Kong review

I finally got around to seeing King Kong the other night, and I guess I’m in agreement with just about the whole world in thinking it’s a pretty good flick. The special effects are almost completely flawless (with the possible exception of the dinosaur stampede, which is still such a cool idea I don’t even care if the execution is less than perfect), the acting (about which more later) is generally good, the action scenes are nicely balanced with some nice heart-string tugging, and the pacing (mostly) keeps you focused for the three-hours plus running time.

Someone, unsurprisingly, has pointed out the possibly racist subtext, particularly with regards to the completely creepy and unredeemed Maori mob, whose only purpose is to scare the daylights out of, or savagely kill, or both, the sympathetic and extremely white main characters. This subtext is only slightly undercut by the Maoris’ association with Kong, who, after scaring the daylights out of Naomi Watts, winds up being completely sympathetic.

This subtext is made a little more complicated by the movie’s being about making a movie, kind of like Day for Night (except with a giant gorilla.) I don’t think I’m spilling any beans to reveal that the white characters are on Skull Island, Kong’s home, so they can get the appropriately primitive location shots for a movie they are making, a movie that is going to star the character Watts plays. When the filming abruptly goes south (after the aforementioned native terrorizing occurs), and Kong has kidnapped the star, she escapes by entertaining Kong: she performs a medley of bits and pieces from the vaudeville act we’ve seen her do when she was first introduced to us. Kong, who was apparently going to just tear her to pieces like a rag doll, is at first non-plussed by Watt’s character’s performance, then entertained, and finally ticked off when she finally says she can’t do any more performing.

So, since we ultimately sympathize with Kong, we could see the movie as being about us, the audience, falling hopelessly in love with the leading lady, and how our love is doomed. And, I’m guessing that the creepy affect generated by the Maori might owe at least some of its inspiration to the way fans strike a celeb who’s had just a little too much fame. If you look at the tribe’s depiction this way, then the Maori are simply a reflection of ourselves, with the reflection having a nice ironic touch, since, of course, the typical audience for King Kong is nothing like a tribe of savages.

At any rate, Kong realizes his love is doomed, and basically commits suicide by letting himself get cornered on the Empire State Building, where, in a spectacular scene, he is gunned down by a squad of machine-gunning biplanes. (Warning: this scene is an acrophobe’s nightmare.) Admittedly, Kong’s suicidal impulse is an extreme reaction to the movie-going experience, but I’m sympathetic. I felt the same way after watching About Schmidt.

About Watt’s performance. As I noted, we first see her as a vaudeville performer, and several scenes, besides the one I’ve mentioned, require Watt’s to act like, well, an actor. She does a great job doing this in the scene with Kong, where her fictive acting has as a motivation her saving her own skin. In this case, she’s got something outside of the acting as a way to give her performance some weight. But, earlier on, on the deck of the steamer the movie crew is taking to Skull Island, we see Watts being filmed looking out over the ocean, and, in this shot, she is positively luminescent. I wouldn’t take much note of this, except that she usually strikes me as being a so-so actor, not bad, but nothing great. And then she’ll do some scene like this one in Kong, or like the audition scene in Mulholland Dr., and I’ll think she’s amazing. Maybe she was born not to be an actor, but to play one.