Excellent Excess

Rating: 8/10 (22 April 2006)

The very first note of John Williams's horn-blaring score as the film's title in thousand-foot-high block letters flashes on screen is the very moment when American film-making turned inexorably to big-budget, grand-themed audiovisual extravaganza strung together with simple stories, snappy catchphrases & cutesy jokes. But if George Lucas decided to follow Henry Ford rather than John Ford, he built a Shelby Cobra & left Pinto-making to his many, many imitators. Ironically, he himself remade one of the finest works of film master Akira Kurosawa, the Western-themed "Hidden Fortress," with one scene (the fight in the bar) lifted from "Yojimbo." As a result, "Star Wars" has a bit of the jittery discomfort of characters trying to fit into a story that wasn't quite made for them, like people with past life experiences that intrude into the present. Kurosawa's hero is split not into two but THREE heroes in "Star Wars" (four if you include the princess, who has a more prominent role in "Star Wars"). Hamill's Luke is often overshadowed by Kenobi (Guinness, whose skill had aged better than any fine wine) and Solo (Ford, in the role that deservedly made him a star), though he often holds his own as the clueless but determined farmboy-turned-hero. In less than five minutes, "Star Wars" sets the standard of outer-space audiovisual special effects that the industry was bound to follow from then on, forever sweeping away the earnest, toylike realism that Gerry Anderson was then giving us in "Space: 1999" in favor of exhausting but beautiful orgies of fast, violent, sweeping movement culminating in explosions of bright color & blaring sound. No wonder there's never any sex. "Star Wars" is science fiction only because it's set in outer space, by which standard "Dirty Harry" is a detective story & "Last Tango in Paris" a romance. Little attempt is made to explain the technological wonders depicted (we never find out why light sabers never have to be recharged or get even a cursory explanation of the Death Star). What little science there is can't be counted on, as when Solo extols the drag-racing abilities of the Millennium Falcon in parsecs, which are units of distance, not elapsed time. But Lucas never means to educate, only to entertain. Solo is a smuggler, not a science officer, while the others are not doctors or engineers but warriors, royalty or villains. Lucas's hammerhanded excess works because it never lets up & never goes for the cheap & easy. Though the heroes are unconvincing, "Star Wars" creates an array of badguys in the Galactic Empire that remain unsurpassed in cinema, headed by Darth Vader, who makes the Wicked Witch of the West look like Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. In another irony, the most memorable scene in "Star Wars" is the motionless roundtable conference chaired by Tarkin (Cushing, in the greatest role of his long career) which yielded phrases long & gleefully repeated by a delighted America ("This station is now the ultimate power in the universe!" "This bickering is pointless!" "I find your lack of faith disturbing"). Perhaps, with the space program petering out & the hard realities of nuclear energy coming home to us, our fascination with scientific exploration was wearing thin. In the 1960s it enabled the cast of "Star Trek" to bring the writings of sci-fi geniuses to life with cardboard & aluminum foil. Never again. What better honor, or infamy if you like, could there be to "Star Wars" than that the "Star Trek" movies of the 1980s followed the simple themes, cuteness & spectacular effects of "Star Wars," turning their backs on their own heritage of awed exploration? Perhaps that first detractors and then supporters of Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative nicknamed it "Star Wars" so convincingly that the original name was quickly forgotten. The film might be a bit dated with its holistic, New Age mysticism (feel the force FLOWING through you!) which likely owes more to Jack Kerouac than Musashi Miyamoto & which became more difficult to depict with a straight face the farther the sequels & prequels went. Nevertheless, it was a worthy successor to the Code of the West, especially in contrasting Darth Vader with Luke & Kenobi. "Star Wars" can't really be judged by the standards of other films, partly because it reset the standards & partly because it became, most unusually, the fourth in a series of six! But there's no doubt that it's a heroic sensory extravaganza that will leave the viewer at once exhausted & exhilarated--and will do it over & over again, without offending, condescending or making one think too hard. If you just want to escape to a galaxy far, far away, jettison all skepticism, lower your shields & prepare to make the jump to hyperspace.