The Cracks in the Great Wall
It seems as if an earthquake visited The Great Wall movie set and left cracks everywhere. The photo shopped abyss has opened and the ideas that could be worthwhile fell into it with colorful screeches which were lost in translations. Or, to write it in a different way: it feels like a movie put together by a committee on strange meetings (with bad translators paid too well).
Crack number one: The Great Wall is basically a monster movie. It’s The Battle at Helm’s Deep with orcs all the time and no Fellowship of the Ring. So, it should be at least a bit scary, a bit bloody. And it is a tiny bit bloody. But not scary, since Zhang Yimou finds every opportunity he can to shoot large groups of people in wonderful colors doing something in synchronization. It feels as if he is still making the opening of Beijing Olympic Games. How this two things combine? Badly. Can they even be combined? Well, maybe, but certainly not today, and not this time.
Crack number two: the movie has two different plots. The second one is there only to keep on repeating the point which, in movie time, we learn early on – that foreigners should be taught honor – but the first one, the one with the monsters, which at least might be of some interest, is at least occasionally neglected in favor of the second one.
Many things are neglected. Motivations. Logic. Willem Dafoe. Cracks everywhere.
One of the generals dies in the middle of the movie. All of a sudden we must take time to mourn, because everybody is very affected by this, although we might be left wondering if we‘ve seen this guy for more than a passing minute. We are supposed to feel although we don’t remember him. But of course, the mourning scene is colorful. So there you go. We need it.
We, supposedly, need Jing Tian. Chinese rumors has it that she has been pushed into a lot of movies because she is some VIP’s, em, protégée. So she is not neglected. She is, on paper, a possible love motivation for Matt Damon. Making love on The Great Wall sounds nice, but you know that you can scratch that idea away right from the start. Do you think they at least kiss? Sorry. She does not look that interested, and Matt Damon is fully employed doing his Jason Bourne thing, being great fighter. He has no time, he carries all the weight of his former roles on his shoulders, and that kind of works for a while. Then you realize that’s all there is to him. He is an import, meant to look good fighting. Why exactly would white people of that time excel in fighting? Why Chinese people are not doing martial arts? Wonderful crazy flying kung fu? It would make more sense. No, it would be better. Stop asking questions.
The CGI has been bought (relatively) well. Again, it does not feel organically connected to the rest of the movie. Cracky, crack. But the interesting thing to note is the subtext. The monster movie featuring attack on such an epic wall protecting culture is surely the movie about The Others. In a smart movie, The Others would have a motivation, a goal, perhaps at least a language. In a very smart movie they would even turned out to be us, or at least similar. But here, although they do communicate, and “have developed intelligence”, they are just ugly, mindless, hungry, and violent. You can’t understand them and it looks like there’s nothing really to understand. Hm.
On the other hand, the whites are there, firstly, to be amazed by China, and learn values, yet finally, the Chinese and whites see the light and learn from each other, and understand that they need to work together. To protect the civilization, probably. That’s all well. But by the end you can’t be sure whether you really care and want to dig out the right metaphor.
I love Zhang Yimou, or at least used to love him. The dramas. The Road Home, Not One Less, Raise the Red Lantern, Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles… His strongest directing card is details, relationships, emotions; this is where and when his choices of colors work; they mean something. When he is immersed into big events, he loses the eye for relationships. God’s eye blinds him. Oh, the things he directed “lately”, performances like Beijing Olympic Games or the story of Liu San Jie in Guilin are feasts… for taking photos. But movies? In The Great Wall, he is playing one of his weaker “non movie” cards… in the wrong movie. And yes, there is something about the idea of ancient China as a “fantasy” land. The Wall has so many layers coming with it. This monster do belong to the legends, but we are not given any background about them. Isn’t there more to do? The wall has been built through centuries. It cements zombies of thousand workers underneath its blocks. It’s probably got unknown labyrinths, doors, ending and beginnings. It would be amazing if the movie would offer some more clues to real enigmas, or at least less known information. It can be done in different ways, and it can be done more; I’d really love to see, for example, the lore of national minorities used in this way.
Maybe next time.
