Platoon

I have a massive cinematic blind spot, and it's in the precise shape of Oliver Stone. I had never seen an Stone movie until now, and considering he's a fairly major name in film, that's a fairly glaring omission. Truth be told, I've never had any real desire to see a Stone movie, perhaps because everything I've heard about him indicates someone who can't do subtlety. Now that I've seen Platoon - one of the three Vietnam movies, along with Apocalypse Now (which was my worst MaR writeup) and Full Metal Jacket, that everyone likes - I can judge him at least a little more accurately.

Platoon is about fresh faced young recruit Charlie Sheen, who looks enough like his father that you wonder if Stone was deliberately trying to recall Apocalypse Now. He's under the command of Willem Dafoe and Tom Berenger and his many scars. Trying to figure out who killed their dudes, Berenger and friends assault a village, kills people for no reason, and generally makes a complete hash of the whole winning hearts and minds thing. Meanwhile, Dafoe, Sheen and their friends start to feel very uncomfortable about what they're witnessing. Then, as in real life, the war starts to go quite badly for everyone involved.

The movie is only tangentially about the conflict in Vietnam, using it as a backdrop to make a more elaborate point about human nature. The characters are neatly divided into two camps, the people who have willfully given up on their humanity, and those who desperately cling to it. The aforementioned village scene is a prime example, with some people willfully killing and abusing the villagers, and others objecting and trying to stop. Dafoe is pitched as the good, and Berenger evil, and the clash between the two - and eventually Sheen and Berenger - is well handled in the battle scenes and important moments.

One problem though, Stone doesn't trust his audience. He can do a brilliant battle scene, or a series of scenes which get his point across magnificently, but then he seems to worry that nobody gets it. So, we get bogged down with scenes where characters fret about moral decisions and explain with words everything that images managed to get across just fine in the preceding moments. I wanted to give stone a call and say "I get it, I was paying attention. You don't have to spell it out for me." There's a narration right at the end when Sheen says something about how they were fighting themselves, not the enemy. If you were even paying a modicum of attention, you would have already realized this, why put it in words? This lack of trust can explain why I've never gotten the impression that Stone movies can handle subtlety at all.

I also feel the need to point out that this has possibly the gayest scene in film history, and I've seen gay sex scenes. When Sheen is introduced to marijuana it plays it as a sex scene, including have Willem Dafoe tell Sheen to put his lips on his gun. I like the idea of the whole drugs as seduction bit, but by making it quite so obvious it becomes comical rather than clever.

But don't misunderstand, I think this is about 80% a great movie. When Stone feels like telling the story and not trying to explain it, it's well made, good looking, often smart and delivers a great commentary about what war does to people. That lack of trust, unfortunately, makes it worse than it should be. I understand the movie, Stone, I've been paying attention. You don't need to tell me what I already know, okay?

Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Back when Jersey Girl came out, a friend of mine tried to convince me to see it by saying "It's like a romantic comedy, but you can watch it if you're a guy!" It was a curious sales pitch, and a not entirely convincing one at that. But I watched it, I'm still not completely sure if it was what my friend pitched it as. It was a romantic comedy, but I'm not sure if a bit more sex talk than average makes it necessarily more masculine than the average.

This comes up because a sequence of that film involves a musical rendition of Sweeney Todd, as depicted by small children. The connection is appropriate, because I can't help but think Sweeney Todd was likely pitched similarly to how my friend pitched Jersey Girl to me. "It's a musical, but there's gore and death and horrible things! Guys can watch it as well as women!"

So what we have here is a film of the musical, starring Johnny Depp and his ridiculous hair starring as Sweeney Todd, a barber back from prison and out for revenge. See, Alan Rickman (whose hair is relatively sensible) plays a judge who tried to steal Depp's wife by sending him off to prison, and he plans on killing him. He stumbles upon Helena Bonham Carter and HER ridiculous hair as Mrs. Lovett, a baker known for making really awful meat pies. Somehow, the plan for revenge mutates into murdering loads of people and cooking them as pies.

This already is looking like a bleak, gory film, and then you've got Tim Burton directing at his most Tim Burton-y. Lots of strange gothic touches, weird makeup with sunken eyes, grim dirty sets, and a whole distinctively twisted look that Tim Burton does all the time. You can tell it's Tim Burton from the very first frame, when there's a blast of orchestra. And then there's the dark town, and it's raining blood, which proceeds to connect a CG interpretation of the main set. It sets the mood brilliantly, and it's a mood that's completely opposite of what one would expect from a musical.

I suppose it might be unfair to think of musicals as all fruity singing and campy costumes. But really, can you blame people for doing that? It's singing! And even the darkest, creepiest musical, directed in a dark and creepy way by a dark and creepy man, starring some of the darkest, creepiest stars in film, is still a musical. And the singing is still in a very showy, elaborate, Broadway style. The style clash is pronounced and bizarre. Why is everyone singing with all this death and murder around?

To be honest, I'm not completely sure being a musical saves this or kills it. On one hand, making such a bleak, depressing story "straight", it might be much too oppressive, the atmosphere stifling, and the story itself far more disturbing. That everyone's singing - especially in the goriest sequence of the film, which has probably the catchiest song of all - ensures that it never seems too real. Everyone singing showtunes is pretty much all that stops it from being the most depressing, bleak movie ever filmed.

But personally, I was distracted by it. It just felt so jarring, everyone singing their way through their lives. I suppose that's the way with all musicals, and maybe I'm just not made to watch them, but throughout I secretly wished that I was watching a standard movie.

But can I really let my personal hangups dictate whether or not it's a good movie? It's well directed, surprisingly well sung (considering the stars aren't known for singing), and certainly an objectively good movie. If I don't like something very much due to it's entire genre, is that really the film's fault?

It's better than Jersey Girl though.