Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Regal Union Square, August 26, 2011
Movie #65 for 2011
Sometimes it seems that everything I read and see and do is part of a bigger context, a longer conversation I’m having with myself. Rise of the Planet of the Apes was, surprisingly, that kind of experience. Between reading articles about animal actors (Susan Orlean on Rin Tin Tin in The New Yorker), the documentary Project Nim about the chimp raised as a human and then abandoned to a primate research facility that has stuck with me since I saw it, and the graphic novel I just finished (Duncan the Wonder Dog by Adam Hines), which uses animal rights as a metaphor for civil rights (or possibly the other way around), I was well primed for Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
JAMES FRANCO plays Will, a scientist working on the cure to Alzheimer’s (which his father, JOHN LITHGOW, suffers from). He has unexpected results in the animal trial phase when the ape subjects get much, much smarter. He has a special relationship with Caesar, a super-smart ape he has raised in his own home, but it is destroyed when Caesar is discovered and removed to a primate research facility - a dank and putrid prison for apes. There, Caesar becomes a revolutionary, makes the rest of the apes as smart as him and leads a charge out of the prison and into freedom. In among this are plenty of inventive action set-pieces and little snippets of story that establish the film that is sure to follow, a remake of Planet of the Apes.
In general, I am not a fan of computer generated imagery in films - I prefer regular old stunts and cardboard cut out effects. And computer generated characters? I really find it difficult to engage with them. So I was wary, going in, of the completely computer generated ape characters in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I felt justified by the opening sequence - a group of animated apes being chased through the jungle - which looked entirely unconvincing. But it all came good - and then some - with ANDY SERKIS playing Caesar (pictured). Caesar isn’t human, but he’s not really an ape any more either, which is conveyed beautifully through detailed and subtle acting. The writers and director RUPERT WYATT (The Escapist) have a lot of faith in Caesar as the emotional and narrative core of the film and it is exactly the right place to put it. He is funny, tragic and compelling - and easy to engage with despite being animated. Huh, who’d’ve thought.
