“Spectre”
Laying
it on thick has always been a popular approach at the movies. Filmmakers found
it to be a possible means of expressing mounting pressure on the psychic front
and studios learned that, if teased in a trailer, it can draw great numbers of
moviegoers, eager for a couple of hours of diversion and sensual bombardment.
Sometimes the trick works stunningly, as in Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows,
in which Eva Green, smeared with red lipstick and wrapped in a tight red dress,
struts about Collinsport, repeatedly appealing with ever-lowering necklines to
the carnal interests of Johnny Depp. As the story and its small-town setting
sank lower and lower into Gothic folly, Green’s lip-smacking torrent of
histrionics surpassed the boundaries set by both Burton and Depp on every front. Sometimes it
doesn’t work quite as well, as can be seen in a large number of films every year, which flop despite – or, more likely, because of – large and overbearing
elements, sown together by swarms of producers for what is hoped to be maximum
impact. As with everything at the movies, the success of the mode of overdoing
it relies on the intuition of the filmmakers.
In Spectre,
that intuition fails – most irreparably. Sam Mendes and the production team,
following up on Mendes’s 2012 mega-hit Skyfall, wished to replicate that release