement. “Do you believe in God?” Langdon is asked point-blank, and refuses to call himself an atheist. His mind says he’ll never understand God, he admits – but his heart says he’s not meant to; “Faith is a gift that I have yet to receive”. What a relief, the symbologist has spoken.
CORALINE ***
DIRECTED BY Henry Selick
WITH THE VOICES OF Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, Dawn French
US 2009 100 mins.
Apologies if you’ve already taken your young and squeamish child to Coraline; I know I’ve been remiss, but I wasn’t able to watch the film before its opening weekend – or I’d certainly have tried to warn fond parents to ignore that blithe ‘K’ rating (“Suitable For All”). I don’t know if it should’ve been a ‘12’ – it is a cartoon, after all, albeit spindly stop-motion animation instead of the clean, rounded lines of most American cartoons – but it clearly isn’t suitable “for all”: Coraline is a nightmarish fantasy, almost a horror film, with mothers turning into monsters, children abandoned by their parents, ghosts of murdered kids wailing mournfully, a boy getting his lips safety-pinned into a fixed smile, and a surreal showbiz scene (a trapeze act played before an audience of Scotch terriers) that’s as weird, in its way, as David Lynch’s ‘Club Silencio’ in Mulholland Drive.
Clearly, it’s a cautionary tale – though I’m not entirely sure what kids are being cautioned against. Coraline (not Caroline) is an only child, an imaginative little girl with a rather dysfunctional home life. Her dad’s always busy with his writing; her mum hates mess, seems a bit neurotic and wears a neck-brace because of a recent “accident”. Even the kid next door – the family’s just moved into a new house – is as much a pest as a friend.
Everything changes when Coraline discovers a secret passage, a portal to a dream-world where she meets her Other Parents. They look the same, except in having buttons instead of eyes – but everything’s so much better in the other world: Mum cooks brilliantly, Dad sings and gardens, and both parents sit by her bedside intoning “Seeee you soooon” as she falls asleep. OK, so that last part is a little creepy.
Needless to say, the whole world is creepy, the film working in the dark-fairytale idiom of Hansel and Gretel (with a touch of The Stepford Wives in Other Mother’s terrifying cheerfulness). One could also mention The Wizard of Oz, except that Coraline’s reality isn’t really boring – her neighbours are all eccentrics, including a mad Russian and a pair of old English actresses – making you wonder what the film really thinks of its heroine. Is it significant that she insists so much on her name (Coraline, not Caroline), or that she begs in vain for a pair of yellow gloves to wear at school, so she can stand out from her fellow pupils? Is Coraline secretly admonishing kids to be good little conformists, and enjoy what they’ve got instead of trying
to be different?
No idea – but the film is effective, whatever its ultimate Message. The opening credits feature needles and dissected dolls, with ethereal xylophone dings on the soundtrack; there are touches of grotesque in Mr. Bobinsky, with his protuberant pot-belly, or next-door neighbour Wybie (short for Wyborne) with the permanent crick in his neck – even before it escalates into fantasy, and the Brothers Grimm nightmare takes over. In the end, the best audience for Coraline may be arty adults and prematurely jaded 11-year-olds with a burgeoning dark side. If they’re young and sensitive, forget it.
NEW DVD RELEASES
Here’s our regular look at the more interesting titles released on DVD in the US and UK over the past few months. Some may be available to rent from local video clubs, or you can always order over the Internet: dozens of suppliers, but http://www.amazon.com (for US) and http://www.play.com (for UK) are among the most reliable, if not necessarily the cheapest. Prices quoted don’t include shipping. Note that US discs are ‘Region 1’, and require a multi-region player.
NEW FILMS
JCVD: That’s Jean-Claude Van Damme to you, punk. Action star proves himself an actor in oddball, entertaining, semi-autobiographical action movie with dramatic asides; see it, if you haven’t already! Extras include 5 minutes of deleted scenes. [UK/US]
FEAR(S) OF THE DARK: A collection of “quiet, menacing horror stories” – all of them done as animation instead of live-action. Spooky French cartoon (not for kids); extras include a making-of. [UK]
THE ROMANCE OF ASTREA AND CELADON: Deceptively simple, limpid period romance is (apparently) the last film by ageing French master Eric Rohmer. Worth a look; no real extras. [UK]
OLD FILMS
MANUFACTURING CONSENT: NOAM CHOMSKY AND THE MEDIA (1992): Well-known gadfly does his thing in first-rate documentary, copious extras including footage of Chomsky in debate with various opponents over the years. [UK]
MARY POPPINS (1964): 45th Anniversary Edition: Another DVD outing for Disney classic, this time in a 2-disc package with lots of extras – most of them focusing (disappointingly) on the recent Broadway musical. Also includes deleted song ‘Chimpanzoo’. [US]
FEMALE PRISONER: CAGED! (1983): Japanese exploitation/erotica from the golden age of the early 70s, featuring the usual ladies in trouble backed by lavish production values. Includes a documentary on the history of so-called “Nikkatsu Roman Porno” and an interview with a Japanese film historian. [US]
YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW (1964): Not quite classic (but still amusing) Italian comedy in three parts, all of them starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. No extras. [UK]
