Kong

I share Matt’s impression of King Kong. I enjoyed the film, but it was clearly a mess. Easily 45 minutes should have found its way onto the cutting room floor. People too often seem to think that directors have a perfect vision for their films, one that is somehow more genuine or authentic than that of producers or studio execs. To some extent this is true, but a producer can and should force a director to exercise some discipline.

That said, the story remains compelling, and there are some interesting elements. Jack Black’s performance has been treated as an Orson Welles impression, but I felt that Black was playing Peter Jackson. He seemed, to me, to embody Jackson’s quest to put Kong back on the big screen, from the clearly laudable elements to the very troubling. The least necessary addition to the story was the inclusion of a friendship between two members of the crew. The relationship took up a lot of time, but was not well fleshed out, and its meaning was unclear. Perhaps most awkward was the discussion of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, which fell completely flat.

This last is somewhat interesting, because I think that a comparison of Kong and Conrad could prove productive. The represent very different interpretations of the collision of the West with the colonial other, both of which are subversive in their own way. However, it’s painfully obvious that the flick was not the place to play this conversation out.