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April 27, 2005

Walk Down the Right Back Alley in Sin City, and You Can Find Anything...

Burt Shlubb and Douglas Klump. Two any-dirty-job-there-is thugs with delusions of eloquence. ~ Bruce Willis as Hartigan (via Frank Miller)

For a long time now geeks like me have had to watch our beloved comic books and graphic novels churned out into a celluloid holocaust of trash. Hollywood has, by and large, never understood the medium and rarely bothered to try. They see the bright colors that depict gritty explosions and their coal-lined hearts translate them into dollar signs before they bother to think about the subtext or the core of the stories and characters. We've seen a horrendous succession of mediocrity thrust at us. Ben Affleck as Daredevil being perhaps the lowest moment we had to suffer. And if the cast is right, the script is vomitus (can you say X-Men, boys and girls?).

Hollywood sees these as million-dollar jerk-off fests to showcase popular stars and special effects. And it's always the GREAT ones they rape. There are a LOT of bad comics out there. Do they go and fuck those up into film fodder? Nope. Bastards.

For years now I've been holding my breath in terror that Neil Gaiman's Sandman would come up on the block. That it hasn't is perhaps one of the last remaining possibilities of evidence that there may be a benevolent God. I think if I had to endure seeing some flavor-of-the-month star like Ashton Kutcher play Morphus, I'd really lose it and end up climbing a bell tower with a hostage and some automatic weapons. And I'd be justified.

So, when Sin City was announced there was that familiar dull sick feeling that cued Queen in the back of my mind ("Another One Bites the Dust").

I'm fiendishly, wickedly delighted to be wrong.

Sin City got it right. Rodriguez/Miller/Tarintino NAILED IT. They didn't make a movie about a graphic novel. They recreated a graphic novel using film as the medium. Every moment of the movie is poetry translated into visual splendor. The acting is spot-on. The atmosphere is eerily effective and from the opening to the ending you are on a journey that doesn't play by rules or phrases like "Hollywood ending" or "plot arch" or "star time."

It's gritty. It's dank and dark and dismal. It's hopelessly fragile and painfully beautiful. It's passion and loathing. It's goddamn glorous.

The moments of elegance in the film are of gut-wrenching beauty. And, like in graphic novels and modern comics, happiness is tentative, hard-won and often nothing more than a random gesture from a stranger. As with many in real life, the characters in Sin City find their joy to be fleeting and the rest of life is just about pacing the cage. Yeah, there are caricatures and bad-asses, but they are true to the form and not simple guns ablazin' white hats. Sweet complicated twisted webs are woven in the inner thoughts of the main characters and you are privy to them all.

The good guys aren't nice guys. Sometimes they're just the least maniacal of the maniacs. The bad guys aren't always criminals, but senators and cardinals and people in positions of power gone terribly corrupt. Because in the real world criminals can cause a little trouble, but we all know corrupt individuals in places of power do the real harm with their puppet-master mindsets. Take that game to the extreme and you have the basis of Sin City.

And the women! The woman are all that is right and wrong with graphic novels and comics. They are sympathetic and brutal and often both on a whim. They are on pedestals as angels, or wallowing in recesses with the darkest of devils. They are goddesses and Valkyrie; easy to get for a dollar, or unattainable for any dime. They are worth killing for, dying for, going to hell for...and sometimes that's just the prostitutes. They are the best and worst of the female animal as seen through the eyes of men. Sure it upsets a few feminist feathers in my soul to watch the damsel in distress card get pushed even further at times by this type of story-telling, but that's the way it goes. When a man tells the story, it's his eyes you see the world through. Doesn't make it right or wrong. It just makes it the story.

This film is brutal and bloody and unapologetic. It's also carnal and venereal. The sexuality isn't cheesed out of it like with Cool World and it isn't diluted to nothing for a PG-13 rating that will allow more under-aged asses into seats. It is the bar by which all others that follow it will be judged. And for those of us that have been waiting too damn long for someone to get it right, it is a welcome fucking relief.

And, for those of you who might have motivations far less complicated than mine, let me just say that Carla Gugino naked is worth the price of admission all by her scrumptious self.

Seraphs and saints with one great voice
Welcomed that soul that knew not fear;
Amazed to find it could rejoice,
Hell raised a hoarse half-human cheer.
~ From "A Ballad of Hell" by John Davidson

Blather d'Art by Doxy at 07:43 AM | permalink | talkback (2)

Comments

Posted by: Karl Elvis MacRae at April 28, 2005 12:58 AM

Posted by: Karl Elvis MacRae at May 1, 2005 06:26 PM

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