The 1933 release of King Kong came at an interesting time in Hollywood’s history. Self-censorship was still the order of the day, and of course it was at the height of the depression.
The story at the heart of the film could in some ways be described as a unrequitable love story.
Fay Wray was great in the film as Ann Darrow, who’s fallen on hard times and is ‘found’ by film maker Carl Denham. In Peter Jackson’s remake, the same scene with Darrow getting caught stealing an apple to fight off her hunger is captured again, this time with Naomi Watts being spotted by Jack Black.
This film is immense – in length at over three hours, and scale with possibly the greatest amount of money ever spent on a film at a reported $207m.
I loved it.
There are two massive difficulties that had to be overcome with this film. The first is that most of us know the story, although black and white films from the early thirties aren’t seen as much as they once were; the second is that something that is unbelievable has to be made believable in a real world setting – albeit a slightly stylised 30s world. This second is actually the harder of the two to achieve, since in Jackson’s previous Lord of the Rings trilogy, we saw plenty of fantasy creatures and buildings, but they existed in a universe where their existance was believable. But if there really was such a thing as a 20ft ape, what would it look like and could we possibly believe in it and invest emotion in its story?
Well, the answers are just like a regular sized ape scaled up, and yes we absolutely can with some of the technical trickery now available to film-makers.
By far the greatest achievement of this film is for the audience to genuinely care about the tragic events that befall the ape. He’s on his own – at least until any sequels get made – which is a fate even the dinosaurs don’t seem to have. And by the time he’s in New York you really don’t care about anyone else in the story.
All round there are great performances. I was wary of Jack Black at first since he can be a very over-the-top character, but he’s been reined in pretty well here. Adrian Brody, as screenwriter Jack Driscoll is OK. I struggled to believe him becoming the all-action hero he’s required to be. The rest of the cast had lesser roles and were all fine. But I did think that Thomas Kretschmann as the SS Venture’s captain had the right amount of grit and distrust about him.
That just leaves Naomi Watts and Andy Serkis’s performance as Kong. Watts is fantastic and this is easily the best film I’ve seen her in since Mulholland Drive. And Serkis really does need to be recognised. Kong seems real. Yes, he’s sometimes embued with suspiciously human characteristics – witness his feigned disinterest with Ann Darrow after she’s been entertaining him with her vaudeville. But overall it’s an incredible combination of great acting and technical achievement.
I suppose I should say at this point, that unless Jackson had turned in a complete turkey, I was always going to love this film. I’ve mentioned before on a couple of occassions that Jackson has opened up some of the mysteries of film-making to an incredible extent. Some have seen these as showing us some of the DVD extras before the film’s even come out, but you really need to watch these videos to appreciate that this was more about the art of film-making rather than always being specifically about this film.
The last post-production diary has just been put up on the net and the first batch – amounting to several hours – have been released as a double DVD set in parallel with the film’s release. However, the DVD only reaches the end of production and the post-production videos are still on Kongisking.net. I suspect that eventually there’ll be some kind of massive DVD set that’ll include all the production diaries. And Jackson himself alludes to there being unused footage, so could there be an extended DVD like he had for the Lord of the Rings trilogy?
So what, if anything is wrong with the film? Some have commented on the length, but I was happily sucked into his world and away from the real world for three hours, so I have no problems.
Some of the effects shots could probably do with some additional work on them. Not Kong himself, who’s fantastic. Nor the other creatures or the CGI New York which is stunning. But some of the boat shots didn’t quite work – in particular the rowing boats trying to reach the Skull Island shoreline. One suspects that since the film was on quite a tight deadline, some bits were rushed.
So if you haven’t already, find three hours to see it on the big screen this Christmas. By all means get the DVD when it comes out – I know I will – but this is a spectacle that deserves to be seen on the silver screen. (Or, in my case, the slightly imperfect silver screen with a few off-white bits. Let’s see, my local cinema is in business solely to project celluloid against a white screen. If the screen’s damaged then fix it!)