Speed Racer (2008)
Speed Racer, Larry and Andy Wachowski’s (The Matrix) newest exercise in fuck tha police, fight the power faux-outrage, is another of those pictures, like the new Star Wars movies, or Sin City, or (the God awful) 300, that places actors in settings that have been totally or almost totally rendered by computers. The prior pictures worked to varying degrees (Sin City being the best) but could never conquer the hesitation that you were watching something that was never actually there; unavoidably dulling the excitement, immediacy and, you know, human feeling in the process. These pictures, despite a (sometimes) visual originality and invention, ultimately feel like that steak that gets re-configured through the transporter in the David Cronenberg Fly: they don’t taste right, they don’t understand the flesh.
Speed Racer turns that disconnection on its head, creating a world so gloriously, obviously, flamboyantly deranged in its artifice that it causes the picture to do an emotional loop de loop; achieving something that is a. accidentally, b. subversively, or c. hypocritically poignant. I’m voting b and c. Speed Racer is a legitimate accomplishment: a hallucinatory children’s picture that has an un-paralleled empathy with that sugar freaking, Saturday morning cartoon binging mind state. But, Speed Racer is also unfortunately, (shades of The Matrix) an attack on the multiple forms of suffocating distraction that persist in modern American life that also (and here’s the rub) happens to provide more forms of suffocating distraction than any recent film I can recall.
Speed Racer at times literally, exhilaratingly, loses control; particularly in flashbacks to Speed’s (Emile Hirsch) childhood that zone out in a blitz of imagination approximating aesthetic overload that immediately cues us in to at least three or four different movements of heartbreak, disappointment and resentment. The Wachowskis, never visually modest, have an especially nifty trick (of which they’re a bit too enamored) of transitioning with an in-camera wipe that gives us the feeling of watching every plot strand, every character, at exactly the same time (an artful version of channel surfing). I normally don’t give a whit what happens to the characters in these types of pictures, but the Wachowskis somehow nearly play this excess of technique to their emotional advantage. The technique chokes the life out of the picture, but this choking of life is, at least partly, the point (an old race is, tellingly, shown with real cars). This world, this candy-colored anime play-land, isn’t passed off as “movie magic”, its Hell, a kiddie friendly Matrix, a place of commercial enslavement that Speed and family must fight with purity and gusto.
The Wachowskis, it must be said, have also become significantly smoother in weaving their anti-big brother tirades (Warners? Who produces their movies?) into their action. The latter Matrix films were (possibly) a little underrated, but their insistence in continually halting the action for self-righteous, half-baked, college text-book sociology fortune cookies was maddening and self-deceiving. Speed Racer works out its self-hatred and conflict through the action, which explodes onto the racetrack and out of the screen in giddy, poetic bursts of disorientation. The people who have complained of the brothers’ withholding crucial spatial information are missing the point. We aren’t supposed to be on the racetrack; we’re in the characters heads, which happen to be on the race track. The lack of visual context and clarity IS the suspense, we, for once, truly feel the speed.
There’s something else undeniably creepy and insidious going on in Speed Racer though. The picture preaches the usual Luke Skywalker (the final race echoes the first Star Wars film’s climax) follow your own beat sermon, but we can’t help but feel that, by buying into this, we are just buying into exactly what the real life consumerist bad guys (represented here by Roger Allam, effectively channeling Tim Curry) would have us buy into. Speed Racer, like all of the Wachowkis’ work (V for Vendetta being the most offensive) is ultimately audience pandering entertainment, decrying consumerist depersonalization while continuing to pioneer consumerist depersonalization.
Speed Racer brings to mind the one brilliant implication of The Matrix Reloaded, that Neo, our hero, was just another pawn of the Matrix, another program designed to foster a sense of false rebellion in a society that doesn’t want to do anymore than pay lip service to such ideas. The Russian nesting dolls of corruption are a true (and very real) Matrix of our society, as well as the one that the Wachowskis’ films have continually hammered against. But what are these talented filmmakers actually offering us beyond un-challenging self-delusion? Speed Racer’s admirers have called it revolutionary. But what, exactly, is the aim of the film’s supposed revolution? To paraphrase another Jeff Goldblum movie, just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. By all means see Speed Racer, it works, it’s exciting, and it has a conflict of interest that may mark it as the most interesting big picture of the summer, but its time we hold the Wachowskis to more than visual button-pushing. They may know the path, but they’ve yet to walk it.
★★★
May 22nd, 2008 at 7:38 am
Chuck, been waiting for your thoughts on this one. Glad you liked it more than disliked it.
Let me flex my Devil’s Advocate chops here, for a moment. This ties into the subjective nature of our experiences at certain films, but I cannot connect with your statement calling it “ultimately just audience pandering entertainment,” when the emotional core of the film resonated with me so very strongly. Nor do I think that “decrying consumerist depersonalization” is the main point. For me, the core of the film is Speed’s pure love of racing, and how he has to do that no matter who (or what) tries to stop him. In this instance, it’s a Big Evil Corporation, but you could have substituted anything villainous there. The point is to (cliche alert) follow your dreams no matter what. The message isn’t “buck the system” or “just say ‘no!’ to consumerism” or “big business is bad.” The message is follow your heart and pursue your dreams.
Regardless, great thoughts here Chuck, especially about the Wachowski’s purposeful withholding of ‘crucial spatial information.’ They’ve been attacked for it, but you’re right, that’s the point.
May 22nd, 2008 at 8:03 am
Evan-I debated on how hard I was gonna harp on that particular point, especially regarding a movie that’s aimed at children. If this was the Wachowski brothers’ first movie, or first movie in this vein, I would’ve probably let it fly as kid’s stuff and ignored the conflict (which could’ve been any number of things, as you say). But they keep going back to this well, and keep congratulating themselves for standing against something they are obviously in bed with in real life, without offering any real insight into (or challgenge of) their platitudes. I may have let a reaction to their filmography speak louder than it should’ve regarding this particular movie, but I don’t think its in there by accident.
May 22nd, 2008 at 11:18 pm
I think the stock market stuff was too much. Even I didn’t know what the hell was going on.
But I agree that the message is a bit unfocused, although in the end, the film is just about the power of art.
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:03 am
I do think that I overplayed the theme that irritated me, because I, overall, did enjoy Speed Racer quite a bit. Oh well.
May 23rd, 2008 at 8:05 pm
The revolutionary chic stuff is an irritant in V for Vendetta. But corporate hacks make pretty effective bad guys. Given this is a cartoon with a children’s audience, it fits.
As far as revolutionary, I don’t think anyone means the socio-political aspect. I think they mean the filmmaking is highly unconventional.
May 27th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
I loved the hell out of this movie, saw it twice, and rewarded it by not even writing a proper review of it. I suck. I think I was more than a little depressed by the critical and commmercial failure. Strange that it stung so personally.
The message never overwhelmed the picture for me, it was always a subtext and an unexpected bonus. For me it was about the simple purity of doing what you love and doing it the best you can. Speed never really got caught up in the machinations of the evil world, he just knew he wanted to cut through the crap and race.
That’s an appealing, seductive message. Add in the business about family and you’ve got a winner in my book.
More than the critical reaction, the utter audience disinterest in this movie disappointed me. This is a filmmaker’s reward for trying something different. Audiences would rather see another Alvin and the Chipmunks.
But enough about me. Nice review Chuck. I think you got this movie in the way it was meant to be gotten, even if some of the more heavy handed elements detracted from it for you.
May 27th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Craig, perhaps when this comes out on DVD you could write a full review for it. I suspect its box office fate is sealed, but it could surprise some people on DVD.
May 27th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Incisive work here, Chuck. You actually took me to a level that I didn’t even realize existed in Speed Racer, especially when you identify the hypocritical consumerist message.
I guess I wasn’t bother by this because I wasn’t looking for it. I was dazzled by the racing sequences but otherwise unmoved - either positively or negatively.
Who knew reactions to this one could be so far-reaching?
May 29th, 2008 at 9:03 am
I don’t know Alexander. I’m oddly dispirited over the whole thing.