The Book of Mormon

(Not a film, but eh, I don't have a theatre blog)

Much of the buzz about The Book of Mormon is that it’s got a lot of buzz. You won’t get tickets without booking six months in advance. That’s part of the whole mythos it’s created. Well, I got lucky – a Facebook message from a schoolfriend saying a ticket was spare if anyone wanted it, so I waited all of two hours to get the hottest ticket in town.

And it was well worth the price of admission, and the genuine waiting time too – from beginning to end, it was incredibly enjoyable, and funny enough that I don’t want to do a plot summary in case any little detail of the brilliantly funny story is spoiled. Suffice to say it’s very much in the South Park vein, a few degrees away from the extreme crudeness and out-and-out surrealism of similarly-themed episodes, but also has its own strong identity and voice.

Throughout, much like Parker and Stone’s other musical ventures, there are gentle parodies of other musicals and musical styles. The hand of Avenue Q guy Martin Lopez is apparent too, and I felt like the momentary appearance of a big monster head was a nod backwards. Nothing is quite as good as the Les Miserables parody in Bigger, Longer and Uncut, and the general pastiches of rock musicals, showtunes et all work better than the direct derivatives of The Lion King and Annie, but the fact is that the writers are absolutely brilliant at making their songs funny – not counting sad refrains, every single musical number had at least one huge laugh, several of them being the very first line.

I paused to wonder in the interval why it is that I love the parody and pastiche here, but hate what Joss Whedon does and found it didn’t work in Eric Idle’s stage production Spamalot. After all, Parker and Stone are poking fun at musicals, and have a certain way of being able to stand above criticism by saying ‘Oh, it’s parody’. They can go over the top, have their actors overact and their songs lack taste because it’s comic exaggeration based on expectations, which rather makes hard criticism seem to miss the point. But the difference is, I think, affection. These imitations don’t sneer at what they poke fun at, they make an earnest and convincing attempt to recapture the same thing and do it right. They don’t sarcastically push camp and silly tropes away, but make use of them in a loving, amused way. That seems to be the distinction.

What The Book of Mormon emerges as is a warm tribute to a rather silly American institution, with odd-couple humour and Parker and Stone’s appealing skewering of naivety in the face of a world with problems that happy-clappy proselytisers seem to have no conception of – but they are strong with characters, too, and both the leading characters, while they go off on their own individual paths, end up likeable and deeply flawed. The Ugandans are not a politically correct representation of a people – of course not! – more a collection of others who have an innate noble-savage superiority to the clueless white kids who want to teach them about God, but they also get most of the best moments, especially a King & I-like moment towards the end, and I suspect ‘Hasadiga Eeboway’ will enter pop culture in some way or another. None of the characters are exactly detailed, realistic character studies – nor meant to be – and it works perfectly that way.

Analyse it however you like – the bottom line is that this is brilliantly funny stuff, and masterfully executed. Add in an ensemble that put anyone who’s ever been on X-Factor to shame, inventive costumes and sets and a very accomplished orchestra and you have…well, a show that deserves all the awards and attention it’s getting! 

Oz, the Great and Powerful

Whether Disney’s last foray into the world of Oz was a success or not is a bit of a tricky subject. Return to Oz was a bit of a flop, but has been rehabilitated by history somewhat, and now has a cult following for its creepiness and 80s aesthetic.

I doubt that Oz the Great and Powerful will get the same treatment, for while its reviews, too, are mixed, and while I enjoyed it, it was very simple and straightforward, and lacks the quirkiness of a cult classic.

But I would still call it a good, enjoyable film that does what it’s meant to do. In similar territory to Wicked, but much more canonical and much less subversive (ignoring the musical adaptation I haven’t seen), it serves as a prequel to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (and The Wizard of Oz). The wizard comes to Oz as an ordinary illusionist (and womaniser), is taken as a leader, at first is impotent and unable to stand up to the witches who largely rule Oz as he finds it – and who he stirs to transition from string-pullers in a largely benevolent realm to vicious tyrants – but with help from his close friends comes up with a plan to use spectacle and illusion to become the Wizard. Which is exactly what I hoped for an exactly what I got.

That said, I was a little worried for the first half. OZPINHEAD himself is hard to like, a scoundrel and a shameless breaker of hearts, and the way the plot is established is extremely lazy – it’s a prophecy that takes Oz from any random person to potential Wizard, and the one who sees him arrive just happens to be one of the most important people in the country, apparently out for a stroll alone in some random deserted area.

It really changes when Oz meets the little China Girl, a tiny girl made of porcelain who is a neat mixture of classic refinement and modern affection for forceful girls – and let us not forget this is a film no feminist test is going to find wanting, even if it’s the male who is at the centre, saving the day. Finding the little broken girl is a turning point for the character – he has to become responsible, and he has someone who believes in him. He has been sent on a frankly daft mission by the Wicked Witch of the East (in disguise, of course), who uses the opportunity to make a Wicked Witch of her sister – and if the transition from black and white standard-definition to widescreen (techni)colour wasn’t enough of a nod to the first film, the green skin, broom and sibling relationship here (none of which was in Baum) make it clear this is intended more as prequel to the famous film than the famous book.

Oz’s companions may be no Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion (all of whom are obliquely referred to in some way), but the China Girl, cowardly monkey and, indeed, Glinda all serve a purpose and offer comic relief. Everything is a little slow until the very end, but the payoff is most certainly worth it.

There’s perhaps not quite enough heart here, and it’s all a bit clinical and by-the-numbers. True quirkiness seldom makes it through Hollywood rewrites these days, so don’t expect it. But accepting it as a product of its time and enjoying it as something simple and accessible, it is certainly to be enjoyed.  

Cloud Atlas

Like so many films these days, released in the UK months and months after the US, it may be easy for an audience in this country to forget that Cloud Atlas was eligible for Oscars - and completely ignored by the Academy. That, along with extremely polarized reviews, will no doubt lead to this film being considered an ambitious but ultimately failed project, despite easily making back its mammoth budget and having some very prominent critics raving about it.

It most definitely split audiences, in a way that the book didn't split its readers, and while the cause of this is primarily structural and derived from expectations about how the cinema will tell stories, ultimately it boiled down to the problem that I found with Cloud Atlas and also Mitchell's Ghostwritten, but wasn't present in Number9Dream - the fact that there really isn't a nice substantial connection between these different stories, only echoes, and that isn't quite enough to satisfy. That said, the screen adaptation quite wisely steered clear of the book's tendency to play with reality by making you think that the characters in previous stories are fictional - here, at least, they are all real even if they later inspired a fictional biopic.

It's unsurprising, but the film ditches the symmetrical structure of the film to cut between the six stories repeatedly, losing linearity in favour of an overall progression, faster pace (in a very long film) and quicker start - it's not easy for readers to be confronted with several chapters of Melville pastiche, but book readers are likely to be more patient than cinemagoers. It's also quite the feast for the eyes when six different films in different styles are intercut, often very beautifully juxtaposed. Of course a lot more is lost in concession to a cinema audience - the nuances of language, references to Nietzsche and Nabokov, the shock of child rape, side-references to Mitchell's earlier books - but there is plenty gained too, from visual spectacle to a more visceral depiction of just how unpleasant Sonmi's story is.
And the main problem here is that the film is confusing, especially for non-book readers. Blockbusters are not meant to be confusing, and 'is there actually any real connection between these stories beyond birthmarks and cursory mentions of previous stories?' looms a bit too large for this to have been a success.

But as one who knew that would be the case, I enjoyed it immensely. Having the actors recur not only means they all get a stab at playing extremely against-type (Tom Hanks as thuggish Irish writer? Hugh Grant as brutal savage murderer in warpaint? Hugo Weaving not only as a mocking phantasm of the mind, an Agent Smith-type assassin and a callous slave-trader, but best of all as a very, very scary woman? Sign me up) but each of them also gets to balance their hammy minor roles with a more moving and heartfelt main part. This is a film any actor must have loved to be in, and even if some of the attempts to make someone of one race look like someone of another are a bit disastrous, the style shifts are endless fun and this can truly be said to have it all - period drama, sci-fi chase scenes with lots of explosions, savage tribes in the jungle, gentle comedy, tender love, high art, political commentary...the only slight miss-hit was not having the 70s section a bit more like the trashy pulp story it was supposed to be. The fact that the San Francisco scenes were shot in Scotland is a bit of a revelation!

I will concede that this isn't for everyone. If you worry you don't understand some greater unifying theme rather than just going 'Clearly there's no great intention to make bolder connections', you will probably get annoyed searching for it. But if you can love a film for its self-conscious artifice, you are to my mind getting this one right.