Movie epics just aren’t what they used t’be. It’s almost as if they can’t make them any more. The acme of the epic for me was Lawrence of Arabia. From there it’s all been downhill. Of course all generations of moviegoers think that they don’t make movies like they used to, and of course they’d be right. Things change.
The Hollywood epic lineage runs through D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915), the first Ten Commandments by Cecil B. de Mille (1923), leaps into sound and colour with Gone with the Wind (1939) and reaches a plateau in the 1950’s with the biblical/sword & toga movies such as The Robe (1953), de Mille’s remake of The Ten Commandments (1956), and Ben Hur (1959), etc. which is more or less where as a kid I joined the plot.
In the 1960’s epics really reached their stride in terms of content and technique.The defining quality of an epic is for me the sense of space and montage. This doesn’t mean just big, a cast of 1000’s and so on. You only have to look at the horsemen in the landscape in Sergei Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky (1938) and the Thames Estuary river chase in David Lean’s Great Expectations (1946) to see cinematographic masters at work. Despite the small screen and black and white photography these sequences brilliantly convey a sense of landscape essential to the epic scale. Hollywood may have created spectacle with Anthony & Cleopatra (1963) and it may have been the most expensive film ever made at the time but it was a throwback and lacked epic scale. That took a maverick like Sam Spiegel and the directorial genius of David Lean coming together to make what for me is the best commercial epic movie ever made, Lawrence of Arabia (1962). The other quality necessary for great epics is the time given to establish the epic scale and achieved mostly through treatment of landscape, figures in the landscape and the soundtrack. This, much more than relentless and massive action scenes and vast elaborate sets, is the mark of a true epic.
The period starting in the late 1950’s with Lean’s Bridge over the River Kwai (1957) through to the early 1970’s is the true golden age of epics. This is when it all came together. As well as Lean’s other movies, Dr Zhivago (1965), Ryan’s Daughter (1970) and Passage to India (1984) others that qualify are Sergio Leone’s early spaghetti Westerns (c.1964), Schlesinger’s Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), Polanski’s Tess (1979), Tony Richardson’s Tom Jones (1963) and Charge of the Light Brigade (1969), Kubrick’s Spartacus (1960), 2001 Space Odyssey (1968), and Barry Lyndon (1975), Zinneman’s Man for All Seasons (1966), and Bertolucci’s 1900 (1975). Add to this latterly from Japan, Kurosawa’s Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985), which matches if not excels the cinematography of Lawrence in use of colour, scope and landscape.
The inheritors of the epic mantle were Francis Ford Coppola with The Godfather (1972) and Apocalypse Now (1979), and Michael Cimino with The Deer Hunter (1978) and Heaven’s Gate (1980). Both directors are masters of montage, were prepared to go to any lengths to get the atmosphere and effect they wanted and both fell foul of their Hollywood paymasters. Only The Godfather was an unqualified success touching into the American public’s fascination with organised crime and the Mafia. With the release Heaven’s Gate, a flawed masterpiece, Cimino sank into oblivion. The new factor common to these epic movies was the amount of time and money lavished on detail in creating the correct historical and emotional atmosphere. No one has done that better than Cimino. Just recall the time spent on the opening Lithuanian wedding scene in The Deer Hunter, the graduation scene in Harvard Yard and the rollerskating fiddler sequence with the immigrant farmers in Heaven’s Gate. This is what make these movies truly absorbing and great epics. Unhappily that does not a blockbuster make and is not how the studio heads see things. Too slow, too long, not enough action, the kids won’t go for it.
As a result intelligent and adult epics are not being made nowadays. The nearest you get to it is a movie like The Gladiator (2000), with honourable mention to The Last of the Mohicans (1992) and Rob Roy (1995). This is about as good as it gets. Back in the 60’s you could shoot a movie like Lawrence on location for about $13.5 million. You simply couldn’t afford to do it nowadays. So to make it work financially you have the computers build Rome, create armies and crowds as well as the landscapes. It’s a lot better than the massive but still tacky giant sets and backdrops of days gone by, but it’s still not believable. If you’re going to fake it, better do it semi-theatrically as Martin Scorsese did depicting the stews in Gangs of New York (2003).
The studios say you have to make it fast moving and action-packed, because that is what the kids, young and old have been fed and become addicted to. Such movies may well last for up to three hours but they seem to be over in a flash. As a result, however caught up in the movie at the time I may be, I come away from the experience feeling incomplete, that something important was missing and ultimately a feeling of “so what?”. Another classic in this mould would be David Cameron’s “Titanic” (1997). These are what I would call “neo-” or “bubble gum” epics.
The noble exception to this would have to be The Lord of The Rings (1999) trilogy. The magnificent scenery of New Zealand’s South Island is one of the key factors of why the movie works so well. This film satisfies all my criteria for an epic experience and some. It works commercially because the original book operates on many levels, appealing to adults as much as to kids. The movie manages to retain this quality too. Obviously some very smart and brave people were behind the entire enterprise in bringing it to the screen. It is really about the only encouraging thing you can find to say about the movie industry today and allows a glimmer of hope for the future.
I went to see Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005) the other day and enjoyed it. Nevertheless, although it was well done with some nice touches I still came away unsatisfied. All the space stuff was just fabulous. It’s incredible what they can do nowadays. But why can’t they just give us some time to enjoy that immensity like the desert in Lawrence? And, why oh why did it have to be released by Disney who of course dumbed it down for us?
Last year when I was here in LA I went to see What the **** Do We Know? (2004) That was a movie which was certainly made outside the system and I’m glad I saw it and happy it got made. Though there were some interesting aspects I found it a tad arch and didactic for my taste. Somehow the New Age sententiousness gets in the way.
All of which puts me in mind of the one and only American film dealing with a serious topic in a way that is both adult and still makes a great movie. Of course when it was released in 1990 it sank like a stone. I am not sure it even made it to general release and I’ve only ever seen it on video. I’m referring to a movie called Jacob’s Ladder directed by Adrian Lyne with Tim Robbins in his first major role. This is a deeply disturbing and unforgettable film dealing with redemption and death. On one level it appears to be a psycho-spiritual thriller but is fact nothing less than a modern treatment of the Bardo Thotral, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and works utterly. It is a progression through the realm of the bardo to the clear light of the void. The opening incident is in Vietnam and setting a gritty New York City. The scenes in the bowels of a city hospital are the most visceral and terrifying renditions of hell I’ve ever seen. Not a hint of Hollywood’s faddish and mawkish takes on Buddhism here. How Adrian Lyne who directed such eminently forgettable movies as Flashdance (1983), Fatal Attraction (1987) and Indecent Proposal (1993), came to make such a brilliant movie is a mystery for which we can be truly thankful. This is a movie that anyone who is on a spiritual path, not just a Buddhist one, should make a point of seeing.
