Guided by the star power of Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan, “City of Angels” was one of the spring’s box office powerhouses. It came with a price. One of the unfortunate consequences is to essentially wipe from memory “Wings of Desire,” the 1987 German film by Wim Wenders the Brad Silberling movie owes for its existence.
Wenders’ movie is one of the most beautiful and poetic films of recent cinema. Nonetheless, the brutal ease that “City of Angels” rendered the film commercially irrelevant is a stark reminder of how easily commerce overwhelms art in the new Hollywood.
While industry pundits and observers ponder what lessons are taught by “Titanic,” the first seems pretty obvious, far greater value is placed on a film’s commercial prowess than artistic pedigree. Naturally, the question becomes, does the commercial prominence of “City of Angels” obviate the vastly superior artistry of “Wings of Desire”?
The discussion seems particularly salient because “City of Angels” is just one of three recent features that are remakes of European originals (the others are “Sliding Doors” and “Nightwatch”). The purist rightly decries this trend, again illustrating a despairing absence of originality, in the same way of Hollywood’s dependence on 1960s television shows for new material. The greater lament is that these works, buoyed by the presence of movie stars and expensive marketing campaigns, appear at a time when foreign language films are increasingly extinct, shown in primarily noncommercial venues such as Facets Multimedia or the Film Center of the School of the Art Institute.
If it has come to that, the only way to see foreign films is refracted through an American vernacular, then we have all suffered a serious loss.
The makers of “City of Angels” have objected to the suggestion their film qualifies as a “remake,” claiming Dana Stevens’ screenplay is “inspired” by the original conception of Wenders and playwright/filmmaker Peter Handke. Indeed, the film significantly departs from the Wenders’ film, introducing its love story very early on. There are also critical stylistic decisions (“Wings of Desire” is mostly shot in black and white).
But a movie is significantly more than character and plot, it is sustained and deepened by mood, feeling and texture. The best thing about the new film, John Seale’s evocative cinematography, mirrors Henri Alekan’s luminous work on the original, in particular the vertiginous camera movements and gliding aerial shots of the city.
The example of “Sliding Doors” is even more problematic. Technically the film, the first feature written and directed by British actor Peter Howitt, is an original work. Except the film’s premise, postulating the contrasting experiences of a young English advertising executive (Gwyneth Paltrow) predicated on whether she makes a subway train, was also the taking off point of “Blind Chance,” a 1981 feature by the late Polish master Krzysztof Kieslowski. The Polish film imagines three different scenarios, told consecutively, of a young medical student, each story varied following the hero’s experience on the train platform. By contrast, the two stories of “Sliding Doors” are intercut and the films are radically different (really the difference between politics and sex, the driving impulses of the two works).
When “Sliding Doors” premiered as the opening night film of the Sundance Film festival in January, neither Howitt nor the producer, Sydney Pollack, bothered to mention the Kieslowski film (for that matter, neither did the reviewers of the two most important American entertainment trade publications, Variety and The Hollywood Reporter). The press book omits any reference to the Kieslowski film. The fact is, in this country only a few specialists and critics are even familiar with the Kieslowski film. So again one wonders, is Howitt’s film honored for an intriguing and innovative structure since only a few lonely voices know to question its authenticity.
One of the world’s greatest directors before his death two years ago, Kieslowski personified the vicissitudes foreign directors have encountered in trying to penetrate the American market.
None of his Polish features, including “The Decalogue,” one of the seminal achievements of modern cinema, was ever distributed here. The only Kieslowski films shown here theatrically were his highly regarded French co-productions (ironically enough, released through Miramax Films, the distributor of Howitt’s film).
“Sliding Doors” is studded with Kieslowskian themes and moments, examining questions of fate, chance, serendipity, solitude and recovery. One key sequence, where both variations of the Paltrow character faint, suggesting an awareness of the other’s existence, is taken directly from Kieslowski’s 1991 “The Double Life of Veronique.”
The story isn’t entirely bleak, an instance of Hollywood cultural imperialism run amok. The thriller “Nightwatch,” starring Scottish actor Ewan McGregor, Patricia Arquette and Nick Nolte, is adapted from a 1994 Danish film. The film is co-written and directed by Ole Bornedal, the director of the original film, “Nattevagten,” that was never shown here though played at festivals in Toronto, Chicago and Sundance.
Bornedal suddenly has an opportunity denied many of his contemporaries, working in a large budget with established actors for a legitimate distributor (the Miramax genre unit, Dimension Films). Unlike the first two works mentioned, “Nightwatch” and its earlier incarnation are quite similar, not just in atmosphere and mood, but in critical plot points. Except now, Bornedal has a much greater platform to showcase his abilities.
That is no mean feat. Juliusz Machulski, a Polish director, was here recently as part of a retrospective organized by the Springtime Polish film festival. A director of commercially successful comedies at home, Machulski has directed the biggest Polish hit in years, “Killer,” a mordant black comedy about a taxi driver who is mistaken for a serial killer (the movie knowingly references the work of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez). Now the remake rights have been acquired by Hollywood Pictures, with leading filmmaker Barry Sonnenfelt (“Men in Black”) attached to direct. Machulski was understandably ecstatic how this could impact his career.
Indeed if the notoriety and attention makes it easier for Machulski to get financing for his next film, then something has been gained in the translation. So Bornedal and Machulski clearly benefit, but what of the rest of the world. If the Hollywood globalization of the market has done wonders for the bottom line at home, it hasn’t opened up our appreciation for the vibrant, intelligent and wonderful national cinemas that function outside our immediate reach.
If we so readily support and champion films like “City of Angels,” “Sliding Doors” or “Nightwatch,” we owe it ourselves to seek out and acknowledge their antecedents. The world is big enough for both.
