Tale as old as time... Review on King Kong (New) Movie

King Kong is not an attempt to retell a famous story. It is a tribute to all the movies that have possibly inspired Peter Jackson’s own journey as a film maker. Watching King Kong is like sharing an inside joke with somebody you are intimate with; or like reading a mystery novel where, if you pick up the right clues, you can read more than the novel; or maybe it is like being in love, where everything that the other person says gets etched in new meanings that only make sense to you two. To judge King Kong as a movie would be brutal – it is a creation of love, passion, and an incredible attempt to convert a cult into epic.

While the comparisons between The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and King Kong are inevitable – Jackson’s compulsive creation of fantasy lands, his epic vision, the sheer scope and credulity of his screen play, the expanse of his canvas, the depth of his characters and the flare of telling the story with just the right balance of everything – I shall stay away from it. I will also presume, for the sake of kindness, that everybody knows the story of King Kong. If you don’t, it is quite simple really – Big Monkey falls in love with hot American girl on a primitive Skull Island, gets captured and put on exhibition, gets angered and searches for the girl and dies in a breathtaking scene that involves the Empire State Building and lot of tears. Now that we have done with the story, here are my impressions of King Kong. Not a review, but impressions. A critique would be too harsh for something that is so obviously a collage, a certain static montage of a film maker’s passion for his life.

Beauty and the Beast.

<div style=''text-align: center;''>Tale as old as time,

Song as old as rhyme,

Beauty and the Beast.</div>

The structuralists called it an archetype – a story that stops being a story and enters the collective consciousness of our being, so that the world around us make sense only through that particular story. There is one story, and one story only to tell…

<div style=''text-align: center;''>Tale as old as time,

Song as old as rhyme,

Beauty Killed the Beast.</div>

The tip of the iceberg

It was the ship that went down, in waters and history. Who would have thought that a ship could sink even without Helen around? The adventure, the spirit of the human being, the passion of being alive, the need to love and the shedding of all facades in times of crises – Titanic was a tale of love on a ship. King Kong has woven in it, a tale of ship that leads to love. And in the first one hour of the movie, Jackson captures what Cameron couldn’t – the danger and the madness of a shipped mariner.

Jurassic dreams

Skull Island was what Spielberg would have made, if he ever made Arabian nights. Things just got bigger, nastier and hungrier. Mixing paleontology and playfulness, King Kong allows for a place that time had forgotten. Big lizards, big monkey, big bats and big cockroaches – the chase and fight and run and scramble sequences were better, bigger and scarier. It was life at its best – untamed and unchastised, each for their own, and all for each other.

The Tolkien hangover

That is the problem with writers like Tolkien. Like your parents, they f^ck you up, they do. And the bad part is that they actually mean to. You can’t make a Tolkien trilogy and be unaffected by it. In ever next frame of King Kong you can see traces of LOTR as Jackson had made it. In the sound track, in the orc like tribals, in the mythical creatures and in the extraordinary power of Jackson’s crew to change the world as we know it into something fantastic and terrible. There are very few people who have the power to create wonderlands of familiar objects and Jackson has mastered that art. The scenes set in the depression struck NY are almost as visually stunning and lyrical as those crafted in the mythical lands of Skull Island.

Monster Mania

There is no doubt left that Jackson is of the monsters’ side without knowing it. His monsters are the scariest…but not because they are new. They are scary because they remind you of all the scariest monster movies you have seen in your life. From Alien to Arachnophobia, and from Horror on Elm Street to Anaconda, Jackson takes you through a journey of a lifetime as for more than one hour one goes through a stampede of creatures all faintly familiar – like the pictures of a wedding album where all the smiling faces seem personal but strange.

Movie Magic

More than anything else, King Kong is a movie about making movie. There is no mistaking Carl the movie maker who took the entire crew on this whimsical near death voyage as Jackson’s self portrait. It is the trait of a dreamer that he can live in his own world and thoughts without ever stepping out of them. It is a respect to the brutality of creation, the violence of giving birth, the pain of delivery that Jackson captures in his “man with a movie camera” stint where he captures himself capturing reality on his tripod. The politics, chaos and stupor of an artist are all wonderfully packed in the movie.

Of Beauty

Naomi Watts and her two front teeth. I rest the case. Oh Bliss!

Of Beast

Adrien Brody and his nose which was larger than King Kong. But oh so f^cking kissable.

Of opinions

Tributes are like shrines. You either like them, and so don’t mind the more than 3 hour run of the movie, or you hate them and spoil it for everybody else around you trying to watch it. It is like practicing heathenism in a religious gathering or something. If you have seen the original King Kong, you should see this one just to see how different and beautiful a tribute can be without distorting the original. If you haven’t seen the original King Kong…really? I mean, there are people like that?