King Kong

If anybody knows how to film an epic, it’s Peter Jackson. He first proved himself with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and then turned to re-making the favorite film of his childhood. King Kong (2005) is a grand adventure, taking all the possibilities of the original and bringing them to fruition.

First of all, it's a three-hour movie. I have no problem with that. There are a couple of sequences that go on just a tad too long, but I enjoyed being wrapped within the story. To paraphrase what Roger Ebert wrote about The Best of Youth (which is six hours long!), “when you hear that it is [three] hours long, reflect that it is therefore [three] hours deep.”

Jackson wisely doesn't even show us the giant ape for the first hour. Instead, the various stories of the human characters are well-established. By the time Kong does arrive on screen, the story is able to devote full attention to his relationship with Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) without getting bogged down with the task of developing the other characters.

The first hour of the film lays the groundwork as the story begins in Depression-era New York City, circa 1933. Among those we meet are: Ann Darrow, a vaudeville performer who has just lost her job; Carl Denham (Jack Black), a desperate movie director who casts Ann as the new female lead in his movie, even though the studio executives have just pulled the plug; Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody), the playwright who is writing Denham’s movie; and Captain Englehorn (Thomas Kretschmann), on whose ship the characters are traveling to the mythic Skull Island.

This Skull Island is some place. Our heroes first encounter a disturbingly bizarre native tribe, and then have to fight off all kinds of creatures: dinosaurs, giant insects (lots of ‘em), man-eating slugs, giant bat-like creatures, and Kong himself. At one point, the men are caught in a dinosaur stampede and the digital effects aren’t quite as convincing as they could be. To quote Roger Ebert again: “But special effects do not need to be convincing if they are effective, and Jackson trades a little realism for a lot of impact and momentum.”

Kong himself is the best special effect, given life through the motion-capture work of the amazing Andy Serkis. All of his skill is brought home in the key scene of the movie, when Ann uses her instincts as a performer and somehow entertains the giant ape. One last quote from Ebert: “The scene is crucial because it removes the element of creepiness in the gorilla/girl relationship in the two earlier Kongs (1933 and 1976), creating a wordless bond that allows her to trust him. …The movie more or less faithfully follows the outlines of the original film, but this fundamental adjustment in the relationship between the beauty and the beast gives it heart, a quality the earlier film was lacking. Yes, Kong in 1933 cares for his captive, but she doesn’t care so much for him. Kong was always misunderstood, but in the 2005 film there is someone who knows it.”

At this point in the film, Kong becomes Ann’s personal protector. They even share a beautiful sunset in a scene that makes subtle use of James Newton Howard’s gentle music. The character of Ann was primarily a screamer, but now she is given more depth than Fay Wray was ever allowed in the original film. Many of Naomi Watts’s scenes with Kong have very little dialogue and involve quiet looks of curiosity and understanding.

I have hardly mentioned the other performances. Jack Black makes a good Carl Denham. In the original movie the character was sort of based on Cecil B. de Mille, but now seems a bit more like Orson Welles. But this is not a comedy role, and Black is effective in the moments when his assistant, Preston (Colin Hanks), begins to see just how deep Denham’s obsession really goes. Adrien Brody is wonderful as the writer falling in love with Ann, who will have to survive Skull Island if he wants to write comedies. The supporting performances by Thomas Kretschmann, Kyle Chandler, Jamie Bell and Evan Parke are equally effective.

Fans of the original film will be able to recognize plenty of lines of dialogue that are spoken in this version, albeit a little more convincingly. There are necessary changes, but Jackson is faithful and pays homage to the original, sometimes in ways that are not so obvious. Even the credits at the end of the movie resemble the credits of the 1933 version. (Here’s some hardcore trivia: There’s an in-joke reference to the original movie in some dialogue between Carl Denham and Preston early in the movie, as they discuss “Fay” appearing in an RKO picture for “Cooper.”)

Is there anybody left that doesn’t know how King Kong ends? The third act of the story takes place back in New York City, where Kong and Ann eventually find themselves atop the Empire State building. But before that there is a beautiful scene between them that takes places on a frozen pond in Central Park. I remember tears came to my eyes when I watched this scene for the first time in the theater. Knowing how people in the story react to Kong’s presence, and knowing how the story ends, seemed to lend the scene a certain sadness.

I have always had a hard time describing why I love this movie so much. It’s a strange story, really. Who could identify with a giant ape and the woman he protects? Maybe I want to identify with two characters that find a mutual understanding and trust that almost no one around them can see. Maybe there is a little anger at the way men try to destroy or control what they don’t understand. The way Ann can look into Kong’s eyes and find beauty in his soul seems to resonate within me.

I think Peter Jackson has created a great modern epic, a true journey of adventure and discovery that looks a little deeper than we expect. Strange that such a large movie is really about discoveries of the heart.