Only in its final shot does the relentlessly dark, disintegrating tone of REVENGE OF THE SITH gain some fragile form of uplift. That’s saying something. Especially since most fans’ love of the STAR WARS films is reliant upon an engagement with stories that smoothly blend humour and action in light equal measure. However, REVENGE OF THE SITH -- my favourite film in the whole saga, and, in my mind, George Lucas’s ultimate masterpiece -- is not interested in whether or not you have a ‘fun’ time. Instead, it offers a rapidly decelerating, frighteningly plausible portrayal of an entire social order come quickly undone by the emotional decisions of a powerful young man torn between two rival cliques. The political order, embodied by its scheming, corrupt Chancellor, in reality a Sith Lord, a cloaked representative of darkness itself, seeks to sway him by exploiting his fears for his family; the religious order of the Jedi, already cautious and wary of the very government it has pledged to protect at all costs, sees him as The One who can redeem and bring balance to The Force. Both groups seek the youth’s counsel; both view the other with suspicion and disdain. It doesn’t end well for Anakin Skywalker, or almost anyone else. The Jedi are slaughtered; democracy is hijacked; his wife Amidala dies in childbirth; his mentors Obi-Wan and Yoda must hurriedly flee into exile. And Darth Vader himself is born from Anakin’s fiery form of robotic half-death. It all goes to shit, fast. After a slow, steady build-up of emotional manipulation and plot machinations over the previous two prequels, events rapidly converge in this film to unseat the old order and usher in a dark age. The whole film is a brilliantly grim, downward descent. Yet there’s that last, lingering image we’re left with, of a young couple staring up at two moons, a newborn gently nestled between them. It’s not only another nice example of the visual symmetry between the two sets of STAR WARS films that Lucas has woven into each of the prequels – in this case, that the young tyke will grow up to become Luke Skywalker, who adopts a similar gaze in the same spot as a young man in EPISODE FOUR. It’s the simplicity of the tableau itself at this end-point in the film that’s so striking and pure. After almost two-and-a-half hours of confusion and betrayal, slaughter and skirmish, politics and battle, the movie ends with a couple cradling a baby and staring up at the sky. As the dusk turns to night, as a new son is sheltered, everything good about life can now start again. That there is one extra moon up above adds an odd form of grace – coming as it does after hours of high-tech effects and whiz-bang editing, it’s a simple, gentle poke at ‘reality’. This ending also evokes the conclusions of previous films directed by George Lucas, specifically THX-1138, where Robert Duvall escapes an Orwellian future by climbing up and outside of his urban-prison to greet a fully blazing sun that blooms ripe and bright red, and it also echoes the end of AMERICAN GRAFFITTI, where a teenage Richard Dreyfuss finally gathers the guts to leave his small town behind by hopping into a plane and soaring up above his old life, the dazzling brightness of the sun through the window blinding him from his youth and bleeding the whole screen a bright white. For Lucas, the sky is a source of escape, exile, promise; here, it’s also a final, emphatic punctuation point of a shot that somehow, in its simple, familiar humanity, instantly offsets and cleanses all the preceding carnage. The only moment of authentic optimism in REVENGE OF THE SITH is saved for the last thirty seconds. A galactic space-opera winds down to a small renewal of faith. Here we go again, it’s saying. Let’s just hold this kid tight and hope for the best.
Posted on: Mon, 02 Sep 2013 12:40:15 +0000
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