Inception, effects-fests and the big-budget unreality curse

Monday, July 26, 2010

Are the massive sums doled out for blockbusters really creative boon for gifted directors such as Christopher Nolan?
It may be one of the summer's darker ironies that, as government ministers vie to find out quite how little can be spent on the nation's health and education, the film industry has reached the point in the year when it's filling our cinemas with movies made for the GDPs of small nations (or, these days, large ones).
Yes, it's the season of those mega-budget, hundred-million-dollar-plus behemoths which prove that, while it keeps getting harder to make films outside the studio system, those within it are are still being given gargantuan funds to boggle and amaze us (and keep us buying those 3D glasses).

And as with any unequal distribution of wealth, awkward questions follow – such as whether having huge sums at their fingertips is actually good for film-makers, or whether they're the right people to have it in the first place. The thing about the kind of grandiose spectacle the biggest budgets buy you is that, CGI or otherwise, it all starts to look the same.

Not literally, of course – even I can tell the difference between Narnia and Pandora. But the set-pieces of the most extravagant blockbusters always seem to share a certain sheeny sensibility so that, however expensive, they never look real. In such circumstances, true creativity is all too often sacrificed for size.

Predictably, I can't help thinking of Inception here – a film in which the $160m budget goes on a smorgasbord of ornate, effects-heavy money shots. Yet impressive as all the dreamscape malarkey is, I left Inception convinced that the best vehicle for Christopher Nolan's talents remains something like Memento – one simple great idea spun out into a terrific, taut, modern thriller. For all the recent hullaballoo, Nolan still feels like a lost maker of brilliant B-movies, with studio largesse inflating his "vision" beyond its natural limits – a phenomenon that has also afflicted Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi.

None of which is to deny the charm of sheer, vast, gleefully ridiculous spectacle, or to imply that anything made for pocket change is intrinsically wonderful; Lord knows I've seen enough films to disprove both sides of that equation. But it's also true that, once the budget starts to climb into nine figures, displaying it onscreen becomes a perversely dreary end in itself – so that rather than allowing a director to show the world the wonders inside his or her head, the game becomes to find ways of visibly splashing the cash just to heighten the sense of the movie as an event. (At this point, it seems apposite to mention that the most expensive film of all time is Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End.)

There are two connected problems here. One is the inevitable committee interference a giant budget brings with it, with the pressure of a carrying studio's entire future likely to stifle even the most gifted film-maker. Not that the most gifted film-makers are often involved here, which is the second problem. The industry's catch-22 is that there is a small army of directors whose wildly individual films mean they will never be trusted with a big budget despite them having exactly the kinds of imagination that deserve one.

After the demented swagger of Valhalla Rising, I'd certainly be intrigued (and shocked) to see Denmark's Nicolas Winding Refn making merry with Michael Bay-style sums. But for me, if there's one film-maker who should be granted at least one go with the serious money, it's David Cronenberg. Apart from the cracked brilliance of his work, it was his fine 1999 techno-drama Existenz that lodged persistently in my head throughout and after my viewing of Inception. I'd urge any Nolan fans to seek it out. And who knows – if enough of you do, he may get $160m to play with ...

Reference: guardian