Sin City
I was so ready to not like this movie. I'd skeptically heard peoples' positive reactions and I'd also read the review in the Times, and the depiction in the Times just struck me as what I'd expected it to be, so my judgment was vindicated even before it was passed. I was wrong.Sin City turned out to be a greasy, gritty, high-tech noir that took seriously its task of not taking itself seriously. Which is to say that Rodriguez (& co.) succeeded in his goal of not adapting the comic (yeah, I called it that) for the big screen, but in translating it. His success may not mean that Sin City is the best film to be made from a comic (Spider Man 2 looms pretty large), but it may be the best comic-on-the-big-screen. The stylized dialogue, the camera shots, the unnatural colors jumping out of the dark shadows, the cuts to profile, the superhero attitudes and achievements: this is a comic book. The only other film (and here I'm inviting you to show me that my pot-addled short-term memory serves me wrong) I can think of that tries to be a comic book was The Hulk. The Hulk cut back and forth between live action and animated panels, and it relied on cliche devices like pages riffling. No such articifce in Sin City. Or rather, Sin City takes all the artifice of the comic, and breaks down the dividing line between comic and movie in exactly the way that The Hulk failed to.
Other than that Times piece, I don't know what critics have said about the movie, but I'd imagine it would mainly be about the lame dialogue and the gore. But that's comics-- that's where the director(s) succeeded. They took the form of the comic more seriously than they took the form of the blockbuster, and that seriousness means including all of the goofiness you find in comics. Which is why plenty of scenes leave you unsure whether to groan and roll your eyes or to wince and flinch.
The story (or stories, depending on how hard you want to look to find the connections between the three acts (think, unsurprisingly, of Pulp Fiction)) is engaging, the action is kick-ass and the visuals could at times be stunning (all the nearly-nude eye candy didn't hurt), but the real reason to see Sin City is that it's a reminder that there are still new things to be done with movies.
posted by Jon Z at
4:34 PM
1 comment(s):
New things to be done with movies, yes. I think Sin City will end up being the movie that points the way to a good movie. I don't think it, ultimately, was one. I will say this about it: it stimulated my lizard brain. It rewired my neurons. When I crossed the street to my car afterwards, traffic was coming at me; my first instinct was to crouch and let the car bounce off me.
I didn't see Hulk, but American Splendor would be the movie that puts comics aesthetics in the service of good cinematic storytelling.
Maybe the problem with movie adaptations is that they tend to be done from really good comix. The rule of thumb tends to be this: good book, bad movie. Mediocre book, good movie; think The Godfather. Sin City the comic book (I've been rereading the Merv story) is so wonderful because of the stark black and white graphics and the way the space between the panels allows your imagination to fill in the horror. The time between movie frames is substantial, but perhaps not enough. So the real technical achievement ends up being almost as cool as a comic book.
By
Josh K-sky, at
5:33 PM
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