To start, let me say, I for one highly enjoy the movie threads and discussions to which Ilsa, Cervaise, lissener and several others contribute. They provide intelligent debate which, even while you may not agree, at least force you to think more thoroughly about the movie-viewing experience.
If I get the point Ilsa c.s. are making, it is that you shouldn’t judge ST by the use of bad actors or by the fact that it is based on Heinlein’s novel. Both of these points I can appreciate. The mere use of bad actors doesn’t therefore make a movie bad, it depends how they are handled and to what use. That ST was presented as an adaption of a novel may be false advertising and can explain a lot of the hatred the movie seems to inspire, however we don’t judge Ulyssess to be a bad movie just because it doesn’t have the hero roaming around Greece like in the original Odyssee. I think it is pretty obvious Verhoeven never wanted to do a pure Heinlein filming, so you can’t accuse him of doing a botched-up job in that respect.
So if we accept that the movie does not desire to be a faithful rendition of Heinlein’s novel, we should judge it to whether it accomplishes what it strives for, or succeeds in a different, unintended way.
With respect to seeing it as an action-movie, I think ST is not excruciatingly bad, but not very good, either. Bear in mind that it never wants to be a cutting-edge CGI’d action movie.
With respect to it being a subversive criticism, the fact that the movie critics didn’t get it, is of no significance. The more trenchant the criticism, the more likely it is that it will be rejected as missing the point, because it touches sensitive nerves of the audience. A residual subconscious adverse reaction might be a factor in the negative judgement ST received.
Furthermore, if ST would have put criticism up front, the studio probably would never have allowed Verhoeven to make the movie: they wanted an action movie, to make money. So the criticism had to be veiled, like in former communist countries a lot of art was secretly subversive, and despite censorship managed to reach it’s target audience. I’m not equating studio economics to political censorship; I’m only saying that the use of layers of meaning is nothing new and exists in various contexts for various reasons.
It may well be that Verhoeven’s talk is just for the critics and may not correspond with his actual intentions, but I find that hardly relevant. Art may succeed in spite of the author’s intentions or lack thereof.
So I agree with the reading of Ilsa c.s. Do I think ST is a good movie? No.
It did manage to make me think about the parallels with fascist society (and bear in mind the very strong influence of WW II and the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands in Verhoeven’s oeuvre) and tendencies in modern Western societies. But the best art work manages to make the point either more forcefully or more nuanced, and provide something that stands as an admirable work on its own. The subtext doesn’t communicate well, it is too blatant and heavy-handed to work on a different level than pure cognition.
For a movie such as this to work, it would have to interest the viewer on an emotional level as well. It would have to get us to care for the fact that the society is slowly becoming like its enemy: an egalitarian society of interchangeable soldiers, with a complete lack of individuality (as I remember it being the point of ST, anyway). The actors present people with a modicum of ‘individuality’, but there is no real personality present, so nothing is lost. Anything of value was already gone before the beginning of the movie. That may be caused by bad acting, but I think the storyline is also to blame: Verhoeven would have had to add elements to make his point.
Then we might have appreciated the movie for its craftsmanship. That, too, is sadly lacking. At least, that is as I recall it. Like a lot of more recent action movies it presented the sparsest of story lines clothed in battles of special effects. The rightly panned Matrix Reloaded and the overpraised X-Men II may serve as examples. When the awe over the pretty pictures is gone, you are left with no real content.
While ST is clearly the product of an accomplished moviemaker, it is also clear that he produced it quickly and without any love for what he was doing. That reflects the content of the movie, and in that respect would seem to strengthen his point. Alas, the converse is the case. If the director doesn’t care sufficiently for his work, why should we?
