As anyone familiar with the effects of debilitating hangovers can testify, the period of initial awakening is a distinctly Freudian experience. The birth trauma is revisited and the night’s previous events remain buried in the unconscious, waiting to be examined again in periodic returns of the repressed. It’s a scary time indeed. So recently, whilst trudging down the corridor in search of the kitchen and precious hydration, I was not in the mood for anything out of the ordinary to invade my delicate personal ecosphere. That’s when David Bowie entered the fray.
As if Bowie’s brand of avant-garde rock weren’t surreal enough, this was the sight of Bowie’s Goblin King jamming with the fantastical denizens of Labyrinth on my television. It really should have been too horrifying a tableau for any fragile mind to digest. But the strangest thing happened: I started to feel oddly comforted by Jim Henson’s confederation of curiosities. A wave of euphoria wafted over me, helping to ameliorate some of the sharper edges of my current predicament. And do you know what it was? It was the fuzzy nostalgia of Henson’s gorgeously tactile world. And it made me wonder: are future generations of audiences in danger of losing that giddy nostalgic rush in a cinematic world defined by digital (rather than physical) boundaries?
Gizmo was always my guy. He was the quintessence of cute as the musically inclined Mogwai who gives rise to the titular Gremlins. I saw Joe Dante’s film countless times as a child, addicted to its genre-defining amalgam of horror and comedy. The Gizmo creation was by no means perfect. In fact, the scene in which the Machiavellian Gremlins throw darts at Gizmo was supposedly a self-referential nod to the difficulties of operating the furry crusader. His movements appear awkward and at times the puppetry is painfully obvious. But the fact that he exists in the frame gives him a tangible dimension that goes beyond the strangely hollow achievements of computer wizardry. We actually believe that Gizmo is there; we are able to perceive him as a thing. That – in my humble estimation – is a critical component of fixing any object in the filmgoer’s psyche. Just look at the example of everyone’s favourite intergalactic gardener: E.T. In Spielberg’s ode to childhood longing, you could almost feel that elongated finger as it reached out to Elliot, reassuring him – as well as us – that he would always be there.
Of course, this oddly comforting sense of tactile reality doesn’t always manifest as adorable Mogwais who happen to be voiced by Howie Mandel (who better to determine who has talent in America, right?). It can also come in the grotesque form of a Brundlefly. Where better than Cronenberg’s treatise on bodily disintegration to pitch the flag for organic special effects? Much like John Carpenter’s The Thing, The Fly offers revolutionary special make-up effects that are designed to repulse rather than excite. But Brundle’s tragic decay is so unflinchingly captured that it attains a surreal beauty all its own. It confronts us provocatively with the fragility of these bodies that we live in. And yet whenever I witness Jeff Goldblum’s descent into Doom fodder, I feel an empathic shiver similar to the warmth that I feel for Gizmo. It’s not the splendour of the image that sticks; it’s the authenticity. Our journey through the gruesomely realistic stages of his anthropomorphic style-shift binds us forever with the quirky Brundle, because his degeneration mirrors our own fears of mortality.
I want to underline that I am by no means a techno-phobe (a term that would have a completely different meaning in an Ibiza nightclub). I simply adhere to the mantra of Guillermo Del Toro, who stated – and I’m paraphrasing here – that any great visual effect has to have a basis in analogue reality. It’s the reason why George Lucas’s Star Wars prequels play like a glorified, emotionally stilted Universal Studios ride. That fetishistic adherence to the wonders of green screen is useful in explaining why Natalie Portman and Samuel L Jackson seem to have been abducted and replaced by wooden doppelgangers in those films: now there’s an idea for a contemporary Invasion of the Body Snatchers. An overreliance on technical innovation in recent cinema seems to be robbing films of their on-screen texture. Does anybody honestly think that Spielberg’s Tyrannosaur has ever been bettered in subsequent Jurassic Park’s? Just look at the discrepancy between Peter Jackson’s Rings and Hobbit trilogies. The Rings trilogy ingeniously interweaved traditional and modern techniques, resulting in an emotionally rich tapestry reminiscent of Lean and Kurusawa. The Hobbit series took a leap towards the absurd, becoming a bloated CGI compendium to Tolkien’s delicate children’s story.
The recent output of visionary director Tim Burton perfectly delineates my argument. Burton’s early work was defined by striking practical chiaroscuros. His wonderfully skewed perspective – distilled in trees of eternal yearning – helped make him a cinematic equivalent of the Brothers Grimm, conjuring dark fairy-tales from the confluence of death and love. Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice stand as perfect visual representations of Burton’s innovative spirit. But the allure of CGI’s endless possibilities proved too much for Burton to resist, and the results have been middling. Both Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland conquered the box office, but they proved beyond a doubt that Burton’s idiosyncratic vision had been diluted by options. Alice in Wonderland’s visual cornucopia was just a deadening assortment of things on the screen, with a complete absence of the magician’s hand that you could almost catch in the act during his earlier films.
At this point I do have to mention the one creator of consistently immersive CGI experiences: Pixar. Animation inherently requires a certain distance from the confines of physical reality and few do it better than Pixar. Whether it’s Woody and Buzz, Mike and Sully, or Riley and her gang of emotional constructs, Pixar have consistently managed to find that cinematic sweet-spot between delighting children and breaking their parent’s hearts. Their entire enterprise hinges on a simple principle: through our children we re-experience our own childhoods. And therein lies a sense of wonder that continues the rich heritage of Walt Disney. But I have to admit that it is that other Disney alumni, Hayao Miyazaki, who most vividly captures my imagination through animation. His rich, complex worlds are brought to waking life with striking creations that reveal every masterful brushstroke. These living paintings connect the audience with the artist directly, proving that even the world of animation is more immersive when boiled down to its essence.
But perhaps I’m looking at the entire issue through an antiquated prism. Contemporary audiences are ultimately creatures of the digital age. Just look at the pre-eminence of social media as a means of communication. The likes of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter ensure that an entire universe of interconnections is possible without any physical contact. Maybe what we are currently immersed in is not the extinction of cinematic nostalgia, but rather its curiously detached evolution. Depressingly, modern audiences are likely more comfortable with uncanny digital worlds than practically realized ones because that’s where they feel more comfortable in their everyday lives. It makes Sylvester Stallone’s hyperbolic Demolition Man oddly prophetic. In a futuristic society, virtual sex has replaced physical intimacy as the socially sanctioned mode of sexual gratification. Slavish devotion to technological advancement taking all the fun out of life. Is that where movies are headed too?
