These two would make a neat double bill on the theme of superficiality. Both deal with appearance and illusion and as such, both leave themselves immediately open to criticism for being somewhat empty and insubstantial films. One of them could actually make a case for being an engaging study of vacuous people; the other, however, is essentially vacuous in and of itself.
The film I’m being fairly positive about is The Bling Ring, Sofia Coppola’s heist drama based on the real-life exploits of a group of affluent teenagers who burgled the unlocked homes of Hollywood’s most fashionable celebrities repeatedly over a year-long period beginning in October 2008.
Considering the goldmine of themes that Coppola has the opportunity to exploit and examine, she has little to say in either support or condemnation of the annoying gang of thing-obsessed youngsters at the heart of her film. The script is saturated with so much “like”s “totally”s and “oh my God”s that there is barely enough room for any dialogue that means anything. We learn little about the motives of the perpetrators, see nothing of their pasts that might shed some light on their characters, in fact see nothing beyond the artifice of their shallow concerns. Coppola refuses to be drawn on whether the bling ring are victims of a society obsessed with fame and shiny objects or simply opportunists looking for expensive stuff and an adrenaline rush.
The direction is stylised for sure, with notable heavy use of slow motion which serves to glorify the great time everyone is having. My favourite shot is a static wide (probably filmed from a helicopter) of a huge Hollywood house which is entered by the two leaders of the group, Rebecca and Marc who rifle through their victims belongings, pack their spoils into bags and exit – all in the space of around 2 minutes.
The cast consist of several solid debut performers, with Katie Chang and Israel Broussard being particularly impressive in their first outing. Inevitably, much of the spotlight falls on Harry Potter megastar Emma Watson but – as in The Perks of Being a Wallflower last year – she continues to defy the washed-out-ex-child-actor stereotype posting another accomplished portrayal. Her character Nicki Moore has the arrogant swagger at the film’s core and, although she has little screen time compared to some of the others, her presence is a strong adhesion in the group scenes and pure deadpan in the press interview scenes.
However much you might want The Bling Ring to be a bit harsh on someone or something, it isn’t a biting satire. It isn’t a eulogy to glamour either. Clearly Sofia Coppola has made a vapid film in order to depict vapid lifestyles – which is almost a get out of jail free card… as such, it’s difficult to praise or criticise the film beyond saying that her approach is probably the right one. It’s about nothing and has nothing to say about characters who live for glitzy nothings. And that probably says everything.
***
Now for Now You See Me which centres on four illusionists/con-artists (Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher and Dave Franco) whose massive live shows appear to drain the biggest bank vaults of the world and spit the stolen money out into the grateful audience. With the authorities on their tails desperate to prove them as criminals, ‘the Four Horsemen’ – as they dub themselves – put on shows of ever increasing size and ambition. The film is constantly building momentum towards… something… Whatever it is, we never really have it defined for us and by the time the film works itself out, everything ends and a soldered-on denouement offers a tedious explanation, leaving us feeling as empty and unconvinced as a film can.
Riffing on the theme of performance magic and hiring various Christopher Nolan regulars, the film has heavy pretensions of being something like The Prestige – one of the best films there is – but comes nowhere close.
In The Prestige, when Michael Cane says something mysterious about the psychology of magic, it is then backed up by an absorbing array of film trickery and breathtaking narrative misdirection all of which ties plot, character and atmosphere into something approaching the best film of the 00s. In Now You See Me, when Morgan Freeman says something mysterious like “the more you think you see, the easer it’ll be to fool you” or “the closer you think you are, the less you’ll actually see”, what then happens is a few special effects, magic show audiences then say “wow” in an attempt to make the cinema audiences say “wow” and eventually we’re all wowing at how little anything ties together.
Jon Bates Writes 