Augury

A link via Alarm-Alarm leads me to this trailer for The Promise movie. If you’ve seen Crouching Tiger, Hero, or House of Flying Daggers you know what this movie offers: A questionable plot surrounded by astounding visuals. The Promise actually seems to remind me largely of Casshern, seeming to be more of a comic-book or a fairy-tale brought to life than a romanticized historical movie.

Seeing yet another movie in the genre of Extraordinary Beauty, I’m forced to wonder: Where are the Western movies? Yes, we have The Lord of the Rings, which has moments of astounding beauty, and yes I would probably prefer to watch The Lord of the Rings over almost any of these Eastern movies. The problem is that the choice is not really between The Lord of the Rings and Hero, the choice is between Dungeons and Dragons and Casshern. When it comes down to a pathetic movie with horrible visual design, or an overly complicated and schizophrenic movie which is nonetheless striking as a perfect adaptation of anime visual style into a movie, I know what I’d rather have.

It seems that Western historical fantasy is always of a certain type: dreary blues and greys, people with perpetually wet and dishevelled hair. You know the movies: The Two Towers, The Thirteenth Warrior, Tristan and Isolde, et cetera. Even something like the BBC’s production of Gormenghast was primarily an affair in portraying characters who have various grotesque features.

I wonder if it’s something in the psychology of Western moviemakers that we can’t seem to have an idealized vision of our past. Everything must always be a “warts-and-all” approach, interspersed only by moments of the sublime. Perhaps we’re so accustomed to critiquing our own faults that we can’t help but carrying them into our fantasy. Maybe it’s just that the stylized visuals of anime are mainstream in Asia, where comics in America have always been not only less stylized, but largely denigrated as an art form. Maybe I’m just not aware of the American movies that strive to capture so much beauty.