Film: Sucker Punch
Director: Zack Snyder
I believe we relive our memories, especially the good ones, as films. They are exceptionally well-crafted narratives, often choreographed with such symmetry that we must question the perceived perfection. And we should, for our mind has a Walter Murch-esque ability to carve out inconvenient truths tucked away in our neural interstices. It tints episodes in nostalgic rose or sepia hues and compiles them into retrospection-friendly montages. But what of those straggling bits of information that don’t add up and are discarded in the neural abyss? Whence go the pain and suffering we wish to repress? These free radicals disappear or lie in wait in our subconscious only to manifest as behavioral quirks. All of us have a few such quirks as part of our personalities. But, garner enough of these and the label of insanity will not be far behind. Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch is about a group of girls who’ve had such a label tacked on them and unwillingly enrolled in Lennox House, a mental health facility at Brattleboro, Vermont. It is obvious that they are all scarred, but how much more than us we are never explicitly told. We are introduced to our protagonist Babydoll as Annie Lennox croons about abuse in the background — a pointer to what she may have suffered at the hands of her stepfather and what lies in wait for her at Brattleboro. The orderlies at Lennox house have turned the facility into a hotbed of impropriety and its latest inmate, Babydoll, deals with it through the greatest weapon at her disposal — a hyperactive imagination. A menacing orderly with a Napoleonic complex turns into a brothel-running depression era gangster, a portly guard at the portal to freedom turns into a corrupt fat-cat Mayor and the congregation area, already aptly named the theater, turns into a cabaret colosseum. And thus the stage is set for Babydoll’s, and Snyder’s, escapist fantasy to unfold. And unfold it does with a stylised fury that is native to modern day videogames. This is the part-female empowerment, part-geek boy fantasy that Snyder recreates with the screen space he is given. And he finds his sources in the titles that have come to dominate our popular culture. Babydoll’s bordello recreation of Lennox House could well be a location in retro GTA Vice City. As the film progresses game patrons and fantasy fans will see locales and characters they are intimately familiar with from Japanese Dojos to zeppelin-filled World War One skies. Snyder and Shibuya wear their nerd-chic influences on their sleeve. Even the progression of Sucker Punch’s narrative is very analogous to the experience of video game purveyor. Babydoll’s first flirtation with fantasy is almost like an enthusiast being introduced to a new game purchased for his favorite console. She first learns the rules of this new reality and what her objective is from a Joseph Campbell archetype — a wise old man. Slowly but surely she learns what skills she possesses in this alternate reality almost like a new player feeling her way through the controls of a game. In her very first playing experience Babydoll realises she will need the help of her fellow inmates Sweet Pea, Rocket, Amber and Blondie to complete the tasks the game sets before her. This isn’t a single player game. It is time up the ante to a multiplayer environment. But the new kid on the bock has to gain acceptance from the alpha of an established group to win them over. In this case Baby Doll wins over Sweet Pea, the alpha female, by protecting her sister, Rocket, from the clutches of a cantankerous cook. The two forge an uneasy friendship as the rest band around them to reach the endgame they all want — freedom from Lennox House and the abhorrent, soul-crushing abuse. From here, the film completely transitions into a videogame watching experience. Each object required to achieve the final objective is a level in this quasi-game simulation complete with analogous mission objectives, minions and masters. Each mission is set to genre- defining, adrenaline stimulating rock with our heroines dressed in costumes that usually see the light only on Halloween. Even the cliché comments that pass for dialogue seem purposefully inserted to achieve a certain ‘quasi game’ experience. Apart from Jena Malone who plays Rocket and Carla Gugino as Dr Gorski (her Polish accent will not set her phones ringing with offers to play Sophie Zawistowski), the performances make little impact. The latter stages of the film, with foregone conclusions and prototypical plot twists, are its most tedious. It also had me rewinding to my earliest memories of playing Chris Roberts’ phenomenal game, Wing Commander. For me, the most enjoyable parts of the game were the strategies that moved the story forward — choosing missions and wingmen — and not the actual missions themselves. Sucker Punch consciously eschews story to focus on spectacle. And it is a lesser experience for not finding a balance between the two.
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