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A Big-Budget Exception: My Reaction to The Wachowski Brothers’ Speed Racer

This is something I never thought I would do! Ever since I started writing on this blog, I’ve carefully kept the Big-budget Hollywood flicks at bay by using my custom painted Blockbuster detection and annihilation system. But today, one flick has managed to trick its way through this fool-proof mechanism (like when Stealth Bombers fooled the Radars).

I’ve just returned home from watching the late show of The Wachowski Brother’s Speed Racer. I used to watch the Speed Racer animated series on TV back in the mid-nineties as a schoolboy and I admit to being a sort of a fan of the series (my favorite being Jonny Quest). I am also an avid follower of The Brothers Wachowski and their ground-breaking work on The Matrix Trilogy (I went through my phase of being a Matrixologist). I had watched the theatrical trailer for the film and was not so impressed with the whole graphical approach to the film, I just expected it to be the film where The Wachowski’s finally get beaten up by the critics for not living upto what they started with The Matrix series but I couldn’t have been more wrong. I carefully avoided the early reviews and any other discussions on the film prior to my watching of it and it was a good thing I did so.

My first reaction after watching the film was very similar to the feeling you get after you’ve spun around about 23 times with your arms spread out to their maximum and then you stop only to have the ground pulled out from under your feet leading to your fall and you’ve hit the floor but you’re still pretty euphoric from all the loss of balance. Speed Racer: the film stays true to the original storyline of the animated series and adds a darker side to it. The gritty dynamics of the film are nicely balanced out with frequent injections of slapstick humour at exactly the right moments in exactly the right quantities. Well then, what is it about this film that makes me separate it from the other typical Hollywood blockbusters? The answer is simple: The Wachowskis.

Special Effects

Earlier I had watched Transformers (2007) and Iron Man (2008), two cinematic adaptations of television series (also toy franchise and comic book respectively) that were heavily reliant on the usage of special effects. Normally, I’m not the one for special effects. I usually end up being the cinema fascist among my group of friends who always whines when everyone else is enjoying all the sugar-loaded special effects in your typical action blockbusters but this time it was different. The Wachowski’s succeed in winning my approval because of the fact that their usage of special effects was not intended to try and create something realistic. This is where I feel several of the sfx blockbusters lose me because they aim at trying to create something real-life and end up expecting so much suspension-of-belief that I tend to get exhausted. The Wachowski’s were aiming at a more abstract look for their CG environment, something like a fantastic J-Pop painting, one that must be viewed with 3-D glasses.

Another vital ingredient in this evil soup is the fact that The Wachowskis’ continuing efforts to create something that no one has ever seen before (which will eventually end up being copied in every following film that falls under the same genre). Even though there is a good chance that it may all end up exploding in their faces, they still have the courage to go ahead with the most incredible experiments and take that chance- a rare act of courage with so much money at stake. The Wachowskis make intelligent use of specially made cameras and lenses that keep the background and the foreground in crystal-clear focus which brings about a very animated-cartoon look. This is quite ironic because the more recent cartoons are developed with the shallow focus “look” of film cameras.

Among all this cartoon-inspired execution of almost everything in the film, The Wachowskis never forget to add the human side of the story. There is a strong constant undercurrent dealing with the subjects of relationships, family and finding one’s identity and purpose in the world. Emile Hirsch is completely believable as Speed and for most of the film disappears beneath the role. Susan Sarandon does a good job in the supporting role while Christina Ricci doesn’t quite succeed in hitting the right notes but is easily forgivable considering the frantic pace and the lavish visual abundance of the film.

But in the end, what impressed me most is that fact that The Wachowskis literally ‘play’ with the narrative structure, the mise-en-scene, the visual effects and the history of the franchise. The film clearly draws inspiration from the physics of Japanese Anime and this creates a very interesting feel to the film. I would go as far ahead as saying that the dexterity with which The Wachowskis ‘play’ with their film could be compared to how Jean-Luc Godard played with Breathless (1959). It very interesting to note all the little intricate details that make references to the television series and to quote from the film, watching The Wachowski’s at work is like watching an artist paint or a musician make music (it doesn’t sound that bad when Susan Sarandon says it). This is perhaps the only thing that they know how to do and if they can do it this well then I don’t see why anything else should matter. These both super-geeky siblings are well on their way to make history someday but until then we’ll have Speed Racer.

I’ve seen that a lot of critics have panned the film but I wonder how many of them are acquainted with the visual style of Japanese anime. In my eyes, the film is great but I’m still turned away by all the video games and all the toys that will be sold as part of the franchise. The irony is not lost onto the film and the fact that the film offers an anti-capitalist stance could be laughed upon when you see how many toys they’re selling under its banner. I guess at the end of the day the film has to earn money or it doesn’t work. The way this film is going, if it ends up being a box-office flop then I have a feeling it might see a second light in about a decade as a cult-film.