Return after renting

Besides watching the mighty Wolverine at the Embassy, this weekend Apple and I also rented a couple of DVDs:

1. Tales of the Black Freighter
2. Burn After Reading

Tales of the Black Freighter

Black Freighter is an animation of the comic-within-a-comic from the Watchmen graphic novel. It was created to accompany the live-action film of Watchmen. Having watched the Watchmen film, and been somewhat disappointed, my hopes were not high for this tie-in. And indeed, the animation is a poor incarnation.

In the original graphic novel, Freighter resonates with Watchmen’s overarching story and characters in complex ways, but is on its own terms a remarkable, meaningful, and terrifying tale. To remove it from this context is a move requiring some delicate handling, but should not be impossible. The animation fails in the end to capture any of the tale’s poetry or terror. It trots the story out without really telling it, and the gruesomeness seems to revolve around itself, diminishing its larger purpose.

Under the Hood

The Freighter DVD also includes Under the Hood, Watchmen’s autobiography-within-a-comic. On screen, the text is translated as a television interview with Hollis Mason and some of his former colleagues. While this was never going to be astonishing in any way, the translation is overall reasonably well done, if campy, and manages to slip in a number of elements and characters from the comic (eg Nostalgia by Veidt).

Burn After Reading

I meant to see this when it was at the movies. Glad I finally got round to it, if on DVD. It’s a very well-crafted and intelligent piece of silliness.

As the Coen brothers themselves describe it, “It’s a film about spies and physical fitness, and what happens when those two worlds collide.”

I think that’s reason enough for you to go and rent it.

Watching the…

I trundled along to the cinema this afternoon, a little bored and looking for distraction. Watchmen was playing in 50 minutes time, so I bought a ticket and proceeded to become casually excited.

Casually exciting is about as good as this film gets. It certainly couldn’t keep my arse awake, and my legs also required constant shifting.

It wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t anywhere near as good as the comics/graphic novel.  Which was expected. The source material was denounced un-filmable for good reason. It’s an incredibly complex piece that deserves to be poured over. As a film, there’s little room for such pondering. I’m all for complex narratives and well-crafted characters. Thinking while viewing is a good thing. But what happens is that some of the book’s most beautiful (and ponderous) moments, of which there are plenty, do not (because they can not) translate well to the constantly moving image.

The comic’s images were bold and poetic, but never flashy. The film often is. It accurately renders the comics’ elements into live action terms. But, for the most part, it lacks the same delicacy.

Terry Gilliam once said that Watchmen, if filmed, would best be done as a mini-series. He’s not wrong. The book is a detailed, intricate inspection of the lives of some pretty interesting, and often pretty fucked up, masked crusaders and the very real world in which they exist. It has  a heck of a lot to say. And while the big screen rendering delivers the flash and the bang, it fails to deliver much of the intimacy.

Go along, if you want to see just how cool the Owl Ship would look if it really existed. The same goes for the characters – they’re well cast.* And do go along for the change in the ending. If there is one thing the filmmakers have done well, it’s altering the final outcome to something a lot tidier and self-contained than what happens in the comics.

*The only let down is Ozymandias. He’s just a wimpy twink with a funny nose.