because you can't have too much entertainment... August 2003

Exteriors

Hulk
Dir: Ang Lee Starring: Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly, Nick Nolte, Josh Lucas, and Sam Elliott

The Hulk, as a character, has always been an external manifestation of internal conflict. And our acclaimed director, Ang Lee, flying in the face of expectations, has exposed all of Hulk's thematic surface as if it were never hidden to begin with. Perhaps far too perversely for mainstream success, Ang Lee has exteriorized shamelessly. This film is practically inside-out with armchair psychology. Not only does our pitiful protagonist Bruce Banner have repression problems and anger management issues, he is saddled with the grand kahuna of psychological problems: Daddy issues. The Oedipal drama flies fast and furious. And yet the more heavy handed the message becomes, the more the director seems to embrace the preposterousness of it all. The only thing that truly remains internalized about the film (aside from Eric Bana's oddly inexpressive performance) is its sneaky sense of humor. Under less talented stewardship, Hulk may have been a more simpleminded action drama, but Ang Lee is too smart of an auteur to not be in on his own joke.

The film's psychosexually charged imagery is a real hoot if you're up for it. It's almost too literal to miss. Here you have Bruce Banner as a little boy. Mommy, in trying to protect him from Daddy, ends up penetrated by Daddy's big knife. And even less subtle things are afoot in two of the film's most indelible sequences. In the aftermath of both of the movie's most effectively violent sequences (one involving demonic dogs, the other the military), the same image reoccurs. The Hulk, realizing the threat is over, sets his eyes on the lovely Betty and immediately shrinks into limp Banner form. Hulk is the erection. Banner is only the flaccid dick. He can't get over his daddy issues and he can't get it up (or together) for his girlfriend.

Hulk's strange and singular sense of humor is its unsung secret weapon. So it's not surprising (but still worth noting) that Lee and Schamus even improbably manage to work in Hulk's signature line "Puny human!" in a way that is weirdly unexpected, fitting, and funny. That's just one of their many bizarre achievements in a film that never seems to live up to its true potential. Sadly, Lee and Schamus, for all their fascinating intellectual play and saving grace humor, can't seem to keep this blockbuster behemoth moving. It's painfully, painfully slow. Yet underneath perhaps 30, or even 45, minutes of redundant awkward padding, I'm convinced there's a nearly great film lurking about. Just like the Hulk himself, who initially appears only in dreams and shadows.

Hulk, as envisioned by Ang Lee, is a tough film to crack. It's both grand and annoying, slow and fleet footed. The performances are a mix of too restrained (Bana and Connelly) and too outrageous (Nolte and Lucas). The unfairly maligned, artfully realized action sequences are perhaps fittingly emblematic of the film's awkwardness. Just as the monster is roaring to imaginative life and soaring into movie heaven, he comes crashing back to earth with a thud. So, in the end, Hulk is too flawed to be a masterpiece. Yet it's also too proudly histrionic and too defiantly its own film to be anything short of the strongest conversation piece of the blockbuster season. When reflecting back on the film's volatile artistic demons and choices I kept thinking of a line from [the entirely unrelated film] Six Degrees of Separation:

"Chaos/Control. Chaos/Control. You like? You like?"

Hulk B

 

 

-Nathaniel

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