Today I'd like to rant at you over something which I have already ranted about elsewhere. Strictly speaking I could be accused of repeating myself, but I actually quite enjoy this particular rant, and in fact it gained some small acclaim when I first 'exhibited' it over on IMDB.
IMDB, for those of you who are yet to step in it, is the Internet Movie Database, a combination of Useful Resource and House of a Million Gibbering Lunatics. It's good for looking up the details of films, not so good for finding intelligent conversation. Unless you stumble upon Me, that is. Though that does presume that you find me in the mood for sensible conversation, and not in the middle of talking about the contribution of Cormorants to World War 2, or the finer points of Dalek history.
Anyway, point is - I liked this particular rant, and so I feel like writing a new version of it.
I've long been an intrigued observer of Mel Gibson's career. Actually, if you look up the word 'career', it has some interesting alternative meanings. It can, for example, describe the way a car swerves all over the road when it's being driven by a drink-sodden misogynist anti-semite. It can also be used in relation to the word 'checkered', rather as you might describe a man who has made good films and has also made a number of Randall Wallace films, as having a 'checkered career' - which here means 'a bit shit'.
Sure, sure, 'checkered' actually means 'containing both good and bad', but I take issue with that liberal interpretation of the term. Hitler was kind to children, apparently, but I do not apologise for overlooking this in my general assessment of his character. Now don't get me wrong. Mel Gibson isn't really like Hitler, and he did once make a film in which he acted - and nobody can take that away from him. In fact, there is solid evidence to suggest that he made more than one of these films, but these days it's rather difficult to remember efforts like 'Tim' and 'Gallipoli', since they're blotted out by the various films he's made about a man with staring eyes and a gun.
However, I recently gave more serious consideration to the matter and realised that I had terribly misunderestimated Mr. Gibson's efforts throughout his career. You see, I thought he was just making cynical, stupid, mindless action movies, but then the penny dropped and I saw the truth! When analysed closely there is a wonderful pattern in Mr. Gibson's film-making career. And when you study this, you realise that many of his films over the last 30 years have been chosen specifically to further his overarching artistic endeavour, which is a deep and thoughtful exploration of that most interesting and poignant of modern cinematic archetypes, The Ultraviolent Nutter With A Dead Girlfriend.
Consider his career path (his films I mean, not the negligent careering path of his driving, nor his wildly veering navigation of good taste).
1979 - Mad Max
Mel plays the improbably-named Max Rockatansky. Max is an ice-cold gladiatorial road warrior who fights against the collapse of civilisation by running hell's angels off the roads. For some reason the biggest threat to civilisation in the future will be dangerous driving, you see. But Max is a really nice guy who loves his family… until a biker gang murder his pretty wife and ickle babby child. So, Max gets a big gun and a big car with a big engine with a big supercharger that makes big VOOM! VAVAVA VOOM! noises, and goes driving with a big cold expression on his big teddy bear face, and wipes the lot of 'em out! Plus, he invents the plot of 'Saw' as an encore.
1981: Mad Max 2
Big Bad Max is out in the Big Bad Wasteland, dealing out more Big Bad Revenge to Big Bad Bikers cos his wife is dead you know. But, having got the whole dead wife thing over with in the first film, there isn't any need for, you know, actual women to appear in this film unless they're scatty blondes or sexy warrior women or moaning old crones.
1985: Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome
His wife is still dead. He's still mean, moody and magnificent. The films aren't still good.
1987: Lethal Weapon
Max… sorry, Mel plays the more sensibly-named Martin Riggs, a suicidally mad cop whose wife is dead. I feel we can, in all fairness, call this film 'Mad Max Cop'.
1989: Lethal Weapon 2
Mad Max Cop 2 - in more ways than one! Not only does the accidental death of Martin's wife Victoria turn out to have been murder, providing him with a revenge motive, allowing him to perpetrate wild slaughter with complete moral righteousness, but he also falls in gratuitous sex with a South African schoolgirl, who is promptly murdered - wait for this - by the SAME man who killed Victoria! Double trouble!
1990: Hamlet
William Shakespeare's sublime tragedy tells the story of how Danish Prince Hamlet discovers the truth of his father's murder, and contemplates this at length with soliloquies and stuff, before finally going nuts and killing everybody after his girlfriend dies. So, 'William Shakespeare's Mad Max' then.
1992: Lethal Weapon 3
Mad Max Cop 3! Only this time Max gets a girlfriend who is considerate enough to not get murdered (though she does take a hit in the closing stages, allowing for a certain amount of armour-piercing-bullet fury from the Baretta-Wielding-Berserker.) The viewers can take heart - just because Max hasn't had his girlfriend murdered in ages, that doesn't mean he can't still be mad.
1995: Braveheart
Mad Jock McMax comes home from the wars and marries an attractive wee lass who is promptly slaughtered before she can even get a chance to act. Max naturally goes berserk and starts killing people in large numbers. After all, his wife is dead. But then what can you expect when the lad was raised by Hannibal Lecter? Oh, his dad's dead too. Obviously. Mr. Burns From The Simpsons guest stars as King Edward The Evil.
1998: Lethal Weapon 4
By rights I should call this Mad Max Cop 4, but in truth it's more like a cross between a martial arts film and an episode of The Cosby Show, with Mad Max Cop occasionally gibbering to remind everybody who the star is. Dead Girlfriend Count: Nil. A real low point in Max's career.
2000: The Patriot
In a radical departure, Mel plays a man who gets through an entire film without his wife or girlfriend or father being murdered - though his son gets murderered instead, by the evil English evil officer, the evil English Captain English. Mel then kills lots of English people by way of retaliation.
2000: Gladiator
Or 'Mad Maximus' as I somewhat obviously call it. I know, Mel wasn't in this. My question is - why not?
This is a film being made about an ultraviolent man who spends the film slaughtering people in retaliation for the murder of his wife. And he's called Max. And in the event he's played by an objectionable Antipodean - Russell Crowe, the world's first Human Tribute Band to Mel Gibson.
2002: What Women Want
This doesn't actually fit the general trend, but I mention it because I find the title so interesting. Is it really an accurate title? What kind of ego does a man need to have his teddy-bear-face appear on a poster above the words 'What Women Want'? Isn't this film really 'What Men Think Women Want'? Perhaps it's "What Women Want Men To Think Women Want To Think Men Think Women Want"? Or something? The big revelation of this film, for other egotistical misogynists out there, is that women quite like it when men shut up and listen occasionally. Mel doesn't seem to have taken this on board, however.
2002: We Were Soldiers
This isn't a revenge film either, but it truly stinks, so I can hardly leave it out. And Mel does kill a lot of people in it… Oh, he's got a wife. Yeah, his character has a wife played by Madeleine Stowe. Well, I say 'wife'… I think really I mean 'little wife'. You know, 'little, doting, dutiful, mumsy wife who stays at home and talks about laundry with all her giggly mumsy army wife friends'. Not one female death in the whole film this time, which on the one hand might be thought progressive, but which on the other hand rather indicates that for Mel, women just aren't really very important unless they can die to provide murky moral justification for his killing sprees.
2002: Signs
Hey, come on. Pay attention. Yes, I know this is that silly alien invasion film from the Sixth Sense guy. But did you not notice? Mel plays a man whose wife is dead! And he wipes the aliens out! Come on, this is well within his abilities. Oh, and you know what… this film has cornfields… Joaquin Phoenix… a man with a dead wife… a lead actor who previously played a vengeful character called Max… This is some kind of weird sequel to 'Gladiator', surely?
2004: The Passion
And to finish, Mel Gibson's Great Work reached a metaphysical crescendo with this thoughtful, measured, and respectful ranting gibberish. By all accounts, the Pope himself said "hnnnggg' in his semi-catatonia after seeing this film, which when translated from the original Polish literally means "This film is an exact representation of the events depicted exactly as they occurred, God agrees, and oh yeah it was the Jews what done 'im in." He didn't seem to express an opinion on Gibson's unintional Freudian self-analysis when he depicts the devil as a woman with a snake for a willy. Ooer. I bet he can't sit through that bit in Return of the Jedi with the Sarlacc pit either - it probably triggers this strange phobia he has...
Essentially, The Passion is Braveheart without the battles. Even so, it's quite difficult to reach the end of this film and not harbour the suspicion that when the stone rolls back on the third day, Jesus is going to be standing there with a sword, a serious look on his face, and uttering the line "It's payback time" in Aramaic. I daresay the evil English Emperor Caligula of Rome (which is in England) probably kidnapped Mary Magdaleine in the original draft of the screenplay, and the last half hour would have involved Jesus taking the fight to Rome.
Not that I have a problem with Mel Gibson films, you understand. I'm sure he's a lovely man.
