Ben wants to know—why my obsession with The Spirit? First, this entire blog is about what it means for a visual artist to make a narrative film. Frank Miller making a film? Check. However what makes The Spirit particularly interesting is that it introduces a whole new set of never-before-seen problems. Usually, the main problem with artist-made narrative films is that the look of the film upstages the acting. The film works design-in, vs. character out and the performers become objectified. At worst, you get something that is kind of boring (Sky Captain) or confuses movement in space for thematic and emotional development (Mirror Mask).
But the Spirit falls into its own unique category--
1. Somehow, the film managed to bypass the corporate blanderizer's numerous checks and edits. They could have fixed it in the script, production, and editing, but there are significant problems at every level. How did that happen?
2. Frank Miller was given the carte blanche to put a graphic novel into film form. The movie isn't really a movie. It's more like a grand experiment, the superimposition of one medium into another, perhaps the purest extension of a 2D sensibility put into cinema. Like Haley's comet, this is something we may see only once in our lifetime.
3. It's an incredible example of a film that makes no compromises. It shoots for the sky and fails at every point. It attempts to do things even Spielberg couldn't pull off. Live action slapstick? Tough. See 1941. Doing a film in another person's style? Spielberg does Stanley Kubrik's AI with mixed results. Put both in the same film PLUS tonal experimentation? Not a project for a first time director, if any director.
This review does a pretty good job of describing my fascination with this film.
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