By Jason Apuzzo. We’ve been speculating for some time here at Libertas that Disney’s Tron: Legacy might go political. The early, key indication of this was an interview with Bruce Boxleitner in which he suggested that the big bad villain of Tron might be a wicked defense contractor.
Collider: Watching last night I sort of got some political undertones in the film –
Wilde: Absolutely. There’s a totally anti-fascist message here.
Collider: She really believes she’s doing the right thing, having this war on imperfection. Do you get that now having seen the whole film?
Wilde: Yes, absolutely, and I saw it more than ever in the movie last night. I knew that was there in the script, but I was really excited to see, like, ‘Ooh, good. We have a little bit of a political slant.’ Maybe no one will notice but you and me, but I think the message, again, is that imperfection is beautiful, the idea of accepting flaws. The story is of a dictator who has ethnically cleansed this universe and what’s left is this desperate and miserable world. The message I think of course is that compassion, humanity and humility are important in our own lives as well as in politics. Again, that makes me think about how incredible Jeff’s performance was because to create a character like Clu who was this merciless dictator who really kind of sends chills up your spine as you think of maybe who he resembles in actual history, but I think it does have a message as well, a political message as well as one just about humanity in general.
I would love to know exactly who Wilde thinks Tron‘s “merciless dictator” resembles “in actual history,” wouldn’t you? Why do I think I already know? Hint: I doubt she’s talking about insane Islamic theocrats eager to wipe out Jews, or any actual fascists in today’s world; she’s more likely talking about America’s ‘virtual,’ imaginary fascists that haunt the current liberal imagination. And we all know who those guys are …!
The young, CGI Jeff Bridges as a "merciless dictator."
In any case, I think perhaps we’re starting to get the vibe of what this film will be saying. As we’ve said here on almost a hundred different occasions recently, sci-fi is the new medium through which the big, ideological statements are being made in the cinema. (Although, truth be told, sci-fi has actually being doing this for decades.) If Avatar didn’t make that point clearly enough, the many new sci-fi films coming in its wake will.
By Jennifer Baldwin. Watching old movies has been a spotty pastime for me these last few months. Working full-time as a high school English teacher leaves me with less free time than I’d like to work on my “Classic Cinema Obsession” articles, so that’s why I’ve been pretty much absent from Libertas since Mad Men ended.
I also began writing for a new film website called Fandor, an amazing new site that allows subscribers to watch a wide variety of classic, foreign, and indie films directly on their computers. No downloads, everything is streamed on the site. And first-time subscribers get a one-month free trial, which is a great incentive to join.
Along with the films, Fandor also provides written commentary and informative essays about the films and filmmakers, including articles by yours truly. My first article for Fandor was on Tarkovsky’s haunting dream film The Mirror, while my second article was on the Josef Von Sternberg/Marlene Dietrich classic, The Blue Angel. I’m also a participant in Fandor’s syndication program, which allows me to embed their films directly on my own personal blog, Dereliction Row. You can watch any of the films anytime you want if you’re a subscriber, or you can watch an individual film for a small rental fee. I’d encourage anyone who is interested in great cinema to check out Fandor.
So even though I have been overly busy with my day job as a teacher, I haven’t completely neglected my passion for classic films. And that’s what this “Classic Movie Journal” is all about. It’s my way to keep writing about old movies for Libertas, but in a more informal, less time intensive manner. Consider these my unvarnished, rambling, and passionate musings on all things old movies. Emphasis on the unvarnished and rambling, please.
So what’s rattling round in my brain this week? Well, as I mentioned above, I have been watching the new TCM documentary series about the history of Hollywood, and I have to admit, I’m a little disappointed. Normally I fall down at the feet of everything TCM does, but this time I’m not feeling it.
I don’t know if my expectations were too high, but the series has not lived up to them. I just finished watching episode four, “Brother Can You Spare a Dream,” which focused on the years 1929 to 1941, and I’ve found that the show doesn’t seem able to get to the essence of its topic each week. This week’s episode was all about Hollywood during the Depression, and how sound technology revolutionized the industry – and yet it never really delved into the cultural impact of the Talkies or the way the movies affected Depression audiences. It gave a little lip service to these topics, but I never felt the grand sweep, the overall impact that the movies had during these years. Through four episodes so far, there’s been nothing epic about this series.
From "The Great Train Robbery," (1903).
Part of the problem is that the show is divided in its attentions right from the start. It’s “Moguls and Movie Stars,” so the focus must be split between the businessmen and the artists. This is a pretty standard approach as far as an appraisal of Hollywood history goes, but the writing of the show has been muddled because of it. It keeps jumping back and forth between the machinations of the moguls and the rise and fall of various stars, but there’s no “through line” that connects everything to something larger. I was expecting a sort of myth-building history of America, as told through the history of Hollywood (something along the lines of Ken Burns’ Baseball documentary). Instead, it’s just a very rote, very surface documentary that breezes through its topic like a Cliffs Notes version of history.
Maybe each episode isn’t long enough? Maybe it was a mistake to break down each episode by decade? I know I would have liked more than an hour to cover the tumultuous and groundbreaking 1920s. I’m not sure how to fix the problem, but I’ve found that each episode is highly disposable and I haven’t learned anything I didn’t already know from my Film Studies 101 class. What’s even more annoying is that I was expecting these earlier episodes to be the strongest of the series, since they would be dealing with the earliest years of Hollywood in which I know very little in comparison to the more popular decades of the ‘30s, ’40, and ‘50s.
Ginger Rogers in "Gold Diggers of 1933."
In last week’s episode, Shirley Temple was given about three minutes of screen time at most. Fred Astaire got maybe a minute. The few clips that we got were brief and usually did not include much dialogue. I mean, this is the 1930s, when dialogue was everything – and snappy, quintessentially American dialogue was the great innovation of the age. Instead, everything was pretty much thrown at the viewer in a helter skelter manner, the only guiding framework being chronology. This series needs more clever montages and filmmaking chops. As it is, it’s kinda boring.
Maybe I’m being too hard. The series is certainly professionally produced and the interviews with the relatives and descendants of the moguls at least provide some new, unique perspectives. Occasionally the documentary will delve into some little known area, such as the career of female director Alice Guy, or the pioneering work of African American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. But overall, it’s familiar stuff. And it’s not even presented in a thrilling or heart-swelling way. If a documentary like this can’t even get a classic movie obsessed gal like me to swoon, then there’s something wrong. A series like this should get me all psyched up to go watch the movies that get mentioned in each episode. Instead, I find myself relieved when the episodes are over and not really in the mood to watch any of the movies discussed.
Maybe the final three episodes will surprise me. I haven’t watched the newest one that just aired on November 29, so there’s still time for redemption. As it stands now, though, this series has been a disappointment. Normally I worship at the altar of TCM, but not this time.
