Friday, January 9, 2004
Zorro
Don Rafael Montero: Do you recognize him?
Elena: No, but he was young and vigorous. He was very vigorous, father.
The Mask of Zorro was on TV a few days ago. Antonio Banderas was the best thing in it. Banderas' zest for acting adds energy to this unsurprising but still entertaining fantasy. Anthony Hopkins phoned in his performance. More and more Hopkins seems an actor of reputation and received notion rather than one of great talent. Zeta-Jones is a physically active and beautiful Elena Montero/Elena Murrieta, but she has never had the radiance of great screen beauties. Her natural, quiet, approachable beauty, is a relief from the surgically enhanced fembots the pop culture currently hurls at us as desirable.
This is a remake of The Mark of Zorro with Douglas Fairbanks. The moviemakers felt this time that the female lead couldn't just be a passive prize, so she fences. But Zeta-Jones' fencing was used as just a cheap gesture of political correctness when it could have served a plot purpose. They could have used her character to mirror the young Banderas' character saving Zorro — at least utilizing her fencing skills for some purpose. There is a joy and fun in her fencing that has more of a sexy pull than her scenes with Banderas, which don't have the chemistry they should.
They could have explored the story behind her fencing skills, as well — maybe as a young woman, insisting, despite her putative father's objections, to learn how to fence — a suppressed memory of her true heritage, as the daughter of Zorro.
The dance sequence could have been the crown jewel of the movie but it was poorly staged and not long enough. Banderas has a light quality unusual in a role like this — he isn't the knuckle dragger monotone action hero — and it matches well with Zeta-Jones. A trained dancer, she could have fully let out her inner drives — as was meant to be implied — if they had just done a better job filming the sequence.
The over-the-top action sequences had a wit the script lacked. There is one fight sequence where Banderas defeats all the extras the moviemakers' budget could afford. It ends in Tom and Jerry fashion, with a big smirk on Banderas' face, after he has lit a canon to finally emulsify his opponents. Banderas was hysterical — you laugh along with him in satisfaction.
A lot has been made of the fact that Banderas is the first Spanish Zorro. The film has a blessed lack of special effects — that deadening encrustation on modern movies that makes them cold and distant. The look of the film is luxorious, a kind of Las Vegas kitsch married to Hispanic themes. But there is also a lack of expansiveness — the outdoors doesn't seem to have a sufficient part in this movie, space for the mythology to fill out the story — it's all interiors — even the exteriors feel done on a movie lot. The mine scenes with child laborers reminds me of Spielberg's slave-urchins in Raider's…
Trivia:
Joaquin Murieta, Antonio Banderas's character's brother, and Three-fingered Jack were real life bandits in Northern California at the time of the 1849 Gold Rush. Joaquin Murieta was a Mexican born in Sonora who moved to California to find his fortune. But after being beaten and robbed by American gold miners, he swore that he would avenge his dishonor. He was the lead in a group of bandits in the California wilderness, killing anyone who stood in their way. His life was the stuff of legend, used by Mexicans as a source of patriotism and by Americans as reason enough to hang anyone who spoke Spanish. Three-fingered Jack was actually a Mexican by the name of Manuel Garcia, who was Murieta's side kick. Murieta was supposedly killed on July 18, 1853 by Captain Harry Love who preserved Murieta's head in a jar of alcohol, along with Three-fingered Jack's hand as proof that the bandit was dead.