Nostalgia for good storytelling is the power behind the film Clash of the Titans. There is no deconstruction in this film, no attempt to employ the magic of anachronism to drive home the point that myths are eternal and they are forever being told. That in their retelling objects and events from other periods mix with those of other dynasties and other empires, and we grin at the liberal appropriations.
The film begins with a voice that could have emanated from those costume dramas of the ’50s. Of stories written in the stars. Constellations!
The camera soars into the heavens, floats into the open spaces where stars cluster together and only galaxies limit our imagination of the infinite. Call me old-fashioned but this was the kind of cinema that used to dominate our filmic consciousness when cinemas stood alone, cut off from any promise of malls or department stores. In those years, stars were not only big, cinemas were huge. No one had yet ever thought of standalone cinemas. Movie theaters then, by divine ruling, stood alone or big against one another, or mighty and decorous. The narratives were even bigger. The inflections were rococo; the plots were baroque. Simple was not part of the aesthetics.
You see all this in Clash of the Titans. The first few minutes of the film were just that: epic and Homeric. Cecil B. DeMille could be sighing with relief where he is now upon seeing the beginning of the film. This is not a film but a fantasy, an extravaganza of adventure. Some critics have called it an affectionate retelling of the original, which was done in the early ’80s; others are disappointed with the lack of propulsive nonstop action.
The film opens in the middle of the sea, where a coffin-like contraption floats into the sight of an ordinary fisherman. The man pries open the container and inside is a dead mother holding a bawling infant. It is Perseus and the dead woman is Danae. We remember Danae from the Greek mythology as the woman who is visited by Zeus, who, this time, comes in a shower of gold.
By the time the glimmer has disappeared, the woman is pregnant. In the film, Zeus takes on the form of Danae’s husband, Acrisius, who in other tales is really her father. But who cares? If gods can assume different shapes to fool and impregnate mortals, then stories—or at least their structures—can change countenances.
The thrill, in fact, of watching Clash of the Titans is not so much in how it maintains fidelity (again, gods and goddesses were themselves not icons of amorous loyalty) to mythologies, but in how it grins and winks at us for the liberties taken with the stories of these powerful men and women, gods and demigods alike.
Forget Homer and Edith Hamilton, and forget even the older version of the film that nearly sank with actors presumed to be Olympian enough in weight and thespian prowess. Or have you forgotten the Zeus of Laurence Olivier? The “original” Clash had more dames (present then and future then) that a classical presentation could bear. Even the Stygian Witch was given to a dame: Flora Robson.
Ursula Andress, at a certain point of her career and our enervation, was declared the Most Beautiful Woman in the World. My grandmother, an Elizabeth Taylor fan, fumed and waited for days to see the face of Andress. My grandmother, I remember, declared the Swiss actress old, and it was still for her Elizabeth Taylor, not the actress but as Cleopatra, as the loveliest of them all. See, intertextuality was alive then. But Ursula Andress was Aphrodite, the goddess of Love and Beauty, in Clash and my grandmother thundered for days.
If Ray Harryhausen, the special-effects person and also producer of the 1981 Clash, was also one of the stars of that film, then animation and CGE and all other technologies take over in the current Clash. To top it all: 3D is the bard for this epic.
It must be said, however, that despite the gripping technological embrace that threatens to overwhelm the film, the actors refuse to be suffocated out of screen. Polly Walker, who was a presence in the miniseries Rome, seems to have cornered the classics onscreen.
She is Cassiopeia long before this strong woman was turned into a set of stars. Liam Neeson is a mighty Zeus give and take the sheen and sparkle that dapple his presence. This special effect meant, I believe, to indicate the supreme awe we should feel before his presence, renders his Zeus with a very Las-Vegasy look. No wonder then that Neeson’s Zeus loses to Ralph Fiennes’s Hades. The latter comes in through this very fashionable chaos of a smoke. Fiennes’s Hades gives the word “smokescreen” a new meaning. Fiennes speaks with an edge and a rasp. His hunch makes him imperfect and somewhat tells us the poignancy of being a god made by man.
Who can be Perseus is a man who can wear a skirt and still remain a man. Sam Worthington is that man. He is that actor.
At the end of the long story, however, the one great thing about this Clash of the Titans is its discourse on how the Titans were taken over by the Gods and the Goddesses of Olympus. The battle is exciting because this film, with the compromise of a figure half-man and half-god in Perseus, takes on the idea that man eventually will take over the divinities. Charming is the part when Perseus refuses to acknowledge his semidivine origin. This new narrative of a saga in ancient human history is a brave and crazy undertaking with lots of daring and irreverence.
Clash of the Titans is directed by Louis Leterrier, who is behind films like Transporter and The Incredible Hulk.
The film begins with a voice that could have emanated from those costume dramas of the ’50s. Of stories written in the stars. Constellations!
The camera soars into the heavens, floats into the open spaces where stars cluster together and only galaxies limit our imagination of the infinite. Call me old-fashioned but this was the kind of cinema that used to dominate our filmic consciousness when cinemas stood alone, cut off from any promise of malls or department stores. In those years, stars were not only big, cinemas were huge. No one had yet ever thought of standalone cinemas. Movie theaters then, by divine ruling, stood alone or big against one another, or mighty and decorous. The narratives were even bigger. The inflections were rococo; the plots were baroque. Simple was not part of the aesthetics.
You see all this in Clash of the Titans. The first few minutes of the film were just that: epic and Homeric. Cecil B. DeMille could be sighing with relief where he is now upon seeing the beginning of the film. This is not a film but a fantasy, an extravaganza of adventure. Some critics have called it an affectionate retelling of the original, which was done in the early ’80s; others are disappointed with the lack of propulsive nonstop action.
The film opens in the middle of the sea, where a coffin-like contraption floats into the sight of an ordinary fisherman. The man pries open the container and inside is a dead mother holding a bawling infant. It is Perseus and the dead woman is Danae. We remember Danae from the Greek mythology as the woman who is visited by Zeus, who, this time, comes in a shower of gold.
By the time the glimmer has disappeared, the woman is pregnant. In the film, Zeus takes on the form of Danae’s husband, Acrisius, who in other tales is really her father. But who cares? If gods can assume different shapes to fool and impregnate mortals, then stories—or at least their structures—can change countenances.
The thrill, in fact, of watching Clash of the Titans is not so much in how it maintains fidelity (again, gods and goddesses were themselves not icons of amorous loyalty) to mythologies, but in how it grins and winks at us for the liberties taken with the stories of these powerful men and women, gods and demigods alike.
Forget Homer and Edith Hamilton, and forget even the older version of the film that nearly sank with actors presumed to be Olympian enough in weight and thespian prowess. Or have you forgotten the Zeus of Laurence Olivier? The “original” Clash had more dames (present then and future then) that a classical presentation could bear. Even the Stygian Witch was given to a dame: Flora Robson.
Ursula Andress, at a certain point of her career and our enervation, was declared the Most Beautiful Woman in the World. My grandmother, an Elizabeth Taylor fan, fumed and waited for days to see the face of Andress. My grandmother, I remember, declared the Swiss actress old, and it was still for her Elizabeth Taylor, not the actress but as Cleopatra, as the loveliest of them all. See, intertextuality was alive then. But Ursula Andress was Aphrodite, the goddess of Love and Beauty, in Clash and my grandmother thundered for days.
If Ray Harryhausen, the special-effects person and also producer of the 1981 Clash, was also one of the stars of that film, then animation and CGE and all other technologies take over in the current Clash. To top it all: 3D is the bard for this epic.
It must be said, however, that despite the gripping technological embrace that threatens to overwhelm the film, the actors refuse to be suffocated out of screen. Polly Walker, who was a presence in the miniseries Rome, seems to have cornered the classics onscreen.
She is Cassiopeia long before this strong woman was turned into a set of stars. Liam Neeson is a mighty Zeus give and take the sheen and sparkle that dapple his presence. This special effect meant, I believe, to indicate the supreme awe we should feel before his presence, renders his Zeus with a very Las-Vegasy look. No wonder then that Neeson’s Zeus loses to Ralph Fiennes’s Hades. The latter comes in through this very fashionable chaos of a smoke. Fiennes’s Hades gives the word “smokescreen” a new meaning. Fiennes speaks with an edge and a rasp. His hunch makes him imperfect and somewhat tells us the poignancy of being a god made by man.
Who can be Perseus is a man who can wear a skirt and still remain a man. Sam Worthington is that man. He is that actor.
At the end of the long story, however, the one great thing about this Clash of the Titans is its discourse on how the Titans were taken over by the Gods and the Goddesses of Olympus. The battle is exciting because this film, with the compromise of a figure half-man and half-god in Perseus, takes on the idea that man eventually will take over the divinities. Charming is the part when Perseus refuses to acknowledge his semidivine origin. This new narrative of a saga in ancient human history is a brave and crazy undertaking with lots of daring and irreverence.
Clash of the Titans is directed by Louis Leterrier, who is behind films like Transporter and The Incredible Hulk.
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