Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Et tu, Koba?

"Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" is the movie that has brought "Apes" to war. Oddly enough, this is one of the most anti-war films in years, with unmistakable allegories and warnings against unguarded militantism and vengeance. This has been observed by several others. Ari Siletz notes that audiences will surrender to the film's fatalism, that "when the forecast is war, peacemaking is as futile as raindancing in a drought." Here's what Rob Ryan has to say: "The central thesis of the second movie seems to be that despite the best intentions of good leaders, people (and apes) are innately paranoid, hateful creatures that are almost entirely incapable of getting along with each other." Three years ago, in my review of "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," the better than expected reboot of the series, I wrote that the horror of the film was that the "descent with modification" that is evolution is flipped and the hegemony of humans over their distant cousins is reversed. The horror of "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" is that now both species have guns and will do anything to destroy each other. There exists here an embrace of the "killer ape theory," the idea that "war and interpersonal aggression was the driving force behind human evolution." War has found a way.

This is really evident in the fascinating performance that is Toby Kebbell as Koba. Koba (if I recall correctly) was the ape who was particularly mistreated in the previous film. Here, he is one of Caesar's (Andy Serkis) top lieutenants. In the opening hunt, it is Koba who saves Caesar's life. Koba recognizes that it was Caesar who saved his first, and so he is willing to follow him wherever Caesar takes the apes as their leader. But it's not so simple. The majority of Koba's scenes show him as a character of haunting mercilessness--an angry warrior charging into battle, willing to figuratively and literally jump through fire if he has to. I don't think I've ever seen something as uniquely frightening as an ape shooting assault rifles while charging on horseback into battle. Scars make you stronger, he believes--but they also make you more bitter. He has learned hate from humans, and that appears to be all he has learned, and so he grows impatient with Caesar's cautious pragmatism and pacifism. Koba is clever as he is vicious, making his humorous scenes, like how he "plays monkey" to distract his enemy humans, all the more unnerving. It isn't too surprising that he hates humans so much. His reflection, to some extent, is in Gary Oldman's character, Dreyfus. It's not fully explained, but we can assume that while it's unlikely the apes killed Dreyfus's family, he blames them. He's a man of war by necessity, he might argue, not by choice.

Caesar, our main protagonist, isn't nearly as interesting as Koba. But Andy Serkis is doing remarkable work with this trilogy. After watching the first film, I couldn't help but wonder if Serkis was getting tired playing these characters that require motion-capture technology. After all, he has done this for Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" and "Hobbit" trilogies, "The Adventures of Tintin," and "King Kong." He is a part of the main cast of the upcoming "Star Wars" film, and while there are interesting, to say the least, theories as to what kind of character he will play (ranging from a Wookie to Yoda to Jar Jar Binks' son), I side with the argument that his character should not be one that requires computer generation. He has proven his ability and imagination with such acting, but now, I say, let him have an opportunity to prove he can do more traditional acting. Serkis knows this; here is what he told the Telegraph: "Caesar and all the other characters I have ever played are driven by one thing and that is acting. Audiences want to be moved by acting, not by visual effect." I still think that audiences don't quite understand the physicality of his work. Here's an great quote from an interesting article in Wired about his performance as Gollum: "He conceived Gollum as an addict whose inner struggle translated into an out-of-control, convulsive physicality. In his audition, he climbed up on a chair, his face contorted, and delivered his lines in a thin voice interspersed with a gurgling cough."

Serkis doesn't necessarily gurgle a cough and contort his face, but his Method acting approach and laborious study of ape movement is obvious. Remind yourself that the actors portraying humans are not seeing the actors portraying apes as we the audience see them, so the pressure is twofold on Serkis and others. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the digital rendering of Caesar seems to look less realistic than that of Koba or Maurice (Karin Konoval), an orangutan who serves as an important adviser to Caesar and a school teacher. Most of the other characters aren't particularly interesting, though. Jason Clarke as Malcolm, the main human, is more of a man of peace (in stark contrast to Clarke's characters in "Lawless" and "Zero Dark Thirty") than Dreyfus. It's not a bad performance or character per se, just a rather flat one. Like Frida Pinto before her, Keri Russell isn't given much to do other than hand out antibiotics to dying apes. But while the movie doesn't have much to offer in terms of character development, the other elements are terrific. The music by the great Michael Giacchino manages to aid the film while seemingly paying homage to the original 1968 film and "2001: A Space Odyssey" (which was released the same year and also famously has apes). Its dialogue isn't exactly that of Shakespeare, but its impressive visuals, powerful imagines and obvious metaphors make it a movie you should see.