Hiring Mickey Rourke is always a problem. No, not because of the substance abuse or that, like a child, he will speak with no filter whatsoever between his brain and his mouth, but because if you put him in a movie, all the viewer will recall is Him.
And if Tarsem The Cell Singh is in charge of the visuals which will then be lush, gorgeous, stained like an oil by one of the Masters and make of violence, a paean to the imagination, the rest of the cast can resign themselves to glowering at their agents for the duration. Tarsem makes sure they don’t. You remember Mickey, but you are also full of admiration at what the director has distilled from his crew in Immortals. He has made Freida Pinto, for example, actually show more than one side of her acting chops, something even Woody Allen couldn’t do. She is sultry, can scream her pain to the Gods, and allows herself to be tender as Phaedra, the Virgin Oracle (the Greeks did have a way with words, didn’t they?).
Immortals follows King Hyperion who has declared war on Man and God alike as he searches for a magical bow that will free the Titans whom the Gods imprisoned aeons ago. Facing off against him is the peasant-warrior Theseus and in the battle that will soon commence, heroes will emerge from the dust and the words from one of the greatest mind-warriors of them all will echo down the ages: “All men’s souls are immortal. But the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.” – Socrates.
It’s interesting to watch a movie like this at a time when words like ‘righteous’ and ‘divine’ have all the wrong connotations. While Theseus encourages his army to fight for ‘honour, your children, the future and immortality,’ in the real world we stay mired in the playground muttering My-God-is-better-than-your-God. Once, what a man left as his legacy was all that mattered. Hyperion and Theseus both believe this, albeit in very different ways. While the latter is obviously the good cop policing the world, (in the real world there’s no such thing), the bad cop in Hyperion was born as the Gods watched his family die. Can you blame him for turning rogue? The point of prayer is questionable if your destiny has already been written in stone, and no, we’re not buying the whole ‘free will’ fiasco.
Meanwhile, I first noticed Luke Evans in this year’s atrocious The Three Musketeers, because he has that Colin Farrell-like intensity that makes me weak in the knees. As Zeus in Immortals, Evans is a joy to watch, never swerving from the humanity he finds in his Godhood. It’s always easy to tell when a man understands the nature of his very private pain as I am presuming Evans does. Or maybe he’s just an incredible actor.
Aside: Why is it that many of the men I like turn out to be gay? Yes, I’m talking about you, Zachary Quinto. Are the Gods trying to tell me something?
While Evans stays true to character, both Pinto and Henry Theseus Cavill (who was sublime in his role in The Tudors and is set to open as Superman soon) falter; was Tarsem too busy paying homage to their undeniable good looks to notice when Cavill said something along the lines of ‘Sorry about that, Mum’ when disposing of her body – and in the most unconvincing way possible? There’s no other explanation.
And while I am at this moment thinking of Mickey softly snarling ‘Witness Hell’ which must go down in the annals of villainspeak along with The Joker’s ‘Why so serious’, or whispering about a torture ‘unique to your gender’ to a trio of nubile priestesses, ouch, I must mention Stephen Dorff. He is excellent playing Stavros, a minor character with some great lines, and it’s obvious that he’s discovered that the key to being memorable onscreen is to enjoy the moment. I am so pleased because he, like Lukas Haas (whose only claim to fame these days is as DiCaprio’s BF), never quite got there in Hollywood and they deserve to.
It’s all about justice in the end.
Sheba Thayil is a journalist and writer. She was born in Bombay, brought up in Hong Kong, and exiled to Bangalore. While editing, writing and working in varied places like The Economic Times, Gulf Daily News, New Indian Express and Cosmopolitan, it is the movies and books, she says, that have always sustained her. She blogs at http://shebathayil.blogspot.com/