The Bourne Redemptionby
Christopher Alexion What makes a movie like The Bourne Ultimatum shatter box office records? The answer lies deeper than good acting and superb action sequences. The film’s impact – and really the reason it’s so much better than many movies – is about how it brings to light Jason Bourne as a character and deals with subtleties of man and his relation to the state. And, yes, tail-kicking filmmaking helps. In the third film adaptation of Robert Ludlum’s spy trilogy, director Paul Greengrass builds on his exceptional work in The Bourne Supremacy. The pacing is crisp, alternately revealing and mystifying as the plot develops. The film is ably shot and acted; Greengrass combines impressive stunts (such as a rooftop chase in Tangier) with believable characterization. Bourne’s mastery of tradecraft also shines through in an early scene in London: Bourne single-handedly maneuvers an informant around a CIA surveillance team and beats up several armed men at once. Ultimatum isn’t immune to criticism, though. In Supremacy, Greengrass sought to create an "unstudied" environment with lots of handheld camerawork so that we would almost experience Bourne’s world as he does. It worked well in moderation. Ultimatum gets drunk off these techniques. At one point we stare shakily at a man’s right eye over the blurry shoulder of the guy sitting across the table. Greengrass also pushes it with his lightning-fast fight sequences. The hand-to-hand battle in Tangier is hampered by the fact that we can’t really tell what’s going on or who’s winning. And then there’s the obligatory car chase – it’s thrown in because the first two movies had chases, and lives up to neither. (Although at one point Jason drives a car backward off a roof, which is pretty cool.) The true appeal of Ultimatum is that, in an age of macho gunslingers and brutal shoot-’em-ups, Jason Bourne is refreshingly human. Like Daniel Craig’s Bond in Casino Royale, Bourne has a soul. The catch is that Bourne’s soul, like his memory, has been stripped from him. And he wants them both back. In a sense, Ultimatum is about choices; Bourne rejects the naturalistic fatalism that assumes that things always just "are the way they are." He accepts responsibility for his actions and refuses to screw up his future decisions. And the difference between Jason Bourne and James Bond is that Bourne ultimately chooses to embrace his humanity while 007, after his own trial by fire in Casino Royale, extinguishes the last flicker of his own. Bond becomes a hardened killer. Bourne looks for redemption. To find this redemption, Bourne must not only seek out those he’s wronged but cross swords with the force that took his soul – statism. Ultimatum does an amazing job of bringing out statism’s dehumanizing role. (Warning: what follows contains spoilers.) The CIA tells young David Webb that when they’re through with him, he’ll no longer be David Webb. He has no idea how true this statement will be. The heads of the Treadstone Project subject Webb/Bourne to a battery of unethical "treatments" to break him down and rebuild him as the perfect weapon of the state. Bourne’s final test, he remembers, was to kill an unarmed, hooded prisoner. "Who is he?" asks Bourne. "We’ve been over this," replies the Treadstone scientist. "What has he done?" returns Bourne. "It doesn’t matter," comes the answer. The state requires absolute loyalty. The state requires its weapons to kill without discretion. A key part of Bourne’s restored humanity is his rebellion against his training. After defeating the Treadstone asset in the car chase, Bourne, gun in hand, chooses not to kill his enemy. When the assassin later has a similar chance at Bourne, he demands to know why Bourne didn’t take the shot. "Because you didn’t even know why you were supposed to kill me," Jason answers. "Look what they do to you. Look what they make you give." Bourne learns that statism made him give both his conscience and his reason. "Theirs not to make reply, / Theirs not to reason why / Theirs but to do and die." But statism isn’t always as blatant as Tennyson’s Victorian lines. The Treadstone recruiters took the pragmatic route, assuring Webb/Bourne that his job would "save American lives," thus cloaking the raw power of statism – as tyrants have done since before Caesar – in patriotic legitimacy. But unlike the men of Tennyson’s Light Brigade, Jason Bourne decides neither to do nor to die. And in the end Bourne’s "ultimatum" to the conscientious and patriotic is simple yet incredibly complex: Serve your country without losing your identity to the state. August 23, 2007 Chris Alexion [send him mail] is a recent grad living north of Baltimore. |
