Kong and Ann Darrow

Finally saw Kong last week – at the Embassy, which was as good a venue for it as I’d hoped. There was a lot to love in the film, and I enjoyed it, but it doesn’t tap into the mythic like it wants to. I don’t know why not. Some confluence of elements in the original that don’t work the same way here? In any case, the thing that I enjoyed the most about it was the character of Ann Darrow.
Ann is a fascinating character. She almost abandons everything – spirals away from language, and civilisation, incredibly quickly. She was broken by society, smashed by it, and didn’t want to come back to it. Naomi Watts performs her with insight and affection, deconstructing her to the point where the final act, in which Ann has virtually no dialogue, feels perfect because the character has progressed beyond anything that can be conveyed in words.
(I’d love to know how much Watts thought through her performance, because it comes across as something very raw and devoid of strategy. There are things going on in Ann Darrow conveyed by Watts that I suspect she couldn’t articulate.)
I can’t remember the last film I’ve seen that finishes by utterly destroying its heroine.
Any romance with Driscoll is doomed, she might be with him and marry him, but she’ll never be able to love him, because she’s already lost to the world.
The moments in the film that got me – the moment when Ann’s being rescued, and you see in her the desire to not be rescued, to go back into the island with Kong. And, after Kong falls to his death, when she stands looking down and the temptation to follow him over the edge plays right through her.
Loved the effects. Kong was great. Too long, but not by much – I’d only shave about ten minutes out of it. (The whole first mate-cabin boy relationship can go, and apart from that I’d just shorten a lot of shots from three seconds to two seconds – do that enough times and you’ve got five minutes out of the film.)
Jack Black didn’t hit all the right notes. Which I’m sad about, I was confident he’d do a great job, but he just didn’t sell it to me. Particularly that final line, originally intended for Fay Wray, which clunked out as the worst piece of dialogue in the whole film.
Overall: Go see it, if you haven’t already. It delivers the monkey action.
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“For me the whole thing that gave the 1933 King Kong its poignancy was that he was an artefact, he was not real. My feeling is that in all of us there is a wild untameable doomed thing that will always be shot down in the end. When King Kong tenderly puts Fay Wray down on a safe ledge and goes to his death, it moves us, because we know what it is that’s happening. Because we know that that thing in us which is always doomed to be shot down, is being shot down. And when you have a realistic gorilla, it ain’t gonna work.”
– Russell Hoban on why he’s not going to see the new King Kong

6 thoughts on “Kong and Ann Darrow”

  1. Particularly that final line, originally intended for Fay Wray, which clunked out as the worst piece of dialogue in the whole film.
    It works quite well if you remember that it’s being spoken by a hack. It’s clunky, but he’s trying for a Dramatic! Poignant! Denouement!

  2. Wow, you got a lot more from that movie than I did. 🙂 I think that we had an opposite view of the Darrow/Denham merit.
    For me Kong was all about obsession, about the need to explore the inner savage and demon. Both Darrow and Denham do this, with the significant difference that Darrow perhaps realises what she’s doing. From my POV the first-mate/cabin boy story was important for framing the counter-relationship of Denham/Darrow.
    In the main story arc, Darrow is being led from essentially a life of civilisation and normalcy into an obsession-driven fantasy world. The first mate, in contrast, is leading the boy back to civilization. That was the thematic significance (IMHO overdone) of Heart of Darkness. That is the ultimate expression of obsession destroying sanity. The First Mate sees this as a warning, Denham as a clarion call to action.
    I thought Watts and Brody were both just phoning it in. Neither of them convinced me entirely that their characters really plumbed the depths. Black convinced me of his character’s madness utterly.
    Ultimately I wasn’t able to buy Kong’s more human aspect. A 25′ ape who can’t speak just seemed a too-improbable focus for Darrow. Though her “ability to love” Kong was nicely explained by Driscoll in relation to his own love for her and his inability to express it.
    Hmm.. I always said I’d need to watch King Kong again to fully understand it, and I think THAT rather than any specific virtue will be its redemption. It is itself an enigma, and lavished with layers of symbolism.

  3. Nice stuff, Mash. Will chew it over.
    I guess we haveta agree to disagree over Naomi Watts’ performance, at least until one or other of us sees it again and has a chance to reevaluate.
    I see the cabin boy/first mate counterpoint thing now you point it out, but I’d still chop it out. What it adds as counterpoint still takes too long.
    I think the Kong-as-focus for Darrow was meant to be justified by the fact no-one else ever went out on a limb for her, whereas Kong risked everything to save her. Kong cared, and was the first one who did, and that was the sum total of her affection – and which fed into her need/desire to escape. Whether you buy this rationale is another matter, but that’s what was being told as far as I can tell.
    Intriguing. Maybe I will have to see it again some time.

  6. I was chatting to someone else about this, and they pointed out that Kong wasn’t really a movie. It was a book with moving pictures. In a movie you tend to get a more tightly focused energy, movies usually only try to do one thing. Kong behaves more like a novel, in that it tries to explain everything and go through the entire spectrum of peripheral acts.
    *shrug* If I were cutting stuff, I think I’d cut everything after they leave skull island. Okay, it destroys your interpretation of the movie, but from my own POV it felt like a complete movie at that point. Albeit, a complete movie leaving wide open the doors for a sequel.

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