DOCTOR STRANGE (2016)
Directed by Scott Derrickson
Marvel Studios, 115 minutes, PG-13
★★
Doctor Strange features fine performances,
eye-popping visuals, and wall-to-wall action sequences. It’s also a narrative mess.
Name a great
superhero film—not a blockbuster, eye candy, or escapist fluff. Name a superhero movie that wins major awards, is analyzed by serious film scholars, and is
studied by film students. Hollywood keeps making superhero movies, but they are
little more than comic book diversions that move. I’ve nothing against comics,
but as an art form they occupy a liminal space between reality and fantasy. Birdman was a great film because it’s about a man who plays a
superhero and becomes unhinged enough to imagine himself one; 2001, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and Blade Runner are path-breaking films because
they created alternative worlds with their own internal logic. By contrast, most
comics dwell partly in the real world and partly in a magical realm and ask you
to suspend disbelief. That works fine with teens, who also live in a liminal
space: the one between being and becoming. They outgrow it eventually.
Please
excuse the detour, but the above phenomenon is exactly why Doctor Strange is a soon-to-be-forgotten flavor of the month. It’s
based on a comic book character that debuted in 1963, though director Scott
Derrickson takes some liberties with the on/off-again Marvel series. The Doctor
is Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), a neurosurgeon whose brilliance is
surpassed only by his ego. That changes in a horrible car crash that leaves him
with quaking hands, a shattered sense of purpose, and a refusal to accept his
fate. The ego remains intact, though, which means he pushes aside a potential
love interest, Dr. Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams), and thinks all the
world experts are idiots for telling him that he can’t be magically healed.
In fact,
magic is just the ticket, but not in the way Stephen thinks. An exchange with a
“healed” paraplegic sends Stephen scurrying off to Kathmandu, where he
encounters the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton). Let the clichés, pseudo-science,
and recycling begin. Stephen must, of course, move beyond ego and conceit.
(Think Arya Stark in Game of Thrones
mixed with warmed-over Buddhism.) Stephen can’t be healed, but once you know
that life is something of an illusion and that various realities coexist, magic
is an energy path one uses to traverse space, time, and the laws of physics.
You might recognize elements of the multiverse in this, but don’t expect hard science. Stephen’s training parallels that of movie Zen masters and
sword-and-sandal gladiators, with the storyline shifting from science to
science fiction and quasi-religious mumbo jumbo. Unless you’re a devotee of Doctor Strange comics, don’t even try to
follow the explanation for what will happen next—it’s all pretext for an
astral-level showdown between good and evil involving props such as ancient
ritual books, altered reality, the Infinity Stone, and the Cloak of Levitation.
In short, Stephen must combat an apostate sorcerer Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen)
and his followers, who have tapped into the Dark Dimension and the power of
Dormammu. If they bad guys sound a lot like Tolkien’s Saruman and Sauron, who
am I to dissuade your rip-off fears? Folklore holds that the creators of the
original comic were LSD users. I don’t know if that’s true, but I can say that
there are luridly colored sequences in this film that are like being inside a
Three-D acid rock poster circa 1967.
I didn’t
hate this film. Cumberbatch is very good in it, as is Swinton, Mikkelsen, and
Stephen’s compatriot good guys Benedict Wong and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Ms. McAdams
is always a pleasant treat, though one could certainly renew debates over how
even women with important skills (neurosurgeon) are defined by their
relationships to men. Sexism isn’t what’s wrong with the film, though. Nor is
over-reliance on f/x—most of it is amazing on a technical level. In my
estimation, the comic book genre is inherently flawed for filmmakers. Which
world do we believe in, the one governed by the laws of physics or the one
ruled by magic? Incessantly mixing them ultimately means there is no
consistent logic in either realm, so all that’s left is wicked cool visuals. “How
was the film?” we are asked. All we can say is, “It was okay.” We’ve just spent
two hours experiencing the frisson of excitement, but when we leave the theater,
we recall nothing intellectual, consequential, or enduring from the experience.
As adults, we know superheroes exist only in flickering lights on a screen that
has grown dark.
Rob Weir
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