The greatest, most devastating anti-epics
Jul 22 '00 (Updated Jul 14 '07)
The Bottom Line Many great movies anyone who loves movies should see at least once.
If people are confused about what an "epic" is, what might an "anti-epic" be? Like an epic it has to have a certain visual richness, and be long. Its leading character may be unheroic, generally fails or is crushed, even if he survives. History either sweeps away or sweeps over the protagonist of the anti-epic.
Joseph Mankiewecz's most visually stunning film, "The Quiet American" (1957) has a real-life (WWII) American hero, Audie Murphy, in the title role. He is a menace to everyone, but the unheroic protagonist in the tempest of Vietnam in the mid-1950s is Michael Redgrave in an exceptional performance of (fairly well-justified) self-loathing--with a 1950s Vietnam background that was exotic at the time and became familiar in part because the lesson of the book and film did not register on American political leaders. (Nor did the remake, starring Michael Caine that was very nearly not released in the US of the Cheney-Bush Empire.)
Joseph Cotten as Holly Martin is Carol Reed's "The Third Man" (1949) is an earlier Grahame Greene character of menacing American innocence in a world he does not understand. (Interestingly, he menaces American innocence in Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt," but Teresa Wright is too self-assured for that great film to be an anti-epic; it's merely un-epic, except in the intensity of Cotten's psychosis.) Martin is deflated against a vivid background of post-WWII Vienna by Alida Valli and Trevor Howard. Orson Welles's Harry Lime is not just an anti-hero but a monster, even if an often charming monster. And with an epic underground chase!
In the title role of "Citizen Kane" (1941) Orson Welles also fails big. At least he does not get what he wants. "Rosebud" is a perfect object of an anti-epic quest (and a journalist an excellent anti-heroic questor).
Sam Peckinpagh's "The Wild Bunch" (1967) is a distinguished entry on the list both for Robert Ryan's leadership of a bunch of bounty hunters who disgust him and the worn-out William Holden as the outlaw leader.
Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Last Emperor" (1967) has John Lone as a bewildered Pu Yi with opulently filmed history sweeping over him (and sweeping away Joan Chen).
While on the catastrophes of the 20th-century in China, which of Chen Kaige's films to pick? "Farewell, My Concubine" was the most widely seen. "Yellow Earth" is pretty gruesome. "To Live" may be the best one for showing what happens to unheroic people cursed to live in "interesting times," but for cinematography, "Farewell, My Concubine" is what I choose to include, after all. I "read" Zhang Yimou's "Hero" as "No matter what happens or what they say, they'll kill you" and the failed attempt to get away from civil war in his gorgeous follow-up "House of Flying Daggers" is certainly anti-epic. As is Ang Lee's acclamed Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (at least for the young lovers; the older ones may be in an epic.)
Similarly, HAL, the only interesting character in Stanley Kubrick's (1968) space extravaganza "2001" is defeated by Keir Dullea as the colorless (dull, but it's not nice to play with people's names...) Dave. Wouldn't it be more interesting to see how HAL adjusted to the mysterious landing place if he had extinguished Dave instead? At least we could be sure he'd have something to say about it all!
Sowing the wind, Michael Corleone reaps the whirlwind by the third part of Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather (1990). Al Pacino deteriorates nicely over the course of the trilogy.And there are bravura set pieces periodically throughout the trilogy.
Laurence Olivier in the title role of "Richard III" should be on the list, although he's perhaps too ironic and self-aware, but he does fall big time ("My kingdom for a horse"). Perhaps I should instead include "Ship of Fools" for its anti-epic fight scene in which Olivier's by-then ex-wife, the petite Vivien Leigh beats up Lee Marvin and the great Simone Signoret suffers movingly. George Segal, Elizabeth Ashley, and José Ferrer are pretty small here and its less historical forces than personal unhappiness that crush those transcendant actresses Leigh and Signoret.
Orson Welles in the title role of "Falstaff" (released also as "Chimes at Midnight") is splendidly unheroic. He is a coward, a drunkard, a braggart, and not particularly mirthful here, and the film is more tragedy than comedy. It has a great in-the-muck battle scene. When Prince Hal becomes king and puts aside childish playmates, Sir John is crushed (with words, this being Shakespeare). There's also John Gielgud's tormented kings with all the grandeur of Gielgud's voice and Shakespeare's words.
A profound debunking of the American western was provided by one of the greatest makers of westerns, John Ford in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" in 1962. For me, the best John Wayne movies are the one in which he loses. James Stewart gets the girl, the credit, political office. . . and a taste of ashes. (As in Hitchcock's somewhat earlier "Vertigo").
As much as I admire these American films, the greatest anti-epics are two late Kurosawa films: Kagemusha (The Shadow Warrior, 1980) and "Ran" (Chaos, 1985). These are two of the most spectacular color films ever made, with particularly astounding costumes. Both films are set in the warring states era of Japan before the pax Tokugawa. "Ran" is an adaptation of "King Lear" (Kurosawa earlier made a stunning Japanese Macbeth as "Throne of Blood" with Toshiro Mifune ending as a human pincushion), the archetype of folly on an epic scale. Folly is more diffused in "Kagemusha." These are great, devastating films.
One should emerge from an anti-epic shaken and glad to have been spared living through what the characters onscreen have experienced.With the exception of "2001" my choices have great acting, as do most of my list of also-rans:
Some other strikingly visual contenders
Aguirre, Wrath of God (Werner Herzog)
Coup de Grâ ce (Scholondorff)
Days of Heaven (Terence Malick)
Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti)
Devils on the Doorstep (Jiang Wen)
Doctor Zhivago (David Lean)
Empire of the Sun (Stephen Spielberg)
Fitzcarraldo (Herzog)
The Hidden Blade (Yomada)
The Human Condition trilogy (Kobayashi)
Kill!" (Okamoto)
The Leopard (Visconti)
Onibaba (Shindo)
Ride with the Devil (Ang Lee) though Tobey Maguire survives intact
Rocco and His Brothers (Visconti)
Sancho, the Bailiff (Mizoguchi)
The Searchers (John Ford)
Senso (Visconti)
The Thin Red Line (Malick)
Twilight Samurai (Yamada)
and the darkened palette of Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows
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