Jean Cocteau, renaissance man and “poet” of film, theatre, writing (including poetry), designing and more was a truly remarkable human being, a leader in the surrealist and art movements, and one of the most influential men in the arts of the 20th century. Among his numerous other achievements, he really helped advance the idea of film as an art form and not just a storytelling form.
Probably best known among cinephiles for his 1946 film of Beauty and the Beast, until recently I was unaware that his two later Orpheus films were intended as the middle and end of a three-film trilogy, beginning with his first film, The Blood of a Poet.
It is a very experimental and surrealist film that broke a lot of ground in its day for special effects; some have aged less well than others, but a lot of this remains impressive and frankly more effective than zillion-dollar CGI jobs you know aren’t at all real. The work involved in pulling off some of this at the time must have been painstaking.
The “story,” such as it is, is that of a handsome and perennially shirtless male artist who is invited by one of his statues to fall into the mirror and pass through to the other side, where a series of strange tableaus unfold. I suspect it is meant as a metaphor for the creative inspiration process, both the downside where the ideas aren’t coming or don’t work, alongside the chasing of inspiration and realisation.
It’s gorgeous to look at, if hard to quite grasp. It’s certainly a surrealist film, and the only one I’ve seen that has an occasional narrator. Cocteau explores several techniques and ideas himself over the course of this 51-minute film, making it rather disjointed and occasionally confusing — but it’s hard to take your eyes off it.
This 1941 B&W fully-animated movie is considered the first Asian full-length animated film, and is certainly the first full-length Chinese animated film. While some western influence (particularly the early Looney Tunes of the 1930s and the early Disney movies like Snow White) can be seen, it is drawn from folk fables themselves inspired by a portion of a novel called Journey to the West, published in 1592.
The folk tales based on the book, we are told at the beginning of the movie, often focus on the supernatural creatures rather than the travelers and the moral of their journey — which is that life is full of trials and suffering. The filmmakers, however, wanted to emphasise the lesson of the story: that working together as a community, faith, and using everyone’s talents in harmony can overcome great obstacles, and make life better for all.
The tale is a fairly simple one: a monk trying to get to “the west” (meaning Central Asia and India) to obtain some Buddhist sacred texts (sutras), but is stopped by a mountain range full of fire. His three servants — a monkey prince, a pig-faced monk, and a stuttering but strong worker — each try to use their various magic powers to solve the problem. Specifically, they need to get a magic palm-leaf fan from an unhelpful princess in order to put out the fires, but their individual ruses and even brute force all fail.
Our three “heroes,” sort of.
The servants all regroup back at the town where the monk helps them brainstorm, suggesting that the three pool their abilities with the assistance of the townspeople to overcome the trickery of the princess and her husband. This they finally do, ultimately winning the day and clearly the mountains of the fire demon that tortures them, so that they and the monk can proceed on their journey of enlightenment.
Despite the handicap of no really good print of the film being available (it is desperately in need of a major restoration), the quality of the B&W animation shines through, with many impressive moments including extensive use of rotoscoping to make some scenes much more realistic, along with smoke effects and excellent character design. The various shape-shifting and disguising powers of the three servants are well done, and the quality of the existing film print picks up a bit in the last third.
The “evil” princess, who actually has a pretty small but pivotal part in the film.
This is primarily a film that would now mainly appeal to fans of early animation, film historians, and students of Chinese history, but it is a very impressive feat of filmmaking that is only marred by the lack of a pristine print. A special mention should go to the musical score, which starts off a bit overwrought in my opinion but soon settles down when needed to accompany the story. I enjoyed it enough that I would certainly revisit it if it were ever restored.
An example of the beautiful backgrounds in the film.
I’ll be blunt — I’ve seen a fair number of superhero films, including a good sampling (though nowhere near all) of the MCU and DC superhero movies. They can certainly be fun, but I usually find myself taken out of the story by the effects and stunts (regardless of how good they are, they routinely disrespect basic physics), especially as time goes on. Black Panther is certainly the best MCU movie I’ve seen to date, but that’s because it plays to my liking of Afro-futurism as a deeply underrated movie genre.
I was very impressed that Marvel went for a movie that was a deeply and topically the African and African-American experience as they did, adding in the futuristic secret of Wakanda, and one which dealt actually quite little with the typical superhero antics, though those boxes are certainly ticked — but there is relatively little of Black Panther the action man and mostly a focus on characters. A lot of the credit has to go to the note-perfect casting throughout.
Even the established stars like Andy Serkis and Michael B. Jordan turn in solid performances, and of course Lupita Nyong’o and Danai Gurira alongside Letitia Wright and Angela Bassett get plenty of non-romantic, meaningful screen time (makes a nice change in the male-dominated superhero genre). I would be deeply remiss if I didn’t mention Chaswick Boseman’s star turn, aided by great supporting characters played by Daniel Kaluuya, John Kani, Forest Whittaker, Sterling K. Brown, and Winston Duke. Some of the most believable and fleshed-out characters in the whole of the MCU are to be found here — and even though he wasn’t quite as great as the rest of the cast, it was great fun to see Martin Freeman as the token white ally.
For a fantasy movie, this had a lot of hard truths within it — starting with the guise that has kept Wakanda’s secret: of course the rest of the world is comfortable seeing Wakanda as a poor country not worth making into a tourist destination, since it pretends to have no practical resources to exploit. The central theme of the film is actually the debate going on both internally and externally about whether Wakanda can reveal its power source, wealth, and technology to the wider world without risking colonization.
The villain of the piece, N’Jadaka/Killmonger, turns out to be T’Challa’s nephew. T’Challa’s father T’Chaka murdered his own brother, N’Jadaka’s father N’Jobu, for stealing and selling Vibranium — which some disreputable people (like Ulysses Klaue, played by Serkis) have come to understand is Wakanda’s secret.
This injustice, which T’Chaka later covered up and kept secret, causes the boy N’Jadaka to become a mercenary killer known as Killmonger. Now an adult, and having trained as a Black Ops Navy SEAL, he returns to Wakanda to challenge T’Challa for the throne. He appears to win the challenge, and immediately begins implementing the flip side of the Wakanda debate: he wants to position this secretly-superior country as the rightful ruler of all countries, turning its technology and resources into a war machine.
Killmonger finds lots of allies among the Wakandan population, and wins over the military wing. T’Challa, having disappeared and taken time to recover from near-death after the first battle with Killmonger, returns to Wakanda to reclaim his throne and must resume his battle — now with much of Wakandan might allied against him, and Killmonger now has powers and the suit the equal of the Black Panther.
As with all such movies, good eventually prevails against wrong, but unlike most other MCU films, things are not fully reset at the end. T’Challa takes on enough of the “Wakanda should be open” argument to bring his defectors back around, and starts making carefully-considered moves to let the world know about his country. It reminds me of some of the more recent, more mature Bond movies in its handling of issues, but the effects are strictly standard-issue, with a mix of fighting/action enhanced stunt work, and Sci-Fi type holo-effects abounding.
I’m reluctantly giving Black Panther three and a half stars because of the issues it raises and the focus on Afri-centric style and solid characterization, which means less time for (but still plenty of) fight/stunt/SF sequences, though certainly less stuff blows up in this one than any MCU film I’d seen thus far. I’m hoping — but not expecting — the sequel, Wakanda Forever, to keep this balancing act going. Sadly, Boseman’s premature death from cancer meant that much of what we would have expected from the sequel had to be changed.
The Chasbah 
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