Laugh it you will: King Kong.
Solidly made, it tells a rip roaring adventure tale.
The special effects have something they don't have in movies today: beauty.
I could go on praising the movie for this and that for dozens of paragraphs but what sticks in my mind, and has developed over the years is that more than any other film I can think of King Kong is about the moviegoing experience itself. Yet there's irony in the tale inasmuch as its main character, a film-maker, travels to the Far East and finds something that he originally wants to film, and then, when it wreaks havoc on the island and its natives, he decides to capture it and bring it back to civilization and put it on display.
As most of us know, Kong doesn't like to have his picture taken, thinks the photographers are trying to hurt the girl he's still enamored with, so he breaks his chains and goes on a rampage to find the girl. The movie concludes with the girl rescued, Kong fatally wounded by machines gun mounted on airplanes, and then his captor's closing line "'twas beauty killed the beast". As I see it, Kong is the real world. He's also us. What happens in the world cannot be controlled or defined by the movies, and yet movies have become in many respects our window to the world.
What enchants me about Kong is the back and forth sympathies the movie creates, first for Denham, then the girl, Ann, the crew of the ship that takes them to Kong's island, and then, for a while, the natives; and finally the great and powerful Kong, who, as things turn out is both extremely dangerous and yet a romantic at heart. Kong is sometimes shown as tender, even affectionate in his way, given that the girl he's in love with is the size of a chipmunk in his hand. King Kong is a movie in which the story compels the viewer to switch sympathies continually; and it often raises uncomfortable questions, such as, for instance, "who's worse, the big ape or the man who captured him?".
King Kong keeps my eyes riveted to the screen and my ears open; to the dialogue, the incredible sound effects, Max Steiner's thunderous score. It's the gift that keeps on giving, from start to finish. Yet while "it's all on the screen" it makes me think about things, movies in particular; the mass media and now the social media in general, and wonder what man has wrought over the past century. For me, Kong is the nature we cannot control, and that includes human nature; the things we have to learn to live with, and which come back at us in unpleasant ways, whether it's AIDS, bedbugs or Muslim terrorists. The movies try so hard to "prettify" life, and yet when real life comes at us it's often monstrous and not pretty at all. Nor do I see Kong as all that separate from life. In the movie, yes, in reality, no. We're all little Kongs to one degree or another, but unlike the monster in the movie we can control our impulses somewhat better, and also unlike Kong, we like to have our pictures taken
Oops. I knew this was going to go on for a while...
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