Original title: Dumbo· Tim Burton · USA · 2019 · Script: Honor Kruger· Interpreters: Colin Farrell, Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito…
Original title: The fall of the American empire ·Denys Arcand · Canada · 2018 · Script: Denys Arcand· Interpreters: Alexandre Landry, Maripier Morin, Remy Girard…
For some time now, A certain suspicion has been imposed among critics towards the work of Tim Burton. Once pretty boy of that same criticism, eager to place fantasy cinema at the same level as other authorial models, Burton's filmography has been losing positions over the years. And although these criticisms are sometimes excessively (case, it seems to me, of titles like Frankenweenie, that went unjustly unnoticed), It is no less true that his work has been diminishing its capacity to surprise. There was a time when we were waiting for the latest production from the author of Ed Wood like someone waiting for rain in a year of drought, and although reviewing his career we can see that it has always been characterized by a certain artistic irregularity (and commercial), we consoled ourselves with the idea that, to a less accurate title, He would be followed by another who would fulfill our firm confidence in his incontestable talent.. Tim Burton's work has always flirted with combining more personal projects with commissions produced for the larger industry. mainstream (Batman, planet of the apes…), although in each one you always found some indication of that particular style and aesthetic that differentiated him from other creators.. It is that brand that has been losing steam to fall into an apparent creative complacency. Your new job, Dumbo, We could place it at the lowest levels of this fall towards that discredit that has been settling among the specialized press and many of its fans..
The first thing that fails in this new adaptation of the Disney classic is a script constructed without the slightest trace of imagination.. He Dumbo original, produced in the year 1941 by Walt Disney himself and from which this work is based, It was a little moral story that tried to instruct us against contempt for what is different.. In what goes out of the norm (Dumbo's famous ears), great virtues can be found, the movie told us. In just over an hour, Joe Grant and Dick Huemer, credited authors of the script and who would collaborate on many of the now classic Mouse Factory films, they composed a fantastic story, but compact, where message and plot were perfectly united, and although it appealed to very basic emotions, The fact is that I knew how to get to them.. Children's cinema that, however, explored feelings such as abandonment, the exploitation, loneliness and helplessness in childhood or the imposition of social values as a normative canon of beauty that despises those who do not conform to it. But this desire to create good stories seems to rarely happen in modern Hollywood.. The contemporary entertainment industry is going in other directions and this new Dumbo de Burton, sponsored by a company that already has more than holding investor than film producer, in iba to be distinct.
Part of this new adaptation, with the return of war (the first world, it is understood) by Private Holt Ferrier (Colin Farrell), true protagonist of this story. With the end of the war, which has left him with consequences in the form of the loss of one of his arms (other deformity), Holt must adapt to life at the circus where he worked before he was called up.. The circus is not going through its best moments, but Max Medici (Danny DeVito), its loving owner, He has an ace in magic: He has bought an elephant who will soon give birth to a little elephant with which to grow his show. A round investment, Max thinks. But when the child is born, the surprise comes: Dumbo has frankly disproportionate ears, fact that truncates his plans. However, Holt's children have discovered an unexpected ability in little Dumbo: thanks to those ears, Dumbo can fly.
Two plot lines open from that moment on.. The first tries to tell us about Holt's adaptation process to his new situation.. Unable to do his old horse tamer act, Holt will have to find his way to recover the self-esteem lost on the battlefield and after the death of his wife.. Besides, an evil and almighty (economically) Vandevere (Michel Keaton), wants to buy young Dumbo to incorporate him into his lavish circus, located in an amusement park of dimensions as excessive as the elephant's ears. The problem is that none of these plot lines take us anywhere and remain a mere excuse to jump between poorly strung action sequences. (Dumbo learning to fly, Dumbo in some circus acts, Dumbo facing the bad guys, thus until an extravagant final apotheosis very poorly justified by the plot). All of this, seasoned with an omnipresent soundtrack that tries to enhance and direct us towards those supposed feelings that the film seeks to evoke and that it fails to convey in any other way due to a text and a montage so segmented that they fail to focus our attention.. The conflicts that affect the characters lack development and a sensation of jumping from one situation to another without a precise motivation takes over a viewer who feels as if they have gone on a roller coaster., unable to distinguish, among so much pirouette, where is the horizon line to which you should go. So that nothing is missing, the script introduces here and there fragments of the well-known environmentalist and feminist discourses to which it seems that all politically correct production today is due (although in the end, no matter how much the role of Holt's daughter is enhanced, Let a name on horseback solve the problem). An authentic stew with more intention of instructing than transmitting an elaborate message.
A Burton who resolves the scenes in a schematic way and without an apparent interest in finding a point of view that seems his own does little to save the function.. So, The Burton brand is diluted in a commitment that differs very little from other super-productions to which the industry is accustomed.. Not even the design of characters and settings manages to amaze us, no matter how many camera movements the director tries to distract us with, pure digital fanfare with no dramatic potential. As the chronicles tell us, Burton has announced as his next project a second part of his success from the 80, Beetlejuice. We will see what he proposes to us, although the fact that he has to resort to old projects does not seem to portend anything new.
Con The fall of the American empire, The Canadian Denys Arcand continues that cinematographic adventure that has brought him such good commercial and critical returns over the years and that began back in the distant eighties of the last century with titles such as The decline of the American empire, to which I would give continuity, already at the beginning of the next millennium, the no less incisive barbarian invasions. A solid triptych with which Arcand has managed to compose a decades-long portrait of the miseries of this postmodern society in which we are immersed.
Here we find Pierre-Paul, a thirty-six year old name, graduate in philosophy, who leads a nondescript life as an employee for a no less conventional courier company. Pierre-Paul does not aspire to occupy any relevant position or position. For him, ambition and material achievements are for fools., because only fools aspire to something as absurd as social recognition and wealth. One day, however, Pierre-Paul is involved in a robbery. As a result of the confrontation between a bodyguard who appears on the scene by chance and the robbers, these end up dead, leaving your loot within reach of the clueless delivery man who, quickly, takes over. A real ordeal begins for our protagonist to overcome the harassment of the police and a gang of gangsters who seek to recover the stolen money.. To solve your problems, He will resort to the help of a luxury prostitute and an accountant who has just been released from prison for a tax crime..
With these elements, Denys Arcand has composed a piece that, although at first it leaves us a little disoriented, It grows as it progresses in its development. A story loaded with a sense of humor, but much whiter, less cynical than in his previous proposals, although no less incisive in his criticism. Yes in his two previous tapes, Arcand charged against the hypocrisy and privileges of the middle classes of his country, The focus here is on combating a system that, very intelligently, leaves out of plan. Pierre-Paul is a shy man, but committed to the causes he defends and with strong moral convictions. Curiously, those principles will be your salvation. And there comes the heart of the whole matter.. In a world where cynicism reigns, lies and ambition, Your naivety and moral firmness will make the difference. Everything around him conspires against him: organized crime, law enforcement officers, even the very logic of the viewer. All of them, They are pieces of a system that, paradoxically, he doesn't have a specific face, a precise entity that directs it, but that orders the daily lives of all the characters. Even the fund investor you turn to to help you clean up the money you have appropriated, He appears as an endearing man willing to collaborate for his cause. And what cause is this?
Denys Arcand has built a modern fable about the need to support each other to survive in a world that is increasingly sordid and mired in a crisis of values.. This is where the proposal works., not as a realistic portrait of society, but like a deformed mirror, as counter-speech. In the triumph of Pierre-Pauland his band, there is the revenge of the common citizen, that is to say, of all of us. GERARDO LEON
