Vietnam War returning to the screen

FILM NOTES

◊ Oliver Stone, director of such movies as JFK and last year’s well-received World Trade Center, originally rose to fame directing films about the Vietnam War. His Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July remain among the best movies about that troubling conflict. Now, according to various reports, he plans to return to the Vietnam theme. This time, Stone’s focus will be on one of the most disturbing events in that war, the incident known as the My Lai Massacre.

The project, called Pinkville, is set to feature actors Bruce Willis, Channing Tatum, and Woody Harrelson. Given the raging debate about war in Iraq, the context is certainly eyebrow-raising.

Tony Soprano not dead — not bad for a fictional character

TELEVISION

◊ Here’s brief update to a another post regarding the final episode of HBO’s hugely successful series, The Sopranos.

According to series creator and main honcho David Chase, the abrupt ending to the final episode of The Sopranos, in which Tony looked up to the camera and then the picture went suddenly black, was not meant to indicate that Tony had just been killed. This and other bits of interesting information comes via an interview in the The Sopranos: The Book: The Complete Deluxe Edition, a book with a title nearly as long as the final season of the show. [Read a related story that appeared in The Daily News here.]

With a murky ending that seemed to support differing interpretations, fans of the series have hotly debated what was supposed to have happened in the last moment of the show. Many were not shy about saying they wanted to believe that Tony had just been the victim of a mob hit.

Apparently, Chase is mildly annoyed that so many fans of the series wanted to see Tony meet his demise. Of course, he had littered the script with many apparent clues, and so it was not that surprising that ardent fans of the show were able to find clues to support whatever opinion they had about Tony’s fate. But there were also plenty of red herrings. Who could say–other than Chase himself–what the intent was?

Taking another look at the finale in relation to the series as a whole, the best evidence that Chase intended simply for the series to stop, rather than for a dramatic murder at the end of the episode, may have been the music. Known for carefully selecting the exact music he felt was appropriate for given scenes, Chase chose the old Journey song “Don’t Stop Believin’” to close out the show. After all, this is the song with the words “Oh, the movie never ends, It goes on and on and on and on.” And that’s apparently what David Chase intended for his characters.

Of course, the show is literally fiction, and so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to get very worked up about what writers do or don’t do with the characters. As entertainment, it’s hard to quarrel with the production that The Sopranos gave us. Yet, the stories were perhaps less fascinating than the characters, who were as finely drawn and three-dimensional as any appearing on screen in recent years. Regardless of what we were supposed to think happened to the characters after the filming stopped, the characters themselves were so memorable–and the actors’ performances so convincing–that The Sopranos rises well above the ordinary.

Blade Runner: The Final Cut — A sci-fi classic revisited

FILM
A Dark New (Old) Version of Blade Runner

Twenty-five years have passed since the debut of director Ridley Scott’s visually stunning Blade Runner, a futuristic sci-fi tale adapted from a story by Philip K. Dick. The story focuses on the fate of artificial humans (called replicants in the movie) that have decided they want to “live” on their own terms. They especially want to continue their existence beyond the arbitrary expiration dates they’ve been given by their human creators.

Unfortunately for the replicants, the humans in Blade Runner don’t want the replicants take charge of their own lives. In fact, to insure that no replicant outlives the time allotted to it by its human creators, enforcer Rick Deckard (played by Harrison Ford) is dispatched to take care of any replicants who try to avoid termination. With this set-up, there’s plenty of conflict to make an exciting story.

Blade Runner is a widely known film, probably more fondly regarded now than when it was a new. One reason for this is purely visual. The movie’s portrayal of a decaying megalopolis is breathtaking. In fact, the convincing visual depiction of an imagined future world, awash with castaway humans and perpetual gloom, is perhaps Scott’s biggest and most enduring achievement in Blade Runner. Whatever else they thought about the movie, many people in the original audiences realized they were seeing a visionary (if nightmarish) cinematic creation.

Back in 1982, people behind the scenes were nervous about whether audiences would know what to make of the story itself, however. Therefore, prior its wide release, Blade Runner was touched up and altered in an effort to give it a better chance at the box office. In a word, it was made a bit more optimistic.

One major change, which the original audience probably didn’t realize, was made to the way the story ended. As it appeared in theaters, the admittedly bleak story was capped with an ending that was not as bleak. The final scene, in particular, seemed to offer some sense of optimism. It implied that some sort of human redemption might be found.

As it turns out, however, that was not the ending that Scott originally had in mind.

Now, with the newest release, the director’s original vision for the story is more fully resuscitated than ever before. After careful restoration and re-editing, Blade Runner is much darker and more depressing. The biggest change comes to the ending, which, after the restoration of previously deleted scenes that alter our perception of it, now seems decidedly downbeat. I won’t give away the details, but it’s the kind of ending studio executives feared would alienate audiences in 1982 when Scott first tried to use it.

Today, the movie industry is less fearful of this kind of darkness, of course. In modern cinema, we somewhat expect that “serious” films, regardless of genre, can be identified by an unflinchingly bleak stare into the abyss of human existence. In many—perhaps most—dramatic screen productions, optimism is cast aside as though an optimistic outlook can only be the expression of naiveté or weakness or ignorance. Optimism is surely not regarded as the stuff of serious film-making.

Undoubtedly, audiences today are more tolerant of bleak stories with dismal outcomes, at least to some degree. Still, I’m not sure audiences will come to prefer Blade Runner’s new, darker ending (which is actually the old ending) to the version that they already know. Viewers will have to decide for themselves, of course.

–GA

© 2007 Winter Street Review