Hulk Smash! The metaphysics of the monster In a perfect world, Ang Lee's "Hulk", which opened in theatres yesterday, would be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. Lee set out to raise the action-blockbuster genre to a new level and he's succeeded brilliantly. I haven't been this jazzed by a movie in a very very long time. From Danny Elfman's nearly perfect score, filled with ever more urgent crescendos, to the fantastically Brechtian use of comic book panel inspired layers to the fact that "Hulk" is at once a treatise on the limits of free will AND a great big green smash fest makes my little geek heart soar. Many critics have been complaining that the movie is emotionally uninvolved. There's some truth to this, but it's deliberate. Lee wants us to be observers, for if we were emotionally connected with He-Who's-Literally-Too-Big-For-His-Britches, then we wouldn't see him for the outsider he truly is. This movie is deliberately cerebral and the mad editing is designed to keep us always at a distance from the characters: a movie of ideas, not heart strings. The Hulk is a character besieged by his own limitations: a missing past, a genetic deformity passed on by his father (Nick Nolte, who despite at one point literally chewing the scenery, is one of the most fascinating screen villains of all time) who loves him both as Daddy and Mad Scientist in love with his own Frankenstein, and most of all by the limits he puts on himself as Bruce Banner (Eric Bana), a man who, even though he is adopted, has managed to wind up in the same field as his creepy, dog-lovin' Dad. There is a moment when Banner's sweetheart Betty (Jennifer Connelly, who takes the girlfriend sidekick to places far more dangerous than you would expect) confronts Banner's Dad about the horror he's brought on his son and the elder Banner replies, "It has nothing to do with him. It never has. I wanted to improve on the flaws inside of me. In me! Isn't the search for truth? To find out what our true nature really is?" While wildly Oedipal, this is a story more about the fact that despite our dreams to the contrary, human beings are a limited, ever-fallible race. If only we could Hulk-out and be free of the limits life has put on us- and it's in the scenes where the Hulk finally embraces his inner monster that the movie, literally soars. As the Hulk jumping-bean bounces across Monument Valley, for a brief moment we are allowed to ride along with him, as he listens to the wind flapping across his massive green body and the Earth below look like some strange abstraction of the mind. Our heart soars with him as we for a moment, get a taste of what it might truly be like to be free- and then the Apache helicopters start firing rockets at the green meanie and once again, we're just a small limited race fucking up on a tiny little planet. If that's not the stuff of tragedy, what is? PS- For those interested, I haven't been blogging becuae I've been working on a new play. I'm going to try to post at least once a week for now on, so there will be new content. Promise :^)

posted by Japhy at 6/21/2003 02:18:00 PM || #