I watched Elizabethtown recently, and wondered why a director would allow the movie to end with a long-winded road trip through various US tourist sites. Worse, from what the reviewer Roger Ebert says, in the original cut the road trip went on for another twenty minutes.
I think some film directors fall in love with their material and can’t be persuaded to cut it out. The trend as far as my memory goes dates back to Lawrence of Arabia, which was directed by David Lean. Lean had made a number of movies, including at least two excellent films based on Dickens’ stories, and they were sharp and to the point.
And then came Lawrence of Arabia. The first half was superb, and the slow moments made sense. But the second half dragged on, with long-winded political material that bored the average viewer.
After that it was almost all downhill, with the worst film of Lean’s career being Ryan’s Daughter, an interminable film, badly acted even by the good actors, and full of cliched visuals that contributed nothing to the overall effect.
Stanley Kubrick is another case in point. After a brilliant career full of often remarkable films, he produced 2001: A Space Odyssey, and fell in love with the material. On first viewing, this film seemed to have some point, but by the end you know it has none, and subsequent viewings reveal it’s as empty as the space that so often films the screen. The remainder of Kubrick’s career was dotted with films made years apart, culminating in the awful Eyes Wide Shut, in which love of the material meant a long-winded and supposedly meaningful film was raved over by those who believe Kubrick could do no wrong, and panned by those who saw he could.
Sadly, I believe there’s another director treading this dangerous path. Peter Jackson made a number of excellent small-scale movies, some of them produced on a shoe-string.
And then came The Lord of the Rings, and for the most part, it’s superb. But the last half hour of the third in the series is a disaster, dragging on and on with endless tears from the Hobbits (who seemed to have lost all their courage and gone in for full-on emotions).
Lord of the Rings would be okay, if it wasn’t for what followed. Against much better judgement, I suspect, King Kong was allowed to screened at its full length, instead of losing the half hour that should have been chopped.
Jackson had fallen in love with the material.
Consequently, we have a superb film at the beginning, a superb film in the middle, and a load of rubbish between. As for the ending with Kong sliding around on the ice: not only is it absurd, but it shows an alarming trend in Jackson’s movies to oversentimentalise. When he’s working with strong characters, things move at a fast pace. When he gets caught up in emotion, his films fall into a trough, and struggle to get out.
He’s doing another remake next: The Dam Busters. Am I alone in thinking this is going to be another three hours’ worth of movie, full of CGI, and dragging in all manner of soppy minutes that will bust it faster than the Ruhr dam itself was busted?
