A Review, Followed by a Revelation
Jan. 2nd, 2010 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarcasticwriterI haven’t been able to get into Livejournal for days, due to internet issues. Way to support my resolution, Universe.
Anyway, Saturday morning I took myself downtown to see some movies, starting with The Young Victoria. The the critics’ consensus on Rotten Tomatoes warned that the movie, while lush-looking, was somewhat anemic and distancing when it came to the storyline. I prepared myself for that disappointment, but I was very pleasantly surprised. Emily Blunt was very engaging as the teenage Queen Victoria, her chemistry with her co-star was good, the rest of the acting was very supportive, and the costumes and historical sets were likewise perfectly appealing. I do have a theory why it might strike a distancing chord with some audiences, though.
As a young queen who is trying to fight off many who would manipulate her, Victoria says little and often does not say what she is thinking. One of the movie’s central themes is that of game-playing, of manipulating people like chess pieces. Victoria despairs that she feels that she is only valued as a chess piece, and it is Alpert who encourages her to take command of the game. She often does this with feints and manipulations in conversation, of keeping her true opinion in reserve until she has enough power to enforce it. For audiences who might not be familiar with the challenges faced by historical female monarchs, Victoria’s silence might seem distancing, but I’ve read enough well-researched historical fiction and seen enough documentaries that I felt like I completely understood not only her history, but her psyche. The film’s occasional voiceover by the character allows the audience past her outward reserve, and once you understand that the character is thinking many things she is not saying, the movie is not distancing whatsoever. Unfortunately, the audience needs to be able to empathize with the character even when she is showing no significant outward signs of emotion, so if the audience does not bring a certain degree of familiarity of the genre to the table, it is not privy to her understated emotional experience.
I don’t say this to pat myself on the back as being particularly worldly or sophisticated. There are plenty of movies in genres I am not knowledgeable enough in to really enjoy. But The Young Victoria is one I already understood. If that’s your kind of movie (and you’ll know if it is), it’s an excellent film.
After The Young Victoria I headed a block to the other theater to see The Princess and the Frog. Coincidentally, I again solidly disagree with the critics’ consensus on Rotten Tomatoes; while it mostly found glowing praise in reviews, I found the movie to be exceedingly tedious, populated by irritating characters, frenetic comic relief, and very tired clichés.
Admitting that hurt a lot. I love – I mean, love - the hand-drawn format. Because as far as the CGI animation has come, it still hasn’t managed to get dramatic human protagonists (and sometimes certain realistic dramatic animals) entirely right. If you want a classical fairytale – one that has a beautiful female lead – you have to return to the hand-drawn format.
I should pause here and say that while I do sort of have an issue with all humans in CGI movies, I am speaking more to classical romantic protagonists; leading men and leading ladies, characters that are supposed to be beautiful or handsome, dignified and not particularly comedic. Comic characters thrive on a high degree of stylization, but beautiful human characters require a much stricter series of aesthetic choices, choices that bring them close to the proportions of real human faces, and perhaps too close to avoid the Uncanny Valley once they are rendered in CGI’s artificial three-dimensional plane.
Of course, hand-drawn images exaggerate facial proportions hugely, but they’re also far enough away from portraying actual human beings that we don’t encounter the Uncanny Valley at all. We can recognize the exaggerated elements of 2D beauty, and, when we’re not confronted with CGI’s not-quite-right hair, not-quite-right skin texture, not-quite-right shading of the planes of the face, not-quite-right muscle –
Holy shit.
I think I might have just pinned it down. CGI rendered human characters don’t have microexpressions. Mostly we hear about microexpressions as they relate to telltale signs that a person is lying, but microexpressions convey a lot of other subtle, subconscious information about a person’s emotional state. We expect realistic CGI faces to have microexpressions, and when they don’t (in combination with not-quite-right hair, skin, etc.), we slip into CGI’s Uncanny Valley and disconnect from the character.
However, when art gets far enough away from a real human being, you subconsciously stop expecting microexpressions (and correct rendering of the human face in a real-world environment). You’re able to tolerate a high degree of stylized exaggeration. Put another way, hand-drawn animation can have beautiful characters because we don’t expect microexpressions, but CGI does not because it is incapable of meeting real-world standards of beauty in an artificial three-dimensional reality.
I wonder if this means that CGI animation is literally incapable of rendering human beauty, and as such, if we’ll never see a serious CGI animated fairytale. I use “serious” rather loosely here, because of course there haven’t been many “serious” animated fairytales. But some of them have had enough seriousness – enough pathos – to be deeply satisfying emotional experiences.
My, this has drifted from The Princess and the Frog, hasn’t it?
This entry has gotten long enough, and this week was uneventful, so I’ll do a more focused review of The Princess and the Frog on a different day.
Anyway, Saturday morning I took myself downtown to see some movies, starting with The Young Victoria. The the critics’ consensus on Rotten Tomatoes warned that the movie, while lush-looking, was somewhat anemic and distancing when it came to the storyline. I prepared myself for that disappointment, but I was very pleasantly surprised. Emily Blunt was very engaging as the teenage Queen Victoria, her chemistry with her co-star was good, the rest of the acting was very supportive, and the costumes and historical sets were likewise perfectly appealing. I do have a theory why it might strike a distancing chord with some audiences, though.
As a young queen who is trying to fight off many who would manipulate her, Victoria says little and often does not say what she is thinking. One of the movie’s central themes is that of game-playing, of manipulating people like chess pieces. Victoria despairs that she feels that she is only valued as a chess piece, and it is Alpert who encourages her to take command of the game. She often does this with feints and manipulations in conversation, of keeping her true opinion in reserve until she has enough power to enforce it. For audiences who might not be familiar with the challenges faced by historical female monarchs, Victoria’s silence might seem distancing, but I’ve read enough well-researched historical fiction and seen enough documentaries that I felt like I completely understood not only her history, but her psyche. The film’s occasional voiceover by the character allows the audience past her outward reserve, and once you understand that the character is thinking many things she is not saying, the movie is not distancing whatsoever. Unfortunately, the audience needs to be able to empathize with the character even when she is showing no significant outward signs of emotion, so if the audience does not bring a certain degree of familiarity of the genre to the table, it is not privy to her understated emotional experience.
I don’t say this to pat myself on the back as being particularly worldly or sophisticated. There are plenty of movies in genres I am not knowledgeable enough in to really enjoy. But The Young Victoria is one I already understood. If that’s your kind of movie (and you’ll know if it is), it’s an excellent film.
After The Young Victoria I headed a block to the other theater to see The Princess and the Frog. Coincidentally, I again solidly disagree with the critics’ consensus on Rotten Tomatoes; while it mostly found glowing praise in reviews, I found the movie to be exceedingly tedious, populated by irritating characters, frenetic comic relief, and very tired clichés.
Admitting that hurt a lot. I love – I mean, love - the hand-drawn format. Because as far as the CGI animation has come, it still hasn’t managed to get dramatic human protagonists (and sometimes certain realistic dramatic animals) entirely right. If you want a classical fairytale – one that has a beautiful female lead – you have to return to the hand-drawn format.
I should pause here and say that while I do sort of have an issue with all humans in CGI movies, I am speaking more to classical romantic protagonists; leading men and leading ladies, characters that are supposed to be beautiful or handsome, dignified and not particularly comedic. Comic characters thrive on a high degree of stylization, but beautiful human characters require a much stricter series of aesthetic choices, choices that bring them close to the proportions of real human faces, and perhaps too close to avoid the Uncanny Valley once they are rendered in CGI’s artificial three-dimensional plane.
Of course, hand-drawn images exaggerate facial proportions hugely, but they’re also far enough away from portraying actual human beings that we don’t encounter the Uncanny Valley at all. We can recognize the exaggerated elements of 2D beauty, and, when we’re not confronted with CGI’s not-quite-right hair, not-quite-right skin texture, not-quite-right shading of the planes of the face, not-quite-right muscle –
Holy shit.
I think I might have just pinned it down. CGI rendered human characters don’t have microexpressions. Mostly we hear about microexpressions as they relate to telltale signs that a person is lying, but microexpressions convey a lot of other subtle, subconscious information about a person’s emotional state. We expect realistic CGI faces to have microexpressions, and when they don’t (in combination with not-quite-right hair, skin, etc.), we slip into CGI’s Uncanny Valley and disconnect from the character.
However, when art gets far enough away from a real human being, you subconsciously stop expecting microexpressions (and correct rendering of the human face in a real-world environment). You’re able to tolerate a high degree of stylized exaggeration. Put another way, hand-drawn animation can have beautiful characters because we don’t expect microexpressions, but CGI does not because it is incapable of meeting real-world standards of beauty in an artificial three-dimensional reality.
I wonder if this means that CGI animation is literally incapable of rendering human beauty, and as such, if we’ll never see a serious CGI animated fairytale. I use “serious” rather loosely here, because of course there haven’t been many “serious” animated fairytales. But some of them have had enough seriousness – enough pathos – to be deeply satisfying emotional experiences.
My, this has drifted from The Princess and the Frog, hasn’t it?
This entry has gotten long enough, and this week was uneventful, so I’ll do a more focused review of The Princess and the Frog on a different day.
