Who can deliver us from this cinematic desert, this landscape of visual nothingness?
During this Oscar season, we celebrate the best films, while the worst ravage the screens. Our theaters burn and, like Nero, we chew popcorn.
Consecutive weeks have seen the release of “Rambo,” “Fool’s Gold,” “Jumper” and “Vantage Point.” Any more of these, and we will be willing participants in a sadistic ritual.
After watching “Vantage Point,” I noted two critical choices made by its filmmakers: one, aesthetic and the other, political, that showed why ingenuity without inspiration results only in exasperation – for the audience, at least.
“Vantage Point” begins with the assassination of the president of the United States as he gives a speech on terrorism in Salamanca, Spain. This particular event is shown about eight times, corresponding with what eight bystanders believed they saw. Hence, the title, which is supposed to show how the composition of what the audience sees reveals the event in its entire truth.
Multiple view points have been used in films for decades, its success or failure depending on the facility with which it can aid the story being told.
This relativity of truth was best captured by Ryonusoke Akutagawa’s short story, “In a Grove,” later made into “Rashomon” by Akira Kurosawa. In the story, a dead body is discovered, testimony is obtained from different witnesses and three people, including the victim – through a medium – confess to the crime. Who committed the act, and who is protecting whom?
“Memento,” “Hero,” “Irreversible” and “Amores Perros” are examples of films that use various perceptions of facts. What these films all have in common is that the visual device used does not get in the way of the story but enhances it.
In “Irreversible,” an irate guy looks for a fight in a gay bar; director Gaspar Noe, using carefully edited sequences, goes backward in time, shows this guy caused his girlfriend’s assault and had come in the bar for revenge. In “Hero,” there are three stories that peel like an onion to reveal the essence of a hero. The first tale paints Jet Li’s character as a man of valor; the second tale demonstrates the emperor’s insight. The final tale reveals the hopeful desires of both men.
Unlike these films, however, “Vantage Point” has no story to tell, so instead of delivering a simple linear narrative, director Pete Travis opts for mechanic repetitions of the insignificant. Each sequence begins with an overhead shot of the crowd in Salamanca, proceeds with a character, arrives at a climax and then returns to the same shot now followed by someone else.
By the third time, the dance was predictable, and I simply followed along. How many angles do you need to see a man get shot, a building explode and people run helter skelter in the streets before you lose interest?
Returning to the bird’s eye view of the masses showed a lack of introspection on the part of the filmmakers: if we begin at the same point before proceeding with a different character, the audience is not privy to a vantage point but simply different points of view.
There is no way to go around it; the mind behind those repeated shots deserves our fullest censure because he insults our senses. Only one character was necessary in understanding the complete story, so why the extraneous detail?
Was the director scared of getting nicked by Occam’s razor?
It was possible for me to disregard the roundabouts to focus on the car chase, the shootings and the solution to the puzzle, but then the credits rolled, and I was left wondering about the moral of the film. If it is that America is unprotected against determined terrorists, the point is well taken. But then again, the moral is undermined by the closure.
Everything leading up to that point shows a president willing to placate our allies and unwilling to engage in petty playground brawls with terrorists. Yet when it is time to tie the loose ends, we are treated to a reprehensible deux ex machina; the terrorists had proved they would spare no cost in the pursuit of their ideals.
I admit a more radical ending might have destroyed “Vantage Point” at the box office, but films hardly haul cash in February; besides, the notoriety might have been good.
I am not advocating a president be knocked off onscreen, but if it seems I am harping on a small point, it is worth considering that in 1978, Italian Prime minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped and killed by the Red Brigades, a Marxist-Leninist group.
Such acts of malevolence have not been without precedent.
By not following its thesis to a logical conclusion, “Vantage Point” belies its title, leaving the audience closer neither to truth nor entertainment.
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Contact Freke Ette at [email protected]