Lion on the line
#571
Last week’s call for casting suggestions for Quilty! The Musical attracted quite a range of responses. Several readers thought Ben should play himself – either because he’s inimitable, or because he’s such a good actor. There was one firm vote for Russell Crowe, but I’m afraid we’d have to shave a couple of decades off Rusty with AI, which may have to wait until the movie adaptation. There were also votes for Joel Edgerton and Sam Worthington.
Eric Bana for Nick Mitzevich was a bold suggestion, (Chopper Read as director of the NGA?), with the same reader recommending Abbie Cornish (known for films such as Bright Star, Candy and Sucker Punch) for the role of Ben’s spouse, Kylie Needham. Another winning idea was that Jacki Weaver could reprise her role in Animal Kingdom to play Skye O’Meara from the APY gang. There were plenty of other recommendations, but the cast list was starting to get a bit lengthy. I’m not convinced we need quite so many art dealers, gallery directors and curators, although Jan Murphy should probably get a singing part. Rachel Griffith has been proposed for the role, which sounds about right although one reader thought Rachel should play Sue Cato, while Claudia Karvan plays Jan. My major disappointment was that none of the readers experimented with a little colour-blind casting. Imagine Aaron Pedersen as Ben! Jessica Mauboy as Kylie! It would be good to have someone who can actually sing.
Anyway, it’s a flying start, so thanks for all the ideas, but it’s still early days for this project which should ideally be timed to coincide with Ben’s next retrospective. That’s probably two or three months away.
As this long weary year winds to a conclusion, I don’t feel inclined to take on a topic that would lead me into one of those endless discussions. My most striking cultural experience of the week was the new Disney extravaganza, Mufasa: The Lion King. It was so awful I hardly know where to start. Although I didn’t enter the cinema with great expectations, two hours of lions playing out a laborious soap opera and bursting into song, made it a rough night at the movies. It felt as if the filmmakers couldn’t decide whether they were making a musical, a Shakespearean drama, a new age Born Free, or a wildlife documentary. It had never occurred to me before that lions have a severely limited range of facial expressions, so when they were getting emotional with one another, they looked weirdly blank.
All that time out on the savannah hadn’t made the lions into fascinating conversationalists, and when they uttered tidbits of homespun philosophy one wished they’d just keep their traps shut and go maul a gazelle. Alas, these lions kept droning on and on, and never once hunted and killed another animal. Oh they talked about it from time to time, but I suspect they were secretly vegetarians. The only symbolic message that came through loud and clear, was that the tribe of marauding bad lions that pursued our hero were all white. Yes, it was a fable from New Hollywood about white imperialists aiming to conquer and subjugate their African brethren.
I know some of you are saying, “It’s only a kids’ film!” but the children in the audience didn’t seem to be enjoying themselves any more than me, judging by the amount of talking and fidgeting. Indeed, the lass in the seat in front amused herself for long periods by trying to balance a plastic water bottle on her head. Under normal circumstances this would have driven me to distraction, but on this occasion it proved rather more diverting than the movie.
Somebody ought to warn the Disney Company that when it comes to CGI, AI, and other new toys, one can have too much of a good thing. Two hours of talking and singing lions was bad enough, but soon we’ll have the travesty of a new Snow White, in which the seven dwarves are all computer generated. It was also an unfortunate piece of casting that Israeli, Gal Gadot, plays the Evil Queen, while Rachel Zegler, as a Latina Snow White, has come out as a vocal supporter of Palestine. It must have been an interesting shoot.
It's becoming a cultural problem that the big studios’ embrace of new technology has led to an appalling hollowing out of content. Mufasa: The Lion King is an utterly empty film, with a plot and dialogue that could hardly be more clichéd. Wicked! is another facile exercise – a shameless attempt to cash-in on the popularity of the musical by adding a raft of CGI effects and extending the story over two separate movies.
Once upon a time, Disney was responsible for genuine artistry in the cinema. Think of Fantasia (1940) or the original Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) or Pinocchio (1940). Today it’s a relentless product churn, all visual fireworks and zero intelligence, made for an audience that has been conditioned to expect this kind of big-budget dross. Until they decide, as they occasionally do, that it’s just too stupid.
When a company is so obsessed with numbers and profits, it generates a conservative mindset whereby films must conform to rigid formulae to reach those millions of hypothetical customers. It’s a way of patronising audiences that might appreciate a better quality product were one made available. At the same time, it’s hard to reconcile this soulless number-crunching with a growing emphasis on PC virtue signalling (a Latina Snow White?) supposed to appeal to a “popular” constituency. But the recent American elections should make everyone think twice about assuming the masses share the same moral imperatives as an anxious, middle-class minority.
In fact, Disney has just pulled a transgender-themed episode from a new animated series called Win or Lose, perhaps recognising that such storylines are too provocative for the current political climate, or simply realising they are audience killers. The Hollywood Reporter noted that two other recent Disney productions that featured LGBQT content, Lightyear and Strange World, have performed poorly at the box office.
If it comes down to a battle between profits and social conscience, there can be only one winner, so don’t be surprised if Disney tones down the race and gender stuff in the near future. Ultimately it’s a false dichotomy because the real issue lies with the persistent dumbing down of scripts and storylines while investment in eye candy keeps rising. If the stories were better and the dialogue sharper, it might not matter so much if characters were gay or trans, black or Asian. It’s the spectre of tokenism that gets under people’s skin – as a character ‘just happens’ to be gay or black or whatever, when the context doesn’t call for any special focus on identity politics. If the script is vacuous, such gestures feel utterly gratuitous. With well-rounded characters and more layered stories, anything is possible.
As if to emphasise this point, this week’s art column for The Nightly, looks at Cao Fei’s impressive survey at the Art Gallery of NSW, called by My City is Yours. Working in the interstices between science fiction and political reality for the past 25 years, Cao has created some of the most vital and engaging audio-visual art to be seen anywhere. No matter what the topic may be, she’s capable of giving it an original twist, never becoming over-awed by the technology itself, which is merely a means to an end.
The film being reviewed is Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door, a film about death that avoids the tears and gloom. The selling point may be the performances of two fine actors, Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton in the lead roles, but it’s a story that will provoke a whole raft of thoughts and reflections. Not a talking lion in sight.
Oh yes. Merry Christmas!