Dawn of the Planet of
the Apes hits all the required big notes of a Hollywood spectacle. It also
delivers what one would reasonably expect from a Planet of the Apes movie, up to and including a chimpanzee firing
two guns while riding on a horse. And yet it’s not a mindless action spectacle
because the filmmakers are interested in letting us understand its characters
not only as pawns of plot or objects of allegory – though they are that – but as
living, breathing beings. Like its predecessor, 2011’s surprisingly effective Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Dawn finds rich avenues of exploration,
turning imagery and metaphor from the 60’s and 70’s Apes into bigger, slicker, modern efforts that lose none of the
soul. This is a franchise that has always been at its best when it uses its
monkeys to reflect humanity back at itself. With its latest iteration, advanced
digital wizardry lets us stare deeply into the eyes of an intelligent ape, see
ourselves there, and confront what we find. It’s a film with action that’s
thrilling and exciting, but mournful as well.
The smartly constructed screenplay by Mark Bomback, Rick
Jaffa, and Amanda Silver finds the good and bad in both man and ape. We see the
groups as mirror images, tribes living in tenuous post-apocalyptic peace. In
the ten years since research lab apes staged a revolt and fled into the forest
outside San Francisco at the end of Rise,
scientists inadvertently brought about a plague. Called the simian flu, the
virus was an artificial concoction that decimated humans, leaving apes
unharmed. Without knowledge of the other’s existence, man and ape live their
lives on either side of the crumbling Golden Gate Bridge. In an early scene,
apes gather around their leader. Later, humans do the same. Both sets of crowd
noises a represented through similar walls of sound, murmuring exclamations
that are more alike than not. When man and ape discover the other, there is
fear, then suspicion tempered with curiosity. But each tribe has warmongerers
who cannot see peaceful coexistence. We come to understand that violence will
arrive through misunderstandings, egos, and fear.
First we spend time with the apes. The opening shot – after
a hokey pre-title expositional montage – stares deep into the eyes of Caesar,
the ape who led the rebellion and now leads his clan of chimps, gorillas, and
orangutans. The camera pulls back until we see a forest filled with apes. With
a hand signal, they leap down on the attack. They’re hunting deer. In smooth,
swooping shots we follow their deadly strategy. We see what they’re capable of.
They take the kills back to their village, a visual marvel of rudimentary
houses, public spaces (simian versions of a schoolroom, a town hall, a
cafeteria), and carved logs set in a ring around the perimeter. As they
interact we learn about their society. They communicate with each other through
sign language, grunts, whoops, guttural broken English, and meaningful glances.
We watch, subtitles our only guide. The workings of their society are
intriguingly revealed through action and image. It’s fascinating, preserving
their status as animals and shading in subtleties of characterization through
magisterial silences.
It almost never looks silly. The effects work is remarkable,
not just for bringing the fantasy to life in convincing ways but for the performances
it helps shape. The monkeys are digital creations around performance capture
data. Like last time, Caesar is created by Andy Serkis, who performed the
grunting dialogue as well as movements down to smallest the twitch, and a team
of talented technicians at WETA Digital. It’s a moving, complicated performance
as nuanced as any fully human work, extraordinarily detailed even and
especially in extreme close-up. All the apes are created this way, enlivened by
a fine ensemble (Toby Kebbell, Nick Thurston, Karin Konoval, Judy Greer) who
are transformed into believably soulful monkeys imbued with personality and
emotion beyond what makeup or trained animals could supply. They are, in
writing and acting, among the most memorable screen characters in recent
memory, sympathetic and humane with multifaceted motivations and expressive
faces. What stand out most vividly are their eyes, so alive and compelling you
can see the gears of thought and feeling turning, giving them heavy emotional
lifting in unforgiving close-ups. We know them as fully as any person on
screen.
Caesar, a compassionate leader and caring father, meets his
human counterpart in the man (Jason Clarke) who arrives in the forest looking
to restart an old dam in order to restore power to the fledgling human camp
living in a small section the crumbling, weedy, fortified ruins of San
Francisco. He has his wife (Keri Russell) and son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) in tow. Once
they discover the animals, they want to learn more about the apes and their
culture, convinced these intelligent creatures will help if they hear them out.
Caesar wants to keep the peace, but other apes agitate for war. The humans are
weak. Why not kill now and never worry again? Other humans aren’t so kind,
either. Back at their base, a leader (Gary Oldman) is stockpiling heavy
weaponry. He wants to reclaim the dam by wiping the apes out. As characters,
the people aren’t as deeply felt as their animal counterparts, but the strong
ensemble brings complexity to what’s on the page. The strength of the writing
is in its activating of the dread and desperation of its scenario as pieces
slowly fall into place, as weapons and suspicions reach the inevitable.
In its broad strokes, the conflict is expected and the plot
moves towards the typical summer blockbuster conflagration that grows tiresome.
But director Matt Reeves (of other excellent efforts Cloverfield and Let Me In)
has given us down time, quiet reflection, moral complications slowly
developing. We’re not tired of action before we even get there. He thinks in
shots and sequences, deploying his camera with patience where many of his
contemporaries slap together chaos. Here he builds tension and empathy out of
crisp staging and long master shots. How better to be overwhelmed by the sight
of hundreds of apes emerging in the trees behind humans in the foreground? By
the time the action sequences roar, he cuts for the impact of clarity, not the
impact of shocks and sensations. He pans 360 degrees with a tank’s turret as
its driver changes from human to ape, foreground struggle reflected in the
background that sweeps across the entire conflict. He watches as groups of
combatants swarm over rooftops. He finds memorable moments: gunfire lighting
flashes in the darkness; a kind character dropped to his death out of frame; a
tight close-up of a whispered warning.
Reeves can’t get around the ultimate wearying effect of the
typical blockbuster climax, but action is all the more impactful for being
rooted in flesh and blood. Digital
beings and stock characters alike are invested with humanity. Every violent
action has weight, consequences that matter. It’s a film that doesn’t want to
see anyone hurt, certainly not the main sympathetic characters, but even
villains of both human and animal variety who remain stubbornly humanized
individuals. They do bad things for what they think are good reasons, reasons
we can understand. Humans should be scared of apes. The animals are strong,
resourceful, adaptable. The apes should be scared of humans. They have guns. This
is a gripping sci-fi adventure that expresses not shoot-‘em-up militarism, but
regret that the worst of man and ape brings conflict to the fore. It slowly
brings two worlds to crisis and grows sad as the prospect of peace dwindles. It
makes for a multipurpose allegory, applicable to any conflict with two
intractable, yet similar, sides. Peace is close, yet, with great sadness, war is closer.
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