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June 21, 2003

Rage, Power and Freedom

Hulk is by far a better film than you would think possible. I have decided not to let early reviews tarnish my impressions. Expecting airheaded fun, I got a bit more from this weeks summer movie, Hulk a surprisingly well-thought out action flick.

If it could be said that a film about a comic book could be beautiful to watch, then there are two candidates. This and the Hughes Brothers take on the legend of Jack the Ripper 'From Hell' borrows from the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Lee replicates the essence of a comic book on screen with multiple frames and angles on action shots and unusual frames within frames. When you get the Hughes Brothers film and listen to their comments, hear what they are saying about the narrative form of the comic strip. You can then realize what a unique achievment Lee has created with Hulk.

This is a movie that will stand the test of time. Even as I watched it, I could tell that it is something that I won't be loathe to watch again despite my simple attraction to the fun in it. Seeing Spiderman again this weekend left me dumbfounded at the preposterousness of the Green Goblin's constantly open mouth. Lee leaves in a great number of short scenes in the film which add to its nuance, it is clearly not a normal Hollywood film. So much of that would have been edited out were this not Ang Lee.

The pace of revelation is tantalizingly slow in this film. It shows some deft work in editing and scripting to put the obvious in context and play deliciously with the backstory. The very idea of repressed memory is done better here than in most amnesia themed films.

The performances are great. Bana's scientist is not over-nerdy, obsessed, pretentious, absentminded or any of the other stereotypes in the genre. He's a bright guy who is emotionally repressed and distant. He has a dark past he's only vaguely aware of, it all comes in dreams which he shares periodically. His girl and professional colleage, played nicely by Jennifer Connelly, too has a mysterious childhood memory. She may or may not be on his side. This ambiguity works through all of the characters in the film. There are 12 sides to the story and each character expresses them in different ways at different times. It is this complexity that makes Hulk unusually nuanced for an action film. It's part horror, part melodrama, part sci-fi.

In a classic moment in this film, you think you've had it with Bana's grunting and Nolte delivers a smashing rejoinder. It's a scene that is pregnant with meaning and yet devoid of hope. It is the fight between the predictable and the inevitable that finds a home in Hulk's story.

The special effects are the ususally remarkable stuff. It may be difficult to believe that the Hulk can leap entire counties with a single bound, but then again, that's why he was called the Incredible Hulk. But where this film really shines like no other in my memory is in its evocation of the biological. In fact I would say that it sets a new standard for popular science fiction of the genetic sort. Like Michael Pollan's Botany of Desire, it will switch in the public imagination some biological complexity into the realm of the fascinating. The Matrix has done that for the philosophical and the digital aspects of the real. You can imagine the effect on someone like me who studied Computer Science and Philosophy as an undergrad. Hulk will put the microbiologists and geneticists in the spotlight.

Ang Lee does heroes well, and Bruce Banner is a hero. As Hulk, he realizes that he has achieved a kind of purity. Yet he is tragic, overcome by a destiny he didn't desire that brings out strange desires in others that he can only meet with confused rage. And yet this rage humanizes him even more. He wrestles with his father only as a monster, he evokes the finest attention from the woman in his life only when he has gone on a rampage as the Hulk. His freedom from the dungeons of his self-made emotional imprisonment are busted wide open only when he becomes this gigantic green mutant.

The Hulk gives us a little to think about and entertains as well. There's not much more you can ask from a movie.

Posted by mbowen at June 21, 2003 10:14 PM

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