The Spirit & ACMI February 22, 2009
Posted by butrosbrando in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
Written and Directed by: Frank Miller
Starring: Gabriel Macht, Samuel L. Jackson, Eva Mendes, Scarlett Johansson, Sarah Paulson, Louis Lombardi, Eric Balfour & Paz Vega
The directorial debut from legendary comic book writer/artist Frank Miller, who’s inspiring body of work includes his own Sin City and other graphic novels such as The Dark Knight Returns & 300 which has built respect for the entire medium. Unfortunately after experiencing the mess that is The Spirit, its obvious his talent lies on the page not behind a camera. Although I do reserve some hope for Miller if he ever has the guts to helm another solo project.
After co-directing Sin City with Robert Rodriguez he was given the chance to direct an adaptation of Will Eisner’s The Spirit all by himself. The film takes a very familiar route, entirely shot infront of green screen and digitally coloured black and white with a few enhanced colours for style. It looks like Sin City but doesn’t quite work or capture me like that did, but i’ve never read the source material so i don’t know how true to it stays. Regardless, differences from the source material is the least of its problems in my eyes. It can be a visually engrossing film (maybe for the first 10-20 minutes) but is soon pulled down by flat character’s, bad dialogue, silly humour and no story. Especially after having been through Christopher Nolan’s super serious Dark Knight smash, rooted more so in a believable reality, where as The Spirit’s comical action that feels like Warner Brothers cartoons just doesn’t quite deliver the needed impact. Due to this i had no emotions toward the characters and couldn’t of cared less about the story.
The movie begins with The Spirit (Gabriel Macht) who recieves a tip about his arch-enemy The Octopus (Samuel L Jackson), who is trying to intercept a treasure chest of some sort in the Mud Flats outside of Central City. This leads to a massive brawl between the two, at this point we learn that both The Spirit and The Octopus have strange invinclible powers that make them essentially boring and careless due to the fact they can’t inflict true pain to each other. It turns out that this chest they are both after contains the blood of Hercules (the son of Zeus) which could make either one of them immortal. To complicate things further, the one who is in possession of the treasure chest is Sand Seref, The Spirit’s childhood flame who has since become a jewel thief played by Eva Mendes. Scarlett Johannson looked like she was having fun playing femme fatal alongside Jackson and Lombardi but still I didn’t see much in her overall character and what was with Jackson’s cronies with words printed on their shirts, pointless and dull is what came to my mind, (actually that refers to the whole film).
Some good scenes and hints of Miller’s style but overall the direction at the end of the day should be left in the hands of the more experienced ones. Some cool designs, beautiful girls, crazy villans and no real solid story. Ultimately, I lost interest very early in the film that should of left me inspired and hanging for Sin City 2!
The setting the scene exhibition at ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image) in melbourne shows a behnd the scenes look at the development of a scene in films such as Australia, Alien, The Matrix and many others. With documentaries and interviews from directors displayed on LCD screens, showing the audience the creative minds behind the films, as well as seeing physical mock-ups, sketches/story boards and designs for many different locations. The exhibition brought you insight into the film design process.
