Bored to Death: INFERNO

There are worse movies than Inferno, movies so inept, confused, ill-considered, or offensive they’re impossible to defend let alone sit through. But that makes it all the more depressing to realize Inferno is the only thing a movie can be that’s worse than bad. It is boring. I don’t mean to say it is slow or off-putting or strange or lazy. No, it is just deafeningly empty from the first frame to the last, completely devoid of interest or entertainment. If it was a bad movie it could at least kick up ludicrous silliness or something so mind-bogglingly tone deaf it’d be worth unpacking. Here we simply have a movie with no real reason to exist, incapable of making an argument for itself. It merely is, playing out with all the excitement and urgency of a talented group of Hollywood craftspeople signing off on a contractual obligation. It’s the kind of movie so tediously uninteresting you wonder if it was possible everyone was sleepwalking behind the scenes, or maybe trading sightseeing tips for their European downtime on Sony’s dime.

Clearly a commercial commitment, Sony couldn’t indefinitely sit on the rights to Dan Brown’s successful books about Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, not after director Ron Howard and star Tom Hanks turned them into two good-sized hits already. The Da Vinci Code (2006) and Angels & Demons (2009) were not great thrillers, but at least they had their pulpy fun pretending their plot mechanics were wrapped in learning, with history lectures and Catholic conspiracy. Any movies that can feature both lengthy art appreciation monologues and Paul Bettany as a self-flagellating albino monk (in the first) or Ewan McGregor as a Cardinal parachuting out of an exploding helicopter (in the second) can’t be all bad. These were fairly self-serious works, B-movies impressed by their own footnotes and inflated with big budgets and big stars. Still, nothing prepared me for how exhausted and joyless Inferno was. Compared to this new film, its predecessors are models of humble, slight, and economical filmmaking. This one stumbles through an endless bleary plot without a single second of rooting interest, believable stakes, or photographic interest. 

It starts with Langdon (Hanks) waking up in a Florence hospital suffering amnesia from a head wound. His doctor (Felicity Jones) tells him he was attacked. Confused and suffering hallucinogenic flashes of horror imagery – the movie takes glum grotesqueries as humdrum – Langdon flees with his caretaker after a policewoman opens fire on them. Now he must remember why he’s now wrapped up in a globetrotting art-adjacent adventure, racing to prevent an apocalyptic event. Because he’s done sort of thing twice before he’s well equipped to get up to speed as he fumbles around the scrambled passages of his mind. Maybe it has something to do with the visual representation of Dante’s Inferno he finds in his pocket, and which has been altered to include clues to a hidden cache of plague virus that would wipe out 95% of the world’s population if unleashed. You can see why the World Health Organization, which this movie imagines operates as an international SWAT team, is hot on their trail. The mystery is why they think Langdon has something to do with it.

I can forgive many an incredulously strained plot, but see if you can follow this. Say you were a brilliant but eccentric sociopathic billionaire scientist with a goal of reversing the world’s overpopulation with your custom-made plague. You’ve hidden it in a bag that’ll blow up on a certain day and time. Would you: A.) tell no one, sit back quietly, and let it do its thing; or B.) throw yourself off a building, leaving behind an elaborate set of art-history scavenger hunt clues leading to your biological weapon of mass destruction? I get when Langdon is investigating a conspiracy with historical roots why sussing out clues in paintings and monuments is a helpful strategy, but why would Inferno’s villain (Ben Foster) create new clues on old art? If he was really intent on kickstarting the apocalypse, why leave room for a professor to figure it out and stop you? There’s little motivation behind anyone’s behavior in this movie, including WHO agents (Sidse Babett Knudsen and Omar Sy) and a mysterious fixer whose office is aboard a freighter in the Adriatic (Irrfan Khan). They change sides a couple times each for seemingly no reason other than cheap surprise.

Inferno is a movie that’ll test a lot of assumptions. Think between Ron Howard directing and David Koepp writing they could surely cobble together a half-interesting story? Think national treasure Tom Hanks could reliably deploy his star power? Think a supporting cast of fine actors could bring something to the table? Think some solid, reliable Hollywood craft – cinematography from occasional Howard collaborator Salvatore Totino, score from the busy Hans Zimmer – could at least render a movie watchable? Prepare to be disappointed. It’s an entire movie of people going through the motions. It can’t even make stunning locales in Florence, Venice, and Istanbul look like the good museum-hopping travelogue thriller it could’ve been. The movie is cramped and ugly – maybe the better to emphasize its villain’s complaint about too many people? – and the way the plot unfolds around an amnesiac hero is treated for mere confusion. This only serves to hobble what should be a swaggering Hanks by making him squint and stagger while reading clues to the other characters, dragged along by the boring plot without clear drive or goals of his own. He can’t remember why he’s there or why he should care, and I could relate. The only reason to see this movie is if you want a dark room in which you could nap for a couple hours.

Safety Not Guaranteed: JURASSIC WORLD

Why is it so difficult to make a good sequel to Jurassic Park? It's been 14 years since Joe Johnston made a half-decent B-movie-ish III, and 18 since Spielberg himself brought us The Lost World, a collection of good images in an underwhelming whole. Sure, the great original 1993 blockbuster benefited from one of those perfect confluences of creative people at the height of their powers. It has Spielberg’s eye for beautifully shaped spectacle, an iconic John Williams’ score, an appealing creature-feature structure of exquisite set-ups and pay-offs, and a hugely likable cast able to turn stock characters into warm and sympathetic people we want to see escape danger in one piece. But it’s not like the core idea – theme park stocked with resurrected dinosaurs descends into chaos – is unrepeatable. And yet here we are with Jurassic World, the third unsuccessful attempt to recapture the magic.

World, directed and co-written by the forgettable indie Safety Not Guaranteed’s Colin Trevorrow in his first big-budget excursion, is the largest, loudest, and fastest Jurassic movie thus far. It’s also the emptiest. It tells the story of corporate greed reopening the dinosaur island and creating Jurassic World, a larger theme park with more creatures and better security. It’s a hit. The new park is swarming with crowds delighted by the dinosaurs. But the owners want more profit, forcing the geneticists to cook up brand new monsters to advertise. (Sort of like injecting new filmmakers into an old franchise, no?) There’s an early scene in which the icy head of operations (Bryce Dallas Howard) sells the naming rights to their new “Indominus Rex” and assures her boss (Irrfan Khan) the beast has “more teeth.” Most Hollywood blockbusters engage in a little double think, but here it is rampant, a corporate calculation scoffing at corporate calculations.

Jurassic World is about nothing more than itself, attempting to preempt some criticism by acknowledging its nature as a product. It creates a bland self-serving parody theme park, realistically kitsch and poking fun at its own existence. It’s an old idea resurrected for the sake of big profits. Get it? We’re to giggle at parallels between the film and the park, laughing at business excesses dazzled by technology while dazzled by the technology of a film made for business excess. The World has a monorail and hamster-ball safari pods. It has a massive aquatic beast in a big tank. It has a resort hotel, chain restaurants, holograms, flat screens, and a raptor trainer (an unsmiling Chris Pratt). This film expects an audience to enjoy a fake theme park as much as the original film wanted us to thrill at dinosaurs. We even have two boys (Ty Simpkins and Nick Robinson), Howard’s character's nephews, to follow through the attractions as they stare mouths agape at CGI busyness. I’m glad someone’s enjoying it. 

This is how it always starts, with oohs and aahs. But then there’s running and screaming as, inevitably, the big, bad “Indominus Rex” gets loose. It’s predictable, and worse, witless. The crisis escalates, soon enveloping the whole park, entirely due to bad decisions characters make. Every effort to contain the mess goes stupidly wrong. It’s a collection of dino attacks, spectacularly visualized in fine effects work, but hollow in impact. Countless people are devoured and animals are gunned down or torn up. It’s sometimes visceral and exciting, but where’s the care? There’s no impact when it’s only there for a thrill without considering the weight of the moment. (Contrast that with Gareth Edwards' much better work with scale and staging in last year's great Godzilla.) Rampaging dinosaurs and hundreds of imperiled tourists make for awfully small thinking when there’s no sense of stakes. It’s full of competent visuals, but has uninteresting characters and set-pieces without suspense because it doesn’t take the time to matter.

Our characters, stereotypical and humorless, enter with dopey stock plotlines both overfamiliar – the boys are worried about their parents divorce – and vaguely offensive – the business woman, always clad in a tight white suit and high heels, is repeatedly told to loosen up and let a man save her. They mix with familiar types – an antagonist with secret commercial goals (Vincent D’Onofrio), a comic relief computer guy (Jake Johnson) – but the likable cast is given lifeless material. Where are the ripples-in-the-water moments? There’s no time for awe, for sublime anticipation. We’re just racing to the next tyrannosaur-sized brawl, the next cruel kill. They’re faced with routine violence they can’t even begin to contain. It saps the urgency to know a convenient contrived deus ex machina is the only way out. They’re not racing to restore power or call for help. They’re just bumbling through the jungle hoping not to get eaten by dinosaurs we barely get to know. And what about the park’s guests? The movie doesn’t care. They’re just background screams.

There’s never any sense of danger, just bright colors and loud noises. There’s a moment when an anonymous woman is plucked out of the crowd by a loose pterodactyl, then dropped into a pool, and dragged up and down until an even bigger dino munches them both. It’s cruelly elaborate. And what purpose does it serve? It’s not thrillingly shaped or given emotional weight. It just exists because the filmmakers could do it, not because they should. There is more tension and personality in one shot of Jurassic Park than all of Jurassic World’s wide shots of impersonal computerized spectacle intercut with dutiful reactions. It’s over-thought – self-amused, loaded with references to its predecessor – and under-imagined.

Castaways: LIFE OF PI

There’s a moment early on in Ang Lee’s Life of Pi in which a little boy stays up past his bedtime with a flashlight under the covers, regarding a comic book with seriousness in his eyes. The panel he finds most fascinating shows a boy opening his mouth and inside can be seen the whole universe. Lee pushes his camera in until this drawn universe fills the frame. The compelling image can be read as the film itself in microcosm: a finely rendered but rather ordinary sight that opens up to reveal untold unexpected wonders. It’s a story within a story and the set-up moves along just fine, but it’s all rather standard stuff. It doesn’t really take off until its quite literally adrift.

This visual marvel of a film starts simply enough with a young author (Rafe Spall) arriving at the home of Pi Patel (Irrfan Khan), a man who reportedly has a miraculous story to tell, a story so good it’ll make one believe in God. Those are lofty (unattainable) ambitions and although the scenes with the writer fall flat (through no fault of the great Kahn), what follows in between interview and narration are charming flashback sequences in which a young boy (Gautam Belur and Ayush Tandon) grows up in a small Indian town with his zookeeper father (Adil Hussain), mother (Tabu) and older brother (Mohd Abbas Khaleeli and Vibish Sivakumar). The little boy has a curiosity about animals and about spiritual matters. His father’s an atheist; his mother’s a Hindu. Soon enough the boy’s a Hindu, a Christian, and a Muslim. His father tells him believing in everything is no better than believing in nothing. Later, talk turns to the zoo’s inhabitants. “Animals have souls,” the boy says. No, the stern zookeeper replies. All you see in an animal’s eyes is your own soul’s reflection.

So, the film has set up a rather heavy-handed, if good-natured, exploration of the intersection between spirituality and the animal kingdom. That it locates this thematic terrain in a quaint little period piece elaborately embellished through visual trickery only adds to the slight charms. By the time the boy is on the cusp of adulthood (now played by Suraj Sharma), circumstances are such that the family is preparing to move to the United States. The animals are sold to American sanctuaries, placed in cages and loaded aboard a freighter that will give the family free passage. Pi is saddened by such a move, but must go along. The journey is unremarkable, at least until one dark and stormy night the boat suffers debilitating mechanical problems.

In a sensationally staged sinking, terrifying and convincing, the boat crashes through unforgiving waves, takes on water, and ultimately disappears beneath the waves. Pi, the only survivor, is left all by himself in a lifeboat with nothing but ocean as far as the eye can see. Soon enough, he finds that he’s not alone. He’s stuck at sea with a full-grown tiger, a situation that only compounds the teenager’s problems. In shock and mourning, he must learn how to survive at sea, make a small amount of food and water sustain him until rescue, and, of course, not get mauled by an enormous feline. Through fully believable effects work, this wild beast growls and stalks about the confined space, becoming a character without quite becoming humanized. He remains frightening throughout.

Largely wordless, the film’s framing device is gone, leaving only stunning images and phenomenal filmmaking. The expressiveness of the camera, the precision of the special effects, and the terrific, physical performance from young Sharma add up to an extraordinary portrait of extreme loneliness and the expanse this character must survive in order to achieve a return to society. Ang Lee, a versatile visualist capable of wonderful invention in many a genre picture from drama The Ice Storm and Wuxia Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon to superhero Hulk and tragic romance Brokeback Mountain, brings to what could be visual monotony a kind of breathless visual storytelling that creates indelible images. The reflective properties of the water creates striking vistas of multiplied sights and shifting color patterns; one nighttime shot doubles the starry sky so that the tiny lifeboat appears to float on a sea of stars. At one point, Pi nods off and dreams a hallucinogenic kaleidoscopic deep-sea vision that could almost be part of 2001: A Space Odyssey’s finale. A moment in which Pi is first confronted by the tiger and reacts by scrambling up over a canvas tarp and sliding around the bow of the boat has a scary/fun edge carefully regarded, the understated physicality of Sharma’s performance reminding me of nothing less than Jacques Tati or Buster Keaton. These images and more like them add up to a terrific cinematic experience.

By the end, though, the drifting boat – and drifting plot – comes to a resolution that I fear works slightly better as prose than on screen. Though I recall finding the conclusion of Yann Martel’s novel, upon which this film is based, of some interest, here it serves to underwhelm with it’s attempt to provide an alternate explanation in words for what we just saw so stirringly portrayed visually. I don’t think it adds up thematically in the ways the characters literally explain to us and it certainly didn’t affect any ideas I have about God, but that doesn’t much undercut the pure cinema at the film’s center. But for the majority of its runtime, Life of Pi is a transporting, enveloping feast of visual inventiveness and expressiveness, nestled inside a less satisfying film.