| Sin City: expressive homage
by Rick Curnutte
Richard A. Curnutte, Jr. is the Editor of The Film Journal. He has studied English and Film at Ohio University and The Ohio State University. He is a founding member of the Central Ohio Film Critics Association and a member of the Online Film Critics Society .
It crackles and zips by; a fearless and ribald entertainment, this Sin City. Its characters snake throughout its labyrinthine narrative, a dense, popcorn concoction aimed at fans of Tarantino and Mickey Spillane both, and all. A violent, shapely picture, Sin City is at once underappreciated and praised for the wrong reasons.
Rodriguez has always felt like a director who was almost getting there. He gave the first half of From Dusk 'Til Dawn a moody, nightmarish quality that, oddly enough, disappeared when it turned into a full-fledged horror movie. The Spy Kids series, despite uneven acting and often-novice special effects, belied a cinematic playfulness itching to get out.
Perhaps it took the proper material (Frank Miller's dense graphic novels of the same name) or getting Miller himself on board as an affirmation, but Sin City marks a substantial leap forward in Rodriguez's film craft. While comparisons (such as the one I made above) to Pulp Fiction make sense in comparison to Sin City's multi-faceted narrative, the films really aren't very similar in a formal sense.
Tarantino, ever the cinematic channeler, was obviously stuck somewhere between exploitation and the New Wave (a place he can't seem to shake). Here, Rodriguez has taken a step into the past as well, to the days of Lang, Tourneur, Wise: Rodriguez's noir is not a direct reflection of those early masters. Rather, like Todd Haynes' Far From Heaven, it is a pastiche, an homage that embraces and sends up genre tropes, albeit quite straitlaced here.
Concerning a large cast of has-beens from the pseudo-Vegas stand-in Basin City, Sin City (like Fiction), skits away from a straight narrative, wandering from story to story like a collage of sights and sounds.
Much has been made about two very particular aspects of Sin City's formal design: its strict visual kinship to its source material (stark black and white with splashes of color) and its extremely graphic violence.
Indeed, Rodriguez succeeds with Sin City where Kerry Conran failed with Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow...he has created a fully immersive digital experience; a world where nothing in the background is real and thus we don't know who in the foreground can be trusted. It happens so seldom, but here the technology serves the art.
The violence in Sin City is, to be sure, quite gruesome and sadistic in nature. Why that is surprising when dealing with such lowly beasts (most can barely be called human) is beyond me. Sin City is served by its atrocities, for it is, ultimately, a story about how corruption spoils us all. Here, as in life, goodness does not guarantee happiness.
Sin City has momentary weak spots, most notably in the performances of several of its cast members (and primarily in Jessica Alba, savaging a crucial role; that Bruce Willis is able to latch on to his character's pathos speaks even more about the extraordinary actor he's become), but that is really very little to complain about when dealing with a directorial vision this fiercely committed.
I don't know the working relationship between Miller and Rodriguez, but the latter's imprint is all over this thing, albeit in a much more mature, disciplined manner.
I always knew Rodriguez would get there...I just assumed he'd take another 4 or 5 films to do it.
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