Film Review: Peter Jackson’s KING KONG *****
Remakes of classic movies are almost always a bad idea. Unlike the theatre, where everything depends on what is happening in the moment and new productions can sometimes offer a fresh perspective on familiar work, a truly classic film becomes burned in the cultural memory and much of its potency is derived from that very permanence. Come to think of it, a frequent characteristic of classic films is their unchanging freshness, the way in which they not only stand out in their own era, but in all eras.
But Peter Jackson’s King Kong isn’t just any remake; it’s one of the best films of 2005, a work of unrestrained showmanship and imagination, and an epic labor of love by one of the world’s finest moviemakers. That it’s also a flawed masterpiece should not deter anyone from seeing it; a flawed masterpiece is better than no masterpiece at all, and rare enough on its own.
Many people, who may only be familiar with the atrocious 1976 Kong remake, have wondered aloud why the man who made The Lord of the Rings (2001-3) would bother with this creaky tale as a follow up. But it’s well known among Jackson’s most devoted fans that he’s been trying to remake the original King Kong (1933) for the bulk of his career, the most visible member of a dwindling club of filmmakers and historians whose devotion to Fay Wray and her stop-motion leading gorilla has never died. It’s a sign of the times, and the movie business, that some of the most important landmarks in the Hollywood canon are now so absorbed into the culture, they’ve become the visual equivalent of dead metaphors. Only a few famous images, such as Kong battling biplanes atop the Empire State Building, live on in the collective memory, regularly providing fodder for political cartoonists and advertisers while completely losing their cultural relevance.
But Kong ’33 was a revolutionary film for four decades, a claim few classics can make, its astonishing visual effects unequalled until the Star Wars films came along to revive its almost forgotten techniques. And that was only half of it: perhaps the most influential fantasy film of all-time, Kong still works because its effects, spectacular as they may be, are wholly subservient to its “lost world” story, only showing up when certain locations or creatures must be invented in the interests of movie reality. The original filmmakers, charting new territory offscreen as well as on, never forget they are storytellers first, pioneers second.
This is how Kong ’33 inspired several generations of filmmakers, by establishing the gold standard for imaginative moviemaking, a wild-eyed adventure/fairy tale for adults that draws audiences into an unforgettable fantasy world. Though some of its effects are transparent now, the creative energy behind them still burns through and Kong himself bristles with character and life, remaining one of the movies’ most memorable monsters.
Peter Jackson’s short but impressive oeuvre has always been motivated by the same spirit of recklessly inventive storytelling, and by using effects as a means rather than an end. He couldn’t be less interested in plausibility for its own sake; to him, a few well-drawn characters are all the plausibility any story needs and the rest takes care of itself. This is an oversimplification, of course, but it’s also a fact: Jackson’s gallery of characters in the Lord of the Rings trilogy often Out-Tolkiened Tolkien with their sheer economy of gesture and thought, sometimes packing volumes into a single scene. With so many believable characters on board, characters, moreover, who effortlessly believed in their fantasy environment, Middle Earth came alive on screen. LOTR’s magnificent production design was finally just icing on the cake of world-building.
While Jackson’s King Kong is certainly about creating one of the most astounding visual worlds in contemporary moviemaking, that is only one layer of Kong ’33 which he has taken to heart. The original film is also the once-and-future granddaddy of movie thrill rides and any remake worth its salt was going have to be up for that task, a cliffhanging heart-in-your-throat esthetic crammed not just with action, but with freakin’ terrifying twists of fate and bone-crunching horror. This fairy tale has never been for children, which is why most kids love it.
It’s no surprise that Jackson, who began his career making low-budget horror gross-outs, is capable of translating all this into the digital age; his Kong was all but predestined to be the compleat visual feast. But his great accomplishment here, the thing that makes him the best sci-fi/fantasy filmmaker of our age, is his characters. Kong ’33 was one of the riskiest ventures ever attempted in classic cinema and there wasn’t a lot of screen time given over to developing its people or its monsters, but Jackson, once again enlisting the aid of mime artist Andy Serkis (who, as everybody now knows, was the performance model for digital Gollum in LOTR), has managed to re-invent Kong himself, expanding and deepening his portrayal with compassion and subtlety.
From the standpoint of realism, this Kong easily surpasses his namesake, his motives becoming clear at each turn of the story. He is wholly gorilla (Kong ’33 had more than a few anthropomorphic traits); his initial fascination with Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts), the woman sacrificed to him by a scary tribe of lost primitives, has to do with her creativity and humor, her ability to keep him entertained rather than any psycho-sexual confusion. Thus, his famous obsession with her develops out of the novelty of communicating with another species, a more profound emotion than that evoked by the original film.
Initially terrified of Kong, Ann grows to understand his isolation and loneliness, watching him closely, not losing her cool, eventually using simple sign language to commiserate with him on some of life’s eternal mysteries, like the beauty of sunrise. She, too, is lonely, from a world full of users and manipulators, and despite the astronomical differences in size, she finds in Kong a kindred spirit.
This is Jackson turning the story inside out, not just for the sake of it, but to express aspects of Kong ’33 that have always been part of the subtext. So, one of the best moments in his version is the topsy-turvy dissonance created when Ann is saved from Kong’s clutches by her would-be boyfriend Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody). Watching the original film, we are relieved and thankful that Ann is finally escaping an unpredictable monster; watching Jackson’s version, there is an urge to cry out, “Wait, wait, they just got to know each other!”
Now that’s a bloody remake, by god: If you’re going to “rethink” it, really rethink it, or do something else. Regardless of how much familiarity you may have with each twist and turn in the King Kong story, Jackson’s film is guaranteed to alternately delight, thrill, and possibly confound you with the breadth of his understanding — of film storytelling, of action, adventure and the Depression Era that spawned the first Kong, of the unnamable chemistry that is possible between different species, of Kong himself and the meaning of his destiny. Peter Jackson’s King Kong has an almost spiritual sense of the natural order, which includes authentic creepiness alongside the awe and wonder.
The film’s greatest flaw (as it was with the LOTR trilogy) is its almost overwhelming too-muchness. Jackson explores every single permutation of the story with a novelist’s eye for detail, expanding and adding to all the characters and events, and once again showing his own special talent for extending each moment to its dramatic breaking point. For some viewers this is a strength, but I’m with Shakespeare’s Polonius on this one: brevity is still the soul of wit, and this Kong could lose about thirty minutes worth of exuberant flourishes without sacrificing a single thing of any importance. The whole point, as a moviemaker, of providing one’s self with too much, is to have material for sculpting and polishing in the editing suite. Especially in the first hour, less build up and a sacrificed minor character or two would give King Kong a pace nearly comparable with the original, which was a one-of-a-kind, non-stop entertainment.
But it’s a drawback that fails to overshadow the enormous power and force of Jackson’s vision for remaking his favorite movie. I have never been particularly moved by the original King Kong, in spite of being an enthusiastic fan since the age of nine, but I’ve always loved it for its audacity and wicked humor, its technical achievement, of course, and most of all its unique, hard-driving narrative. Jackson has revived all of these things and tied them together with the kind of heart that could only come from a long nurtured appreciation for what King Kong could be, as well as for what it once was. Like his other movies, it is the film of an unabashed movie lover with a great respect for his source, but too much genius of his own to simply cart out an homage. He has made a complex and emotionally challenging King Kong, not exactly a better film than the original, but a stirring companion piece that will entertain new generations.
None of this would be possible without the luminous, perennially underestimated Naomi Watts, who spends most of her screen time running from and acting with giant beasts that weren’t really there when the cameras rolled. One of the few modern actresses with a genuine hint of 1930s glamour to her face, she is also the only one I have seen who can play both guileless and street smart in the same moment and make it look easy, as if that was her natural self. She has a gift of imagination far deeper than most actors and, despite the awesome visual effects in this film, it is her work moment-by-moment that most makes us believe in this tallest of modern fairy tales.
As might be expected, Jackson also fills his movie with clever references to the original, but it is never gratuitous or telegraphed. The viewer just has to know things like costume styles, original dialogue and large swatches of Max Steiner’s 1933 score, in order to pick up on their appearance in the new movie. Perhaps the most enjoyable reference comes during the brutally exploitative show intended to showcase the captured Kong in New York: the sets, costumes, and the thundering music, are all exact duplications from a “native” ritual in the first film, turning the faults of 1933 to rousing advantage, emphasizing Kong’s misery in captivity and, not coincidentally, critiquing the misguided notions of another era.
One of this year’s must-see films, be prepared for a very intense entertainment on many levels.
King Kong
directed by Peter Jackson; screenplay by Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens & Peter Jackson, from story by Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace; director of photography, Andrew Lesnie; edited by Jamie Selkirk; music by James Newton Howard
with Naomi Watts (Ann Darrow), Jack Black (Carl Denham), Adrien Brody (Jack Driscoll), Thomas Kretschmann (Capt. Englehorn), Andy Serkis (Kong/Lumpy)
3 hr., 7 m.; Universal, rated PG-13
release date: December 14
NOTES:
RHYMES WITH CIRCUS: Andy Serkis also has a substantial live action role as the cook Lumpy, a funny character bit which Jackson gave him in return for his work as a stand-in and computer graphics model. For his performance as Kong, he studied great apes in Africa for months in order to recreate their mannerisms and emotional states. One hundred and thirty-two sensors were attached to his face during the motion capture sessions to model Kong’s mood swings and expressions.
THE TWO ANNS: Fay Wray, the original Ann Darrow, was signed to appear during this film’s finale as a crone delivering the last thematic pronouncement about beauty and the beast. Unfortunately she died just before production started, in August 2004 at the age of 97, but not before she met Watts, whom she felt was perfectly cast in the film.
Wray, who enjoyed her own fair amount of luminosity way back when, was a 25-year-old box-office star when she made King Kong; Watts, who spent many more years as an undervalued performer before Mulholland Dr. (2001) changed her fortunes, was 36 when shooting began on Kong last fall, and her role for the remake was a lot more physically demanding than anything Ms. Wray had to endure.
Eric Barker is a writer and indie filmmaker living in Indianapolis.
(This post has been edited from its original length by the author.)
