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Stargate
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There were
earnest conferences all over the globe during the ‘90s on the fate of
storytelling in a multimedia age – an age in which major, mainstream movies
will more and more be made with computerised, digital technology.
If anything
is at stake in this revolution, it is the belief – fervently held and nurtured
by most movie moguls – that films must tell mythic stories replete with heroes,
quests, personal growth and collective triumph.
Of course,
any kid who plays video games knows that heroes and the like have hardly
disappeared from the latest, interactive forms of ‘fast fiction’. Such mythic
elements remain, but they have been reduced to mere blips in a program, no more
important than the colours, special effects or machine-gun blasts. Some
connoisseurs of popular culture might argue that, no matter the technology,
this has always been the case in supposedly vulgar genres like fantasy, horror
and SF.
The
marvellously entertaining Stargate is
perfect fuel for this argument. It has two heroes, both of whom lack fulfilment – a scientist (James Spader) whose radical theories about the
origins of human history have made him a social outcast, and a military man
(Kurt Russell) who grieves over the accidental death of his son. When the
passage to another world opens, courtesy of a stargate concealed since ancient
Egyptian times, these men are able to venture on their much-needed mythic
quest.
Yet, beyond
these most basic and functional marks of characterisation, the film cares not a
fig for life or its meaning. This is truly a video game disguised as a movie,
an extraordinary orchestration by director Roland Emmerich (Universal Soldier, 1992) of a barrage of
flickering lights, bombastic music cues and gesticulating figures. It is a
funny, exciting movie which requires very little humanity in order to work
effectively.
Stargate is one of many modern movies which
is self-consciously mythic, but in a free-for-all, crazy way. It borrows myths
from everywhere at once. Among the ingredients are a "chariots of the
gods" premise (aliens built the pyramids) and a large dose of Orientalist
fantasy (Spader gets an exotic, Egyptian girlfriend). There are sundry
ideological pellets in the brew, too: the cosmic villain (Jaye Davidson from The Crying Game [1992]) is extremely
effeminate, while Russell's liberation of an oppressed alien race is a lesson
in macho militarism.
But such
"messages" are also just blips in the film's circuitry. There is much
to enjoy here: the intricate objects whose parts separate, hover and click back
into place; the special-effects plunge through deep space; and Spader, usually
typecast as a brooding or disturbed soul, who is allowed to be quite charming
and funny for a change.
MORE Emmerich: Godzilla, Independence Day © Adrian Martin March 1995 |
