It’s time to take a serious look at Zack Snyder | Little White Lies

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It’s time to take a seri­ous look at Zack Snyder

23 Mar 2016

Words by David Jenkins

Two men, one in a Superman costume and the other in casual clothing, sharing a gaming console and drink at an event.
Two men, one in a Superman costume and the other in casual clothing, sharing a gaming console and drink at an event.
He rein­vent­ed the com­ic-book movie. He filmed the unfilmable. So why doesn’t the Bat­man V Super­man direc­tor get respect?

Drop a cat out of a win­dow and chances are it’ll land on its feet. Drop a piece of toast on the floor and it’ll prob­a­bly land but­ter-side down. Now hold that thought for a sec­ond. Zack Sny­der is an Amer­i­can film­mak­er who, as house direc­tor to Warn­er Bros, has been hand­ed his own key to the Hol­ly­wood toy­box. Yet Sny­der doesn’t churn out the kind of demo­graph­ic-tooled prod­uct” that’s usu­al­ly the finan­cial lifeblood of a major Hol­ly­wood stu­dio. It’s clear from his films that he’s a man with inter­ests and pas­sions. Some­one, some­where, likes Zack Sny­der. Com­mer­cial­ly, he’s a cat. You can drop him from insane heights and he’ll saunter from the scene with­out so much as an insou­ciant lick of a crum­pled paw. Crit­i­cal­ly though – and there’s no nice way of putting this – Sny­der is toast.

You only need to place a few frames of film on the light­box to neat­ly encap­su­late Snyder’s cin­e­mat­ic world. It all comes back to the icon­ic sequence in Mar­tin Scorsese’s Rag­ing Bull in which De Niro’s Jake LaM­ot­ta is on the ropes, hav­ing his face pum­melled in slow motion by John­ny Barnes’ Sug­ar Ray Robin­son. There’s a direct homage to the moment in the open­ing scenes of Watch­men as down-at-heel avenger The Come­di­an is sim­i­lar­ly beat­en about the head by a masked assailant.

But it’s not just the chore­og­ra­phy of the shot which suf­fus­es Snyder’s work: it’s the hor­rif­ic arcs of gore and sup­pu­rat­ing wounds pre­sent­ed in micro­scop­ic detail; it’s the phys­i­cal­i­ty and dance-like qual­i­ties of hand-to-hand com­bat; it’s switch­ing between immense, com­plex panora­mas and near-imper­cep­ti­ble moments of suf­fer­ing. The max­i­mal and the min­i­mal exist­ing in the same space at the same time.

After com­mer­cials (Bud­weis­er, Miller Lite) and music videos (Mor­ris­sey, My Chem­i­cal Romance), Sny­der cut his direc­to­r­i­al teeth on the fleshy neck of a clas­sic hor­ror remake, deliv­er­ing a dig­i­tal­ly enhanced riff on George A Romero’s zom­bie-based take­down of blind con­sumerism, Dawn of the Dead. His his­tor­i­cal siege movie 300 marked the point where Sny­der became a paid-up mem­ber of the block­buster fraternity.

He was then entrust­ed with an unfath­omably risky prop­er­ty in the form of Watch­men, Alan Moore’s late-’80s graph­ic nov­el which decon­struct­ed super­hero mythol­o­gy by bold­ly re-imag­in­ing an Amer­i­can atom­ic era shaped by vio­lent masked vig­i­lantes. Pur­port­ed­ly unfilm­ma­ble”, it had stumped six stu­dios and four direc­tors for 20 years. But not Snyder.

The orna­men­tal blood-let­ting was elim­i­nat­ed (albeit not entire­ly) for his detour into kid­die town with anthro­po­mor­phic 3D ani­ma­tion Leg­end of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole. Final­ly he gave the destruc­tive, wash­board-stom­ached machis­mo of 300 a female-front­ed oppo­site in 2011’s upskirt insan­i­ty aria Suck­er Punch. It was pitched as Alice in Won­der­land with machine guns” and flout­ed Warner’s rumoured no female leads” policy.

What­ev­er your thoughts on Sny­der, the release of Bat­man V Super­man: Dawn of Jus­tice, a film which has every pos­si­bil­i­ty of strong-arm­ing its way into the upper ech­e­lons of box office glo­ry, demands we look clos­er at the director’s body of work. The sin­gle nar­ra­tive motif which links his five fea­tures is the idea of the few band­ing togeth­er to defeat the many. On paper, Dawn of the Dead and 300 actu­al­ly tell the exact same sto­ry: a small group of peo­ple – new­ly mint­ed sol­diers of for­tune – are warned of encroach­ing hoards and then wade into a messy and usu­al­ly futile show­down. Polit­i­cal­ly, one might even read Snyder’s work as espous­ing Ayn Rand’s phi­los­o­phy of objec­tivism, in which the self-inter­ests of a minor­i­ty are placed above the needs of the masses.

Superhero costume, debris, and crew in cluttered warehouse setting

From the bril­liant open­ing scenes of Dawn of the Dead, in which actress Sarah Pol­ley escapes her sub­ur­ban ham­let as it’s rav­aged by the liv­ing-impaired (amus­ing­ly, they’re nev­er called zom­bies), it’s obvi­ous how much Sny­der enjoys styl­is­ing and fram­ing sim­ple actions. We flip between a POV shot inside a car with a blood­ied wind­screen to a panoram­ic bird’s‑eye view of the road. We watch from above as a car spec­tac­u­lar­ly careens into a barn. Sny­der is a direc­tor of extreme ten­den­cies. Visu­al­ly, there’s no mid­dle ground. In 300, it’s either a breath­tak­ing scene in which a fleet of galleons sway pre­car­i­ous­ly on trou­bled tides or the path of a broadsword as it pierces ene­my flesh. In Suck­er Punch, it’s either the air­ship-scat­tered amphithe­atre of some fan­ta­sy steam­punk blitzkrieg or the snowflake that melts on Emi­ly Browning’s eyelash.

Entire worlds are built from scratch in Snyder’s cin­e­ma and these worlds usu­al­ly car­ry as much dra­mat­ic heft as the human pro­tag­o­nists. The mind’s eye skir­mish­es of Suck­er Punch – extra­or­di­nary visions of Japan­ese bat­tle­bots, drag­on moth­ers and clock­work Ger­man stormtroop­ers – act as a self-ref­er­en­tial nod to the director’s love of con­struct­ing rich, immer­sive land­scapes. Beyond the human cliques which receive a spe­cial focus, Sny­der also like to paint with peo­ple. In 300 and Dawn of the Dead, he mar­shals epic, swirling mass­es of bod­ies into the cramped frame. These styl­is­tic prece­dents hark back to the silent era, to Grif­fith, De Mille and von Stro­heim. Snyder’s max­i­mal sen­si­bil­i­ty plus the way he nat­u­ral­ly grav­i­tates towards the grotesque also recall the qua­si-sur­re­al fres­coes of Brueghel and Hierony­mus Bosch.

Exam­in­ing the man­ner in which Sny­der sells his own films is a busi­ness for which face-palm­ing was invent­ed. In reac­tion to the accu­sa­tions that 300 oper­at­ed as neo-fascis­tic pro­pa­gan­da, Sny­der sim­ply shrugged off all who deigned to extract sub­text from this wor­ry­ing­ly ornate war opus. Crit­ic Mark Cousins described it as fer­al and Rums­fel­dian”, com­bin­ing the cor­po­re­al mon­stros­i­ty of Tod Browning’s Freaks with the gaudy psy­cho­sex­u­al over­tones of William Friedkin’s Cruis­ing. The Ital­ian fas­cist par­ty Allean­za Nazionale even co-opt­ed the film’s imagery in their mar­ket­ing materials.Conversely, Sloven­ian pop philoso­pher Slavoj Žižek argued that the pecu­liar nature of this bat­tle made it impos­si­ble to draw con­tem­po­rary par­al­lels. But accord­ing to Sny­der, it was just a bunch of guys stomp­ing the snot out of each oth­er” – a rare case of a film­mak­er actu­al­ly attempt­ing to sup­press the sub­texts of his own work.

Had Sny­der not been so cosi­ly diplo­mat­ic in the assess­ment of his films, there’s every chance 300 may have escaped its tri­al by fire. Paul Ver­ho­even knew exact­ly how to over­come the lefty naysay­ers when he released Star­ship Troop­ers in 1997. Instead of tak­ing the fascis­tic tone of the source mate­r­i­al at face val­ue, Ver­ho­even deliv­ered the film as an iron­ic take­down of cul­tur­al impe­ri­al­ism and the tri­umphal­ism of war­fare. If Sny­der had trans­ferred his ener­gies to think­ing about what he was say­ing rather than how he was going to say it, 300 may have stood as a sharp and bom­bas­ti­cal­ly stylised trea­tise on race-hate and mas­culin­i­ty through the ages.

Along­side direc­tors such as Michael Bay, Nevel­dine & Tay­lor and Tony Scott, Sny­der could be termed a vul­gar auteur”, some­one who retains an aes­thet­ic con­ti­nu­ity across an iden­ti­fi­able canon of work, but who makes genre films aimed at a mass audi­ence. The sun’s always on the hori­zon, no mat­ter what time of day it is,” he says of his stylised realities.

Does Sny­der project him­self into his own char­ac­ters? It would be unfair to see him as plucky Barn Owl Soren from Leg­end of the Guardians, who slow­ly learns to fly and final­ly defeats an enclave of evil slave­hold­ing owls. Maybe he’s Baby­doll from Suck­er Punch, liv­ing in the par­adise of his own dreams? No, Sny­der is Dr Man­hat­tan. He’s the melan­choly, blue-skinned deity from Watch­men who holds the fate of human­i­ty in his hands. His audi­ence doesn’t know whether to love him or hate him, can’t decide if he’s God or the Dev­il. He’s the embod­i­ment of immense pow­er and this pow­er feeds his imag­i­na­tion. It’s his gift. His curse.

This arti­cle was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in LWLies 47: the Man of Steel issue.

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