THE REBIRTH OF HOLLYWOOD? by Tom Mes As the nineties draw to a close Hollywood cinema seems caught in a downward spiral of formulas, remakes and tv show updates. Lack of creativity has Hollywood looking back and making not the slightest effort to look ahead or even around. And yet, a glimmer of hope shines from inside. To say Hollywood isn't known for its inventiveness is no radical statement. The purpose of studio heads and producers isn't to warrant creativity, it's to rake in the cash. But the creative crisis Hollywood is going through at the moment seems unparallelled. Its rulers are firmly in the grasp of the blockbuster-and-cocaine legacy of the eighties, holding on to that era's bankrupt formulas for dear life. While the action hero blueprint of Sly, Bruce and Arnie took a full decade and a half to peter out and cave in under the weight of its inherent ridiculousness, these days successful formulas last a maximum of three years before giving up the ghost. Cases in point are the serial killer movies in the wake of The Silence Of The Lambs, the slasher wave of Scream and the current glut of already-in-decline teen comedies. But like the generation that stood up at the end of the for Hollywood desperate sixties to drag the industry into a renewed era of prosperity and creativity, there now emerges a group of young filmmakers with a fresh look on filmmaking. They make films that stand out by means of visuals, themes and storytelling, films that disassociate themselves from bankrupt formulas, and that have a connection not only with other cinema, but also other media. In the vanguard of that movement are two films in particular: The Matrix, directed by the Wachowski brothers, and David Fincher's Fight Club. THEME Interestingly, it's a similarity in the narrative that one of these films shares with a product of old Hollywood that clearly illustrates the new direction these films are heading. The relationship between the characters played by Brad Pitt and Edward Norton in Fight Club is almost identical to the one between Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves in Taylor Hackford's The Devil's Advocate. The amoral extrovert who by the power of sheer charisma drags an already partially corrupted youth deeper into a dark and shady world he himself craves. But the similarity points out the difference. And that difference lies with the origin of the characters in both films. The Devil's Advocate was based on an age-old religious archetypes. Pacino was the devil and the devil loves corrupting people. Period. Brad Pitt's Tyler Durden however is a human being, a complete individualist who makes his choices based on his vision of the world he inhabits. In a society populated by individuals there is no room for anything as ancient and archaic as the devil or even religion. The religious themes in Fincher's own Seven prove that that particular film was nowhere near as innovative as his latest. 'Ah, but what about all those religious references in The Matrix?', I hear you say. Therein lies a paradox, because the plot of The Matrix isn't quite so similar to christian lore as it might seem. In The Matrix, heaven is hell and vice versa. He who manages to break free of his earthly shell finds himself not in Eden, but in a totalitarian nightmare. True salvation lies not in attaining heaven, but in free will and invidualism. And that makes The Matrix a very un-religious film. The theme of individualism versus the clockwork of society is an integral part of Fight Club and The Matrix, but also the slightly more recent American Beauty. Look back at recent years and you will find it reflected in films such as Starship Troopers (Paul Verhoeven, 1997), Crash (David Cronenberg, 1996 and a very clear forerunner to Fight Club), Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996), Robocop (Paul Verhoeven, 1986), Videodrome (David Cronenberg, 1983) and of course A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971). At the same time the individualism of movie characters received a major boost in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1991) and Pulp Fiction (1994). All of which goes to show the theme is by no means a product of the late nineties. The source is the transition in our own Western civilization. A transition from a top-down governed society, based on obedience to leaders, to a society of individuals with their own responsibilities. Each country or culture has had its own means of achieving obedience, be it through the creation of a common enemy (as in the US) or through a system of separation based on for instance class (UK), religious conviction (Holland) or ethnicity (South Africa, the USA again). In all cases though, the traditional systems are making way for empowered individuals. This transition is not necessarily a bad thing, especially if one realises that we have not yet arrived in the stage of individualism. We're still searching and trying for the right way to run a society based on individualism. And with trial comes error. Juvenile delinquency, arrogance and selfishness show that no transition happens smoothly. Those mistakes are a reason for many to call for a return to the establishment of old, to discipline and order. But there is no way back. In a society like ours, inundated with information, the power of the individual is inescapable. Freedom of choice is the only way to deal with a world where every one is in touch with every one else by a whole series of means. No one lets themselves be told what their beliefs and values should be. The only way to return to the establishment of old is by means of force, repression and censorship, which in turn will mean the end of democracy. Paul Verhoeven used this idea as the basis for the future society of Starship Troopers (1996). Here, a return to order and discipline has logically created a totalitarian and militarist world state whose main instinct is destruction. The fact that men and women, and white and black, are all equal in the eyes of the state is a treacherous image. This equality gives the citizen only one right: the right to go out and get slaughtered for his leaders. Every corpse is equal in the eyes of both the enemy and the military. Verhoeven's critique of western, and particularly American, society is echoed in his earlier film Robocop, in which we see a man trying to escape from his programming in order to restore his individuality. Being made in 1986, Robocop's protagonist will never fully escape, tied as he is to his prime directives. VISUALS Another aspect of Robocop that returned in Starship Troopers were the short bits of information that interrupt the narrative at regular intervals. In the earlier film these took the shape of news bulletin and commercials, but a decade later their look has changed to an internet-esque computer interface. Which leads us to the second characteristic of Hollywood's new cinema: a visual language that increasingly refers to, and borrows from, the graphics and interfaces of the computer screen. In The Matrix we find references not only in the omnipresence of computer monitors and the 'digitised' look of Neo's spiritual awakening, but also in the fight sequences. Camera movement, sets and choreography, though rooted in Hong Kong action cinema, clearly mirror video games like Tekken. Similarly, the scene in Fight Club where the prices of the furniture in Edward Norton's apartment start floating across the screen resemble a section of a corporate cd-rom rather than a scene from a Hollywood movie. In a way this is an unavoidable consequence of the use of digital effects in cinema. It was only a matter of time before someone came to the realisation that digital technology offers more options than the creation of rampaging dinosaurs. Here craft meets art and the experiments of an ever-increasing guild of independent digital filmmakers find their way into mainstream cinema. As does the digital video camera. From Dutchman Ian Kerkhof, through the work of the Danish Dogma troupe and Tom Tykwer's Run Lola Run (1998) to find its temporary climax, if the rumours are correct, in parts two and three of the Star Wars prequels. But the computer and the digital image are but one element of the new visual language. Hong Kong cinema, as mentioned above, and in its wake Japanese animation and comic books, also put their two cents in. Though the visual stylings of Hong Kong have been copied, in varying degrees of success, by Hollywood directors since the early nineties, it's in combination with other visual elements that it finally finds its full - American - potential. The thing that has been superseded is the influence of MTV. The visual approach of the music channel has served its purpose by letting us grow accustomed to an increased frequency of moving images but must take a step back to allow for the application of its heritage in a more considered whole. Pure speed without goals, based on the MTV-formula and found in the works of a different type of young director (Michael Bay, Brett Ratner, Antoine Fuqua et al - not by chance all former music video directors) is, at very short notice, destined to become as much a relic as the thoroughly conventional, old-Hollywood, formulaic blockbusters it's applied to. NARRATIVE But isn't speed without goals, and without substance, another characteristic of our transitional age? The deluge of information, 24-hour economies, channel hopping and the superficial nature of television programming seem to support this. But again, this is all because we are searching. As previously noted, the information age and individualism are two sides of the same coin. To be born or to grow up in an information age means to receive and process stimuli in a different way than the generations before you did. A way that is faster and more cursory and as a result is deemed superficial. In actual fact the members of the information age are developing into more critical, and thus more indivualist, human beings than their forbears. They learn to see the interlinking of stories, to separate the main issue from facts of secondary importance without losing sight of the encompassing whole - an unmissable skill for someone who has to deal with a deluge of stimuli on a daily basis. The members of the information age know how to select from an overwhelming supply, which is exactly the premise on which the internet is built. They browse and scan their info and think in menus and multitasking. The leap from one subject to the next isn't a problem, because the input is processed faster. If we extrapolate that theory to the movies, then it's no surprise that the characters in The Matrix, a film made by two guys in their late twenties, can cope a lot easier with moving in and out of a virtual reality than the characters in eXistenZ, a film made by a director in his fifties. Someone in his fifties lacks the ability to jump from situation to situation of a younger generation. This works its way into story structure and cinematic narrative too, which brings us to the third and final element of the new cinema. An audience with a broader range of perception and an increased ability to process information gives the filmmaker a set of fresh possibilities when it comes to telling a story. Pulp Fiction, The Usual Suspects (Bryan Singer, 1995), Run Lola Run and Following (Christopher Nolan, 1998) all made use of this. Nolan specifically used our methods of perceiving, gathering and processing information as the premise of the fractured narrative of Following. Another example is the jump-cut nature of the opening act of Trainspotting. Here we jump (or switch, or surf) from situation to situation, while our perception is challenged even more by a deliberately vague line between fact and fiction. Though the memory of Trainspotting and its merits as a film have been tainted by marketing and forced-upon hipness, the film is most definitely a predecessor to Fight Club, which uses a similarly jumpy first act, to the mindgames of that same film and of course those of The Matrix and to the nearly overwhelming stream of sound and images of Run Lola Run. Whether the new wave truly has the stamina to make a lasting difference remains to be seen. A cynic could rightly point out that a cinema that has such profound roots in its own time is inherently dated. What is clear however, is that here is a solution to the problems of a Hollywood in crisis. But on a larger scale things resemble a revolt rather than a revolution. A true revolution would have higher goals and would free cinema from the still omnipotent grasp of postmodernism. The films THEME: American Beauty Fight Club The Matrix Run Lola Run Starship Troopers Crash Trainspotting Pulp Fiction Robocop A Clockwork Orange Videodrome VISUALS: Fight Club The Matrix Run Lola Run Starship Troopers Robocop NARRATIVE: Fight Club The Matrix eXistenZ Run Lola Run Following Starship Troopers Trainspotting Pulp Fiction The Usual Suspects Videodrome [15-01-2001]