Kong is King
As an occasionally genius but otherwise latently schizophrenic and really quite tragic friend of mine remarked: "You may try to derive all sorts of imaginary meanings out of it, but it's just a fairytale of a huge ape, and a silly one at that". Now, one can always sneer with the cynics, which I often do, or one can choose to embrace and investigate the illusion.
I liked that beast. I appreciated its being-in-the-world, as opposed to the being-in-front-of-it (
and here's what I mean by that) which Jackson unmistakenly attributes to just about every human creature in the movie. What hooked me was the theme of "Savageness"/Otherness being abducted from its context and pulled into the self-oiling cultural machinery of a panicked civilisation. What in the beginning of the film appears to be one man's hubris, is later transformed, through the immense popularity of the Kong show in the last act of the movie, into a much broader allegory: the civilised world not only revels in the exoticism of the Other; it
reaffirms itself in the face of savageness it purports to have laid behind, while enjoying, in the velour-clad theatre seats, the illusion of the stability and superiority of its own solutions, schemes and order.
Except savageness runs in our veins, and human progress as opposed to the stasis of nature is an illusion prey to temporary resources, limited sustainability and, some say, finite human ingenuity. And since that depression one century ago only foreshadowed a crisis closely impending, much more permanent and shattering, so is our need for an elaborate distraction/affirmation increasing. That's why Kong, offering sentimental entertainment on the theme of a dislocated Nature, while at the same time commenting on the ideology and the very impulse that drives us to create and consume that sort of stuff, is one of those movies that, unlike the Ring trilogy, seems to be the right film to make at the right time. Not that a movie ever makes any difference.
Of course there were problems with the overall structure, what with the overblown mid-section overcrowded with fanciful bestiaries (those CGI guys just don't know where to stop) and the indigenous tribe sequences of whose point I remain uncertain. All characterisations except for Kong and Naomi Watts' character remained sketchy - albeit I think there's a reason for that - and quite a few scenes and dialogues were plain stupid. But in spite of the indulgent script and the CGI tedia, the director keeps a steady course and the storytelling is quite masterfully done; I only wish Jackson didn't abandon the aphoristic style and image economy that mark both New York sections of the film as soon as he got on that boat.
As for Jackson's endings: I was appalled to see Naomi Watts fall into Adrien Brody's lizzardly arms. I hoped for her to gather up and jump into that abyss. But how did you guys feel about the way the Ring trilogy ended: with the cute little cottage sheltering a hobbit's family idyll and its heavy wooden door closing on us. Cheeky way to round off the damn thing.