Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

When I first heard that there was going to be a film based on Disney World’s classic ride, Pirates of the Caribbean, teenage me had some doubts.  What kind of silly story could be told based on animatronic pirates who plunder, pillage, auction off women and sing?  But under the direction of Gore Verbinski, the film turned into a huge success that is still treading water with lackluster sequels thirteen years later.  

When a ruthless band of pirates invade Port Royal and kidnap the governor’s daughter, Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley), the young blacksmith, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), tries to save her with the help of a recently arrested pirate, Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp).  Jack isn’t really concerned with the rescue, but wants to get his ship, The Black Pearl, back from Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) and his crew.  Throughout their swashbuckling adventure they get into hair raising situations, meet colorful characters, and discover a chilling curse lined with gold, greed and blood.  

Compared to most films under the Disney name, Pirates of the Caribbean has more twists, mystery, violence and scarier images than we are used to seeing from them.  The punishments for piracy are laid out in the beginning, showing handing, rotting corpses with a sign, “Pirates, ye be warned.”  There is a soft love triangle between Elizabeth, the recently promoted Commodore Norrington (Jack Davenport), and the young pining blacksmith we’re all rooting for, Will.  Best of all, there is a curse over the crew of The Black Pearl (no surprise, given the title), where the moonlight reveals them as they truly are.  

Johnny Depp, clad in a tricorner hat, dreadlocks and messy eyeliner, portrays Captain Jack Sparrow in an Oscar nominated performance.  With his amazing entrance, sailing a sinking dinghy into Port Royal, he sets the tone for a new brand of pirate.  He saunters down the pier with a half drunk grace and casually offers three times the payment to dock his sunken boat with no name attached, then pockets a whole pouch of money.  While at first glance he seems to be a drunken fool and flying by the seat of his pants, he is actually quite crafty, always thinking ahead of Will, Elizabeth and Barbossa.  But mostly, we just wants his beloved ship, The Black Pearl, back.

My favorite scene is the first sword fight between Jack and Will.  Will finds Jack hiding in the blacksmithery and being the noble, upstanding citizen he is, plans to turn in the pirate, especially since he threatened dear Elizabeth.  What begins as a simple sword fight, quickly escalates.  Literally, into the ceiling rafters.  When one sword is lost, swatted away or broken, there are plenty others around, some red hot and tossing sparks when clanked.  When the donkey who runs the mill becomes spooked, he sets the whole workshop in motion.  Then, when a wagon acts like a catapult, the sword fight takes to the rafters.  It is wonderful how the danger and excitement increases every minute until Jack has to resort to more ruthless, pirate-like tactics.  

Pirates of the Caribbean is probably the best film inspired by an amusement park ride ever (please, let me know if I missed another gem in this small genre).  While it is a hard argument to call it the best pirate film ever, is is a great modern pirate film.  It’s got the swashbuckling, the rum, kidnappings, stealing, fun, adventure on the high seas and a bit the supernatural to thicken it all.  And with a total of five Oscar nominations, it earned respect from most critics.  If you haven’t already seen this fun, modern, grown up bit of Disney magic, I highly suggest you do.  

“Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me.”

Shakespeare in Love

Writer’s block.  There are very few things that can really inspire the words to flow again, I suspect even fewer were easily accessible in the Elizabethan era, where just preparing a quill can be time consuming.  What we have here in John Madden’s Shakespeare in Love is a fictional portrait of a young William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes), fresh out of ideas, but being pressured for a new play.  “I cannot love or write,” he says, suggesting that one follows the other.  However, he does have a small start to his upcoming play, so far entitled Romeo and Ethel the Pirate’s Daughter.  Writing is almost always a work in progress.

Then there’s Viola (Gwyneth Paltrow), an idealistic young woman whose spirit seems overfilled after hearing Will’s work,  “I will have poetry in my life, and adventure and love.”  She aspires to act in one of his plays, but women are forbidden from appearing on stage, it’s considered lewd.  Having women played by pre-pubescent boys can have some issues and seem to make any romance feel a bit off.  So she disguises herself as a young man and lands the lead role as Romeo, before the play is even written.  But before Will realizes his lead is a woman, he meets Viola, is instantly in love, and inspired to write.

Viola continues to work with Will and his players under the name Tom Kent, and Will attempts to use Tom as a messenger to help profess his love for Viola.  The rowboat scene where Will goes on about his love for Viola to Tom is wonderfully comic, romantic and weird all at once.  Seeing Viola behind that little mustache trying to milk every word from Will while trying not to swoon is an amazing moment that only gets better as she loses herself.  After Will pieces together what just happened, he and Viola pursue a steamy romance while they keep her real identity secret at the playhouse.  All this secrecy and obstacles between their love inspires Will further to create Romeo and Juliet.

As I watch this film more and more (it’s quickly becoming a climbing favorite), I find new appreciation for Paltrow’s Oscar winning role.  There is such a dynamic duality that she must encompass, that I don’t think everyone understands on the first viewing.  She is Will’s inspiration to write, his lover, and yet she must keep up the act of being a man, go on stage every day and perform the words she helped bring about.  In an age where it’s normal for men to dress as women on stage, she turns that upside-down.  Not only is there risk of being exposed as a woman on stage, but the relationship with Will is disregarding the fact that she has recently become engaged, which in turn, inspires the tragedy of the play.  Paltrow combines all these criss-crossing roles and ideas so well, while boiling it all down to just the idealistic girl who wants a life full of love, poetry and adventure.

Shakespeare in Love is a rare, wonderfully entertaining film that can bring literature alive in its natural setting, even showing us a story of its origin.  So many people are first introduced to Shakespeare’s work in a boring classroom atmosphere, where we read his most heated lines in a completely bland teenage monotone.  Textbooks show that he was a bald man looking out to us from some painting, that frilly thing around his neck.  Here, Shakespeare is vibrant, handsome and reciting his own poetic lines in perfect tone, in rhythm of his walking as Geoffrey Rush tries to keep up.  Romeo and Juliet has never felt so alive or looked so naturally good.

“Like a sickness and its cure together.”

Elizabeth

The way Elizabeth begins, with it’s intensely epic music, blunt summary of history and horrific images of burning heretics writhing in flames at the stake, makes it feel like a historical horror film.  That’s not a bad thing, the turmoil England was in between Henry VIII and Elizabeth is shown with a little more style, but just as much gore and gusto as history allows.  Throughout the film you’ll see people tortured, beheaded, said heads are put on spikes and a decent amount of sex.  Really, if you’re looking for a more red-blooded approach to British history, Elizabeth is it.

As the quick bursts of text will tell you, the film beings while Mary (Kathy Burke) is on the throne, but she has no heir, leaving Elizabeth (Cate Blanchett) (“born of that whore Boleyn” and a Protestant) next in line.  There is also turmoil brewing across England pinning Catholics and Protestants against one another, Catholics calling Protestants heretics.  Should Mary let Elizabeth succeed her to the throne, she wants to make sure Elizabeth will uphold the Catholic church, but she can make no guarantee.

Elizabeth’s lifestyle is not fitting for a monarch as she assumes the throne.  She is having an openly passionate romance with the Earl of Leicester, Robert Dudley (Joseph Fiennes).  There is pressure from all around for Elizabeth to marry and produce an heir, only then will she have security.  And some of her advisors are not to be trusted.  But Elizabeth is young, rebellious and idealistic for a queen and believes for a while that she can continue her carefree, romantic lifestyle while ruling England and charming the old Bishops into a single church of England.  With her trusted advisor Sir Francis Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush)he soon learns that she will not be taken seriously if she continues to portray herself this way, and we witness the amazing transformation from young Elizabeth to the chalk-faced historical figure, with all the sensuality of a nun, we’ve seen in textbooks that transformed England to new prosperity.

I love how Cate Blanchett has this natural style of beauty that seems a little unconventional.  There’s something that makes me feel she is from an older world, but it’s positively radiant.  She has the perfect look for portraying a young Queen Elizabeth and gives her a lively, passionate and cunning personality.  One of the most striking moments is during the coronation, where she looks so pale, young and old, frail and powerful all at once under that long sweeping cloak.  Later, her transformation into The Virgin Queen is just visually astounding, putting Mozart’s Requiem as the soundtrack is a perfect fit.

“I may be a woman, Sir William, but if I choose I have the heart of a man!  I am my father’s daughter, and I am not afraid of anything.”

The King’s Speech

The day after I saw The King’s Speech, I realized that I had not told my readers that I did a podcast last month, but what a pompous way to bring a personal touch to such a wonderful film.  King George VI was royalty pushed to be a world leader who had to courageously work through his debilitating stammer.  I’m an out of work twenty-something who places her restless fingers on a keyboard to feel a sense of purpose.  When that somehow attracted the attention of the good people at Film School Rejects, I was honestly taken aback when they wanted me to be a guest on their weekly podcast.  A big part of me wanted to turn them down, I’m much more comfortable being precisely manicured text rather than a revealing voice, with my tongue rushing ahead of my mind, being sent straight to ears all over the world.  But I knew I would only regret letting the opportunity go.  I hardly slept the night before and as I tried to calm a few nerves with a beer before going live on the air, I only felt sick.  Somehow, I made it through and didn’t make too much of an ass out of myself.  Thing is, I don’t have a stammer, the world wasn’t hanging on my every word and I’m no one of much importance.  But both King George VI and I had that crippling sense of self doubt and a fear of revealing our voices.  His story is inspiring enough for me to come out and reveal mine, have a go at it if you’d like.

In the past, it seems that all monarchs had to do for their subjects was look royal, but with modern era inventions, such as radio and television, they’re suddenly called up on to do more.  To speak in public, to address the entire nation and to let the coronation become a filmed public spectacle.  The monarchs are expected to be more than images that represent all of England, but a voice.  That would be perfectly fine if one were good at public speaking, but unfortunately ‘Bertie’ (Colin Firth), the future King George VI, has a terrible stammer.  And with Hitler’s powerful speeches spreading his influence, the King will need to speak well enough to rally his country in a time of crisis.

He has seen every speech therapist knighted under the crown, but his wife, the future Queen Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter), has found one last unorthodox hope.  Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) guarantees that he can help with breathing techniques, loosening up body and mind, gaining some confidence and in turn gaining a friend.

But Bertie is one tough monarch to crack.  Firth portrays him as so much more than a stutterer, but a man who is under tremendous pressure and it’s his birthright job to not show it.  It doesn’t help that he compensates for this his vulnerlbility by being stubborn, having a temper and being pretty bleak about his condition.  A future king is not the type who can easily open up about his insecurities, but it’s amazing and heartfelt to watch Firth move his character forward to face his condition.  It’s not the perfectly executed stammer that sets Firth’s performance apart from the rest, but everything he uses to make King George VI a flesh and blood man.  If two weeks from now, Colin Firth is not holding an Oscar, I will be speechless.

One of my favorite scenes was when Lionel has the King and Queen at his house one night.  He has not told his family that he is treating the King and has arranged the lesson around a time when they would have the house to themselves, but suddenly his wife comes home to find Her Majesty sitting at the table drinking tea.  Hilariously, Lionel panics, presses himself against the wall in the other room to hide, afraid of how to explain this to his wife and it’s Bertie who has to push him out.  It’s wonderful to see the roles reversed between Lionel and Bertie, even for a funny and trivial moment, and it really shows the extension of their friendship.

In the end, The King’s Speech is about more than a stammering monarch, but a testament to that personal type of bravery and support that helps us all stay strong in crucial moments.  If The Academy is looking to award a film that mixes history, friendship and inspiring courage, The King’s Speech will surely win Best Picture.

“-How do you feel?
–Full of hot air.
-Isn’t that what public speaking is all about?”

Shine

In the film, we are first shown David Helfgott as an adult (Geoffrey Rush), running in the rain with a futile cigarette hanging from his lips.  His speech seems like sporadic sentence fragments jumbled together that never stop flowing from his mouth once he starts to talk.   His smile never fades, yet he seems disconnected, lost between time, space and his own confusing string of words.  There’s an instant need to know this man’s story.

In Shine, we are shown David’s childhood dominated by his father’s repressed musicality.  His father, Peter (Armin Mueller-Stahl), constantly reminds his young boy that he’s lucky to be learning the piano.  Peter’s own father had smashed his violin, now Peter will slowly crush his son’s mental state.  Between turning David into an amazing child prodigy, pressuring the boy to win all the contests he’s entered in and physically lashing out his anger onto the boy, David only knows his father’s love through fear of failure.

As David grows into adolescence (Noah Taylor), he gains amazing opportunities through his musicality.  He is offered to study music in America and it seems that his father couldn’t be more proud.  However, just as David is offered a place to live, Peter crushes this dream and forbids his son to leave home, saying David would be punished forever and destroy the family.  When David is offered another scholarship to study in London, he hides it from his father as long as possible, defies his father and leaves.

In London, it seems that the nervous and quiet David might finally blossom, it’s the most we have seen him among people his own age and smiling.  He feverishly practices and with a professor by his side, finally attempts Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3.  It’s the hardest piece of music for pianists, and a goal David knew his father had for him.  The images of young David constantly playing, learning and mastering this pianist’s nightmare are stirring, beautiful and bring determination and meaning to the music.  Along the way, we notice David forgetting a few things (his pants as he’s checking his mail), and may be pushing himself too hard.  Eventually, David suffers a monumental breakdown, landing him in an institution.

Will that college recital be David’s last great moment?  From here on out, Rush is back and shows us what an amazing down but not out man David is.  Though it’s hard at first to tell what this motor-mouthed David is trying to say and mean, we see clearly that he has a pure heart and a joyous love for music.

One of my favorite scenes is when David is staying at a friend’s house.  When she returns, she finds classical music blaring and water over flowing from the sink and shower.  Worried, she looks around for David and finds him in the yard, jumping on a trampoline wearing nothing but an unbuttoned overcoat and Walkman headphones.  It’s just beautiful to see someone so overjoyed by music that they stop in the midst of everything to just jump around and feel the freedom of the wind on their skin under the blue sky.

Though the journey for David to reclaim his life is the last movement of the film, it is most stirring, heartfelt and we finally see David become his own person, rather than a puppet at the hands of his father.  Rush expertly brings David from his darkest hours and into fantastic light while portraying symptoms of his schizophrenia.  Rush doesn’t lose David’s character to the mental disorder, but rather shape the symptoms around the already established David.  Add in the fact that Rush relearned the piano so he could really be playing and I completely agree that that Oscar for lead actor is well deserved.

I love how this film just wants to celebrate a life.  Out of years of abuse, obsession and torment comes this beautiful person who despite his flawed mind is a good and kind person with tremendous talent.  Sadly, it feels like Shine has been quietly tucked away while Jerry Maguire has been hailed from hello.  That’s a load of bull.  You don’t need to know a schizophrenic  or love music to connect with this film.  Just have a yearning for your own life full of happiness and freedom.

“-No one’s ever been mad enough to attempt the Rach Three.
–Am I mad enough, professor? Am I?”