Sunday, April 09, 2000

It's one year, shy a month, since TPM came out in theaters. There was hype and crashed moviefone lines and the thrill of seeing the words “Episode I” come up in the open crawl for the first time. Big movie screens with surround, digital sound.

But when that's all over, when Star Wars Episode I comes to video, what then? Watching a film on videocassette is the acid test of a movie. There are stereo televisions and big screen televisions and home theaters, of course. But Episode I arrives WBDVD -- without benefit of DVD. The picture is as sharp as videotape can manage, no more, no less.

Lucasfilm chose to market the letterbox, wide-screen format in a gift box with a film strip, booklet, and behind the scenes footage. At $29.95 at Tower Records I decided to pass. Last summer I invested quite enough hard earned cash into the film, between the soundtrack and return visits to the movie theaters. For $16.95 I could have the pan-and-scan. Being a purist, I've started buying a lot of my tapes in widescreen, but I'm used to the widescreen being either the same price or one or two dollars more.

There are two TVs in my house. One is a 21” stereo TV with a stereo VCR. The other is a little 13” with a mono VCR. I watched my pan-and-scan version on the little TV. The test doesn't get acider than that.

Two hours and fifteen minutes later, on a cold Sunday during a freak snowstorm (I was still sunburned from my day in the park the day before) I formed my conclusion.

The secret, the truth no one seems to want to hear, is this: The movie's good.

It's a flawed movie. But as any English professor will tell you, Shakespeare had his flawed plays, his racial stereotypes. The flaws of Episode I are isolated and while not trivial by any means, aren't enough to destroy what is so very good here.

The problems lie in four areas: the existence of Jar Jar Binks, some unfortunate racial stereotyping and accents, the over-acting of Jake Lloyd, and the fact that we don't get to witness the suffering and dying of the Naboo people.

I can make good arguments to excuse the last two issues. Although Jake is no Haley Joel Osment, my trust remains with the creator, George Lucas, who had his reasons for choosing Jake, reasons which seem apparent on screen. He has a charisma, innocence, and empathy that is right for the child Anakin. Critics and fans griped that he had no darkness. That's the point. How did such a gee-whiz golden child turn into the heavy-breathing heavy Darth Vader? It's the kind of stuff great epics are made of. (For more on Anakin, see my original diary.) As for the white-washing of Naboo's troubles, I think Lucas and his team may have feared making the first film too dark. This is the film that's supposed to be at the top of the slope that rolls down into despair and back up out again. It has to be light. Filmgoers have imagination -- the suffering is there, implicit, even if we don't see it. It may have been a mistake not to show it on screen, but this isn't an issue that detracts from the cathartic and visual pleasures of the film.

As for accents, well, yeah. I know. But it's balanced by the multi-ethnic casting. Heck, this film had a female fighter pilot, something conspicuously absent in any of the other three films. Episode I manages to simultaneously be politically and not politically correct.

Jar Jar. Well, Jar Jar still should die. But on occasion, he makes me smile. And I still say Gungans are better than Ewoks. Boss Nass balances Jar Jar. Watch the film, ignore Jar Jar.

Now, the good stuff. Hm. Ewan McGreger, Liam Neeson. The incredible art direction -- Coruscant and Naboo and the underwater Gungan city, beautiful tapestries of a time lost. The pod race, which is one of the most suspenseful and visually amazing sequences I've ever seen on film (and I've seen a lot of movies, I really have). Small, quiet moments like Padme comforting Anakin, or Anakin talking with Qui-Gon at Shmi's dinner table, Anakin and Shmi's good-bye scene. You have to be a very cynical, hardened viewer not even to be moved by John William's music score at that point, as the force theme swells in and Ani walks away to his destiny. The music is worth a thousand words. The final battle between Darth Maul, Qui-Gon, and Obi-Wan. Not just that the special effects rocked. It's that they were so pretty, the backgrounds, sets, costumes, colors so vibrant.

It's eye candy, and perhaps much can be forgiven because of eye candy, a conclusion my friend Batya and I reached during a phone conversation earlier this week. We realized that being so visually oriented, maybe we were kinder to the film.

But there have been eye candy films that didn't touch the emotions. This reached me on a visual and intellectual level. It's not just the eye candy that makes Episode I fly. Otherwise it would not have bewitched me on a 13” television screen almost equally as on a 40' movie screen. It's not the greatest film ever. It's not even the best Star Wars film. But it's a good film.

The media reports that pre-release sales are “not stellar” for Star Wars on video.

Where did all the fans go?

Where are all the people who obsessively kept websites, downloaded trailers, and waited in line literally for weeks?

Those who worship at the altar of Lucas are now disgruntled because they don't have a DVD release.

Anticipation reached such a fever pitch last May that no force on earth, no film maker on earth, could have met expectations. This is Star Wars' strength and its weakness. It is more than just a movie, it's an insitution. People placed their hopes, vulnerable, before Episode I, and were disappointed. George Lucas stumbled. Whether or not he tripped and fell won't be clear until the next installment is released.

You know what? I'm going to cut the guy some slack and just enjoy the ride. Usually I can be quite critical and it takes a lot to make me go “wow.” It says something that I'm defending TPM so fiercely with a flaming lightsaber. There's something there.

I'm awaiting Episode II a wiser fan, not quite so excited (but it's early yet), with low expectations but an open mind. There will be no count-down diary from me this time; never again will there be an Episode Prime.

The Phantom Menace is part of something that is more than just a movie. But in itself, as “just a movie,” it's flawed and, to this filmgoer, absolutely beautiful.

No matter how I watch it.

(Constance Cochran spends most of her time watching or reading, and then discussing, amazing things such as Star Wars. She resides and works in New York City. Her site -- where the diary can be found, along with a lot more of her musings -- is at http://start.at/dottxt.)