Dead Man's Chest, Part 2: Standing my ground.

CONCEPT

Disclaimer: There are spoilers.

Okay. So I'm essentially willing to throw in the towel and give my opinion a vote of no confidence with regard to The Squid and the Whale. That is, I'm unmoved: I still hate the film. But my assertions are altogether broad, and I don't think that my arguments are any better than what people have said in response.

With Dead Man's Chest, however, I'm ready to argue until I'm out of breath. In fact, I went to see the film a second time today, just got back and I'm thoroughly ready to tussle.

I'll try to speak to each of your comments in order. (Hoping not to unnecessarily offend anyone.)

MILLIGAN: "You may have put your finger on why films based on Classical mythology have typically been either poorly conceived (Troy) or awesome but commercially unsuccessful (Clash of the Titans).
By the same token you don't often see the works of, say, Neil Gaiman appearing in film either. Transgressing artistic conventions is fun, but does not tend to rake in the dough."

If my hypothesis is correct, then you've called attention to one more remarkable thing about this film: that it's managed to be awesome and commercially successful; to transgress artistic conventions and rake in the dough. Why? Well, I might get to that a bit more in response to Clinton's comment, but I think it has to do with the fact that we generally go to movies to enjoy ourselves. If people can enjoy a film that transgresses artistic conventions, they're not going to be driven away. In fact, experimental art in general would far better if more artists could/tried to walk this line.


GEMMA: "I buy this as an argument for the power of the trilogy when it's finished—and I'll go see the third film with the same level of devoted groupiedom either way—but I'm not sure I buy it for Dead Man's Chest alone. I like the focus on conceiving its own mythos, and I think the two movies thus far have been extremely successful in building the world. But I would be equally frustrated dropped into the middle of a central book in the Iliad with no compass, and that was my struggle in Dead Man's Chest."

Keep in mind I wasn't arguing it was the perfect movie. I argued that it was extraordinary and important. It is flawed. So are many great movies, including Casablanca: try to watch it objectively and answer me how overwrought is that? By way of criticism I thought DMC was too thoroughly scored, and indulged in the mania of overlong fight scenes that has afflicted every big-budget action flick for the last several years. I would have liked to have seen decisive moments, like when Sparrow asks Will to "pay his debt" and his subsequent deception of Elizabeth made a bit more explicit. In other ways, I think that the movie was incredibly traditional. For example, in terms of its place within the trilogy ("first one stands alone, second one mucks it up, third one is Spring Cleaning") DMC fell right into line. Same goes for the jealous lover rule, which I would like to see a level head prevail over (since the circumstances were pretty damn extreme) just once.

But beyond this, I have to disagree with you. Whether or not the explication of cause-and-effect is as clear as we want it to be doesn't really come to bear on the mythology of the piece. That is, we're given no guarantees that this film will stand on its own without Curse of the Black Pearl, and frankly, I don't see why it should. It's not like any secret was made of the fact that this is a trilogy.

On the other hand, while I can say plenty of nice things about Curse of the Black Pearl and its imaginative conception, the discrepancy of power between protagonist and antagonist, and its extension in the form of narrative grandeur, is completely unique to Dead Man's Chest. The villains of BP made it into a ghost story, not a myth, which could be argued in several ways, not least however is that now we've got the antagonist of the first film leading us with long odds (literally?) across the River Styx. BP, in other words, was within the realm of safe and familiar storytelling. It did not break the narrative barrier in any of the ways that DMC did. I'm not talking about mythos as "building the world" but as confronting the audience with a new relationship to the film.


LISA.

Thank you m'dear! :)


MXZZY: "I still think that the film could've have benefited from some more editing. There were too many jokes & references in the dialouge to the first movie when visual cues would have worked just as well. Otherwise, it was very enjoyable."

Like what? I only caught a couple; Elizabeth and the rum (which I thought was funny), and the Two Pirates that Got Away. Actually, the history of the monkey, the complexity of the relationship between Jack, Will, and Elizabeth, and the story of Barbossa are not verbally explicated at all, but relied completely on our familiarity with the first. I think that might even be part of Gemma's complaint, if I understood correctly.


DAN: "Still haven't seen this. Not sure I plan to after the first film (which was dull despite some inspired schtick from Depp) and the critical drubbing the sequel has recieved everywhere but here.
Are you sure your high hopes and admirable populist sentiments haven't transformed incoherence into radical epic flatness? I recall a facetious Film Comment article about the buddhistic haze of unknowing in Michael Bay's films.
-DC"

Dude! You didn't see the movie.

"High hopes?" Actually, I was expecting to be let down given how much negative press this film has gotten. I was more suprised at how much I liked it.
"Populist sentiments?" Yes, the masses can get it dreadfully wrong (Star Wars Episodes I and II and ~III are pretty solid examples) but I don't think critical acclaim is a much better yardstick.

Critics have a couple disadvantages when it comes to recognizing present-tense, as Milligan puts it, "artistic transgressions," and I'd say narrative transgressions in particular.
The first being that the masses go to a movie to have fun. Critics go to a movie to try not to have fun so that they can be discriminating and convey information rather than blind praise. The problem is, when one tries not to have fun (even allowing one secretly hopes to fail) it necessarily involves consciously laying down more fetters and expectations than we'd otherwise have. Sometimes a tangled plot will be just that, a tangled plot, or as you put it, "incoherance." But if it's more, if the tangledness is caused by something other than a lack of writing ability or organization, how would someone know? Only with a certain amount of patience and open-mindedness that I see little sign of in most critics.

The second disadvantage, which I hinted at before, is that film is only a hundred years old; it was born into storytelling conventions that, by-and-large, still apply today, certainly within popular film. I really feel that most of my insights into DMC don't come from films at all, but from fiction and mythology. I recognized something I'd seen elsewhere, but scarcely ever in a movie. That is a context that cannot develop simply through watching and critiquing a hundred movies.

Beyond all this, I don't know what to say because you haven't given me any reason or argument other than the Collective Opinions of Critics Everywhere.

* * * * *

Usually when I post comments on a movie or some music, I'm lucky if I get any comments at all, so I'm happy that this has merited some conversation. But I'm still a little frustrated because I feel like most of the comments so far haven't really addressed the claim I've made. This is unfortunate, and I think, plays into a common traps in politics and journalistic practice these days; not to answer the difficult questions with which we are confronted, but to dress them up as something easier and less ambiguous.

My claim about the movie? I might be wrong, truly, and if so, I'd like to know that I am and I'd like to know why. And if I'm right... I'd like to know that my position has withstood genuine scrutiny.

I'll say it again: my claim is that Dead Man's Chest is mythic.

END OF POST.