Two months ago, the Liberian Girl and I were lying in bed trying to fall asleep. The TV, which was trying to watch us, spit out a 60-second spot for a movie called Hanna. After the ad concluded, I mumbled something to the effect of:
“I may be half sleep, but I’m pretty sure I just saw a commercial that told me there was a movie where the Incredible Hulk was gonna teach the Lovely Bones how to be an assassin…”
The Liberian Girl lifted her head and nodded, “Well…that is kinda what just happened…so…when are you taking me to see it?”
Two weeks ago, the Liberian Girl and I saw a matinee screening of Limitless in Georgetown. It was a decent film built on an intriguing idea about drugs, brainpower and acts of extreme brilliance. While I had modest expectations for it, I was a bit worried by the collection of trailers that preceded the film: Fast Five; The Hangover, Part II; Scre4m; Arthur; Thor and X-Men: First Class. One, or some, of those films could be good. Hell, maybe all of them will be. But none of their trailers demonstrated much of an imagination. Each felt so much like a property. Almost like they were commercials for commercials. The meta was pretty uninspiring. Appropriate, I suppose, to set up a film adapted from a novel. As the opening credits for Limitless began rolling, I second-guessed that day’s movie choice. For just a moment. Thankfully, the intriguing premise we gambled on kinda delivered. At the very least, it didn’t feel like a waste of money. Or time. (Thank you, Bradley Cooper, for not making crap movies.)
Two days ago, the Liberian Girl and I bought tickets for a matinee screening of Hanna. In Georgetown. As we took our seats, I remembered the pack of trailers that set up the last movie we saw in that theater. And I grew very curious about what kind of preamble we might get this time. It was a bit more eclectic: The Conspirator; Crazy, Stupid, Love; Captain America; Anonymous and Fast Five. What that said about the anticipated audience for Hanna was anyone’s guess. Mine would be that some marketers believe there’s still room for acts of art to mingle with acts of commerce. Show business is ever the paradox.
Hanna, the main feature, was equal parts character study and semi-classic chase film. The titular character still wears a training bra when we meet her. She is also finishing training with her father to be capable of killing any creature or any combination of creatures. We know that her father did something, that the something involved the CIA and that he needed to hole up somewhere way off the grid to avoid CIA detection. That’s how Hanna and her Papa ended up living somewhere deep in the Arctic woods. Hella far from any kind of civilization, Papa (played by the first feature-length Incredible Hulk) raised Hanna (played by the Lovely Bones) with only the aid of his own warrior expertise and an encyclopedia. Consequently, when Hanna fully matures as a warrior, she is also ill-equipped socially for the modern world.
The chase begins after Hanna flips a switch daring the CIA to come and find her. (You may have seen that part in one of the ads for the film.) The pursuit dashes and dips through Northern Africa and Eastern Europe as a CIA agent and her flamboyant Neo-Nazi operatives inch closer and closer to Hanna. Along the way, Hanna befriends a civilian British family and has to deal with alien appliances like coffee makers and remote control TVs. Lurking at the end of the trail is Papa and…well…we don’t quite know what. I probably shouldn’t say any more for fear of spoiling it.
The quickie analysis is that Hanna is a really well made film. It’s got a solid cast. (In addition to the Hulk and the Lovely Bones, Cate Blanchett plays the CIA lead.) The script gives them plenty of room to explore and discover in the midst of the chase. It also has enough lightness and humor to offset the intensity of the 100-minute chase. The cinematography alternates appropriately between frenetic and patient. The Chemical Brothers score is pretty sick. But the smartest thing Hanna does is to resist the temptation to play up the sexuality of its teenaged female lead. She is presented instead as very icey, yet believably naive. While Hanna has been trained to do battle with the CIA’s best, she has no clue how to go about kissing a cute boy. (The Liberian Girl said he was cute. I wasn’t so sure.)
While watching the film, I found myself thinking, “There’s no way an American made this.” When I mentioned that notion to the Liberian Girl after the movie, she whipped out her Blackberry and quickly discovered that director Joe Wright is British while screenwriter Seth Lochhead is Canadian. We sat at the bar contemplating what that meant exactly. Neither of us was sure. Smart, mature American filmmakers aren’t extinct. Nor are their domestic audiences. After all, the auditorium we sat in for Hanna was at about 70% capacity. Still…something just felt weird about all of it.
Maybe the ultimate takeaway from seeing Hanna had something to do with the gross necessity of marketing. I kept thinking back to the contrasting sets of trailers–and the ad that inspired us to choose to see Hanna in the first place. I understand that studios (or the corporations that own them) need to make sure consumers are A) aware their films exist and B) sufficiently excited so as to go out and see them. But who decided it was a good idea to spend as much marketing a film as is spent to make the thing? I know that Fast Five is coming soon to a theater near me. I been knowing that, actually. And I suspect I’ll spend the next few weeks trying to escape that damn’d movie. (Although I may go see it with the homie if he buys enough bourbon to make it worth my while.) The way the average medium-to-large-budget film is marketed implies there is a fifth (ironically) silent P in the Marketing Mix: Pulverize. As in: “we need to pulverize the sensibilities of our potential consumers.” To what end, I’m not sure. I think I grew numb to all of it some time ago.
Post-Script: The screenplay for Hanna was selected as one of the best unproduced scripts of both 2006 and 2009. That’s a dubious distinction to earn once. Let alone twice. Why it took so long to get made, I don’t know. Go figure.
