I wrote about my favorite Robert Zemeckis film, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" for this series a few years ago, but not as a piece for Robert Zemeckis. I gave the credit for that movie to its unsung animation director, Richard Williams. This puts me in a weird spot now that I actually want to write about Zemeckis. It took me a while to come around on Robert Zemeckis as a great director, because for so many years he'd gone so far off the rails - making films that pushed the boundaries of special effects technology, but that didn't function very well as films that anybody would want to watch. However, there's been a lot of reevaluation going on with the recent release of "Here," and I've come around on his importance. So, as not to repeat myself, today I'm writing about my second favorite Zemeckis film.
When you're talking about Robert Zemeckis, you inevitably have to talk about his use of special effects. Zemeckis's career didn't really get going until he started making his effects-heavy spectacles, like the "Back to the Future" films, which his sensibilities are incredibly well suited for because he is such a detail-oriented, tech-savvy director. The effects work in his older movies still holds up beautifully today, because Zemeckis is such a perfectionist. His approach could be hard on his actors, but allowed him to make cartoons believably interact with a live-action world, have multiple Michael J. Foxes exist in the same frame, and stick Forrest Gump into historical footage, back when all of those things were impossible. He's always had a fascination with animation, and spent a significant chunk of his career trying to use motion capture performances to make cartoon features. However, I think his most successful attempt at turning human beings into cartoons was in "Death Becomes Her," one of his weirdest, darkest, and nastiest films.
For those who don't understand what camp is, "Death Becomes Her" is a great example. Two awful, jealous, Beverly Hills frenemies, played by Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn, are pitted against each other over the affections of a hapless man, played by Bruce Willis. Their feud eventually involves magic potions, zombies, and lots of over-the-top violence. It also provides plenty of opportunities to turn the female form into a canvas for grotesqueries. We watch Meryl and Goldie get old, get fat, get unalived, get their bodies warped into many different impossible forms, and become horror movie monsters - with fabulous hair and clothes. I admit I've always had a special fascination with female screen monsters, and the ways in which femininity can become monstrous. "Death Becomes Her" offers a smorgasbord of morbid delights in this vein, with the shiny new CGI effects allowing for some really impressive physical transformations. Here's Meryl with a broken neck and her head on backwards. Here's Goldie with a gaping hole in her torso that's not slowing her down at all.
Critics at the time of release called the film shallow and mean spirited, but I related very much to both of the main characters. I didn't find them shallow, but rather childish and stubborn and full of elemental rage. They're caricatures of women, but caricatures that still ring true emotionally. You can trace the roots of the story back to the old hagsploitation flicks like "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" but "Death Becomes Her" is much more ambitious. I love that the movie mercilessly skewers Hollywood diva behavior, snipes at the beauty industry, and pushes the heightened women's melodrama tropes into the realm of pure absurdity. Meryl and Goldie really get to let loose and go big, escalating from catty insults and other traditional forms of bitchery to going at each other with shotguns and shovels. It's as indulgent as anything, and so entertaining to watch.
I have to mention that "Death Becomes Her" is now a Broadway musical, which I have not seen but which I hear good things about. I'm honestly surprised that it took this long, given the film's history as a cult classic and camp touchstone. Unlike its heroines, "Death Becomes Her" has aged remarkably well as a movie, and all things it was sending up - impossible beauty standards, ageism, and the price of looking beautiful - are all as bad in the social media age as they ever were. And when was the last time you saw any blockbuster starring two women in their forties?
What I've Seen - Robert Zemeckis
Used Cars (1980)
Romancing the Stone (1984)
Back to the Future (1985)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
Back to the Future Part II (1989)
Back to the Future Part III (1990)
Death Becomes Her (1992)
Forrest Gump (1994)
Contact (1997)
What Lies Beneath (2000)
Cast Away (2000)
The Polar Express (2004)
Beowulf (2007)
A Christmas Carol (2009)
Flight (2012)
The Walk (2015)
Allied (2016)
The Witches (2020)
Pinocchio (2022)
Here (2024)
---
No comments:
Post a Comment