Movie Epics

I think of movie epics as being visionary, crazed, obsessional: Gance's NAPOLEON, for example, or Bertolucci's NOVECENTO or Griffith's INTOLERANCE. Directors are sometimes driven crazy when they work with the epic form; they become obsessed with trying to explode the confines of movie narrative. Great directors like Griffith or Gance, who work on vast scales, are usually trying to make the greatest movie ever made. They're Beethovenian: they're confident that they'll be remembered for generations. They'll try anything onscreen in order to elicit awe in us viewers, & they stamp every scene with their own unhinged personalities. They're hell-bent on expressing their ideas by breaking old rules & forging new ones.

A film epic is more than just a long movie with a gallery of characters drifting in & out of the story. The Peter Jackson Tolkien movies are too predictable & conventional to be called true epics. They're middle-class expressions of reactionary storytelling. The lengthy battle scenes are sodden, even soporific. I've never seen anything blander than Jackson's slow-motion technique, & probably five of the nine hours are in slow-motion. It isn't cathartic or compelling; it's just vapid. Those Tolkien movies lack the daftness, the idiosyncrasy, of the work of the hallowed directors. They're nothing but spittle when measured against Tarkovsky's truly visionary ANDREI RUBLEV.