Sucker Punch (Zack Snyder)

[jack]

Sucker Punch attempts to tell a real world horror story (the main character is sent to an asylum by her abusive step father to silence her) using Epic Fantasy Battle imagery.

In several ways, it reminds me of Inglorious Basterds: both feel like a clever and artistic director saw a controvertial subject, and exclaimed "hey, I could tell something really thought-provoking with that", and ladled on a lot of artistic imagery, and made a film with a really interesting premise, but the notable flaws that:

(a) because he waded into a controvertial subject he wasn't already an expert of, people will be incredibly polarised whether they really like the interesting bits, or incredibly pained by having lots of evocative imagery of a painful subject metaphorically thrust in their faces with little excuse

(b) it felt like the interesting premise was enough, which means the interesting bits of both films are in setting up the characters and establishing the premise, but when we get to the Glorious Imagery bits of the film, he forgot to make up anything interesting to go _in_ it, so it's all rather boring.

On the first, I don't feel sure to comment. I saw aspects of both "look, gratuiously nasty things happening to people in skimy outfits is usually exploitative" and "basically no other films have a core message of 'normal people surviving horrible situations can be just as AWESOME BADASS as military heroes blowing up dragons and we can be sexy if we want without it being gratuitous' so we should treasure this one!"

On the second, I think this is why no-one liked it much, whether they were inclined to love or hate the premise. The fantasy battle scenes didn't really feel like they had much content: if they'd been more closely tied to things happening in the real world from the start and/or it had felt like there was some serious back and forth and/or there had been interesting opposing characters, they would have been a lot more exciting, but apart from the beginning of the first, and the end of the last, it just felt like "cinematic awesome stereotypes #57, go, yawn, yawn, yawn, done".

Comments

[rysmiel]

This one did not, on the whole, work for me.

I felt that what it was trying to do had an element of "look, that whole band-of-brothers shape of heroism and emotional sentimentality works with women as well, and with women in real-life situations" that was totally failing to get how pushing self-sacrifice as a positive decision for a female character in the 1950s has a whole pile of other strong connotations that don't work in the direction of empowerment. I also think that the escape-plan in the brothel-level of reality being so readily thwarted by random chance, and contrived to push toward the valorisation of self-sacrifice, cuts actively against the message of empowerment it was being sold as; it's not depicting a world where striving for competence, thinking things through, or general resourcefulness actually makes it past some fairly low hurdles.

I also disliked it for the dishonesty of taking a character who, in the outer frame story, is deceived into carrying out an unpleasant act, and responds to discovering he was deceived in ways that show decency and integrity, and painting him as a cartoon villain in the inner frame. And ye gods, would it have helped to give the Scott Glenn part to a woman. (In my own personal ideal world, Helen Mirren.) I was rather taken by the spectacle scenes purely as spectacle scenes, though.

The comparisons it suggested to me were, on one hand the handling of the female soldier character in David Mamet's Spartan, which works in precisely the wasy Sucker Punch did not, for me, and on the other hand, Tension: the Void, which is a weird and compelling and beautiful first-person adventure game that's taken some flak for having a male protagonist and being otherwise full of languid, passive, scantily clad female characters; most of which reviews appear to my reading to be from people who gave up an hour or two into a forty-hour-ish game and have not therefore noticed that the male characters, when they appear, are all belligerent, insecure, pathologically jealous Giger/Cronenberg cyborgymutanty grotesques; the critical subtext in re notions of gender identity and expectations of gender roles video games in general is left as an exercise for the reader. (That sentence was phrased with great care to avoid as many spoilers as possible; if you've not played the game, I suggest avoiding online discussions/reviews which tend generally to be less careful, as this is really one thing more impressive for unfolding in its own time. It is also fiendishly hard in some ways; I think the sorts of challenge in it might be a thing you would enjoy.)

[andrewducker]

It didn't work for me largely because the scenes of Anime-Violence were so cut off from what might have been actually happening in the real world that I didn't care about them, at all. If there had been analogues between the real world and the combat that had been obvious, so that we could see where mistakes in comic-world would translate into bad things in the real world then I'd have been much more involved.

[rysmiel]

I parse the anime-violence scenes as representing the dance numbers we don't actually see in the brothel-reality, the in-world intent and of which is above all to be a distraction; ideally, to compel attention to shiny Cool Stuff and stop the audience thinking about what's going on in brothel-world; it certainly has that effect on the brothel-world audience.

I can certainly see you failing to care about them as a failure on behalf of the scenes, and the disconnect there felt like a missed opportunity to me when first I saw the film, but on further reflection, direct analogues to the brothel-world action would feel to me to be cutting directly against the plot purpose of "we are going to blow your mind so you stop thinking about what's going on in brothel-world for a bit", it would pull the viewer's mind back where the viewer is supposed to be not looking. Which as a storytelling technique is something I am inclined to laud the film for trying, particularly as I think one is meant to tumble to that being what it is doing after the first couple of fantasy sequences but still be swept away by the later ones.

[jack]

to compel attention to shiny Cool Stuff and stop the audience thinking about what's going on in brothel-world

Hm. That's a really interesting point. I wouldn't like to guess whether that was deliberate on or not...

Either way, I can see an argument for not reverting to the brothel, but it still feels like the fight scenes should have more connection to _something_. It's likely I wasn't doing them justice (I saw DVD, not in the cinema), or that I'm too genre-aware, and they were tense for the intended audience, but the middle two I definitely felt as filler rather than something that might legitimately be defeated by the steam nazis or dragon.

[jack]

Thank you, that's an excellent description of _why_ several things I already saw as bad were problematical.

a whole pile of other strong connotations

You're right. "That seems superficially reasonable, but actually is a sufficiently emotionally loaded concept if you know the context it can't be there without obscuring everything else" is a phrase that needs to be said more often -- practically all the time.

Several people made the point that exactly the same sort of "go on without me" is made in male war films, but you're right, that's not the point, it IS different in sucker punch, not because the main character is urged to give up her ambitions for something she doesn't believe in, but because sufficiently many other women were, it shouldn't really be brought up.

This is what I mean when I say the film is clever but walking on eggshells -- it works very well as feminist escapism for at least some people who _don't_ share those connotations, but that doesn't mean it was a good idea.

it's not depicting a world where striving for competence, thinking things through, or general resourcefulness actually makes it past some fairly low hurdles.

Again, you're right. I think they're SUPPOSED to be big hurdles, and we're supposed to be impressed with the characters (which is a fairly good plot), but now you point it out, I agree that however hard they may be to live through, the weakness in portraying the hurdles well makes it look like the women are much weaker than they're supposed to be.

I think the sorts of challenge in it might be a thing you would enjoy.

Thank you. I definitely added it straight to my list of things to try! :)

[jack]

painting him as a cartoon villain in the inner frame

You mean the doctor? I found it very hard to tell.

Firstly because in the hospital, if he was habitually giving lobotomies (especially without checking with the requesting doctor why she thought it was necessary) that's pretty dire by modern standards. But I don't know if the film was suggesting that deliberately or not. Are we supposed to see him as a good person who ended up doing bad things in their day job, but came through to do the right thing at the end of the film? Or are we supposed to assume he didn't usually do lobotomies, or genuinely had good reason to think he was doing the right thing for the patient if he did?

Conversely, in the brothel, didn't he barely appear? The internet suggested he was supposed to have a larger role in some deleted scenes where he was supposed to be scary in advance and then surprisingly compassionate when the main character actually met him, but that lots of people thought that was portrayed very badly, since however compassionate he seemed, "falling in love with the man you've been brainwashed to have sex with" is almost impossible to portray as a genuinely loving decision, rather than Stockholm syndrome.

[rysmiel]

Or are we supposed to assume he didn't usually do lobotomies, or genuinely had good reason to think he was doing the right thing for the patient if he did?

I read it as the latter; that lobotomies are things he regards as a very serious unpleasant necessity in specific circumstances and he is horrified to think he might have carried out one that wasn't called for.

The internet suggested he was supposed to have a larger role in some deleted scenes where he was supposed to be scary in advance and then surprisingly compassionate when the main character actually met him, but that lots of people thought that was portrayed very badly, since however compassionate he seemed, "falling in love with the man you've been brainwashed to have sex with" is almost impossible to portray as a genuinely loving decision, rather than Stockholm syndrome.

True. I think it would be hard to portray the brothel-world version of the high-roller as at all sympathetic if he's still actually going to go through with the sex, because I can't really see a plausible way of him being misled into doing so that accurately maps his situation in the outer frame; the false equivalence there is distasteful to me.

[jack]

And ye gods, would it have helped to give the Scott Glenn part to a woman

I thought about this, and initially dismissed it (it didn't feel like they were deferring to him, per se), but then mentally replaced "female" with several other possible historically non-establishment groups, and decided that having an establishment figure in that role squicked me in those cases, so it probably shouldn't be the case here after all.

Either way, I agree Mirren (or a couple of other women I saw suggested but can't remember) would do that role excellently well.

[rysmiel]

It's not that they defer to him, it's that he is the Source of Wisdom. The Yoda part, if you will. Having that come from a female character would have made a big difference.