Reconciling Highbrow, Big-Budget Films

The Wings of the Dove. Interview With the Vampire. No connection? As Henry James might say, the depth of congruence that does, in fact, exist between these seeming dissemblables is enough, upon revelation, to transport one into the fullest and truest state of deep perturbation and wonderment.

Or, as Anne Rice might say, think again.

For starters, these movies have the same costume designer in miracle-worker Sandy Powell. And, as any true aficionado of the Kevin Bacon Game can tell you, Wings' Elizabeth McGovern was in the otherwise forgettable romantic comedy The Favor with Interview star Brad Pitt. (Actually, The Favor is forgettable anyway, unless you're curious how Brad looks in wire-rims.)

We could make circumstantial connections all day, but the fact is that in key aspects of character and plot, Interview With the Vampire and The Wings of the Dove spin strikingly similar stories. Sure, their twinship isn't biting anyone's neck just yet. Still, the similarities are telling and important, and all the more interesting for the fact that they are unlikely to receive much comment or notice.

Truth be told, most of the people who saw Interview are not likely to queue up for the latest James adaptation, more frightened by the corset-friendly dresses on the poster than they ever will be of Tom Cruise in fangs. By the same token, one has no trouble thinking back three years and imagining James fans professing the deepest scorn for an entertainment as broadly-targeted as Interview With the Vampire. see Brad howl! hear Tom cackle!

More and more, whether because of what movies are made or how they are marketed (or both), movie-going audiences seem to divide into two distinct camps, the art-house faction and the block-buster crowd. The two species have specific and trackable behavior patterns that make differentiation easy.

The art-house faction sort of reverse-hibernates through much of the warmer months, but they become much easier to find in the bleak of winter, when they brave all manner of snow and ice to see films about angst set amidst the very same snow and ice. This month alone, we have films about a schoolbus crashing in the snow, a town struck by an ice storm and Emma Thompson as a widow who takes pictures of snow and ice. No kidding; these folks can be a chilly bunch.

The blockbuster crowd, a generally warm-weather group, likes familiarity. They so love it when a movie has a number at the end of its title that, in cases like ID4, they will actually add one where none exists. They like attractive, squabbling, invariably "brilliant" scientists who do stupid things: piss off dinosaurs, drive into tornadoes, piss off dinosaurs AGAIN. Plus, these people hate Emma Thompson, because she was in that dumb pregnant-man movie with their pal Ah-nuld. What was up with that?

Occasionally you meet a real omnivore who will plunk down $7.50 for anything. But more likely, you as a reader have self-identified as either one or the other of the above. But why bother? To what extent are the movies available to us really bifurcated on such a simple line? "That arty stuff is boring," complains Average Joe Popcorn. "Those action pictures are so senseless," scoffs Elitist Joe Coffeeshop. Neither of these statements are universally true, of course, which brings us back to Henry James. And to vampires.

The Wings of the Dove is about Kate Croy (Bonham Carter), a rich, pale orphan who cannot marry the man she loves because he is poor. As a way out of lonely misery, she convinces her dashing lover Merton (Linus Roache) to court her rich, beautiful but ailing friend Millie (Alison Elliott) so she'll leave him all her money.

Once her plans are in motion, the trio relocates to Venice, an old, seductive city well-suited to falling in love but also rather treacherous in its dark, decaying moodiness. By Kate's logic, Millie will get some good lovin' before she dies, at which point she and Merton (I swear that's his name) can set up house. Who loses? So the three of them become a sort of family for one another, until sexual tensions and power plays wreak all kinds of havoc.

Interview With the Vampire, in turn, follows Lestat (Tom Cruise), a rich, pale solo-flyer who cannot marry anyone because, well, he's undead. Bear with me. As a way out of lonely misery, he bites and converts dashing Louis (Pitt) and encourages him in turn to vampirize and thus "adopt" a young, beautiful, but ill child named Claudia (Kirsten Dunst).

Once his plans are in motion, the trio moves to downtown New Orleans, an old, seductive city well-stocked with lusty prey but also rather treacherous. By Lestat's logic, Louis and Claudia will have all the joy of being immortal, and he will have some company who respects him. Who loses? So the three of them become a sort of family for one another, until...you see what I'm getting at?

The Wings of the Dove, of course, doesn't have any more chance of making $100 million dollars than Interview With the Vampire had of winning Academy Awards. Which is unfortunate, because of the two, The Wings of the Dove is the far superior--and scarier--vampire movie. Millie, unlike any character in Interview, is hugely sympathetic without being boring, so we are much more horrified by Kate's predatious approaches than we are by Lestat's. Also, as the film rolls on, Millie's skin whitens and her eyes sink back in her skull. We can literally see Kate and Merton draining her life...and they really "like" her, which makes their attack more horrific to watch.

The point is not to disparage Interview With the Vampire, which was a fine film with plenty of chills. The point is that Wings should be incredibly satisfying to the earlier film's audience, if only that film's audience would go. As things stand, The Wings of the Dove is being sold as a Merchant Ivory picture and shepherded into theaters like Sony Harvard Square where no one would think to look for scarefests, however high-class and subtle.

Worse, those members of the broad popular audience who supported Interview and are aware of The Wings of the Dove may assume they wouldn't be interested because the new film is "too art-house," or "too genteel," or "too Bradless." Not much one can do about that third objection, but the other two represent false divisions imposed by film marketers or, indeed, by audiences themselves.

Heck, six months ago My Best Friend's Wedding hit the jackpot with a plot about what?--a lovelorn, self-centered and gorgeous young woman who tries but fails to manipulate her friends into her own romantic designs. Imagine the profit jumps if they retitled the James adaptation My Best Friend's Dying.

Yet, if art films are unfairly ignored by mass audiences, more commercial films are spurned with equal injustice by self-appointed cineastes. If the artificial line drawn between "art" and "commerce" at the movies is erased, and mass audiences can be persuaded toward art films like The Wings of the Dove, then the traffic should rightfully move both ways. The Kendall Square crowd should give a chance to Hollywood's special-effects gizmos, which are more interesting, provocative and even political than film snobs will allow.

Take, for example, Starship Troopers, which on first glance seems like as dumb a blockbuster as they come. The premise of the film is to corral a truly mind-boggling number of Aaron Spelling bit players into playing futuristic action heroes fighting giant insects on the planet Klendathu. The movie doesn't skimp on the gunfire or the chomping, stomping Bug Things, which of course are its major selling points.

Less marketable but much more intriguing are the diverse political implications of Starship Troopers. For one, rather than a picture like Star Wars, which pitted two adult and articulated ideologies of Good and Evil against one another, this picture features a kind of super-race of buff, soulless, undifferentiated humans against a race of beings who are denied any thoughts, feelings or social structures at all. The film is essentially two hours of watching apple-cheeked children squash anthills for sheer visceral thrill.

As such, the film's thematic debt to fascism or even imperialism is not inconsiderable. We are better than Them, albeit for fully arbitrary reasons. Killing Them will be a big guiltless joyride for Us, who are Their clear superiors. You can see Rudyard Kipling on a nasty day really digging this movie.

This is not to say, however, that I hear the death-knell of liberal compassion or civilized political thought among the booms and bangs of Starship Troopers. In fact,Starship Troopers is sophisticated enough to recognize and comment on its own absurd, jingoistic hubris. We know this because director Paul Verhoeven punctuates his movie with the kinds of stentorian radio calls-to-arms familiar from World War II newsreels, and the same stylized "heroic" dialogue of '50s-era comic books and trading cards.

Starship Troopers is in fact based on a pulp novel from the '50s just like those which the movie so savvily spoofs. The movie seems to critique belligerent nationalism and militarism from the inside out; and yet, the jazzy thrill of watching those bugs get picked off is great enough that the audience participates in that very same militarist spirit. Verhoeven torques our knee-jerk impressions of our own political sensibilities and forces us to resolve that conflict ourselves. All this from the man who made Showgirls.

Speaking of Showgirls, Starship Troopers is also audaciously political and even--gasp!--feminist in its handling of the gender-mixing of its military forces. Gender is never portrayed as an impediment to becoming a spaceship pilot or front-line soldier; actually, neither the film nor its characters acknowledge any gender gap at all. The harmony between male and female soldiers is so improbably complete that everyone showers together in the wide-open locker room. Sexual liaisons do occur among unit members, but cease en flagrante when the battle-siren sounds. Not a character in the movie questions any of this, and the military functions like clockwork.

Verhoeven, a native of the Netherlands, where the incorporation of minorities into the military has been famously successful, speaks volumes through the film's self-conscious silence regarding the gender issue. Indeed, the political gesture must have been important to him, because for the film it was commercial suicide: the nudity earned the film an R rating, thus excluding the entire preteen market who buy action figures, love outer space, love giant killer bugs and pay to see their favorite movies multiple times.

Certainly, one need not engage Starship Troopers in an ideological discourse to have a damn good time watching it. Nor, however, does The Wings of the Dove lack some solid, unintellectualized, "pure" entertainment value. The point is that most films offer something for the mind and for the adrenals, and they deserve to be seen by a wider audience than niche-marketing allows. Film has prodigious potential as a unifying medium, and as a mouthpiece to circulate all sorts of ideas across broad swaths of the public. That potential is undermined, and our intellectual and social development stunted, if we limit ourselves unneccessarily to seeing only certain kinds of movies

Interview With the Vampire, in turn, follows Lestat (Tom Cruise), a rich, pale solo-flyer who cannot marry anyone because, well, he's undead. Bear with me. As a way out of lonely misery, he bites and converts dashing Louis (Pitt) and encourages him in turn to vampirize and thus "adopt" a young, beautiful, but ill child named Claudia (Kirsten Dunst).

Once his plans are in motion, the trio moves to downtown New Orleans, an old, seductive city well-stocked with lusty prey but also rather treacherous. By Lestat's logic, Louis and Claudia will have all the joy of being immortal, and he will have some company who respects him. Who loses? So the three of them become a sort of family for one another, until...you see what I'm getting at?

The Wings of the Dove, of course, doesn't have any more chance of making $100 million dollars than Interview With the Vampire had of winning Academy Awards. Which is unfortunate, because of the two, The Wings of the Dove is the far superior--and scarier--vampire movie. Millie, unlike any character in Interview, is hugely sympathetic without being boring, so we are much more horrified by Kate's predatious approaches than we are by Lestat's. Also, as the film rolls on, Millie's skin whitens and her eyes sink back in her skull. We can literally see Kate and Merton draining her life...and they really "like" her, which makes their attack more horrific to watch.

The point is not to disparage Interview With the Vampire, which was a fine film with plenty of chills. The point is that Wings should be incredibly satisfying to the earlier film's audience, if only that film's audience would go. As things stand, The Wings of the Dove is being sold as a Merchant Ivory picture and shepherded into theaters like Sony Harvard Square where no one would think to look for scarefests, however high-class and subtle.

Worse, those members of the broad popular audience who supported Interview and are aware of The Wings of the Dove may assume they wouldn't be interested because the new film is "too art-house," or "too genteel," or "too Bradless." Not much one can do about that third objection, but the other two represent false divisions imposed by film marketers or, indeed, by audiences themselves.

Heck, six months ago My Best Friend's Wedding hit the jackpot with a plot about what?--a lovelorn, self-centered and gorgeous young woman who tries but fails to manipulate her friends into her own romantic designs. Imagine the profit jumps if they retitled the James adaptation My Best Friend's Dying.

Yet, if art films are unfairly ignored by mass audiences, more commercial films are spurned with equal injustice by self-appointed cineastes. If the artificial line drawn between "art" and "commerce" at the movies is erased, and mass audiences can be persuaded toward art films like The Wings of the Dove, then the traffic should rightfully move both ways. The Kendall Square crowd should give a chance to Hollywood's special-effects gizmos, which are more interesting, provocative and even political than film snobs will allow.

Take, for example, Starship Troopers, which on first glance seems like as dumb a blockbuster as they come. The premise of the film is to corral a truly mind-boggling number of Aaron Spelling bit players into playing futuristic action heroes fighting giant insects on the planet Klendathu. The movie doesn't skimp on the gunfire or the chomping, stomping Bug Things, which of course are its major selling points.

Less marketable but much more intriguing are the diverse political implications of Starship Troopers. For one, rather than a picture like Star Wars, which pitted two adult and articulated ideologies of Good and Evil against one another, this picture features a kind of super-race of buff, soulless, undifferentiated humans against a race of beings who are denied any thoughts, feelings or social structures at all. The film is essentially two hours of watching apple-cheeked children squash anthills for sheer visceral thrill.

As such, the film's thematic debt to fascism or even imperialism is not inconsiderable. We are better than Them, albeit for fully arbitrary reasons. Killing Them will be a big guiltless joyride for Us, who are Their clear superiors. You can see Rudyard Kipling on a nasty day really digging this movie.

This is not to say, however, that I hear the death-knell of liberal compassion or civilized political thought among the booms and bangs of Starship Troopers. In fact,Starship Troopers is sophisticated enough to recognize and comment on its own absurd, jingoistic hubris. We know this because director Paul Verhoeven punctuates his movie with the kinds of stentorian radio calls-to-arms familiar from World War II newsreels, and the same stylized "heroic" dialogue of '50s-era comic books and trading cards.

Starship Troopers is in fact based on a pulp novel from the '50s just like those which the movie so savvily spoofs. The movie seems to critique belligerent nationalism and militarism from the inside out; and yet, the jazzy thrill of watching those bugs get picked off is great enough that the audience participates in that very same militarist spirit. Verhoeven torques our knee-jerk impressions of our own political sensibilities and forces us to resolve that conflict ourselves. All this from the man who made Showgirls.

Speaking of Showgirls, Starship Troopers is also audaciously political and even--gasp!--feminist in its handling of the gender-mixing of its military forces. Gender is never portrayed as an impediment to becoming a spaceship pilot or front-line soldier; actually, neither the film nor its characters acknowledge any gender gap at all. The harmony between male and female soldiers is so improbably complete that everyone showers together in the wide-open locker room. Sexual liaisons do occur among unit members, but cease en flagrante when the battle-siren sounds. Not a character in the movie questions any of this, and the military functions like clockwork.

Verhoeven, a native of the Netherlands, where the incorporation of minorities into the military has been famously successful, speaks volumes through the film's self-conscious silence regarding the gender issue. Indeed, the political gesture must have been important to him, because for the film it was commercial suicide: the nudity earned the film an R rating, thus excluding the entire preteen market who buy action figures, love outer space, love giant killer bugs and pay to see their favorite movies multiple times.

Certainly, one need not engage Starship Troopers in an ideological discourse to have a damn good time watching it. Nor, however, does The Wings of the Dove lack some solid, unintellectualized, "pure" entertainment value. The point is that most films offer something for the mind and for the adrenals, and they deserve to be seen by a wider audience than niche-marketing allows. Film has prodigious potential as a unifying medium, and as a mouthpiece to circulate all sorts of ideas across broad swaths of the public. That potential is undermined, and our intellectual and social development stunted, if we limit ourselves unneccessarily to seeing only certain kinds of movies