Episodes
Monday Jul 19, 2010
YOU DO NOT WANT TO MESS WITH HITCHCOCK IN MY WORLD!!!!
Monday Jul 19, 2010
Monday Jul 19, 2010
For starters:
1) Yes that is a tattoo of Alfred Hitchcock on my arm.
2) It is real.
3) I got it free because I got another tattoo on Hitchcock's birthday, and I mentioned wanting this. When we looked it up online we discovered it was his birthday and the artist threw it in for free.
After placing the movie "Disturbia" on my worst remakes list I began to feel a bit hypocritical because I hadn't actually seen it. I know that my reason was valid and I stand by it. You simply cannot place Hitchcock in a flashy packaged throwaway popcorn film. Many of the stories he told could be remade today and fare quite well depending entirely on who wrote and directed them, who starred in them, and how they were handled.
The problem is matching all the components together and making a film that is intended to reframe a story in a similar modern world. Sadly, there are very few directors I could think of being able to pull this off. Actually, I could only think of one. I know I've been harping on this film a bit lately, but after watching "Inception," the idea of Nolan directing DiCaprio in a reworking of North By Northwest doesn't sound terrible. If not Leo then someone like Clooney, maybe Clive Owen. The important question is director.
In this particular instance, where the themes of deception, shifting reality, distrust, a hero choosing to become a hero, mistaken identities, and moral relativism I can think of no director better suited to handle it.
As he made a billion dollars on one film, he is one of three who could pull it off. The other two being Sam Rami (Sony owes him some creative license for what he made them off Spiderman), and Spielberg (because he could tell a studio he wanted to release his home movies and they would let him). These men not only have the talent, because there are many other equally talented filmmakers out there, but they have the license to make something that is risky and have a studio back them. Sadly, there are not many directors who have this clout. And that is what it takes, clout.
Now, let us talk "Disturbia."
D.J. Caruso is a talented director. His work on "The Salton Sea," and "The Shield," show that he has the ability to handle intense subject matter and suspenseful scenes. The writers were fairly untested, having done mostly TV and some small features before. These were men that were lucky to have this opportunity and could be pushed around by the studio a bit. This isn't about their talent, but rather what games they had to play to get the film released.
Before I get into plot and mechanics let's talk cast. I hate to say it, but I like Shia LaBeouf more than I want to admit. He seems like a cool kid who got lucky with his career. Watch season two of "Project Greenlight," and you will see that he is a funny and enthusiastic young actor who really enjoys what he's doing and does what he can to make the movie the best it can be. This is a guy who skipped meals on an overnight shoot to work on his scene and had to be forced to take a break by the director, so I have no problem with him. Nor do I have a problem with Sarah Roemer. She is attractive and does a good job. So does the rest of the cast, even Aron Yoo gave a decent performance as the annoying as hell Asian sidekick.
The problem with the main cast is that they are stepping into huge, iconic shoes. Shia, no matter how likeable, fades into nothing in the shadow of Jimmy Stewart, at least not at this point in his career. And Sarah, though talented and hot, cannot compare to Grace Kelly. It's too much to ask for someone like me to not draw unfavorable comparisons here. I know that I often stress that films have to be viewed on their own, but we're talking Stewart and Kelly! I just can't do it.
Now, the basic story is the same. A guy is stuck at home for a long period and goes a bit stir crazy. One night he thinks he hears something and begins to suspect a strange, solitary neighbor of being a murderer (in this case a serial killer who fled Texas years earlier).
In one movie we have Jimmy Stewart as L.B. "Jeff" Jefferies, a globe trekking photographer who badly broke his leg while photographing an accident at a car race, and is stuck in his apartment while it heals.
In the other we have Kale, a troubled young man who recently lost his father and is under house arrest after striking a teacher and can't go more than 100 feet from his monitoring station without the police coming.
This fundamental difference changes a lot of things between the two. In "Rear Window," Jeff cannot get away, at all. He can't even get up the three steps to his apartment door to lock it if the need arises and he has to sleep in the living room because he can't get through to his bedroom for the same reason. Imagine what that would do to you. Months of three walls and a row of windows. No television, just the world inside his apartment building set to whatever soundtrack he has on hand, or is played by one of his neighbors.
In "Disturbia," Kale is restricted to a rather large house and into his yard. He can move about freely and if there is any trouble, all he has to do is set foot into the street and the police will come in a matter of minutes. I know that being stuck at home sucks, but this is a guy who has cable television, an X-Box, friends who can come over. There isn't a complete obstruction of movement, just the inconvenience of living his normal life in a rather nice house and a beautiful front patio.
This leads to problem number two. Jefferies was suffering from insane cabin fever. He is a man accustomed to living out of a suitcase and going to wildly exotic locations as part of his daily life. We meet him at the end of his cast wearing time, so we know that he has been stuck in that room for a long time and all he can do is look out of the rear window into the courtyard. All of this is set up in less than one minute and about four lines of dialogue. Everything is communicated. His adventurist life is shown through photographs, the people he watches are shown in a quick panning shot, and we know about the cast when a friend congratulates him on getting it removed and he comments that he still has one week before he can, "emerge from his plaster cocoon."
On the other hand, it takes "Disturbia' over half an hour before we get to Kale's house arrest, and only a few minutes past that before he is spying on his neighbors and going nuts. The set up is very long and completely unnecessary. We get his close relationship with his father, and his fathers death in a car accident Kale blames himself for. The odd thing about this is that as important as his father is made out to be in the opening, he is not mentioned at all after about the one hour point. He is just dropped like a convenient plot device that lost his usefulness. Oh, and as for cabin fever, we don't really get much of this and it could have been done so easily.
How? Well, all mom does is cancel his X-Box live and his iTunes account, leaving him with just his computer and the big TV downstairs, and just playing X-Box with friends or by himself. His behavior doesn't change. This could be fixed by one simple move. It is set up that he is a bit of a messy kid whose room is always a mess. If they had implied some time passage and shown his room, and the entire house, to be spotlessly, obsessive compulsively organized this would show a change. It's out of character, yes, but it show just how bored he is and the obsessive nature of it would communicate how it's impacting his emotional state. All he wants is something, anything to keep him busy.
Oh, and the camera leaving the house kills the claustrophobic feel the film needs to work right. That's the beauty of "Rear Window." Not only does Jeff feel isolated and twitchy, we start to feel that and suddenly his insanity seems reasonable because we know how he feels so much that we become just like him, sitting there, watching everything, and hoping that a man murdered his wife just for the change of pace that would bring.
That is the essence of how this film doesn't work. The most brilliant idea "Rear Window" puts forward is that we, the viewers, are the biggest voyeurs in the relationship. We are no better than Jeff. We sit there peering into his world of peering into the worlds of others and find ourselves wanting more of them for our own entertainment. He, like us, doesn't even know the names of his neighbors. They are simply a collection of characteristics that he can observe.
We are never invited into that position in "Disturbia." Kale knows his neighbors by name, and instead of the curious involvement of Jeff he is completely detached from these actual people he knows. It lowers an already questionable act to the level of Peeping Tomery.
The biggest flaw with "Disturbia" is the lack of mystery about the suspected killer. In "Rear Window," we become part of Jeff's world for the simple fact that we have no idea if a crime actually took place. We are spying into a world that we don't really know anything about, and because of that we are seeing actions from his somewhat skewed point of view. We interpret what is happening in the most exciting way possible because that is what Jeff does, and we don't know any better. "Disturbia," however, takes that away from us. We know without question that the neighbor is a killer. Us knowing more than Kale, in this instance, is a hindrance. There is no building of suspense or tension, we know that he has to be proven right. In "Rear Window" it was completely possible that Thorwald, the neighbor, did nothing wrong and Jeff was just reading into things out of boredom. The simple possibility of that made the film a thousand times more intense.
In the end, "Disturbia" becomes a victim of the studio system that made it happen. What could have been a very fresh and intense retelling of a classic became a watered down, flashy, and predictably disappointing fast food product. It's like the new Burger King ribs. Yeah, they're technically the same "meat" you would get at The County Line, but really, all you're eating is processed crap pressed into a shape that reminds you of something much, much better.
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