FILMBRATS - REVIEWS

Well-known filmmaker Carl Denham set sail towards his biggest motion picture undertaking yet. After packing a ship with a massive crew, they drift away to an uncharted location. Denham hopes to bring pictures of the exotic landscape and its people back on film as part of his newest fictional masterpiece. But that’s not all he’s after. He has heard stories of the legendary Kong, a giant ape that haunts the primitive natives of Skull Island. This will be the real star of the picture. The only problem is getting the king of the land to play along.

This is the epitome of a great action movie. There’s an air of mystery surrounding us from the time we open on Denham at the boat, and as secrets are revealed throughout the picture, other questions arise in their stead. Especially when Kong enters the fray, you’re not sure if he’s fighting everything in order to save his sacrificial wife or if he’s looking to protect his dinner from other predators. You’re always on edge as the film continually picks up the pace and doesn’t let up until it reaches the climactic, tragic, yet extremely satisfying ending. The only drawback to moving with such break-neck speed is that the script moves equally fast. The characters hit the bullet points needed for the conversation and then move on. For instance, the tension between Denham’s star Ann Darrow and the boat’s captain, Jack Driscoll is summed up in one sentence: “Women can’t help being a bother. Made that way I guess.”

There are a slew of misogynistic and racially offensive undertones to be found in the film. Not only is Ann offered up as a sacrifice to Kong, but according to the natives, the white blonde girl is worth six of the natives. Considering the movie was made in 1930, it’s easier to look past that now. The underlying sexual and societal themes still come across and aren’t nearly as laughable. I’ll leave the film theorists to write more in depth about all of that. After all, this is the type of movie that can be and has been written about ad nauseam.

Directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack have created a world unlike any other. They take the fiction film to a new level by bringing us a massive epic of a movie within a short 100 minute running time. They deal with many of the same thematic elements as in their famous documentaries “Grass” and “Chang”, such as exploring unknown lands, integrating and comparing civilizations, the perception of what is real, as well as man’s place in the world. But since it’s fiction and they don’t have to worry about getting in trouble for misleading people, they are able to incorporate special effects, animation and the integration of sets and projected footage, and as many fight scenes as they want.

And it all looks amazing. It’s easy to tell this production was meticulously planned out to the tiniest detail. The scenes where the actors have to interact with what’s being played on a giant projection screen behind them (as if it were one seamless location) are expertly crafted. The only bump is when they attempt to do a tracking shot. The actors stay in the same spot and pretend to walk sideways as the footage their watching actually tracks along. But once you get into the action between man and beasts as well as beast versus beast, you’ll hardly care. The stop motion animation of Kong and the prehistoric creatures he has to battle is simply incredible. Simply put, this movie is probably the most enjoyable, thrilling, exciting, fascinating piece of cinema up to that time.

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