The Direction of Ridley Scott - Movies Good Enough to Eat

Ridley Scott has never received an Oscar. A lone nomination, for Thelma & Louise way back in 1991, is the closest the man has ever got to true recognition of his work. Despite this, a number of his films have been huge box-office successes, and his status as a safe bet is as good as cemented in the world of Hollywood – quite an achievement for a man born in South Shields.

Scott is often accused of being more invested in creating a world than in creating the characters, a problem stemming all the way back to his advertising background. The idea goes that Scott knows how to sell things – you see Rome in Gladiator, you want to buy it – but he doesn’t know how to make you emotionally invest in the characters. Another reason for this criticism comes from Scott himself – he constantly talks about creating a world rather than the people in it. His philosophy has always been that if you cast well, then creating the nuances of the characters can take a back seat as good actors will do it for you.

A problem Scott has repeatedly run into is the industry’s habit of handing out Oscars only to films released in the preceding year. A lot of his greatest works, especially Blade Runner and Kingdom of Heaven, were critically slammed originally – only to be re-evaluated years later. Blade Runner especially is now considered a masterpiece – but Scott will never receive any formal recognition of this.

A Prophet & City of God - Power, Poverty and Conflict.

Despite differing in both time period and location, City of God (2002, Dir. Fernando Meirelles) and A Prophet (2009, Dir. Jacques Audiard) share many similarities in their themes.

Starting with poverty, the least applicable thematic link between the two. Whilst all the characters in City of God clearly live in abject poverty, right the way through the 20 or so years the film covers, the same simple statement is more difficult to make when looking at A Prophet. Set in a prison, it can certainly be assumed that almost everyone is doing pretty badly for money (at least when the profits from their crimes are taken away!), but it doesn't really push this angle in the same way City of God does. In City of God we see the occasional glimpse of the richer, better world just on their doorstep, physically close but realistically a world away. In A Prophet, the drabness of every single person and thing in the prison, and in fact outside, does nothing to dispel the notion that the entire world is in fact like this.

In A Prophet, power could be described as the single most important thing in the movie. When Malik arrives in the prison, aged just 19, he holds no power whatsoever. The film is as much about the tipping of the balance of power as it is about the actual progression in the story, the two being tightly intertwined. The Corsican Mafia who Malik is able to get into favour with early in the film hold all the power initially, but by the end of the film Malik is able to leave prison with a full-on bodyguard of protectors from the now-powerful Muslim gang. The transition between the two is slow, a key turning point being when Luciani, a Corsican who arranges for Malik to get day leave from the prison, discovers he is using this same day leave to sell drugs. He attacks Malik and causes some temporary damage to his eye, but from this moment the audience knows he's lost the power. And he knows it too.

In City of God, there is also a balance of power, although presented slightly differently due to the larger time period covered. Early in the film the power is held by the "Tender Trio", a fairly "neighbourhood friendly" gang. Pretty quickly though the gang starts to fall apart, as the guys are not totally cut out for a life of crime. In their place comes a much more dangerous boy, Lil' Dice, who after killing a motel full of people and one of the Tender Trio, starts to take the power for himself. The film then jumps forwards 10 years, where Lil' Dice, now known as Lil' Ze, has taken control of almost all the city through his drug empire. The balance of power shifts between him and his main rival Carrot during their gang wars throughout the 1970s, ending as the next generation kills him off and intend to take over the city themselves, much like Lil' Ze did originally.

Conflict is the final area I will look at, and really, it's fairly simple. Conflict invades every minute of City of God. Characters and random people die left, right and centre in this film, especially in the fatality-heavy second half. The whole film is about, effectively, one massive war that has raged since the 1970s (and continues now, to the point where it was actually too dangerous to go there and film).  A Prophet, on the other hand, does not hammer home a theme of conflict. It's always there, in the way people glare at each other across the prison courtyard and huddle in little groups, but it rarely manifests itself beyond the odd shower fight or prison killing. I feel I must be pretty desensitised at this point to consider that as "not hammering it home".

Overall, City of God and A Prophet share some key underlying themes, which although sometimes reinforced and introduced differently, make them feel at times to be similar movies. Most important to this feeling is the constant feeling of entrapment, whether directly through poverty (in City of God) or directly through imprisonment (A Prophet).

City of God

The main message of City of God is that violence only breeds violence. The society is shown as relatively peaceful at the beginning of the film, with only a few "innocent" hold ups in a relatively nice area. "The hoods" share their profits with the locals and are generally decent people. However, this low-scale violence ramps up in the second portion of the film, as one gangster takes over the entire city. Each act of violence merely causes a larger retaliation, ad infinitum.

The film uses several scenes with quick cutting, giving the film an almost non-stop feel. Even during scenes that are relatively slow, the use of bleeding the sound from the following scene into the end of the current scene keeps the pace moving. The use of split-screen in some scenes allows some action to happen in one scene whilst a more conversation-based scene takes place on the other side. At all times the story seems to be moving forward, helped by the regular narration that allows the story to jump characters, locations and time periods without any confusion. Mostly it is shot in a documentary style, using handheld cameras and colour desaturation to create a feeling of realism. Sometimes, however (specifically the shot of Rocket standing between the two gangs, taken from the matrix) it uses more advanced cinematic techniques.

The film was set in the nearby favelas - filming was not possible in the actual Cidade de Deus as it was still too dangerous. The film was almost all cast from actual favelas - only one established actor was in the film, in the role of Carrot.

Comparison: The City Settings of La Haine & Sin City

In La Haine, the city, or more specifically the Banlieue is definitely a defining presence. It acts as a home for the characters and the narrative, but also, and perhaps more importantly, as a trap or even a grave. It informs everything about the characters – the same people raised in say, a country town would have been completely different. It is small and claustrophobic – almost like a prison. The use of black and white in the film makes the whole thing look almost like CCTV footage, furthering the criminal undertone of the whole estate. Despite the fact that none of the main characters have jobs (perhaps Hubert did, but his gym has been destroyed) there is the sense that everyday life continues, and in fact Said tells a beggar on the underground to “get a job”. Drugs and alcohol abuse are ever present, needles lying on the ground apparently so commonplace they are not even worthy of note by the characters.  The huge swathes of the film dedicated to them sitting in various age-worn locations, doing nothing, shows how little the city offers to them in the way of entertainment. The overwhelming feel of the film is that the people here will live their whole (probably short) lives in this location, and will almost certainly die there, as one of the main characters does.

Despite being based on a graphic novel, and presented in a very unique style, Sin City actually holds a number of comparisons to La Haine. The story does not feature a main character – instead, it features four stories revolving around Sin City, only linked by their constant references and visits to a single bar. The city in the film is shown as a hive of scum and villainy, where shooting a gun in a public place and beating people to death is not even worthy of a police presence. Every character in Sin City seems to have either started out with good intentions, or is hoping to do something right in the end, but due to the nature of the city and it’s corruption these attempts never really succeed. Specifically Dwight’s story seems to be a matter of everyday life in the city – in this we see that the “nuclear family” does not exist, much as is the case for Said and Vinz in La Haine. Women are treated abusively by the majority, and seen as sex objects for the most part. The treatment of the women by the average customer of Kadie’s Bar is only 5 years and 5 beers away from the treatment of women shown by Vinz and Said. At the end, the death of Marv, Hartigan and many others are not treated with any seriousness – they are basically forgotten. This is much like the death of Vinz at the end of La Haine – we see from the death of his friend Abdel that such a thing is not considered a big deal by the general populace – it only seems to be a matter of concern for his direct family and friends.

In summing this up, I realise that this is actually quite a poor comparison. Unfortunately after half an hour of consideration I couldn’t think of any other film in which the city is such a defining presence on the film as a whole, and so this will have to do for now.

Catching up with my Catalogue Entries!

Ridley Scott's Failure to Achieve Critical Acclaim

Focus Films


Item 1: Kingdom of Heaven: Director's Cut
(2005, Scott Free Productions)

Primary Source. Valuable because it is widely considered the peak of Ridley Scott's cinematography and direction, it was made (unlike previous films) under no restrictions from the studio whatsoever, leaving Scott to make exactly the movie he wanted to make. Of course, by the time it reached the cinemas the movie had been hacked to pieces by the studio, who had seen what Scott wanted to make - and found it a bit too much for them. Fortunately the original, 3-hour epic managed to make it's way to DVD and it is probably the finest example of Scott's directing abilities.

Item 2: Blade Runner: The Final Cut
(1982, Warner Bros.)

Primary Source. Incredibly useful, Ridley Scott's first high-budget feature film (it had nearly three times the budget of Alien), it features defining use of his technique to create a look that was previously unknown - a version of the future not clean and sophisticated, built from scratch, but a crumbling metropolis built on the ruins of the past. It also ties into the advertising side of his career - the film features a lot of advertising bought by companies who for some reason wanted to portray themselves in this dystopian future - leading to the infamous "Blade Runner Curse".


Item 3: Black Hawk Down
(2001, Jerry Bruckheimer Productions)


Useful because it is, in many ways, the defining war film of the last decade. Visceral and loud and nasty to look at, it suffered strong criticism for not seriously evaluating the US troops' reasons for being there. Of course, the fact it was based on a novel apparently flew over the heads of most people. Nevertheless it does not in any way glorify war - much like Saving Private Ryan a couple of years earlier you come out of the cinema thinking "owch".


Interviews and Insights:


Item 4: The Path to Redemption - The Making of Kingdom of Heaven
(2005, Scott Free Productions)

Useful because it features dozens of interviews with Scott about every aspect of the film-making process. It also features hours of footage of him at work, in pre-production, filming, and post production. It shows how he works at each stage and the way he sets out to build a world rather than just film sets. Hundreds of useful quotes both from him and the people who work with him.

Item 5: The Making of Gladiator


See above description, because basically it's the same reasons for it's inclusion.

Books:


Item 6: Ridley Scott: The Making of His Movies 
(2000, Orion)

Primary Source. Useful because, to quote Amazon; "beginning with the director's youth and his early success in television advertising, before moving on to a film-by-film analysis of Scott's work" it pretty much covers the exact topic I am myself researching. Unfortunately it stops with G.I.Jane, but covering Blade Runner, Aliens and Thelma & Louise, it manages to deal with three great examples of his cinematography. It also deals with the famous Hovis adverts from the 70's.

Websites:


Item 7: The Total Film Interview - Ridley Scott


(http://www.totalfilm.com/features/the-total-film-interview-ridley-scott) Covers his commercial success, his common criticisms and every film up to and including American Gangster, at that point unreleased. Useful because it provides a rare insight into his own views on his career - usually he does not do interviews and his director's commentary's, whilst very informative and insightful, tend to deal with the film in question specifically rather than providing an overall viewpoint.

Item 8: "I'm doing pretty good, if you think about it"


(http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/ridley-scott-im-doing-pretty-good-if-you-think-about-it-2068888.html) An article covering much of Ridley Scott's rise and his position as a completely self-made man. Interesting because it is very up to date, written as it was only last month.

Item 9: The Riddler Has His Day


(http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/84/) Article from Sight and Sound magazine, whilst nicely written it is actually very critical of the man, having been neither a box office record breaker (like James Cameron) or a critically-lauded failure (like Martin Scorcese). Comes with the wonderful caption "Movies Good Enough To Eat".

Discarded Items:


Item 10: Ridley Scott (Wikipedia)


Very useful in helping me find other sources to begin with, you just cannot use Wikipedia quotes in a real piece of work!


Item 11: G.I. Jane


Discarded because the film is so unimportant to Scott that he actually forgot he even made it (an interview with him had him list all of his films (and why he was proud of them) and he completely jumped over this one. Also it's a terrible, terrible film. So that's understandable.


Item 12: 1492: Conquest of Paradise

(1992, Paramount)

One of Ridley Scott's few cinematic failures, this movie was made to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's famous voyage. Mediocre reviews and a dismal box office taking made it his worst-grossing film to date. Discarded mainly because it was made "to order" so to speak, and in fact the only thing good about it is the soundtrack.

The 400 Blows (Les Quatre Cents Coups)

It's a film of two halves for me but I will run with the negative part first so I can end on a lighter note.

In terms of narrative, i felt that plotlines and characters were underdeveloped. With the exception of Antoine, every character could be summed up in three words or less - his mother is only ever a conniving scumbag, his father alternately overly cheery and a bastard, his teacher just the second of those. Antoine himself is clearly in a bad situation, and his choices less his own and more based on reactions to events previously - for example, writing on the wall after his teacher punishes him (somewhat) unfairly. However, we never see another side to the characters. His mother never displays any quality worth marrying her for, a fact made more severe when you realise she already had a son. His father just seems to be the step-dad out of water stereotype that you can see anywhere. It is impossible to sympathise with the teacher and his aggression towards Antoine is never explained. I like my characters to have reasons and motives and a distant glimpse of redemption. (Note: This is exclusively for heavily character based films. I don't expect to empathise with a Die Hard villan, because I watch those films to see things explode a lot)

Without a doubt there are comparative themes with La Haine. The Paris setting, the downtrodden protaganist, and the inescapability of their situation are definitely paralell and make me very glad I didn't grow up in France (aside from hating the language!)

On the positive side, the cinematography and direction was revolutionary, and it stands apart from the other films of it's era with quite modern techniques for both editing and shots. Very interesting to see.

La Haine

- Good use of editing and digetic sound.
- Characters are for the most part believable and at least partly relateable.
- Impressively professional appearance for a film shot on handheld camera.
- Big impact ending, although inevitable when viewed as a whole.
- References to the fact it was a movie throughout was amusing.

Good film :)

Hidden (Cache)

A strong dislike of a majority of world cinema gives me an unfortunate bias against this film, but I feel it is as valid an opinion as any. Whilst yes, it is nice to hear a movie use the technique of silence for a change, this movie leans on it like a documentary - except documentaries actually usually use more music than this, and cover something you can care about. Within the part we watched, there were no identifiable or likeable characters, no one I cared about and in a way that was because the film contained barely any dialogue (especially relative to the length of the film).

Whilst it is entirely possible that seeing the entire film would change my perspective (and I would be very happy if it did) on this basis it seems unlikely. A very important part of film-making is knowing where to cut a scene, and this director either doesn't know or doesn't really care. This impatience with static, mostly silent shots that don't show you what's going on could be attributed to a short attention span, but I sat through the whole of Eastern Promises the other day with no problems and that film makes a glacier look nippy when it comes to plot progression. But it does it whilst actually showing me what's happening. If I want to see car's headlights behind me, i'll get my housemate to drive in while I stand facing the gate. But I don't. I turn around.

I have a rule. If I look at a film and think "I could have made that myself" then I will never describe it as creative.