Man of Steel - Overly Academic Movie Review

Rating: 6/10 (25 June 2013)

Man of Steel - Overly Academic Movie Review (Contains Spoilers!)
After taking a break from his prior pro-insurgency films such as 300 and Watchmen, Zack Snyder returns to the oeuvre that made him famous: the geopolitical allegory with Man of Steel. The title is an obvious passing reference to the Andzej Wajda films; Man of Marble and Man of Iron.
In this new retelling of the Samson myth Mr Snyder takes our distinctly Jewish super hero "Kal-el" (which means "easy with God") and constructs a searing criticism of the Israeli settlement programs and the conservative right wing leaders of that country.
Mr Snyder begins his film with the birth of his New Israeli Hero at the start of the Kryptonian Shoah. Here Mr Snyder veers away from the normal Kryptonian Holocaust stories. Kal-El's father, Zor-El, standing in for Yitzhak Rabin, tries desperately to save Krypton, and hence the Jewish people, from themselves. Zor-El breaks away from the Knesset and rejects the prior military stance of the Likud party. He even goes as far as placing into Kal –El "the Codex" all the genetic material for all the Jewish people who have yet to be born. A heavy prospect for any person, let alone our Neo Samson savior.
Mimicking real life , our filmic Yitzhak Rabin is killed by the Jewish right wing here represented by General Zod. However, Young Kal-El is shuttled off to safety by his Jewish mother Lara Lor-Van, played beautifully by Ayelet Zurer, a well-known Israeli actress.
So what is to happen with our intergalactic Israel? For the sake of the story it must be destroyed, but I do take Mr Snyder to task for saying greed is what caused it. This sadly reeks of a subtle anti-Jewish sentiment.
Kal, or by his new Americanized name Clark Kent, is raise with American values here represented by Kevin Costner and idealization of the American value system, It is this value system that Mr Snyder believes will save Israel from itself.
Kal/Clark has a hard time accepting who he is in this new world, He goes on a spiritual quest to find his family. Deep in the Arctic he finds what can best be summarized as a futurist/ ancient synagogue. Here he learns from his spiritual father Zor-El the history of the Jewish intergalactic Diaspora. Changed and free from the having to face the Shoah first hand Kal is free to develop beyond the history of his Krypto-Semitic ancestry and create a new identity in the United States.
While Kal was spared from experiencing the Kyrptonian Holocaust, General Zod experienced it first hand and it hardens him. This is where the film constructs it humanization and deconstruction of the Israeli right wing. Zod travels the cosmos looking for "settlements" but only finding death. How could anyone who experienced such horrors not be infinitely changed by it and becoming a monster?
Mr Snyder walks a delicate line between these subtleties. Can Israel seek to re-establish itself on the land of others? Mr Snyder says no and so does his Neo-Samson. The right wing has become monsters and will stop at nothing to impart their will on the land even if this means genocide. In a not to subtle scene, Zod uses a world generator whose two pieces (inverted triangles) creates the star of David over the earth making it only habitable for his Krypto-Semitic people. While the impact of the design is striking I fear Mr Snyder does take some liberties with anti- Jewish imagery.
In the end our Neo-Samson prevails, but not before Mr. Snyder visually references the human ash in Schindler's list and forces Samson to brutally end Zod.
Overall I found this film entertaining. There are some devious plot points; a striking example is when Kevin Costner's character commits suicide while rescuing a dog. This is an obvious statement of the decay of American values at the hand of religion. (dog = god)
In the end the film would have been improved by some much needed editing. Once you destroy an entire people and world in the first five minutes, a fight in Metropolis pales in comparison. I felt that Mr Snyder could have left the points a little more vague instead of painting the Likud in such bloody strokes.
I give the film three out of five stars.