Ntuple Indemnity

The reference to A Streetcar Named Desire in the above title bears some relevance to The Terminal, which I have already put off discussing for a week and a half, but first, some belated thoughts on Marlon Brando. This will be far briefer than an actor of such legendary calibre deserves, but events like these are cases to file under “saturated volume of discourse”; more than a day after the fact, and there is little left to add.

Everybody has their favourite Brando moments on the screen, not to mention the mystique they find in one or more of the many offscreen legends that surround his persona. Heather Wallace, for instance, associates him most with his big moment in Streetcar. Many of us, even those such as myself born after the fact, recall the 1972 Oscars, when he refused his Best Actor win by proxy, sending a Native American actress named Sacheen Littlefeather to deliver a statement on his behalf. Brando, of course, was all about theatrics; as it turns out, Littlefeather was not a Native American at all, but the little-known Californian actress Maria Cruz. If anyone back then projected that they’d be talking about that one for years – thirty-two years on, that anyone is still correct.

What makes the ’72 acting Oscars even more interesting is that Marlon Brando was nominated in what could be considered the wrong category. The Godfather earned four acting nominations – one for an Actor in a Leading Role (Brando), three for an Actor in a Supporting Role (Al Pacino, James Caan, and Robert Duvall). Watch the movie, read the screenplay, read the original book by Mario Puzo: there is no way Don Vito Corleone is the Leading Role in The Godfather. The central character who dominates in terms of screentime is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, Michael. Of course, the Oscar nominations have always been driven by election-style marketing campaigns in trade publications like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter; two years ago, Ian McKellen was being pushed for a Leading Role nomination for his performance as Gandalf the Grey in The Fellowship of the Ring, but New Line decided partway through to switch gears and rightly push him for Supporting nomination instead – where, conveniently, his chances were better anyhow.

Not so with 1972. That year, all three Supporting Corleones – Michael, Sonny and Tom Hagen – were defeated by none other than Joel Grey. While among the younger generation he probably rings a louder bell as the father of Dirty Dancing‘s Jennifer Grey, his Oscar win that year was more than just a consequence of vote-splitting. It was the consequence of one of the best performances in any movie musical (and certainly the wackiest), the Master of Ceremonies in Cabaret – a role Grey created on Broadway, reprised by Alan Cumming (Nightcrawler in X2, Boris the Invincible in GoldenEye) in the 1998 revival. Joel Grey, whom I actually saw perform live at the Jack Singer a few years back, is a show-stealer. Mark my words: if Marlon Brando were in the right category that year, we would have no Sacheen Littlefeather of which to speak – and deservedly so. Yes, Don Corleone is iconic in the way he moves, the way he talks, the way he falls over and dies with an orange in his mouth; but I would put the balance in favour of “Wilkommen”, “Two Ladies” and the “Money” duet with Best Actress winner Liza Minelli.

But with Marlon Brando in the Actor in the Leading Role category, the Academy ended up awarding the two best performances of the year without pitting them against one another – and in doing so, set themselves up for Oscar’s most memorable stunt.

But returning to a spot of praise here, I want to talk about A Streetcar Named Desire. In only the greatest performances, like the aforementioned Master of Ceremonies, does one equate an actor with his work. Never mind that he practically invented method acting: Stanley Kowalski is Marlon Brando, and moreover, Marlon Brando is Stanley Kowalski. I have seen three screen versions of the Tennessee Williams play – Elia Kazan’s 1951 movie starring Brando, and two colour television remakes: one in 1984 with Treat Williams, another in 1998 with Alec Baldwin. The three varied in terms of how close they were to the original stage play; as some may know, Stella’s decision at the end of A Streetcar Named Desire, the Kazan film, is quite different from what she does in A Streetcar Named Desire on stage.

This, not Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, is my pet example of how the slavishness of a screen adaptation bears no linear correlation to the quality of a motion picture. Okay, so the other two are already disadvantaged by the fact that they are not really motion pictures, but dramas made for television, which is itself an inherently inferior medium for reasons I will not go into for the time being. They are not helmed by Elia Kazan, or any director who knows how to position a camera, for that matter. In fact, the only thing worth mentioning about the 1984 version is that the music is scored by the reliable Marvin Hamlisch; and the 1995 version has absolutely nothing going for it, except it is a cheap and accessible alternative to seeing the complete Tennessee Williams text on a stage where it belongs. But the most telling difference is this: not only are Treat Williams and Alec Baldwin not Marlon Brando (and by induction, not Stanley Kowalski) – they aren’t fit to lick his boots. Anyone who even attempts to play Stanley in front of a camera can be described in three words: not Marlon Brando. Never mind that Stella walks out on the guy – because of Marlon Brando, among other factors, the Kazan film upstages (no pun intended) the play itself in terms of being the definitive Streetcar. As such, it is an untouchable property.

And so were The Godfather, Apocalypse Now and all the other films where Marlon Brando didn’t just act – he defined. That’s how iconic he was.

With that very brief statment out of the way, let us proceed to a fictional character who, as the saying goes, depends on the kindness of strangers: Viktor Navorski, the stranded traveler played by Tom Hanks in Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal.

Now, this film had to live up to some lofty expectations, seeing as how given the prolific versatility of his curriculum vitae, Spielberg is probably whom I would identify as my favourite director living or dead. I am only three films away from being a Spielberg completist, not counting the ones prior to Jaws: The Color Purple, Always and Amistad being the last ones on the checklist. It was generally considered, up until he directed Leonardo DiCaprio to a career-best performance as Frank Abagnale, Jr. in Catch Me If You Can, that the one genre Spielberg could not do was comedy. Of course, the reference point for this was 1941, a slapstick piece of the silly-stupid school, which few people remember was still above the cut insofar as the silly-stupid school is concerned. In The Terminal, he aims for a middle ground between the two extremes and ends up with a piece that features both a cat-and-mouse character dynamic and just-for-laughs scenarios aplenty, but certainly not to the same extent.

As a movie that is built entirely on the premise of a man stuck in an airport terminal, this is the equivalent of what Trekkies commonly refer to as a “bottle episode”, a story that takes place entirely aboard the Enterprise: on the surface, it appears to be one of Spielberg’s least ambitious projects, but it deals with its own challenge of trying to stay interesting for two hours whilst trapped in a very finite number of sets.

Not much can be said for The Terminal in terms of plot, but its situational character relationships and more comedic scenes keep it alive. Navorski, who goes to America for reasons I will not reveal here but is denied entry on the basis of his country ceasing to exist en route, is an inspiring presence played by an inspiring thespian. Tom Hanks has a convincing stumble and a foreign grasp of English, only falling short of completely becoming the character because we have already seen his face in ten or more other films and heard him sing “You’ve Got a Friend In Me”; he delivers hilarious physical comedy with a charm that eludes the Jim Carreys and Ben Stillers of the industry.

Speaking of Jim Carrey, The Terminal in many ways reminds me of the former Ace Ventura’s own career best, The Truman Show. The connections are more than superficial; both are about a man confined in a world monitored by the cameras of a god from above. Here, Stanley Tucci takes the Ed Harris role, as a supervising immigration officer engaged in a battle of wills with Viktor Navorski. The conflict between the two is, sadly, one of the less engaging subplots of the movie, and it has a lot to do with how Tucci’s character is written. As far as villains go, unlike Tom Hanks’ FBI agent in Catch Me If You Can, he never grows beyond being a frustrated control freak, and this lack of dimension hurts an otherwise delightful movie.

The Terminal is largely a one-man show, but it also delves into how Navorski brings something out in the people around him, and how everyone’s life is really a journey to escape a cycle of perpetual waiting. There is an engaging supporting cast that includes the likes of a fugitive janitor who watches people slip on wet floors for entertainment (Kumar Pallana), and a lovelorn cook (Diego Luna) who offers Navorski food in exchange for proxy advances on a Trekkie customs officer (Zoe Saldana). Less interesting is the flight attendant that captures Navorski’s attention, played by Catherine Zeta-Jones, but the romantic subplot does round out a few thematic corners and make for a terrific candlelight dinner scene.

John Williams, by the way, is on fire this year. Following the act of finally giving the Harry Potter series a breath of musical freshness in The Prisoner of Azkaban, here he delivers arguably the best of his lighthearted and contemporary scores, other than, well, Catch Me If You Can. It supports the movie with a whimsical, lively sort of bounce. You can shortlist this one for the Original Score award right now.

For the most part, Spielberg’s latest offering never pretends to be anything more than a diversionary comedy, and an uproariously funny one at that, but it comes bundled with some very real ideas about goals, destinations, and lives that never seem to get there. See it for a lovable Chaplinesque performance from Tom Hanks that transforms what should be a dreary backdrop into a fantasy playground in its own right.

As somewhat who spends a disproportionate quantity of time writing about film, this is admittedly nothing short of blasphemy, but eulogies for the late, great Marlon Brando are going to have to wait. First, I need to catch up on this Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Terminal business so I can get to what I really want to do, which is write volumes about the so very special Spider-Man 2. All three are worthy of a trip to the cinema, but it is the superhero sequel that boasts a volume of potential for literary critique that outstrips the other two combined. Fortunately – in the sense of getting reviews out of the pipeline, anyway – in spite of De-Lovely opening in arthouse screens this weekend in the United States, a Canadian release is nowhere in sight; the essay in the making that is I, Robot is two weeks away; as such, I have a fair bit of catch-up time at my disposal.

Fahrenheit 9/11 has been discussed to death in circles political and otherwise, and there is little this here writer can add to the volume of discourse on the subject other than taking sides on certain issues. The primary question, then, is whether or not a film that has exhibited such an impact in the media at large just by existing, let alone having its contents examined, can be discussed free of contextual prejudices – in other words, as a documentary and nothing else.

Since I do not possess a fanciful array of fact-checkers at my disposal, let us focus not on whether or not this Michael Moore character is right or wrong about the disunited state of America, but on what this movie says about his skills of an artist. Those of you with long memories or bound editions may recall my glowing review of Bowling For Columbine in the 24 September, 2002 issue of The Gateway (which, sadly, is not present in the online archives). I called it “a mosaic of celluloid evidence that is objective in its structure and cinematographic style… [it] juxtaposes these clips in a fashion that coheres as a cunningly subliminal and utterly convincing argument against everything that Moore blames” – and the activist filmmaker tries to do the same thing here. Like Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11‘s primary strength is in its meticulous editing, a juggling act of footage that informs, entertains, or tries to jerk a few tears. In the film’s more amusing moments, it splices clips from classic television shows such as Dragnet and Bonanza, not to mention an interview with Britney Spears, and manages to make them look impressively topical.

In stark contrast is how it follows Lila Lipscomb, a war mother from his hometown of Flint, Michigan – seen early in the film as a proud and patriotic woman who hangs an American flag outside her door every morning, only to return later alongside a key piece of new information: that she lost one of her children to last year’s campaign in Iraq. Think of it as a structural representation of that time-worn camera direction, “pull back to reveal.” As in his other works, Moore often features himself as an onscreen interviewer with an arsenal of loaded questions, but is at his best when he sits back and leaves the narration to the unstageable. For all the accusations of fakery and manipulation, the substance of some of his points still holds. The impact of one soldier’s loss on his family is something that is statistically negligible in war, but Moore plays it in so personal a way that it demands sympathy, and advocates his belief that the reasons for entry into Iraq were not worthy of a single death.

It should be noted, though, that of the two, Columbine is the stronger film – and this is where context can no longer be avoided. The difference lies in the extent of sin by omission. Up until Fahrenheit arrived on the scene and gave them bigger fish to fry, the ongoing debates about the factual accuracy of Moore’s earlier documentary raged on, but the disputes failed to topple the essence of his thesis, which is presented with such conviction it seems irrefutable: that a lot of Americans own guns to flaunt some cultural identity or right, and boy, is it silly. The thesis of Fahrenheit 9/11 is that George W. Bush does not always have America’s interests at heart in order to flaunt some conflict of interest with his Middle East business buddies, and boy, is he silly. The problem with the latter is that the material he quite intentionally and sensibly omits – after all, one does not carry the burden of presenting the opposition case – is a lot stronger and a lot more relevant to the big picture. Identifying the Bush administration, not its enemies, as being the solely responsible force that sends innocent soldier boys to their physical or psychological deaths is already a big step towards implicitly absolving Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein of any guilt; the former dictator’s Iraq is portrayed as harmless, toothless little place in the sun where little boys play in the streets, never mind its curiously unmentioned security-by-fear approach that Moore openly fingers Bush of abusing.

Fahrenheit 9/11 carves out its intent as to entertain those who smile and nod in agreement with everything it says, pick a good fight with the other end of the political spectrum, and bring the undecided voters of America onside. With respect to the first two, it excels; but its success depends on whether or not that third demographic actually exists, and if so, to what extent. Without a doubt, by compiling all the anti-Bush arguments of what they call down there the “liberal media” into a two-hour timeframe and releasing it in a highly accessible medium, Moore has made a movie that will keep the Republicans on the defensive for a few months to come. Whether or not anybody will actually be swayed by a movie they likely attend with some built-in preconceptions has yet to be seen; for all we know, it could be the equivalent of a Mustafa Hirji campaign against a Universal Bus Pass deal – clever, substantial, but ineffective insofar as getting anybody to switch sides.

Regular readers can expect my reviews, or more precisely, recommendations of Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Terminal later this week – but first, to some urgent business.

It may be the month of June, but with Christmas less than half a year away, the wishlist compilation has already begun. This year, the item on the top of the list is, one might say, a rather modest request. I will admit, whenever I emphasize the magnitude of importance embodied by this very simple favour, I sound like a mother asking a little boy to clean up his room – but it’s necessary.

Joel Schumacher: please, for the love of all that is good and holy, don’t screw up The Phantom of the Opera.

In the fifties you had your fun, vibrant musicals with the Freddies and Gingers that defined a genre, colourful displays of movie magic with extended surrealist sequences like Gene Kelly’s all-dancing finales to An American in Paris and Singin’ in the Rain. That is not The Phantom of the Opera. The epic stage adaptations of the sixties that knocked one Best Picture after another out of the park – rival gangs on the mean streets of New York in West Side Story, the loverly Covent Garden by firelit night in My Fair Lady, the whole gamut from Andrews to Anschluss in The Sound of Music, the Artful Dodger’s whirlwind pickpocketing tour of London in the “Consider Yourself” number in Oliver! – that’s what I want from The Phantom of the Opera: grand, romanticist portraiture with a sense of humanity, a new association between memorable songs and memorable scenes, not to mention top-notch symphonic orchestration like John Williams’ Oscar-winning work on Fiddler on the Roof.

We already know about one somewhat major plot change and the addition of a new song. Fine – that’s excusable, and every movie musical pulls off that kind of thing; “Something Good” in The Sound of Music comes immediately to mind. However, here is a sample of things that are not quite so acceptable, many of which are unresolved ambiguities, some of which are hopefully going in the commonsensical direction. Of the latter is “trying to be Chicago and confining musical elements to the stage rather than using the songs as the primary storytelling device.” I liked Chicago, but this is The Phantom of the Opera. Of the former: if the orchestration is not consistent with the music of the period depicted, it is nothing to me. I adore Moulin Rouge! like family, but this is The Phantom of the Opera.

The first public footage was released this weekend in the form of a teaser trailer that shows a fleeting montage of images in rapid succession. Initial impressions are as such: the sets, the costumes, the piece’s appropriateness to the period – that looks fine. The trailer linked above is fairly low-quality, but already it is possible to discern some key shots that pertain to memorable scenes – Meg Giry at the mirror in “Angel of Music”, the chandelier, the cemetary in “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again”, the Phantom punting his way down the sewers, “Masquerade” – and they look fairly good. The snow in the cemetary is an especially nice touch.

When adapting a stage production to the screen, especially a musical and more to the point, one of this calibre, one of the foremost criteria for judgment is whether or not it does something with the screen that cannot be done on stage. Primarily this deals with setting and atmosphere. In this respect, things are looking up.

The photography looks dynamic and the colours are gorgeous, but the darkness could be darker – or maybe it’s the fault of the low-quality video in the current trailer. As far as dynamism in cinematography goes, having the odd shot with a twenty-degree rotation is perhaps too modern a styling, but time will tell if this works in context of the finished work.

I sincerely hope the rapid cutting in the trailer is due to the post-production audio work being incomplete and an inability to show off any of the singing in sync with the pictures at this stage, and is no reflection of how the movie will actually be edited. Quick cuts from shot to shot that masked the flourish of the dancing worked for Baz Luhrmann (however debatably), but for the umpteenth time, this is The Phantom of the Opera. I want sustained imagery. The stage production already had sustained imagery, and between media, that’s what films are supposed to be best at creating.

Red flags: none. Uncertainties: many.

Let me make this as clear as possible – and the fact that I am writing in the first person should clue one in as to the degree of seriousness and gravity with which I speak: with The Lord of the Rings out of the way, there is no adaptation in the motion picture industry I care about more than this one. That includes you, Goblet of Fire.

So don’t mess with it. As was the case with The Lord of the Rings, anything less than a serious run for Best Picture is abject disrespect to the source material.

Seriously, Joel: do me this one favour for Christmas, and all is forgiven for Batman and Robin; and let me assure you, I take my Batman seriously.

There are two separate items I want to discuss in this post, and the way they relate to each other will be quite immediately evident. The first is, of the two, the more direct example of cross-pollination between the mythologies of America and Asia. The second, and altogether lengthier subject about which I will write the usual thousand-worder about the “storytelling potential of the cinematic medium” and related jargon, concerns a cultural legend of Japan that sports a new look and is worth a trip to the silver screen.

This article on Comic Book Resources speaks for itself:

Eastern Swing: Sharad Devarajan Talks Indian Spider-Man

What’s the hottest comic book topic right now?

If you said Spider-Man, you’d only be half right.

As officially announced by various East Indian newspapers last week and confirmed online this week, the South Asian comics distribution company “Gotham Entertainment” has reached a historic deal with Marvel Comics to publish a new version of Spider-Man in an upcoming four issue mini-series. No, it isn’t just a new continuity: Spider-Man is now an East Indian by the name of Pavitr Prabhakar and the Green Goblin is tied to Hindu mythology. To tell CBR News and its readers a bit more about the project, Gotham’s President & CEO Sharad Devarajan spoke with CBR News.

…

“Though we will remain true to the underlining mythos of Spider-Man, which is epitomized in the phrase ‘With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility,’ the character will be reinvented so his powers, problems and costume are more integrated with Indian culture. Unlike the US origin, which is deeply rooted in science, the Indian version is more rooted in magic and mythology. This version of Spider-Man will gain his powers from ancient mystic in order to combat the evil threat of the Green Goblin, who will also be reinvented as a modern day Indian demon from myth.”

Yes, the article has pictures – and yes, an English-translated American edition will also come at some point, though of course, that will lose some of the authenticity. Now, forget for a moment the irony of a company called Gotham doing a Marvel title, and take a minute to let the genius of this idea sink in. I will not claim to be anything less than generally oblivious to Indian mythology, but this sounds like a brilliantly-conceived take on the universality of mythical heroes, which I mention in case I’m not the only one currently reading too much Joseph Campbell for his own good.

Oh, and “Pavitr Prabhakar”? Gold.

Now let’s move on to the more easterly nation of Japan, a country about which I am somewhat less qualified to speak than say, Adam Pauls. I venture a guess that the vast majority of my readership is not too familiar with the Japanese television and film character Zatoichi. If that is the case, go catch up on your readings, and I’ll see you next class. The capsule summary runs thus: Zatoichi is a blind man, a masseuse by day, with a distinctive sword sheathed in a cane, and the sharpened senses to use it. Sounds very much like a certain man without fear, if you ask me. The extent of intentional mutual influence between Daredevil and Zatoichi is unclear; the former first appeared in 1964, the latter in 1962.

The reason I bring him up now is because of ‘Beat’ Takeshi Kitano’s update of the character in the film Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman, wherein he both directs and stars. The new Zatoichi is now making the rounds in Canada, having played at the Uptown Stage and Screen in Calgary this week, and currently at South Common for you Edmontonians. It draws Marvel comparisons right off the bat, having initially hit the festival circuit last year on the heels of Ben Affleck bringing Matt Murdock into the mainstream consciousness, but also because Zatoichi’s cane sword in the film is a blood-red cylinder, which is apparently something new – understandable, given that the Zatoichi films of old were in monochrome. But beyond the shared basis of a blind superhero with a cane, and the aforementioned bit about the universality of heroes or whatever, the similarities are few.

Nowadays you see people take the word “postmodern” and spread it like margarine everywhere they go, but the new Zatoichi is where it actually applies. For the most part, it is a throwback to an older age in filmmaking, one of patient, stationary but conscientious shots, and minimal scoring in the musical department. Kitano’s stark blond hair aside, the majority of the film would not look out of place in the sixties. It’s a refreshing break from the over-edited muddle of Matrix imitators that are so excessive in cutting and camera movement that the action is impossible to follow, but casual audiences will find it to plod for stretches between the swift and gory swordfights. It feels like a movie with a sense of first-hand cultural authenticity, unlike the recent crop of American samurai movies, such as Quentin Tarantino’s unabashedly reverent Kill Bill and the faux importance of The Last Samurai.

Occasionally, though, Kitano’s approach is one of experimentation. Early on in the film there is a brief scene of farmers tilling a field, cut in such a way that the sounds develop into almost a techno beat – never mind the tap-dancing festival at the conclusion that stops just short of The Matrix Reloaded, to everyone’s relief. It is almost as if he is asking us to listen to the sounds associated with the images in the same manner a blind man would, without ever bringing us into pitch darkness or superhero sonar-vision. Watching Kitano perform the lead role himself is a delight; he alternates between staggering gambling addict and legendary blademaster with comfort and conviction.

The fights are remarkable given how short they are, forsaking extended clashes of katana-on-katana for a brief swell of anticipation-resolution as the participants strategize, then execute. After all, Zatoichi would hardly be a master swordsman if he took his time slicing and dicing the local goons. If you contrast this with the likes of Hong Kong cinema and its own folk heroes like the martial arts master Wong Fei-Hung (in more films than any character in history, and played by Jet Li in the now-classic Once Upon A Time In China), the difference in style is very representative of how Japanese and Chinese martial arts traditions diverged in their own developmental paths. Hong Kong cinema has the ten-minute fights with fancier flourishes of cloth and blade; Japanese cinema demonstrates the gutting of enemies with a stroke or two apiece.

Now, I do not claim to be too well-versed in Zatoichi lore myself, but where the film is a little lacking is focus; not in the visual sense, but in its focus on the main character. To put it briefly, a lot of time is spent elsewhere. Those of you who have trouble discerning names and faces right off the bat will have a doozy following the tangled web of concealed identities in the plot, which concerns two geisha assassins exacting revenge on the gang bosses who murdered their parents. It does make sense by the time the credits roll, but not so much until then. As I mentioned earlier, Zatoichi is also what one would apologetically call patient, and may not hold the attention of those weaned on the speed of the standard twenty-first century Hollywood action movie. Nor does it ever tread on the literary seriousness of the average arthouse foreign film. In a category-defying self-contradiction, it is both conventional and avant-garde, but thankfully succeeds at both.

On a final note, time to break professionalism and be a complete geek. I just about flipped out when I saw the end credits – specifically, the name associated with the music in the film: Keiichi Suzuki. This is the same Keiichi Suzuki who composed for one of the greatest RPGs in the short history of video games, namely, EarthBound for the Super Nintendo. His versatile soundtrack for that game featured everything from weepy melodies on tinny piano evoking the sentiment of homesickness, to the Blues Brothers stylings of the Runaway Five, to the harmonic distortions of enemies from outer space. While his work for Zatoichi is minimal, it is significant, and just as diverse, covering everything from traditional Japanese folk music to the pseudo-techno breakbeats I mentioned earlier.

But never mind the score for Zatoichi – there is just something inherently cool about seeing a name from a phenomenal element of the Nintendo experience appear onscreen. If only somebody could get Nobuo Uematsu on a movie, we’re set.

Virtually all character dynamics in the movies, it can be said, are covered to one extent or another in Casablanca, which Robert McKee (screenwriting instructor, author of Story and butt of many a joke in Charlie Kaufman’s screenplay to Adaptation) rightly acknowledges as being the paragon of all cinema as far as writing is concerned. You have the more obvious themes of love lost, forbidden and rediscovered between Rick and Ilsa, the love inspired by romantic heroism in the case of Victor Laszlo, and a resulting triangle that is so prototypical as to be Pythagorean; these are constantly emulated, though often unconsciously, and regularly with only the merest trace of the same emotional complexity.

Yet while Casablanca is among movies the undisputed king of the portrayal of love in its romantic forms, often overlooked are its more understated pairings, and how they are seen time and again in even the best of the films in the decades that followed. Take no less than Raiders of the Lost Ark, for instance, and notice René Belloq’s subservience to the Nazis, one that he independently but weakly denies: “All in good time,” he replies, when Indiana Jones asks him what will become of his prize upon delivery to the Fuhrer. Belloq is a striking villain, but we trace him back to that other allegory of occupied France, Captain Renault. Louis, of course, has quite a different fate than Indy’s archaelogical rival. Between him and Rick, we see “the beginning of a beautiful friendship” in a manner where both shirk their supposed allegiances or lack thereof, certainly at their own peril, but with consolation in each other. The great conflicted partnerships follow a similar pattern, be it T.E. Lawrence and Sherif Ali, Blondie and Tuco, or heck, even Shrek and Donkey.

This is not to say that all films are necessarily Casablanca‘s sons and daughters – such a claim, at least as it would pertain to conscious intent or chronological order of production, would be a stretch – but try and name one other piece that brings together so many degrees of character interaction.

That said, the films that most emphasize the relationships not found in Casablanca and do it well are the ones that we recognize as being similarly exceptional in their own right. Think, here, of the unrequited charity of friendship Melanie offers Scarlett, or to use a recent example, the unspoken bond between Bob and Charlotte in Lost In Translation that should make one consider yet again the cleverness of its title. But perhaps the most prominent absence in the Bogart classic is the relationship between father and son, a staple of world mythology both ancient and contemporary.

That brings me to what I would like to examine today: the films that model the many aspects of the father-son relationship, much in the way that Casablanca tackles pretty much everything else.

I speculate that a lot of people, when asked to name the definitive movie about fathers and sons, will quite justifiably make a very strong case in favour of The Empire Strikes Back. Loath as I am to divide a sweeping congruous saga into its parts when it is greater than the proverbial sum, I would actually point to Return of the Jedi.

If we look at dramatic narratives as driven not by individual characters, but instead the tangled bonds between them, the final redemption of Anakin Skywalker is an event of monumental literary consideration. Star Wars is, on a basic level, a tale about slavery. In The Phantom Menace, we see Anakin enslaved in a literal sense, though it is not altogether that uncomfortable nor physically demanding so much as it is he is treated as an asset to buy and sell, and a matter of pride in the eyes of his owner. He is freed under the promise of high adventure across the stars, but we see in Attack of the Clones that he becomes a Jedi only to be, in his eyes, enslaved to a code of conduct that forces a lid onto his rampant emotions and severs his forbidden attachments, albeit finally in vain. Although there is that chasm of ambiguity to be filled next May with the release of Episode III, we are aware of his fate: somehow, in his efforts to be the free spirit he is at heart, he winds up under the most tragic enslavement of all: he finds his very spirit dominated by the Emperor and moreover, the Dark Side of the Force.

So what we see is a cyclical process whereby at every turn, Anakin’s freedom from one form of slavery only leads to another even greater. Star Wars, then, revolves around the search for a force (pardon the pun) powerful enough to trump the seemingly irrevocable corruption of the Dark Side. The key decision point is in that moment in the Death Star Throne Room when Vader looks back and forth between his master and his son, the former with lightning shooting out his fingers, the latter crying for mercy. The pleas for paternal intervention ultimately win out, and the bond between father and child trumps that which has held so long, the connection between master and apprentice. It is a poetic turn of events, given how Anakin himself never knew a father, but only one master after another.

It is also ironic, considering that the very fact that Luke even knows the identity of the man-machine behind the mask is due to the latter’s voluntary revelation of the facts in the bowels of Cloud City at the end of Empire. Vader chooses to divulge the information of his fatherhood, by all appearances to try and convince Luke that it is his destiny to fall to the Dark Side; he acts as an agent of the Dark Side, beckoning for the continuation of the cycle of slavery. At the end of all things, Luke’s knowledge of the truth is what draws the saga to its fitting conclusion.

Luke’s journey through Jedi is itself notable. After the scenes on Dagobah where his two mentors verify Vader’s claim, he accepts the truth, but never does he accept that his father is at heart an evil man. It can be argued that in screenwriting terms, the strongest scene in the entire saga is Luke and Vader talking on the plank where an Imperial Walker is docked, the former having just surrendered himself; that is a whole other discussion, but notice what happens. “So, you have accepted the truth,” says Vader, when his son calls him Father. Luke’s reply speaks volumes: “I’ve accepted the truth that you were once Anakin Skywalker, my father.” And it is that knowledge that drives Luke to put everything on the line just to prove that somewhere in that mechanized suit, humanity remains. In doing so he defies the word of everyone before him, every assertion that upon a fall to the Dark Side, there is no redemption.

The Empire Strikes Back is an incredible film on all counts, but its role in the development of the father-son connection is minimal in comparison. Sure, you have the most thoroughly spoofed scene in the movies, the revelation that is now such a part of the cultural consciousness at large that it is known to those who have never even had the pleasure of seeing a Star Wars instalment. You have Vader’s quest in that movie’s own plot arc, the obsessive hunt for the boy who sent his TIE Fighter spinning out of control. Still, it is Return of the Jedi that takes this setup and runs with it, and features the concept of fatherhood as a focal point with respect to both the plot and the final stage of development of the overarching themes in that galaxy far, far away.

That is why Return of the Jedi is as definitive a father-son film as one can find, one that clings to the mythic tradition unlike any other film. Of course, it is hardly lonely at the summit of its subgenre. The Godfather is a piece to consider, though it is more about the sons themselves than their relationship to Don Corleone: Sonny as the devoted son, stopped short by a few hundred bullets, give or take; Tom, the good son, but subtly removed and restrained by his status as an adopted child; Michael, the son who initially abandons his father’s legacy the most, only to become its inheritor; and Fredo… well, the less said about Fredo, the better. Road To Perdition is more overtly about fatherhood, focusing on the ideas of neglect, disapproval, sibling rivalry, and the following of paternal footsteps. The two Henry Joneses in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade are a more comical pair, but no less serious about fatherly neglect and idolatry. One hopes to see more of the strained, disapproving relationship between Denethor and Faramir in the Extended Edition of The Return of the King; the trinity of the Steward of Gondor and his two sons is a literary highlight insofar as fathers and sons are concerned, and the added scenes in Osgiliath in the Extended The Two Towers was already a valuable addition.

If my desert-island selection of father-son films were limited to two, though, count on the second as being Finding Nemo. One of the many reasons Nemo is indisputably the best animated film in recent years is the complexity of its character dynamics, which one will notice are outside Casablanca territory as often as possible. This is the definitive movie that we see told from the unblinking eyes of the father, and there is no other piece that expresses anywhere near the same level of fatherly devotion. The way Marlin braves underwater minefields, sharks in denial, the docks of Sydney, and the darkest depths of the ocean floor, all in the name of an impossible rescue, is one of the most compelling adventures in recent cinema. Look at the way he tries to escape the highly symbolic belly of the whale, hurling himself at the barrier of baleen, with nothing more on his mind than a determination that no matter what the obstacles, he must tell his son that a hundred and fifty is young for a sea turtle. As overprotective as he is, Marlin is the greatest dad in any movie, period.

I’d like to move on to legendary movie moms while I’m on a roll, but the essay on Almost Famous will have to wait until next May. Go read Sophocles or Freud or something. Oh, and Happy Father’s Day.