The week in gore

(Yikes, it's been a busy month...)

I have seen a LOT of movies lately, and I found myself thinking something similar about three of them. Each got press at the time of its release surrounding their graphic violence (or, in one case, lack thereof), and naturally I had opinions.

First, "Drive," the movie starring the guy I can appreciate yet not totally fall for, Ryan Gosling. Ryan's a stunt-driver in Hollywood who moonlights as a getaway driver for various robberies. Here's a sampling of things I heard about "Drive" from reviews and other people who saw it in the theatre: "80's eye-candy;" "ultra-violent;" "adrenaline-fueled;" "non-stop escalating tension;" "I will forever boycott the Oscars for not nominating Albert Brooks." Etc.

For possibly the first time in my life, my reaction to a movie was so diametrically opposed to that of the critical consensus that I wondered if I'd seen a different movie. Usually I can understand where critics are coming from even if I don't agree with their opinions, but never do I check my DVD multiple times to make sure I didn't get a director's total re-cut.

I liked "Drive." The actors are wonderful (though I'd have given my imaginary Oscar to Bryan Cranston over Brooks). It's slow for an action movie - literally in some spots: very liberal, at times exasperating, use of slo-mo walking shots the like of which you usually only see where the screenplay is 68 pages long and they need to stretch the thing to feature length. But I'm okay with a more character-driven story that's willing to slow things down at times for resonance. But I didn't get "adrenaline" or "escalating tension" one bit.

But it's the gore dissonance between the critics and me that really got me. Frankly, I didn't think it was that bloody... but then, I watch a lot of zombie movies. Yes, people get killed violently because it's a film about violent people. But "Braveheart" uses more fake blood by a mile. Maybe it's more intense on the big screen. Or maybe "Drive" just attracted a lot of art house viewers who heard about it on NPR and who don't own "Dawn of the Dead," and they were caught off guard.

Then, this weekend, I saw "The Hunger Games" in IMAX and "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" in my living room. I'll take the first part last. ("Quiz Show"! - see, I don't just watch zombie movies.)

So, I've expressed issues with the "Millennium Trilogy" books (of which GWTDT is the first US adaptation) because I thought they could use serious input from an editor. Well, it appears that David Fincher was that editor. (Note: I have not seen the Swedish adaptation.) Fincher streamlines the story to focus on the most important elements and move the plot along. I tend to love Fincher's unflinchingness while getting irritated with some of his indulgences - for instance, in the DVD commentary he mentions using the largest rain machine ever used on a film in Sweden on a scene that would've been perfectly fine without rain, and all I could think about was how may indie films could've been made and distributed for the cost of that rain machine. But, I think the fact that I finished watching the movie and then immediately turned around and watched the whole thing again with commentary (missing a race in the process) speaks pretty well to how engrossing it is. And Rooney Mara is *amazing.*

But, onto the gore. One reason I waited until this came out on DVD was that I was concerned with the depictions of violence toward women, which is a pretty major piece of the story. I reasoned that, in the privacy of my home, I could pause and walk away if I needed to. But I didn't need to. The basic plot is about a hunt for a sexual predator, and nearly all of the descriptions of his crimes come in dialogue or in extremely quick cuts to crime scene photos. They probably weren't very pleasant to create, but what the viewer sees isn't gratuitous.

Of course, the A-number one scene I was worried about is when main character Lisbeth Salander is violently raped. I probably would've cut away toward the beginning of the scene, because it's not like the audience doesn't know what's happening behind that closed door, but I think I can understand why Fincher didn't cut there. It's a disturbing scene, but it's not unwatchable. Others' mileage may vary, of course. Going by the commentary, Fincher felt that showing more of what happens to Salander makes the later scenes when she gets back at her rapist more powerful. Not sure I agree, but at least he put some thought into it.

Now, onto "The Hunger Games," which has actually gotten some criticism that it's not violent *enough.* This school of thought says that the writers and director are blunting the emotional wringer that is a story about teenagers forced to battle to the death. On the other side are people who a) can't sell this movie to its target audience without a PG-13 rating, and b) people whose imaginations work perfectly fine, thank you.

I haven't yet read any of "The Hunger Games" trilogy, so I have a different perspective from someone who has every word of them memorized. But, in general, movies can, and should, spell things out far less than books do. Movies have the advantage of being able to convey information visually and audibly, and so a bunch of quick cuts at a battle site or a boom of the cannon that signals a competitor has died are all you need to understand what's happening.

I've read a few criticisms of THG that I think are bizarre. (No, not the racists who got the nasty shock that there are black people in Panem. No more virtual ink need be spilled there. Or the people still bitching about Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss. She's awesome, get over it.) For one, there's that "blunted impact" argument, which seems to imply that, because I didn't see 20-odd teens slaughtered, I can't have left the theatre in the appropriately somber state of mind. I don't know, I like to think that at age 31 I'm pretty perceptive to allegorical examinations of the glorifications of violence in 21st century American culture, but I'm grateful there's a critic out there who wants to remind me that forced murder is bad. Someone out there didn't appreciate Gary Ross' handheld camera, but if I could see this in IMAX and not get seasick, it couldn't have been THAT bad.

But the weirdest - shades of "Drive" in the "did we see the same movie?" department - are the critics who say the movie moved too quickly for the audience to fully digest what was happening. Was not the case for me at all, and I say that as someone who had only the film's output to go on (because I've not read the books). Even with minimal exposition, I understood the logistics of what was going on, who was who, who was bad/good, etc. That scene with you-know-who and the flowers - my dad got choked up, and he for damn sure didn't read the books. An entire theatre audience doesn't burst into applause at the climax of a movie if they didn't feel something.

So, back to the whole violence and gore issue... there are certainly movies where I don't have any tolerance for geysers of fake blood or for depictions of pain, usually when I feel it isn't necessary to get across what's going on. In general, I trust filmmakers to make thoughtful decisions about those things. But, like I said.........I do watch a lot of zombie movies.