Pirates - ARGH!

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest 7/8/06.

I really enjoyed Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, though I had several concerns about both its structure and politics. Above all, however, it was a lot of fun; it was very campy and Johnny Depp was truly hilarious. So, overall, I really enjoyed myself. However, here are my comments and concerns.

First of all, it was a middle movie in a trilogy and it felt like the middle movie of a trilogy; NOTHING was resolved in the end. The bad guy wasn't vanquished; no conclusion of any sort happened. It left loose ends open in a way that was rather frustrating and unsatisfying. Which may make the third movie really great, but as an individual film it leaves something to be desired.

The most disturbing issue of the film was an incident toward the beginning in which Depp was stranded on an island of cannibals. These were apparently supposed to be Carib Indians, though they felt more Polynesian or African than Caribbean (although that's a completely uninformed opinion). These native people were portrayed as cannibals and savages in a way that was completely unnecessary and inappropriate in this day and age. I kept waiting for the whole incident to become some sort of misunderstanding, but no, it really was totally offensive. Bitch. PhD. has a great post on the movie that deals with some of the issues and the facts.

The thing I loved about the movie was the emergence of the East India Trading Company as the real bad guy on top of the crazy supernatural monsters. Unlike the first film, with the super cool zombie skeleton pirates, this movie felt like it was reaching really far to create a story and a bad guy. It drew in several really different nautical myths and then didn't play up the mythology behind it. Davy Jones, who in most nautical lore is not a person but a symbol of death, was personified and given a backstory. The Kraken, which is originally from Icelandic and Norse literature, and seems to basically be a giant squid or octopus, but somehow was controlled by Davy Jones in this film. The Flying Dutchman, a ghost ship that can never put into port, could be really creepy and powerful all on its own, and I would have liked it to be less connected to the Davy Jones figure as its capitan. I find the historical issues of the films even more compelling than the action-packed plot. It's fascinating to connect the plots and locations to the actual history of the Caribbean region and to pirate lore and history. Dead Man's Chest did a good job suggesting some of this history and geography, at least enough to make me want more. With all this fad for pirates, you'd think you'd see more contemporary pirate films to fill in some realism or even historical accuracy.

Johnny Depp ruled this movie, as it should be. The Orlando Bloom/Keira Knightley relationship got completely sidelined, tenuously reintroduced in the end with some possible tension that would have been nice to see developed more strongly throughout the film. I kind of like that their relationship was treated as an established fact that didn't need to be troubled and repeated throughout the film, but it feels like copping out to ignore it the whole time and then introduce tension at the end. I loved the parallels between Davy Jones' story of 'loving a woman as wild as the sea' and Orlando Bloom's relationship with Keira Knightly as an untamed woman who is a pirate at heart. I would have loved to see that more developed in this film, instead of put off for the next movie.

My favorite moment of the film was Keira Knightly dressing as a boy and serving as a sailor on a ship, which I would have loved to see them do more of. I wish they had actually chopped off her hair and making her even more of a pirate herself. There were creepy moments when she tries to use her femininity to her advantage, and I'd rather see her compete with the boys on her own term. I very much enjoyed seeing her try to faint and being ignored by the men than when she tries to manipulate them with her sexuality. She makes a great tough, independent woman and I don't think they should undercut that.

I'm also conflicted by Naomie Harris as Tia Dalma, a witch/voodoo priestess character. Harris did a great job and she's really beautiful, but the character was a exoticized in a slightly creepy way, and seemed more of a plot device than a character. I hope she gets more character development in the third film, which I'm beginning to think of as a second act to this film. I'm kind of disappointed that they made that choice because it didn't have to be that way, but I have high expectations for the next film.

I could talk about this movie for quite a while, but overall I thought it was fun but not great. A pretty good summer action movie with great special effects, but it was too long for its failures of plot.