OFF THE SHELF – Issue # 4: THE DAVID FINCHER COLLECTION
He’s the closest thing our generation, blighted by the internet and blockbusters drowning in CGI, has to Kubrick. He’s, unarguably, one of the greatest visual shooters working in the industry to date. He never allows himself to deliver anything that could be considered ‘similar’ to anything he has done before and he is one of the most well-respected directors within the industry to date. He’s David Fincher.
He’s the dude that managed to take himself from the sets of some of the greatest music videos of all time, through the disaster of a franchise picture for a big studio that tanked and into the realms of a ‘modern cinematic masterpiece’ with one of the greatest serial killer flicks back when the genre was swimming in below par variations on Silence of the Lambs. With one film in between he pulled a second genuine classic out of its box office failings and into the pigeon-hole marked ‘timeless masterpiece’ by the time it reached DVD.In his latest film Zodiac, due for a cinema release next week here in the UK and already indifferent and somewhat dismissively received over in the US last month, Fincher steps back into the territory (some rather uninspiringly dismiss as) “first visited by Se7en” and takes a completely fresh and detailed look at the true life crimes of 70s serial killer The Zodiac. Some are calling it the “greatest cinematic police procedural movie of all time”. Others are dismissing it as “overlong” at two and a half to three hours (for a film that has to span hundreds of witness accounts and several years? I think not! Spider-Man friggin’ 3 is roughly the same length with little to nothing, in comparison to Zodiac, to justify it!).
In celebration of next week’s new Fincher release and because I’m getting the feeling you guys deserve a “shorter read” (the issues get pretty large and may have to be split up within themselves over the coming weeks) I’m digging into the part of my shelf given specifically to Mr David Fincher.
Alien 3 I’ve never seen Fincher’s Alien 3: Director’s Cut that was recently released with the all-new boxset. Then again, Fincher is encouraging fans of his work not to bother as it is – whilst an improvement on the originally released version – not what he intended and not what he would have done if he’d had full control to go back and ‘fiddle’. I don’t really intend to either. I wouldn’t even say I’d own this or the 4th one had it not come in the same box as my Alien and Aliens DVDs. However, whilst this was the flick that fans awarded the “Worst Alien-Franchise Entry Ever” award (then took it back and handed it the “Worst Alien-Franchise Entry Ever Until Alien: Resurrection Came Along” award instead), what’s apparent is that – when looking at this NOW with a few more Fincher films behind us – this is a critically lauded, visual genius from the world of pop music working with shackles of constraint by a dictatorial studio. You start to appreciate the odd glimpses and second-long snatches of visual inventiveness and directorial brilliance that Fincher manages to slide into what is a maligned sci-fi ‘genre flick’. Anyone who STILL hasn’t got over this flick and STILL refers to it as the film that killed the franchise or any of that old horse shit, please see – alongside Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Exhibit A – Paul W. Anderson’s horrendous, steaming pile that we shall only refer to as Exhibit B!The Game
I fuckin’ hated this film when I first saw it. I mean really detested it. I followed, no… stalked, it from it’s announced green-light right the way through it’s production and up to it’s release. My love for Se7en was so strong that I just couldn’t wait to see what the guy behind it did next. I was so pumped in the weeks leading up to its release. Then I saw it. I bought into it wholesale and enjoyed the first act and the start of the second act and then… well, I don’t know. I just started letting go of the film and losing interest and, before I knew it, that much criticised climax was upon me and I just switched off completely and derided the flick as a total misfire. Then, over the years, I started building upon my love for conspiracy movies and becoming a bit of a ‘conspiracy movie bore’ down the local pub (yeah, I’m a sad, sad man what can I say!). One of my mates threw me completely off by asking how I could love conspiracy movies (and more on them in a later issue!) but not have much time for Fincher’s The Game. I started laying out a very detailed argument as to why The Game has absolutely nothing to do with the conspiracy movie genre and he came back at me with detail after detail as to why and how it was. And do you know something fellow ‘Rotters? It’s not often that I completely ‘miss’ a film’s intended point or objective or just “don’t get it” and, on the rare occasions that I do, I would never ever allow myself to admit it. But I’m admitting it to you now. The Game was a film that I just didn’t get. I was going into it with narrowed eyes and a closed mind as to what I wanted from the director of Se7en, my “new all time favourite movie”, and he didn’t deliver that and I’d hated on him for it as a result. But that’s Fincher to a tee isn’t it? He’s constantly side-swiping our expectations of him and never hands us the same movie twice. If he ever finds himself revisiting the same genre (and The Game and Panic Room are very loosely pigeon-holed as thrillers but just look how differently they are shot and presented) he’ll never present the same vision twice or overlap on any of his previous work. (That’s why I’m SO excited about the upcoming Zodiac!) So, anyway, I went out and hunted down a copy of the film and watched it again. I looked at it as a ‘conspiracy’ flick. I looked at it more deeply, trying to find anything that could justify the naff finale. It’s not often a flick completely throws my opinion on a second viewing. Especially not to go from ‘dislike’ to ‘adoration’. But The Game definitely grew on me in a big way. Stuck between the geniuses of Se7en and Fight Club it’s easy to forget it but it’s a cracking little flick and, with many trying to cover-up Alien 3 and pretend it never happened for Fincher, it falls on this film – unfortunately – to adopt the label of “black sheep” on his CV. I’m proud to own it on DVD though.Panic Room
I dug this film way, way, way more than I actually thought I would. I’m a bit of a mainstream Hitchcock junkie so it bugs me whenever a thriller is released and they instantly hit it with the “Hitchcockian” tag and it turns out to be anything but (I mean, come on, Cold Creek Manor? “Hitchcockian”? Don’t stick your hands down my pants, fumble with my testies and promise to call but fail to do so!) or whenever DePalma releases something new and they’re saying he’s “doing another Hitchcock homage”. Panic Room suffered, in the lead up to its release, from a major case of this and I just wasn’t interested. I’d heard about Nicole Kidman having to drop out and Jodie Foster having to take over. I don’t hate Foster or anything but I don’t have her up on a pedestal like, say, Frances McDormand, Laura Linney or Cate Blanchett. I saw all the trailers for this and it just didn’t spark anything for me. Fincher was three for four with me at this point in his career and I really should have had more confidence in him but I didn’t, I wrote this off before I’d even seen it as his “misfire” after two modern classics separated by a genuinely brilliant, under-rated gem. Had I not been “forced” to go and see it with my then girlfriend, I would have waited for the DVD. But man alive, was I glad I caught up with this on the big screen. I had a blast with this film. All the negative shit about Fincher showing off with CGI shots through coffee pot handles and shit like that, well I was so invested in this flick from the get go that I didn’t even register any of that crap. From the opening titles (superb!) right the way through to the film’s closure I was hooked and on the edge of my seat. My love for this flick out-lasted the actual relationship with the person I first saw it with and I went back with my friends. I took my parents. My adoration of it has diminished slightly over the years and with repeated viewings but I still reckon it’s a first-rate, much-maligned (undeservedly) modern thriller. And any film that makes me tolerate Jared Leto is a work of art as far as I’m concerned!Se7en
We could talk about ‘that ending’ and how it came about due to Brad Pitt’s resilience in the face of a silly action climax in a burning church. We won’t! We could talk about the magnificent lighting or the production design! We won’t but we should! We could talk about Gwyneth Paltrow actually being, you know, good in this flick! Again, we won’t. Finally, we really should throw down some words on ‘that actor’ coming in unbilled in the third act and… Let’s not! With Se7en, a dark, grisly, horrifying and intelligent thriller and one of the greatest of it’s type ever made, Fincher has realised that the true mastery is not in showing us scenes of a horrific nature but simply bringing us in on the aftermath and letting our imagination provide the real scares. He does this fantastically well. This is filmmaking of an extremely high order. Fincher blasts away all thought of his disastrously handled big-screen directorial debut (the misfire that was Alien3). Screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker, previously snatching a living working the VHS counter at Tower Records in California, provides one of the strongest screenwriting debuts in the history of cinema. Morgan Freeman confirms his status as one of the greatest living actors and Brad Pitt destroys any notion of himself as just the “sexiest man alive” by delivering a fantastically nuanced performance no one thought him capable of. Perhaps the reason the film avoids full recognition as the genuine modern classic that it is, is because it isolates too many people with its subject matter. The film is not a gore-soaked horror movie. It is much more intelligent and cleverly presented then that. It is, in fact, one of the best films Hollywood has ever made.Fight Club
What the hell can I write about this film that hasn’t been covered by the internet community already? What can I say about the first film to be rediscovered and adopted by the DVD/internet community upon its release? Is it as good – nay, great – as everyone says it is? Has it stood the test of time? Does it really deserve the status of “modern masterpiece” that is so easily thrown at it? Has the twist stood repeated viewings and close scrutiny? The answer to all of the above is a definitive YES screamed as loudly as you can possibly muster. This is a truly awesome film. Everything you have ever been told about this film is true. Read Art Linson’s memoirs to get a really clear picture of how Fox and its cowardly marketing department fumbled the ball on this one. In the history of directorial filmographies, David Fincher’s one-two combination of masterpiece (Se7en) to masterpiece (this opus!) by way of a quick duck-and-weave (The Game) is one of the greatest! If you don’t own this on DVD and don’t intend to rectify this mistake within the next 60 minutes then please don’t visit this site ever, ever, ever again.
Thoughts?!?
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