The Good, The Bad and The Multiplex

by Mark Kermode

  It’s hard to know where to begin in describing the putrescence of SATC2 – there’s just so much to hate. With a bum-numbing running time of 146 minutes, this piece of corporate consumerist pornography is about the same length as Kubrick’s 2001, a film which traces the evolution of humans from crawling apes to space travellers, from the birth of man to the dawn of a new star child. As I have frequently said, 2001 is the yardstick of cinematic economy by which all movie lengths should be judged, and if you can’t tell your story in less time than it took Kubrick to map out the evolution of mankind then frankly you’re not trying. SATC2 is trying (it’s very trying – boom boom!) and yet, sadly, despite its bloated running time, the group of shoe-shopping caricatures depicted in the opening reel have evolved into nothing more than a group of marginally more suntanned shoe-shopping caricatures by the time the end credits finally roll. If aliens had indeed been observing our earth (as The Carpenters so convincingly sang) and caught a glimpse of this lot, they wouldn’t have bothered leaving a weird monolith that taught us how to make tools and fly to the moon; they would have nuked us out of the galaxy and moved on forthwith.

  When SATC2 first opened in cinemas, several female critics wrote breathtakingly scathing articles about the movie’s monstrous reduction of women’s emancipation to the right to have sex and buy expensive footwear. Fair enough – but as both a man and an old-school Trot I’d like to move the argument on from gender politics to class war. Here’s my ideological problem with SATC2: it is, in essence, a film that requires its audience to sympathise with the plight of drippingly wealthy Americans, whose opulent ownership of stuff leads only to self-pitying whingeing and the ownership of more stuff. The lead character, Carrie, is a writer (allegedly) who lives in an uptown New York apartment with her husband who, I have been forced to conclude, is an international arms dealer – how else could they afford this gaff? The seething marital tension between these two supposedly loveable folk explodes when he buys her a massive flat-screen TV and she complains that she actually wanted jewellery. Boo hoo. This materialist misunderstanding precipitates a crisis so profound that Carrie decides to leave the aircraft-hanger-sized apartment in which hubby insulted her with the $10,000 TV and flee back to the safety of her other apartment, which she appears to have been keeping on the off-chance that just such a present-buying cock-up would arise. Even though the first apartment had a walk-in wardrobe so large she could have set up a second home in there, Carrie apparently has enough disposable cash to leave apartments lying all around town without ever worrying about the bills. But she’s still unhappy, and decides that what she really needs is to get away from it all.

  To get away from her two apartments, giant flat-screen TV and arms-dealing husband.

  At which point, I cease to care what happens to her.

  The film-makers, however, are just getting started. Having established that poor Carrie needs a break, they send her and her chums off to stay in a hotel which, we are informed, would cost $22,000 a night if they were actually paying for it (although, as Richard E. Grant observes of Uncle Monty’s country cottage in Withnail & I, such things are ‘free to those who can afford it, very expensive to those who can’t’). On arrival, each of our heroines is presented with their very own exotic flunky to do with as they wish – to wait on them hand and foot, and be ready to make hot chocolate at any time of day or night if the pain of being an obscenely rich American suddenly becomes too much to bear. At a key moment of emotional dawning, the flunky who has been assigned to Carrie reveals that, rather than just being a bootlicking slave, he actually has a wife whom he is only able to visit every other month because the airfare home is far too expensive for someone of his lowly standing. Clearly this is the moment at which Carrie will realise that her gargantuan wealth has consequences in the ‘real world’ – that in order for her to bathe in opulence others must suffer and perish. But no! What looks like the movie’s revelatory scene of economic and emotional saving grace (Carrie realises that there are other people in the world) actually turns out to be yet another vomit bag of ‘me time’ as Carrie is struck by the similarity of this poor waif’s predicament to her own heartache. Just like this foreign flunky slave, she too is spending time away from her beloved. She too is suffering, just like him! In a genuinely awe-inspiring moment of capitalist propaganda, SATC2 conspires to make us feel that there is a common bond of pain being shared between an impoverished Middle Eastern doormat and an overpaid Yankee sloth. The message of this scene is not about the staggering inequality of wealth and opportunity between the rich and the poor, but about the universality of the pain of love. Or, to put it another way: ‘Don’t worry about eating the world alive in material terms; just enjoy your own emotional pain – because you’re worth it!’

  I am reminded here of Billy Bragg’s wonderful anthem of the disillusioned left, ‘Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards’, which opens with the following lines:

  It may have been Camelot for Jack and Jacqueline

  But on the Che Guevara highway filling up with gasoline

  Fidel Castro’s brother spies a rich lady who’s crying

  Over luxury’s disappointment

  So he walks over and he’s trying

  To sympathise with her but he thinks that he should warn her

  That the Third World is just around the corner.

  Somehow, I doubt Billy Bragg is on Carrie’s iPod.

  Other SATC2 characters include a lawyer who is treated badly at work and so quits her job with apparently no financial repercussions (perhaps she was working pro bono on lowly human rights cases – or perhaps not). Another is a mother who has a full-time nanny tending to her sprogs but who still finds time to go cry in a cupboard because she is so oppressed by the pressures of motherhood, which include getting jammy handprints on her expensive vintage skirt. ‘How on earth do people who don’t have help cope?’ she asks rhetorically, giving a metaphorical wink to the audience. Clearly the writers think this sort of thing acknowledges a common experience but, without wishing to state the bleeding obvious, if any of us were in Sex and the City, we wouldn’t be proper characters – we’d be the help. We’d be the serfs, the doormen, the flunkies, the elevator operators. In this world of wonder, even those of us on way-above-average wages wouldn’t get a look in.

  And there’s just so much more to rail against: the inherent racism of a script which sends Americans to a Middle Eastern country so they can throw condoms at foreigners with self-righteous anger; the sub-Paul Raymond conceit of women in burkas hiding racy designerwear under their religious robes, just dying for the opportunity to swap fashion tips with the Western women whose heathen lifestyles they absolutely adore. All in all, it adds up to a vile and pernicious slice of imperialist propaganda which celebrates misogyny, belittles non-Americans, insults audiences, and wallows in greed, avarice and bulimic vomit. At great length.

  It is, to be clear, not good.

  And I felt the need to say so. As did pretty much every other film critic in the country, nay the world.

  According to the official studio line, SATC2 ‘underperformed’ at the box office thanks to almost universally negative reviews, which briefly put the kibosh on the development of any further plans for SATC3 (although a ‘prequel’ is now in the works). It’s a convenient argument: ‘bad reviews killed our movie’. But let’s look at the harsh economic realities. SATC2 cost $100 million and took $280 million worldwide, meaning that it more than balanced its box-office budget sheets whilst racking up further profits on home-viewing sales, TV tie-ins and countless other promotional opportunities. The studio and its enfranchised distribution partners would have been laughing all the way to the bank (as would the exhibitors and DVD outlets), even if the profits that poured in were not quite the engorged river of cash they might have expected. The writers, directors, production designers, advertising executives and PR companies who worked on the movie would have had a multimillion-dollar money-making machine on their hands that paid their sal
aries and looked good on their CVs. And, of course, the four leading players were handsomely rewarded and lavished with worldwide press attention, thereby increasing their immediate media-market value and helping them sell more stuff (of their own choosing) in the future. Because they’re worth it!

  Fact: lousy reviews did not kill SATC2 (although having to watch lousy SATC2 came close to killing this reviewer). The film still did far better at the box office than anything so despicably dismal ever deserves to do. And the awful truth is that, no matter how vitriolic, even the negative reviews almost certainly drew some punters to see the movie. In the weeks after the film’s widespread critical savaging an entirely predictable press backlash began to emerge, with columnists, cartoonists, letter writers et al. proudly defending the movie, which had (inevitably) gone straight to number one in the box office. Even though received critical opinion was that the film was not just bad but world-beatingly terrible, audiences were still flocking in, making it incumbent upon editors to mollify their potentially alienated readers and viewers by hastily putting forth the ‘alternative’ view. This is standard practice – any extreme critical reaction not only justifies, but positively demands, an equal and opposite right of reply. If you really want to rubbish a movie, the most effective thing to do is give it a two-star review which says the film is not terribly good and generally a bit boring and unremarkable. Or, better still, don’t review it at all – why give multiplex terrorists the oxygen of publicity? Leading your weekly reviews with an attention-grabbing tour de force trashing of SATC2 (as did so many British critics – myself included) will simply increase the film’s talking-point potential, ensuring that none of your listeners/readers/viewers are unaware of the film’s existence and, perversely, making some of them want to go see what all the fuss is about. And as we have seen, thanks to the miracle of ‘lowered expectations’ it is entirely possible that some of them may actually enjoy the film, all the more so because they were half-expecting to see the worst film ever made and were surprised when the film actually ran through the projector without the auditorium exploding in a conflagration of crap. Hell, if they even so much as smile, smirk, giggle or titter in the first 30 minutes they’ll start to feel they’re watching a different movie to the one you reviewed; or (more likely), that you’re just a stuck-up critic who’s entirely out of step with popular taste and doesn’t know what real multiplex popcorn punters want from their Friday night blah blah blah blah blah.

  The difference is that the critic (hopefully) went into the movie wishing for the best and was genuinely shocked and appalled when it was worse than they could have imagined. But after reading/hearing/watching the reviews, the punters went in expecting the worst and were shocked and appalled to discover that the movie didn’t live down to the vitriolic critical trashing. Or maybe it did, and they just wanted to demonstrate that critics don’t know nothing.

  A popular view, apparently.

  In fact, no matter what anyone tells you, audiences generally don’t trust critics one jot. And if you’re in any doubt about that fact then go online and check out the aforementioned YouGov poll, which puts paid once and for all to the idea that critics can make or break a movie. If that were true, how come so many of you went to see Transformers, Bride Wars or Paranormal Activity 2 after I specifically advised you not to?

  It doesn’t surprise me that my reviews hold so little sway with the movie-going public, although it may surprise you to learn that those of others hold even less. But the reality is that critics cannot kill a movie – only distributors can do that. And of course multiplex-cinema chains who are sucking the very life out of interesting, offbeat (and often indigenous) films by glutting the market with over-produced franchise fare, turning mainstream film exhibition in the UK into a dumping ground for Hollywood’s most poisonous refuse (more of which in Chapter Six). We critics can say what we like about the latest Iranian masterpiece from Abbas Kiarostami. We can give it a rave review and urge all our readers/listeners/viewers to go and see it at their earliest possible convenience. But unless those readers/listeners/ viewers live within striking distance of a thriving independent cinema, they won’t be able to see until it comes out on DVD. Why not? Because every multiplex screen in the country is taken up with showing Sex and the City 2, Transformers 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean 4 (in 3-D) for the foreseeable future. No wonder the box-office figures ‘reveal’ that everyone loves blockbusters and wants to see nothing but blockbusters for evermore. The fact is that most people simply don’t have a choice. For most cinema-goers in the UK, it’s blockbusters or nothing.

  And if that’s the case, who the hell needs critics?

  Chapter Five

  ‘THE BRITISH AREN’T COMING … OR GOING’

  ‘Is it a “British” picture?’

  Ken Russell’s mum

  TWO SIGNIFICANT EVENTS occurred during the writing of this book. The first was the announcement in July 2010 of the closure of the UK Film Council, which, it was declared in some quarters, would mark the ‘end of the British film industry’. The second was the Oscar-winning success of The King’s Speech, which, it was declared in some quarters, would mark ‘the rebirth of the British film industry’.

  Neither of these statements is true. Let’s see why …

  To begin with, the idea that the Oscars can be seen as a serious indicator of the state of cinema, whether national or international, is risible. Look, for example, at this list of movies from the past 15 years: Crash; Boogie Nights; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; A History of Violence; Pan’s Labyrinth; The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford; Of Time and the City; and Let the Right One In. What do these movies have in common? Firstly, they were all the best picture of the year when they were first released. Secondly, none of them won the coveted Oscar for ‘Best Picture’. Thirdly (and most damningly), none of them were even nominated in that category. Oh, and before you go complaining that Crash beat Brokeback Mountain to the top prize, I’m referring to David Cronenberg’s adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s novel – the film which prompted the Daily Mail to launch a ‘Boycott Sony’ campaign and which remains banned in Westminster to this day – rather than the Paul Haggis Magnolia-lite confection that bucked the odds when it trumped Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain in 2006. I rather liked Haggis’s movie, and indeed predicted its Oscar triumph simply on the basis that its message (‘Hey, we’re all interconnected in strange ways, aren’t we?’) was more Oscar-friendly than that of Ang Lee’s challenging love story which, as writer Larry McMurty explained, ‘is not a gay cowboy film … they’re gay shepherds’.

  Sadly, gay shepherds don’t win Best Picture Oscars.

  All you really need to know about the Oscars is that they’re the awards that didn’t give a Best Picture gong to Citizen Kane, but did give one to Driving Miss Daisy. Just think about that for a moment, and try to imagine a world in which Driving Miss Daisy really was the best film you were going to see all year. Be honest. You’d throw yourself off a bridge, wouldn’t you? Or, at the very least, you’d give up going to the cinema and instead develop an interest in violent video games. In fact, when it first opened in the US in December 1989, not only was it not the best film of the year, it wasn’t even the best Morgan Freeman film of the week. When I interviewed Freeman for the New Musical Express he had two new films coming out back-to-back: the anodyne Driving Miss Daisy and the rather more forthright Glory, a film from director Ed Zwick about the US Civil War’s first all-black volunteer company. Frankly, I was far more interested in the latter and was delighted to discover that Freeman felt exactly the same way, dismissing Miss Daisy as a harmless piece of fluff before turning the conversation back toward more substantial matters. Yet, according to the Oscar voters, things in 1989 didn’t get any better than a stagey adaptation of Alfred Uhry’s play about a rich white woman and a sage black chauffeur sharing quality time together in a big old car. (By far the most entertaining thing about Driving Miss Daisy was the fact that it inspired a porn
spoof entitled Driving Miss Daisy Crazy, a parodic title which ranks up there with Saturday Night Beaver, The Sperminator and Shaving Ryan’s Privates, the last of which is actually a documentary about comedy porn titles – apparently.)

  Or ask yourself this: What is Martin Scorsese’s greatest film? Many would go for one of the seventies classics like Mean Streets or Taxi Driver, although the monochrome wallop of Raging Bull probably packs more of a punch. The hyperkinetic Goodfellas has stood the test of time, too (without it we wouldn’t have Boogie Nights), and even Casino has gained stature over the years. For sheer mischief-making controversy you could argue that The Last Temptation of Christ was Marty’s finest hour – clearly it’s his most personal and passionate work. My vote would be for The King of Comedy, a note-perfect dissection of psychopathic celebrity culture in which De Niro channels the ghost of Travis Bickle for darkly satirical ends. But according to Oscar history, the defining pinnacle of Scorsese’s screen career to date is … The Departed. Yup, that’s right – as far as Oscar voters are concerned, maestro Marty’s greatest film is the remake of a Hong Kong actioner which had a far more memorable English language title (Infernal Affairs) than Scorsese’s Oscar winner, the name of which no one can ever remember. How’s that for a killer pub-quiz question?