SERKIS AS CAESAR. Well-deserved acclaim for “digitized” characterization.
As the latest “Planet of the Apes” installment unreels, we soon realize with a shiver that the state of digital filmmaking has advanced so much that—dare we say it?—the digitized ape characters in the movie are more interesting and involving that their human counterparts!
What is the world coming to? How did the makers of this sci-fi drama, who we must presume are humans, allow this to happen? But, proof positive is up there on the screen for everyone to ponder: When put side by side, the performance of the story’s ape hero, Caesar, is more involving than that of his human ally (played by Jason Clarke)!
The role of Caesar is performed, via motion-capture and digital wizardry, by the gifted Andy Serkis, who previously won well-deserved acclaim for his “behind the digitized image” characterization of Gollum in “The Lord of the Rings.”
Couldn’t director Matt Reeves have cast a commensurately exceptional actor as the lead human character in his film, and thus made for a more level playing field? In any case, after getting over “our” thespic loss to the more expressive apes in Reeves’ movie, we more rewardingly get to appreciate the production’s other, more upbeat elements: Topping our list of cinematic delights is the risky but effective way that the movie has been able to build up the story’s central conflicts so grandly that they sometimes come off as quite “Shakespearean!”
Big buildup
No wonder Caesar has been given his imperial name—the movie’s big buildup to the heights and depths of tragedy is quite intentional. Aside from the giveaway name, the production’s entire look is dark and dangerous, highlighted by an emblematic use of flames for chiaroscuro contrast—an amalgam of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” and “Coriolanus,” no kidding!
Yes, this is cinematic overreaching on a grand scale, but at least the film isn’t skittish or abashed about going full-throttle for the classical jugular, even if it’s mainly for effect.
All of these overwrought images and scenes are put to good use in dramatizing a “future imperfect” world that has the human race decimated by a deadly illness, thus enabling the apes to take over.
So, what’s the problem? A few human survivors seek to reassert themselves, and the apes refuse to let them—except for their more enlightened leader, Caesar, who wisely sees the planet’s future made peaceful by a modus vivendi that the two “races,” apes and humans, should strive to arrive at.
Unfortunately, some humans and apes don’t agree, so all Shakespearean hell breaks loose—until wiser minds and hearts prevail. —That tentative happy ending, or acceptable compromise, is difficult to accept, but that’s just another hurdle that the viewer has to surmount.
All told, despite all the excesses and overreaching involved, Caesar’s “visionary” character provides such a strong emotional and thematic fulcrum that the film ends up as a credible and sometimes even tantalizing viewing experience.
Yes, it’s “eventual supremacy of the apes” scenario is a spaced-out illusion and delusion, but the viewer who’s willing to go along for the ride for a couple of hours could find himself rewarded with occasional insights that he wouldn’t have arrived at if the production had opted to be less overwrought and more safely, predictably “logical.”