MAMMA MIA !
NOVEMBER 29th 2008
I was an Abba fan from the very beginning, the more so as time passed
and
they developed emotionally and musically. I was prepared, by much
publicity and news of extraordinary sales figures, for the DVD of a
film
of Mamma Mia (which I had not seen on the stage) to be a great
exprience.
This evening I was treated to it on a large high-quality domestic
screen belonging to a friend and sat through it in increasing disbelief
that those responsible for the production and its execution had so
little respect for anyone but the most relentless and cloth-eared Abba
addict.
I am amazed they could not have been told when they had finished the
final cut that they had produced an experience so painful that, if
taken even as anything more than mindless audio-visual entertainment
for those suffering from attention deficit disorder, would signal the
death of the film musical as a genre.
I now have to take about six hours of deep sleep and perhaps hours of
thought before I can marshal the words to express, fully and
accurately, the technical, musical, dramatic,
cinematic, cultural, and pictorial
audio-visual abyss that this.... thing..... production..... I don't
know what word to use, represents.
The morning
after...
Well, I have slept on it - not very well I have to say - and I will try
to be fair. First of all let me say the movie was introduced by my
hostess who had seen it in the cinema and thought it was fabulous. I
had just that afternoon been listening to "The latest movie news and
reviews. Francine
Stock talks to Judy Craymer, the creator of Mamma Mia, the most
commercially successful British film of all time, as it is released on
DVD". We heard what triumph it was for British Cinema and for Judy
Craymer who had prevented Hollywood from mucking it up. I was enthused
and believed it all. That many million people can't be wrong!
So this was the moment. My hostess switched it on and for some minutes
we watched in silence. After some time she ventured: "Well I guess you
have to see it in the cinema. I went with a friend.... it was fun..." I
said: "It's terrible". She said "It gets better". It didn't. We were an
audience of 3 humans and two TV viewing dogs. At the end there were no
dissenting voices. It stank. Here is
why:
1. In choosing the widest
screen format, the producers have
fallen into the biggest elephant trap the movie business has made for
itself and biggest egg ever laid by the technical standards gurus who
mis-plan our miserable lot. We will be living with this for the
foreseeable future, particularly now that the HD-TV merchants have made
the same error. Take a look at this page: http://www.dvdaust.com/aspect.htm.
Read, mark, learn and inwardly digest and come back here where I will
tell you in advance that the best aspect ratio for the human eyes and
brain and for every purpose under the sun, on small handhelds and in
the cinema, is the good old 4:3, in either
portrait or landscape (always lansdcape for movies).
You can get away
with Cinemascope etc. in a cinema
with a big screen, as the top of that screen is way above the viewer's
head (in a decent seat). Because the screen is huge, you do not have to
do exaggerated close-ups for the audience to see faces in detail. In
fact a real close-up on a big cinema screen is overpowering. Great
musicals have been filmed in wide screen formats but only by people who
knew what they were doing and even then they were only
supportable when viewed at home if all, or nearly all, the height of
the
TV screen was used in the frame, the sides of the picture trimmed and
the action centred if needed in the adaption process. I viewed Mamma on
a large new wide-screen digital TV and although the full
width was used, the top and bottom of the screen were still black for a
few inches. Like looking through a letterbox with the top at about eye
level.
Even then it
would have been OK if the camera operators and director had known what
they were doing, as we could have made an adjustment and lost the
extremes. But they did not know what they were
doing. They had decided to film lots of the action in close-up even
when people were jumping up and down and, in this film, there is a
whole heap of jumping. The tops of heads were often cut off when
standing still, and when moving about there was a serious loss of body
parts in all directions. This produced serious viewer discomfort, as
every time the action or part of a person passed the top of the screen
one was aware of watching a TV or viewing through a hole and thereby
removed from any involvement. Golden rule: the margin of perception should NOT
interact
with active subject matter or the illusion of presence is lost.
2. Even without suffering from
all of the above, in most of the shots
(with some obvious scenic exceptions) there was no background in focus,
no ground or floor, no ceiling, roof or sky, no sense of where the
characters were as they acted out the flimsy story; and act it they did
as if their lives depended on it, with not a trace of subtlety. There
was thus no trace of atmosphere, no poignancy, no visual lyricism to
associate the mood with the music with the people. In the same musical
number the picture cut from one place to another, one time to another,
from indoor to outdoor, from one or two performers to a crowd of
hundreds suddenly involved in the same action for no apparent reason at
all. I would not have been surprised if a cartoon character such as
Bugs Bunny had suddenly joined in and ushered on stage the entire
Warner Brothers animal kingdom, joining in a chorus. No doubt this was
deliberate, a new approach, as if to say "we know characters don't
really burst into song so what the hell, don't lets pretend, this is a
party". But the result is neither one thing nor the other. It is
meaningless.
3. The music. What can I say. I
guess they got some very competent
professionals to plunk it out. They plunked out, as if generated by an
automated electronic system devoid of any human input at all. There were exceptions
of course in some of the less plunky bits. But the whole point of
Abba was they played, and recorded, in a very, very special way, what
would otherwise have been simple and sometimes banal music. The
instrumental banalisation here was dire.
4. The acting? Baransky played
herself, or one of her classic selves,
quite sassy and, er.. yes.... the men read the lines from their scripts
as they were told and moved their eyebrows appropriately. They seem
embarrassed, not just as part of the plot but to be taking part at all
- and I am nor surprised. Amanda Seyfried charmed and intensified but
after a bit one could take a bit less of it. As for Streep, she tried
to make something of it but in the middle of a movie mess like
this, what can you do? At the end she desperately tried to make an
arm-waving drama out of a song that in the hands of Agnetha Faltskog
was a real heartbreaker. The music and the voice, with minimalist
and moving body language should say it all. But this was a travesty. Of
Walters, the less said the better....
In summary, a really desperate attempt to blend music which should only
be
played and sung by ABBA with a story contrived to make use of it. It
could have worked, but they hadn't a clue how to do it. For some who go
to
the cinema determined to enjoy it on the big screen, the sound and
frenetic activity may disguise the utter lack of any artistic or
technical or dramatic merit or interest of any sort but a day or two
later, who will remember a single scene apart from the embarrassing
ones? In contrast, who will not remember
for
ever the many scenes in all the other great
musicals of the past.
Worst of all, this
has been a commercial success. These people, the producers and
directors, have made money and
may go on to commit further crimes in the media. It is too late to
bring a halt to their careers. All we can hope for is a crash like the
bankers had, for the same reason - loss of plot, loss of (artistic in
this case) integrity, abuse of technology and the meaningless tweaking
of a few pavlovian synapses in the public nervous system. As for ABBA,
let us hope their heritage and reputation can recover, for if this is
the legacy most often discovered by later generations, they will not be
admired.
DECEMBER 1st 2008
I have had a chance to re-read my review above and thought I had better
have a look at the IMDB Database to see what other reviews were around.
Hmmm... they were ecstatic..... except for ONE - from Roland E.
Zwick (magneteach@aol.com) - who in his own more
polished words said a lot of what I have said above. I see that 42 out of 65 people found his comments
useful. Perhaps I am not having any original thoughts here...
But, you
will say, what a grinch you are, James, how
uncharitable and mean. Never mind
your miserable technical complaints, here are people doing their best
to make a great picture to bring happiness and tell unmarried mothers
who sleep around and fatherless children that it's fun to be either of
these!
Why not both? Nothing to worry about, it's all in the mind! Let's just
be happy, why
get married anyway? It will all turn out alright in the end and
children will have more fathers and a bigger extended family. Think of
the millions of young people who will see this film and follow the lead
of these beautiful icons of the new century ! "
Of course you are right. There are not nearly enough unmarried mothers
or fatherless children in Britain, if we had more, they would not feel
so out of it. What a boring old fart I am, I am; what a boring old fart
I am!