Pull that fine thick hair of his, Remy, you adorable rodent, you! Make him dance! And cook! Preferably something without garlic. The smell of burning vampire flesh can put off the diners.
On Saturday we caught Ratatouille, a movie released in the US so long ago that the Region 1 DVD release is in a couple of weeks. That this made my summer movie viewing a bittersweet experience is a statement as accurate as it is devoid of the shouty fury I unleashed upon learning about the outrageously long wait I had ahead of me. Even if Disney's reason for delaying the release that much was that an orphanage was saved from being pulled down, I'd still be pissed beyond reason. How many ratless months? How much suffering Chez Canyoneck? And why, so some megacorp can make a few extra bucks? Don't care! Orphans saved from begging on the streets? Don't care! Me want rat movie pronto. Stupid Buena Vista. Me smash megacorp for tardy release, and hold grudge for rest of year. That show them!
Thankfully, it was worth the wait. Actually, that doesn't even cover our reaction. My eyelids were peeled back for the length of the movie, blinking only when tears poured forth, which they did with increasing frequency as the movie progressed. As a result, I have a bone to pick with genius director Brad Bird. I was already pointlessly annoyed that I would not be able to pick my favourite film of the year from the double whammy of excellence that was Zodiac and The Bourne Ultimatum, and now this comes along. Three totally different movies, but all of them absolutely perfect. Ratatouille is the pinnacle of computer animation, filled with remarkably fluid movement, beautiful colours, believable textures, and to top it all, it provides more food for thought than almost every other movie I've seen this year.
Damn, I'm so late to the party. All of this has already been said, but I have to chime in, because my love for this movie is so overwhelming. Technically, it is as good as movies get. I felt like the silver screen was kissing my eyeballs, and just to rub it in, the pitch-perfect voicework and Michael Giacchino's adorable soundtrack were nuzzling my ears. If a movie could hug you, that's what Ratatouille would do from the first frame to the last.
If that was all the movie did, it would be enough to put it high up on any self-respecting film watcher's top ten list for the year (if list-making is your bag; certain other contributors to this site are not so keen), but Brad Bird expands and clarifies some of the themes introduced in his masterpiece, The Incredibles. Though I'm more than a little unsure about some of the potential Objectivist, Ayn-Randian philosophies suggested by that film, I find the idea of celebrating excellence very appealing. When I heard that Ratatouille featured a similarly controversial message to that of The Incredibles, I was worried that a trend was developing that might retrospectively make the lesson of the earlier movie seem less endearing. Was Bird going to use all of his movies to espouse some awful, selfish, right-wing nonsense I would find it hard to get behind?
Thankfully, I'm convinced the movie is less about promoting devotion to the all-powerful uber-mensch, and more about celebrating excellence and intelligence. I took from it a message about having faith in yourself and doing everything you can to do what you do best, even in the face of indifference or lack of support. Early on in the film Remy's talent and curiosity and yearning for knowledge are treated by his family as a waste of time and energy. His rat brethren might come around by the end of the film (without ever being able to see the big picture the way Remy does), but at the start of the movie they are an ignorant mob who distrust intelligence. I could hate the movie for making them step into line at the end, but it's not presented as the actions of an automaton army governed by the confidence of a Objectivist right-wing control-freak, but as an expression of trust in a natural leader. Arguments can rage for years about whether Disney just funded a fun, vibrant, colourful, kid-friendly adaptation of The Fountainhead, but I thought it was about trusting someone you love to do what they need to do to be happy, and encouraging and helping them in achieving their goal. It's one of the most uplifting endings I've been lucky enough to see.
Even better than that is the arc of Anton Ego, the curmudgeonly critic who haunts the movie as a passive antagonist until the final few minutes of the movie. I don't wish to ruin the end of the movie for those of you who have yet to see it (and if you read this and have any sense, you will rush to a cinema immediately), but there is a scene involving him that is filled with such simple, honest beauty that I blarted hot tears all over Canyon, who was in a similar situation, from what she told me later. My heart, it melted.
The see-sawing negative and positive treatment of Anton Ego and the art of criticism sadly reminded me of M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water, which is one of the bitterest films I've ever seen. Stung by the reviews of The Village, Shyamalan and his very thin skin went all out to get his own back on critics. In the middle of his preposterous, badly-thought out, dreary tale of Scrunts (dog/lawn hybrids), Narfs (Bryce Dallas Howard after an injection of creepy), Tartutics (angry monkey warriors, and no, they're not as cool as that sounds), and Great Eatlons (just a really big eagle), Shyamalan introduces Harry Farber, a film critic (played by Bob Balaban), who thinks there is no originality left, and as a result is incapable of joy or empathy or anything. He treats everyone like dirt (including adorable semi-hero Cleveland Heep, played with typical intensity and commitment by Paul Giamatti), and his confidence in his own ability to parse the mechanics of story-telling nearly dooms Bryce Dallas Howard to death by LawnDog when he inaccurately interprets some unnecessarily complex rules of Narfdom conveyed in obnoxiously grandiose and slow-moving scenes of ear-tugging and, and, and... Ugh! It's too complicated, contrived, and stupid to go into in full detail. Just believe me, it's horrible horrible storytelling.If anyone here has the DVD and has seen the deleted scenes, please tell me if there are any featuring Farber throwing kittens off his balcony, or making baby stew. He's practically that villainous and unpleasant in the movie. It's an even worse directorial decision than basing the plot around a writer who will save the world by writing the most important book ever, and then deciding that the only person qualified to play that part is, well, M. Night Shyamalan himself. Actually, it's a toss-up. Both decisions are monumentally wrongheaded.
The worst scene in the film (or in any film that year except for certain unsavoury scenes in Neil LaBute's ode to woman-hating, The Wicker Man) comes when Farber gets killed by Shyamalan's instrument of justice, the Rogue Scrunt. Farber is cornered as in the photo above, and has watched so many dull and uninspiring movies (unlike Shyamalan's, of course), that he now see everything through a Robert-McKee-Story prism. This is his external monologue prior to being eaten:
Farber: Hello? Is the bathroom on this level working? [Scrunt walks into view and menaces Farber] A dog inside the building! Go! Shoo! Why you're not a dog at all. My god, this is like a moment from a horror movie. This is precisely the moment where the mutation or beast will attempt to kill an unlikable side character. But, in stories where there has been no prior cursing, violence, nudity or death, such as in a family film, the unlikable character will escape his encounter, and be referenced later in the story, having learned valuable lessons. He may even be given a humorous moment to allow the audience to feel good about him. This is where I turn to run. You will leap for me, I will shut the door, and you will land a fraction of a second too late. [turns to walk away]
Scrunt: [Leaps onto Farber and starts eating him] Growl! This is for saying the twist in The Village was obvious! Rend! Tear! Signs was a masterpiece, you nasty hurtful meanies, and not an hour and a half of genius followed by twenty minutes of potentially career-killing stupidity! Chomp! I'm the best director in the world, and not the patron saint of arrogance and hubris like what you said! Slurp! You taste like poo, you poo man! And you smell like poo! Glurp! Who's laughing now? I just made a movie about how poo you are! [finishes eating, runs off into the night, sobbing]
It's literally jaw-dropping. I know executives told him he would never get away with filming that scene, but to still go ahead with it takes brass balls. (Confession; I might have added the Scrunt dialogue. Or I might not. You'll have to rent the movie and find out, won't you?) In case I come across as someone harbouring a grudge against Shyamalan, I will add a disclaimer. His style is one of the most distinctive in Hollywood, and though he could stand to speed his movies up just a bit, that style can work amazingly well. He has a directorial eye that is second to none. The Farber death scene might be monumentally dumb, but it's framed in such an original way and shot with such ravishing style and precision that the stupidity of it seems even worse in comparison. As for his other films, I liked The Sixth Sense a lot, and absolutely adored Unbreakable, which I think is his best movie. Even his dreck hasn't put me off his next movie, The Happening, which sounds fantastic.
Sadly, Signs was good, up to a point, and after that, he's disappointed me repeatedly. His style may be distinctive and his films may be beautiful, but only when he reins himself in. As soon as he goes too far with his stylistic tics, it falls apart. Critics who said The Village was nothing more than a Twilight Zone episode were not wrong. It's a 45 minute story padded out to over twice that length with lots of slow walking and ponderous dialogue scenes, albeit shot with typical beauty by the wondrous Roger Deakins, and performed with immense conviction by a talented cast.
Lady in the Water too has glorious, award-worthy photography by Christopher Doyle, and features some great performances, but takes forever to tell an absurd and badly worked out story, featuring fantasy characters forced to adhere to nonsensical behavioural rules that serve only to drag a thin story out to feature length. Why can't Narfs talk about their world and their relationship with Scrunts? Because Shyamalan says fairy tales are like that, so shut up and deal with the fact that that little arbitrary rule just added 20 very slow scenes to a movie that otherwise would have been over in half an hour. Why do all the Korean and Italian characters spend the movie shrieking and freaking out like a bunch of lazily written caricatures? Just say no to racial stereotyping, Shyamalan. And what was with Freddy Rodriquez's pointless rubber arm?
That just made me laugh every time it turned up. Small comfort, though. It broke my heart to see Lady in the Water, not just because it's an overlong and dreary vanity piece that's as technically perfect and beautiful as it is moronic, but because it's so so nasty, and confirmed reports of Shyamalan losing the plot while pitching the movie to Disney production president Nina Jacobson. I mean, I can kind of see why he reacted so badly. I've got a thin skin too, and I know if I got reviews that are half as severe as those received by Shyamalan (a notoriously criticism averse perfectionist), I'd cry for months. What I wouldn't do, though, is build an entire movie around that anger and upset. That's a hell of a complicated and expensive rattle to throw out of the pram.
Compare that to Brad Bird and Jan Pinkava's creation, Anton Ego. At first I thought Bird was also demonising critics with many unsubtle directorial choices: making Ego look like a cross between a vampire and an undertaker; hinting that he is somehow accidentally responsible for the death of Gusteau; designing a study for him that is shaped like a coffin; making his motivation a desire to destroy the restaurant for no other reason than that he enjoys giving bad reviews. I was seriously beginning to flash back to Harry Farber being mauled by a Rogue ShyamaScrunt. If Bird had gone that way for the entire film, it would have ruined Ratatouille for me completely. Remember I said I didn't want to ruin the film if you haven't seen it? Let's just leave it like this; bearing in mind what I think the worst finale of the film could have been, and how unsubtly the character was set up earlier, I was surprised at the direction Bird went in. Deliriously, joyously, tear-inducingly surprised. Shyamalan should be dragged from the set of The Happening and made to watch Ratatouille. Hopefully he will learn something about what criticism is, or can be. You never know, his heart might even melt.
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