Back in 2001, a young writer/director named Richard Kelly made a film called Donnie Darko (yes, it really was that long ago). It was an incredible movie, loved by critics and, depsite it's indie credentials, audiences everywhere. The film worked because it was unlike anything seen before, a subversive blend of arthouse surrealism and mainstream drama, with an incredibly affecting ending. The film's weirdness is often focussed on. After seeing The Box, Kelly's latest, the director's debut seems incredibly normal.
The Box starts off (relatively) simple. Set in 1970's Virginia, a young couple, Arthur (James Marsden) and Norma (Cameron Diaz), striving to give their son an education at a top school, are given a mysterious box by the charming, heavily scarred Arlington Steward (Frank Langella). He posits them with a moral dilemma - if they decide to press the encased button they will recieve $1million. However, someone who they don't know will also die. Sounds far too narrow a plotline, right? How can they make a whole movie out of that?
Well, if it helps, by halfway through the movie, you'll forget it was ever about a box. What follows is something of a conspiracy thriller gone off the rails. Kelly can't even stick to one genre in his fevered attempt to destroy the brains of audiences worldwide, flitting through sci-fi, horror, drama, and even fantasy, as the reality of Steward's plans become (slightly) clear. This is not an easy film to follow - towards the end it almost becomes a mess of half-baked ideas, becoming like one of those TV shows (Lost, Heroes, etc.) which open so many plot strands that there's almost no way of tying them up coherently. That most of the plot strands are tied up is testament to Kelly's skill, both as a writer, and as a lunatic who's brain can seem to process a billion things at once.
Sure, there's a lot of stuff that's not explained, and this becomes even more apparent upon a rewatch. And a lot of elements are left incredibly ambiguous. Who are Steward's 'employers' he so frequently refers to? It's up to us, the audience, to figure that out. And you can tell that Kelly wants it that way. In fact, above all, the audacity of this film can't help but be admired. Here we have a big, Hollywood blockbuster blueprint, with a twisty plot, a 12A rating, and Cameron Diaz in the lead. However, Kelly just can't resist, and tries to mess with the audience the whole time. Complex moral questions pepper the whole piece, challenging us not just to think about the plot, but to think about humanity, philosophy, and ethics. Not only all this, but he ends the film on an unsettling, disturbing note, a ten-minute long scene that not only presents us with an even more complex moral issue that the film's starter, but also one of the most puzzling final shots in recent memory. This is the kind of film you'll need flipcharts and multiple-coloured pens to follow perfectly.
However, as brain-bustingly bamboozling as it all may be, it's also extremely entertaining, and this is why it all works. Your head may begin to ache after a while, but you'll also be gripped, wondering how the hell it can all possibly make sense. The big twists are perhaps not as satisfying as they should be, but, then again, your mind has to make half of them up. All the central performances are also very impressive, particularly Langella as Steward, who manages to be completely charming and completely psychotic at the same time, never once losing his cool, but even more creepy because of it. The CGI that is used to cut off half of his face is also incredibly impressive, with many 'how the hell did they do that?' moments. In fact, the only problem is that it's somewhat distracting from his performance, such is the incredibly grotesque quality of it.
If you're prepared to sit down, let your brain ache, and have a good think whilst at it, The Box is a blast. If you're not in this state of mind however, you'll probably still have a blast, wondering just where it can go after it reaches the pinnacle of it's insanity. And even if the final destination disappoints you, the journey is well worth it.
4/5
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I find this interesting, because I personally thought the film was piss poor =p
ReplyDeleteIt is a Marmite movie, people either love it or hate it. Oddly enough, with films like that I tend to be right in the middle, but as flawed as it was, I thought The Box was stupidly entertaining =p
ReplyDeleteThe whole thing just felt like a "Made in China" version of a Lynch film. It's Kelly's style of Faux art house, like Donnie Darko that annoys me. I could go on about it but I really can't be bothered =p
ReplyDeleteBasicly "Button, button" is what I wanted from the film and it wasn't what I got.
Hmmm, I'd rather a director made a film that actually meant something though, as opposed to just surrealism for the sake of surrealism. I'm not necessarily saying this about Lynch's films, because I've never seen one. I just feel that Kelly wants to make strange films, definitely, but ones that also have meaning behind them. I'd rather someone make a film that can speak to me as an audience member as well as it does the director, as opposed to one where the director just made the film to please themself.
ReplyDeleteBut then again, I don't see his films as "arthouse", I just see them as artistic. Arthouse to me is a negative connotation, because being the shallow, uneducated boy I am, I think the majority of arthouse is, to be blunt, a load of wank =p
But that's just my opinion, and I've probably contradicted myself a lot. I know what I mean, just difficult to put into words =p
I tend to prefer a director to make something with meaning usually, but I don't see how Kelly has done that here. There is the whole moral dilemma of pushing the button obviously, but that bit's lifted from "Button, button" and is handled terribly in this film. When it switches to Kelly's original content the dilemma gets left behind and a stupid sci-fi conspiracy takes its place. The consequences of pushing the button become meaningless, instead it becomes about what they have got themselves caught up in rather than why killing a person for personal gain may be a bad thing. It has the effect weakening what should be the main focus of the film, and is one hell of a missed opportunity.
ReplyDeleteThe whole thing came across to me as weird just to be weird. I don't see any reason behind what he has made and I don't think there really is one, although I'm sure there are plenty of arguments against that. But that is Surrealism. It's about experimentation, trying something new. In other words Surrealism is always surrealism for surrealism's sake.
Lynch films do speak to me as an audience member, he doesn't just make them for himself. No one can put the amount of effort Lynch puts into every scene, every shot and every sound and make it purely for themselves.
"The Box" is arthouse, but it's all arthouse that has been done before. Kelly hasn't created anything really new here but he's got away with looking like he has which annoys me no end.
Watch "Lost Highway" it's overrated as fuck, but it handles the whole "couple get mysterious package" and "creepy possibly supernatural stranger" ideas much better than this and to top it all off Lynch completly subverts what we expect from a film, something Kelly want's to do but seems unable to actually pull off.
And yeah, stuff like this is always hard to put into words, so forgive the flaws that are probably evident in this post.
=]
Also it committed the most heinous of film crimes. It bored the shit out of me. I wasn't sat there thinking "Where can this go next?" in an excited way, I was sat there thinking "Where can this go next?" in a "Jesus Christ when will this end" way.
ReplyDelete