The not-so incredible Incredible Hulk.
Marvel Comics is now-unarguably-the leading source of today's cultural myths. After the recent pulp-to-screen, large-scale adaptations of Spiderman, Daredevil, X-Men and now Hulk, Marvel has "changed our ways of presenting human nature, if not human nature itself." That quote comes from scholar Harold Bloom's summary of Shakespeare's Western preeminence, but it also describes Hollywood's grave reliance on Marvel-esque special f/x fantasy.
Enter Ang Lee, the most humorless of acclaimed contemporary filmmakers, always hankering for the "intelligent" and "tasteful"-which now includes the appreciation of graphic novels as the popular measure of human experience. If some preview audiences were disappointed by Lee's Hulk, it's only because they don't realize what it means. Lee officially elevates their low-brow pop icon to middle-brow status-and dryness.
Lee takes the original 1962 Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Marvel Comics concept seriously, as a sensible treatise on human nature-if not human nature itself. Research scientist Bruce Banner (played by Eric Bana) embodies normality to the point that he lacks introspection and accepts his own repression. In a laboratory mishap Banner is exposed to gamma rays that ignite the experimental genetic code passed on to him by his own scientist father David Banner (Nick Nolte) who had been working on an antidote to radioactive weaponry. The accident also unlocks Bruce's repressed memory and anger, transforming him from a pale, acquiescent dork into a green, howling gargantuan.
"I feel that everyone has a Hulk inside," Ang Lee reasons in the film's press kit. "And each of our Hulks is both scary and, potentially, pleasurable." He never really gets to the pleasure principle. Instead, Lee's collaborator and screenwriter James Schamus explains how they "moved the script in directions that would allow Ang a chance to grapple with certain ideas-the familial conflicts, the search for Banner's past, the genesis of the Hulk."
As a team, Lee and Schamus are not fantasists; they're literal-minded esthetes. This won them specious praise for the politically correct domestic dramas The Wedding Banquet, Eat Drink Man Woman and the woozy literary adaptations The Ice Storm and Sense and Sensibility. No one expected to have a good time at those movies, and so accepted dullness as a sign of refinement. Even Lee and Schamus' Ride with the Devil, a Civil War snoozer that fashionably took the side of the Confederacy, demonstrated how solemnity can overwhelm political sense-and good intentions. But it also demonstrated Lee and Schamus' inability to distinguish their intellectual ambitions from genuine cultural exploration. With their academic backgrounds, they're a younger, pedigreed, even more pretentious Merchant-Ivory.
Lately, they have presumed to upgrade popular entertainment. Giving sense and sensibility to the Hulk reflects the same bland instincts that produced Lee and Schamus' biggest hit, the infuriating Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. No one talks about that movie anymore; its temporary success was the result of promotional hype. A similar remoteness can be felt in Hulk, only not having to read subtitles makes it more apparent. That Hulk's audience might be more discriminating than the Hong Kong enthusiasts who supported Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (they felt hipster obligation) is an amusing irony. They'll be rejecting Lee and Schamus' effort to once again prove the hegemony of trash culture.
Here's a further irony: I prefer Hulk to all the other Lee and Schamus films. It has a vital simplicity that Crouching Tiger and Sense and Sensibility especially lacked. Their best idea is Lee's controversial decision to show the Hulk as anime-leaping across the desert, toying with helicopters and army tanks. Clearly fake images preserve the link to the Marvel Comics origin and give a viewer the pleasure of imaginatively projected fantasy. These f/x fly in the face of the conventional CGI notion that make-believe must look real. In their literal-mindedness, Lee and Schamus have contravened the movement that sanctions digital f/x and comic book metaphors as Hollywood's alternative to human nature itself.
Good actors also maintain the old-fashioned separation between CGI and life. Eric Bana's oval face and dark eyes have a boyish gentleness that, as Bruce Banner edges toward the end of his emotional tether, becomes thrillingly livid. The humane scale of Bana's rage is nearly as phenomenal here as it was in Chopper. (It's a racist joke that Denzel Washington's Training Day tantrum was honored the same year Chopper was overlooked.) Describing his transformation, "When it comes over me and I totally lose control, I like it!" Bana conveys the same relief we experience at seeing Hercules unchained or watching King Kong battle his adversaries. As Banner's lab colleague and love interest, Jennifer Connelly suggests a raven-haired Rapunzel (or a young Liz Taylor) just enough to make the story's subplot momentarily romantic. Nolte, as Banner's deranged father, expounds Nietzchean logic with showstopping gravity. Nolte gives Hulk the same Oedipal-politics-writ-large as Arthur Penn's Target. Turning him into an electrified CGI monster (worse than what he did to his son) is, simply, less awesome.
Hulk has a different tone from movies that exult in comic book mythology. Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers was more exciting, Joseph Losey's Modesty Blaise was quirkier-both movies had a sense of satire. Hulk lacks the imposture that is essential to Pop art-just as Sense and Sensibility lacked real sensibility, Crouching Tiger lacked zest. Lee's audacious split-screen effects multiply the images on screen, replicating comic book panels by turning every post or doorjamb into a border that frames different shots, even using an obvious variety of shapes (from cannibus leaves to helicopter blades) as transition devices. But none of it has the wit of the many wipe-dissolves Walter Hill has innovated over the years. There's not even the parodic silliness of the comic book panel-imitations you see in the Bonecrusher music video Never Scared or Missy Elliott's Sock It 2 Me.
Lee is a no-fun filmmaker. His gentleman-amateur approach to different movie genres is not a sign of masterful sophistication. He and Schamus will try anything, but their staid academicism isn't good for much. A genuine intellectual-philological-approach would explore the appeal of comic book mythology as Charles Burnett did with the rookie cop protagonist of The Glass Shield. Lee and Schamus take no intellectual risks. They simply latch on to Hollywood's comic book and CGI craze. In the crucial moments when father and son confront each other's ambitions and regrets and Bruce Banner recovers a primal memory, Lee lacks the basic movie craft to build parallel emotional momentum. Maybe it's because he feels no conviction for what is, after all, Marvel's trite comic book plotting. Who can blame him? He's an adult. But attempting pop iconography with absolutely no panache is just arrogant.
When movies were made in a literate era, many of them were adaptations of stage plays. Television and comics have nearly extinguished theater culture and virtually discarded spoken language. What's missing in this Marvelized era? Seeing people express themselves through words and the eloquent play of emotion in their bodily movement and facial gestures. The American Film Theater series of the 1970s preserves that steadily vanishing culture in Kino International's double DVD sets, comprising ten modern plays in all.
The pet project of Ely Landau, who had produced Sidney Lumet's great, definitive film of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night, the American Film Theater resembles Ang Lee's literal-minded approach, but fortunately time and good taste were on Landau's side. Dedicated actors, directors and playwrights make the series a milestone. It captures a now-gone moment in cultural literacy for which no f/x can compensate. The AFT versions of The Iceman Cometh, The Maids, A Delicate Balance, The Homecoming and others enrich one's idea of what movies could be. (Seeing these filmed plays makes you long for some brave contemporary filmmaker to preserve August Wilson's Seven Guitars or Edward Albee's The Goat on film.) Landau's low-budget technique is regrettable, but what always comes through in Kino's discs is an unequaled presentation of human nature, if not human nature itself.