Writing Citizen Kane or my review of the Amazing Adventures of Kavaliar & Clay

I can't remember how long ago it was that I first watched Orson Well's film "Citizen Kane", which is a film that while brilliant, drug for me. I did not understand the hype or why film buffs acted as if they had seen Shangra-Lai or the promised land whenever it was mentioned. Often in whispered undertones of awe. Male film buffs in particular.

Now, in retrospect I do. Michael Chabon in his pulitizer prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay explains why Citizen Kane was a masterpiece and then demonstrates it. His novel is written in a similar manner to Well's film. A technique that is by no means new or orginal in our era, not like it was when Citizen Kane aired on the silver screen.

What did Wells do? Simple, he split the point of view of the narrative and made the narrative itself a jig-saw puzzel that would eventually create a portrait of the central character, Kane, through multiple points of view -demonstrating that we cannot know someone without knowing everyone he comes in contact with or affects, no matter how indirectly. Wells also treated Kane as a bio-pic. It was amongst the first fictional bio-pic's created and in a sense satire on the form itself. The character is loosely based on William Randolph Hearst and Wells. But is in reality fictional.

Chabon takes on a similar challenge with Kavalier and Clay - he creates a fictional bio-pic of two comic book writers during the dawn of comic book age, just after Shuster and Siegel created Superman. The novel contains, much like a biography would, footnotes at the bottom of pages. It also contains long tangents that have very little to do with the story, but everything to do with the time period and the environment in which the characters worked. And like a biography, the author jumps ahead in time and tells us the outcome before we reach it in the narrative. Telling us that this experience explains why the character did this later. Or this is what happened to that piece of artwork - even though it won't be brought up again later in the story nor will the character who has it. Like a biography, the author assumes you know the ending before you've seen it. Just as Wells assumed that people knew the ending of Kane before they saw it.

( rest of this cut for vague spoilers, I tried to limit them, but it is sort of impossible. )

Revisiting Superman

As you may have already gathered by now, I have a weakness for films about "superheroes" or people with special powers. Also have a weakness for books about them. Don't know why. Maybe because in the films and books the people are often treated as outcasts and come across socially awkward, or maybe it's because they are written by people who feel this way. Not sure.

At any rate, amongst my favorite superhero films or films based on comic books, is, and this may surprise some people, Superman the Movie. Which in some respects is better than anything that has come before or after it in that it focused on the core of the story and less on the visuals or special effects. I mentioned in my review of Superman Returns, which is several posts back, that I'm not sure you can fully appreciate the film Returns without first seeing Superman the Movie and its sequel Superman II - since Returns is both a homage and a direct result of the prior two films. Returns would not exist without them and is meant as the sequel to Superman II. It is also demonstrative of a certain filmmaking technigue known as the "homage". Like it or not, Bryan Singer's Superman Returns is an important film because of how it frames itself around what had come before. And note, not films done by the Singer or containing Singer's cast, or even created in the same decade as Singer's film. The homage Singer creates - also comments on a style of filmmaking and special effects that has changed.

( review of Superman the Movie and Superman II, also mentioning Superman Returns, cut for vague plot spoilers for all three films. )