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Under discussion:

Sin City  (2005)

The Spirit  (2008)

Frank Miller’s film adaptation of Will Eisner’s The Spirit is an elaborately stylized train wreck. It would be easy to see only the glaring dissonances, such as childish one-liners sharing the screen with a scene in which a man is bludgeoned with a severed head, and write off the film entirely. But this wouldn’t do it the justice it deserves. The Spirit is a kind of “what if?” that populates the daydreams of only the most committed comic book nerds, which by some miracle has actually been made into a film. It’s a film that exists to answer an outlandish hypothetical question: what if two of the greatest comic artists of all time, Will Eisner and Frank Miller, teamed up to make a movie?!? Fortunately for Mr. Eisner, he didn’t live to see the result

The plot of the film is really unremarkable, and serves only to deliver the more considered stylistic elements. One of the big questions the film needs to answer, but doesn’t, is whether or not it’s a comedy. And what does “comic” mean here?

In Eisner’s original Spirit comics, noir serials syndicated in newspapers in the 1940s, the two meanings of the word ‘comic’ were not very far apart. While Eisner’s The Spirit did go beyond “the funnies” and into more in-depth material, the tone, in terms of both art and subject matter, was generally light. There were gags, it was okay for villains to be goofy –– comics were comic. Things are very different today, thanks in large park to Frank Miller. Miller’s gritty 1986 adaptation of Batman, The Dark Knight Returns, took the character from Adam West camp to the gritty vigilante we know today in just four issues. In the nineties Miller stunned the comics world again with his violent and unflinching series, Sin City, which resulted in a film adaptation of Sin City co-directed by Miller and Robert Rodriguez that matched the dark aesthetic and brutal violence of the original. Comics, especially Miller’s, are not so comic anymore.

Eisner and Miller do have common ground on which to stand: noir. Both The Spirit and Sin City are derivatives of classic film noir, and for this reason it seems to make sense for Miller to direct an updated film noir using Eisner’s classic source material. Or does it? The Spirit the comic isn’t really a derivative of classic ’40s noir, it actually is ’40s noir, albeit for the page rather than the screen. Miller’s brand of noir truly is derivative, with updates and distortions that render it something completely different than the old detective and dame yarns we all know. Sin City builds an overly stylized world and dares you to inhabit it, forcing you to ask whether people are really that depraved and violent. The Spirit the film, on the other hand, dares you to inhabit a world where you’re forced to ask if people are really that silly.

Much of the dissonance that plagues the film is evident simply by looking at the art of Eisner’s Spirit compared to Miller’s in Sin City. Eisner was a master of classic cartoon lines. The ink flows in a clear and playful way. The lines could describe Mickey Mouse as easily as they could render a dame or a dead body –– Eisner took that classic visual language and pushed it to new places. Miller pushed the medium, too, but Miller’s ink isn’t suited to anything classic or comical. With large chunks of black cut violently by stark white, Miller draws like he’s dipping his pen in his best friend’s bullet-riddled corpse. It looks amazing, but it couldn’t be more different from Eisner. It may seem like this wouldn’t matter –– it’s a live-action film after all –– but it matters a great deal. In directing The Spirit, Miller attempts to force Eisner’s soft, jovial character into his brutal, hard-edged world, and it just does not fit.

The credits of the film roll over a series of drawings of The Spirit, done by Miller. They’re stunning. The masked crusader looks like he would fit right into Sin City’s gritty world, at least on the page. On the screen, it looks like Miller ruined a perfectly good storyboard by turning it into a movie. And yet, The Spirit is still worth seeing, if just to watch Miller try to pull it off.

Under discussion:

Born on the Fourth of July  (1989)

Endless Love  (1981)

Taps  (1981)

Magnolia  (1999)

Minority Report  (2002)

Valkyrie  (2008)

We’ve known for months that absolutely nothing was wrong with Valkyrie, and now we’re just a few days away from watching this tiny independent feature storm the box office, redeem United Artists as a production entity and make Tom Cruise a respectable household name again.

Of course, there is the slight problem: he’s portraying Nazi Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who may have disagreed with the party politics, but still rocked the swastika and straight salute.  How exactly did Cruise, one of the great symbols of the “Blockbuster Film” and American culture, wind up so perfectly suited as a crippled, over-zealous Nazi embroiled in conspiracy? We’ve excavated evidence from his filmography to track the transformation.

Taps

As resident wide-eyed reactionary Cadet Captain David Shawn, Cruise is always ready to go out guns blazing. After their coup to keep the Bunker Hill military school, the boy soldiers are dwindling, tired and worn-out after playing pretend guerillas costs a few lives.  As they finally give up when the real Army threatens to come in with a tank, Cadet Captain Cruise gets to showcase his suicidal genius: take on a tank with an M60 Machine Gun from his “fortified bunker” (read: dorm room) after everyone else has surrendered.  Later, he’d still have the right idea (use a suitcase bomb to kill Hitler) but wrong way to do it (placing said suitcase under heavy oak table, killing others but leaving Hitler with a few minor injuries.)

Magnolia

If there’s one necessity over all others to be a convincing Nazi, it is possessing the ability to brainwash the masses with the most general of terms.  Cruise’s Frank Mackey is slimy, misogynistic and has a loyal cadre of slobs who’d do anything he commands. Why? Because they all have cocks and that means they’re pre-destined to rule their homes/relationships/beds and women must respect them thanks to “Seduce and Destroy.”  Stalking around the stage, Cruise perfects the magnetism for converting those of weak minds to do his bidding. Mackey plays brilliantly on inadequacy and makes further strategic choices to disarm those around him (ie: doing press in his underwear, breaking down when he realizes his persona is cracking.)

Born on the Fourth of July

Of course, when considering ideology, one must also take into account copious baby killing and twisted politics. Ron Kovic (Cruise) starts out a patriot ready to die for his country, but becomes horrified by the haphazard war he’s been thrown into: opening fire on a defenseless village, accidently murdering one of his own in friendly-fire and then being shoved away into a decrepit facility in the Bronx where he may as well be dead.  Kovic drifts into miserable alcoholism and tries to recover from being the victim, but not before this scene with Charlie (Willem Dafoe) as his veneer shatters.   The quiet dread here would lead to Kovic would going forth and fighting for Veterans’ rights, and can be paralleled to von Stauffenberg’s own break-down that lead to leading the insurrection.

Minority Report

Nothing says “Nazi Training” like teaming up with Steven Spielberg on a film wedding crazed government officials, secret police and Max von Sydow.  As the head of the “Precrime” unit in Washington, D.C., Tom Cruise expertly knows how to find untrustworthy scum and black-market organs—especially when he’s on the run for a crime he didn’t commit (yet.)  Spielberg is a fan of the chase, whether it be by dinosaur or Ralph Fiennes. And you don’t get much more training in “how to run from authority figures” than when they use jetpacks. Of course, later, Cruise would likely ask Bryan Singer if the whole “metaphorical” sense of cat-and-mouse could be replaced with jetpacks.  Bryan Singer probably broke down sobbing at that point. We assume.

Endless Love

Spinning information may be one of the most important assets to the Nazi Party, but especially if you’re in the middle of high treason and an assassination attempt. Fitting then that Cruise’s first role got him into this right from the start, as a guy in cut-offs named Billy who recommends to David (Martin Hewitt) try out arson.  “I lit a whole pile of newspapers, you ever try to light a whole pile of wet newspapers? Geeze, it smokes like crazy” he shrieks in nasal tones.  “Do you want to hear the wild part? It’s like I’m a hero or something! They thought I saved the whole block! To this day, my mother thinks I’m a hero!”

David leaves, inspired to mimic this same act and eventually wind up in a mental institution. Cruise cackles off-screen, having taken the first steps toward Valkyrie.