Some fantastic eye-candy held tenuously together by a filament of story.
The Cell was indeed pretty spectacular to watch as both scene design and computer effects made for some stunning and/or interesting visuals, but I walked out of the theater still feeling a little cheated. There have been many claims of comparison between this movie and Silence of the Lambs. I don't think they're justified. Sure both have psychopathic killers and a strong female chasing or searching, but that's where it ends. Silence of the Lambs felt like a much longer of a movie than it was because it was full of character development, story, plot, and dialogue. The Cell had precious little dialogue, but on the other hand what was there was not extraneous--it was there to serve a purpose.
The characters were very shallow, however. Vince Vaughn's "Agent Novak" was the typical driven overworked FBI agent. You do get a very slight taste at his motivations during a conversation he has with Jennifer Lopez's "Catherine." In fact, I was actually glad that they only decided to touch on what may be a character history for him as opposed to drawing out a long clichéd speech. They went for believable secretiveness instead of sentimentalism. On the other hand, the tastes of "Catherine" we get are annoyingly/compellingly brief. We're told by one of her co-workers that they found her exceptional from the beginning in what she does as a child psychologist. We see she sleeps with a small pillow decorated with a Cabalistic or Hindu design (my apologies to whatever religion or faith it is a part of that I don't recognize it well enough,) she smokes marijuana at home, and enjoys very odd, surrealistic cartoons. I'm certainly glad to be SHOWN glimpses of who her character is as opposed to being told, but I felt it was almost worthless. Can we assume that because she's a little off-of-center in her home-life that's what makes her special as a voyager literally into a person's mind and psyche? If so, which I believe is indeed the attempt that was being made, it wasn't fleshed out well. During her forays into "Carl Stargher's" twisted mind we see her mainly as an observer, sometimes listener. We never see her actually use whatever talent and skills she has to navigate his mind. In fact, she's saved from being a captive in the nightmare in one point by Agent Novak yelling something about her own personal life he'd read in her file, that seemed completely out of the blue. Almost "deus ex machinae" in how it was something we as an audience member had no clue of and for all we know he pulled out of a hat. No, of course he didn't, it was a true fact about her he used, but I get the feeling of the writer cheating. In any case, I felt let down that Lopez's character didn't do anything spectacular to show her skills. Anyone could have walked through the killer's mind like she had. So long as they had a strong stomach.
As for being disturbing or horrific, not really. I've been many times more disturbed by a few episodes of FOX's television show "Millennium" than I did by this movie. They did a good (if not banging-over-the-head) job at creating a reason why Stargher is what he is and does what he does. Which perhaps disturbs me more than anything else by how abused he was as a child...but fortunately we know that a chemical/brain condition is what helps make him a psychopathic killer as opposed to a support-group member. His nightmare headspace is an interesting collection of Nine Inch Nails video, Francis Bacon, medieval torture, sado-masochism imagery (ibid Nine Inch Nails *grin*.) Not really any H.R. Geiger or H. Bosch as I was expecting, but that's OK. As much as I love the horrorscapes of Geiger we've gotten a lot of his work from the "Alien" movies and "Species" and such. There's one scene where Stargher, as king of his dark world, walks down the stairs of his dais, with ENORMOUS purple sheets of material that had been wall curtains being pulled across the walls and following behind him by rings embedded in his back. That and the one of Jennifer falling slowly through the air in a red dress as if floating in water make for some memorable visuals. But by the end, that's all you're left with is interesting visuals. (WARNING: Probable "Too Much Info" from here to end of the paragraph.) I felt the ending was too nice and tidy, neat and clean. The good guys win, the bad guys get what they deserve, the innocent find peace (albeit in a slightly unexpected and appropriate manner, I thought,) and there was nothing to chew over as you left the theater. No side-effects, no mysteries, no what-ifs, nothing at all curious or open or bothersome. Based on the way Lopez takes care of the both Stargher's (you'll understand when you see it,) within her own mind's setting, I was certain she would walk out of the experience a little tainted, or dark, or changed. By the ending tag scene one would expect something unexpected to happen. Instead, "Catherine" seems completely unchanged by the recent events. What I would think would be pretty amazingly significant and weighty events that happened within her own mind.
One of the reasons I feel this movie was made more for the visuals as opposed to a story, is a scene where Lopez is talking to another character in a slower, revealing exchange, the corners of the screen start to grow some vaguely psychedelic vegetation in the style of perhaps medieval manuscript illumination, or probably closer to east Indian art. While the camera is on Lopez's character the bottom left corner is framed while it's the upper right corner while it's on the other character. It was visually interesting, but blatantly destroying the 4th-wall. How would Lopez's character's mind know she had an audience of movie goers that would be looking at them through a rectangular window? Even in the surreal world of the mind, rules are created and must be obeyed. One of the 1st most important lessons of film or theatre or speculative fiction when you're doing something other than realism: no matter how fantastic the environment obey the rules you set up at the beginning, and I feel this little bit of visual graphic display broke the rules. Very disappointing.
In the end I felt The Cell made for a great experiment is visual stimuli, but unlike say The Matrix or Dark City the whole doesn't hold up to that one facet. It's like a meal made up entirely of professional cake decorations. Fascinating and colorful, but of no substance and doesn't keep very well. Unlike the other two movies I mentioned which will be remembered for their breakthrough style and design because the whole package stands up to the challenge of the effects, The Cell will be forgotten when the next surreal-dreamscape movie with a big budget comes out.
Category: Movie
Genre: Sci-Fi
Date Reviewed: 2000-01-01
Pros:
Cons:
Rating: 4