Tomb Raider - Objective & Subjective Drama
Thoughts On: Tomb Raider (2018)
A rich adventure's daughter, who has disavowed all of his wealth, investigates his disappearance.
Though I can say that Roar Uthaug's Tomb Raider was surprisingly good, it isn't a particularly special film; certainly above-average as a video game movie, but only by virtue of the fact that it seems to delve only into the cinematic, story-based elements of the games, which ultimately leaves this a pretty traditional action-adventure film. Furthermore, this is not very far removed from the Angelina Jolie Tomb Raider films. This is especially true in terms of the structure. The Jolie films all start with fun and games that are eventually interrupted by a call to action catalysed by a man - a father or a love interest of some kind - as attached to ancient ruins. These ancient ruins take Lara off to a different country where she encounters bad guys, but eventually has to side with them before, in a final climax, there is a huge conflict and all is sorted out. Uthaug's Tomb Raider follows this basic formula with very minor alterations and the expected dressing up (a unique selection of location, myth, ruins, etc). This leaves the narrative predictable, but this is not necessarily a bad thing.
The Tomb Raider narrative seems to be an incarnation of the hero's journey centred around a confrontation of masculine forces. It is then typical of the kind of narrative seen in, for example, Clash of the Titans. These kind of films are very much so about confronting male and female forces, both the positive and negative. (You can read about Clash of the Titans here). Tomb Raider is descendent of this basic narrative in that her father represents her central inner-conflict and motivation. In following this imago, this image of perfection that she holds of her father, Lara comes upon dangerous and evil men. Her task here is to wield the dangerous and to defeat the evil. Before this, however, she must exist as they do; this is why the 'co-operation with the bad guy' element of the plot seems so inevitable. It is having mastered the masculine domains she enters that Lara Croft can impose her moral fortitude by confronting ancient masculine/feminine archetypes (the ruins that she so often has to investigate). These ruins are tied up in her own interior conflict with her father, and in overcoming and mastering this domain, she takes an individuating step of the hero. So, in total, each Tomb Raider film deals with Lara Croft overcoming a subtle Freudian drama connected to her childhood and father by travelling along a Jungian narrative spruced up by a lot of Hollywood flash. It is fascinating, however, to step back and see how these narratives developed in the video games - and were played primarily by boys. From this perspective, Lara becomes an imago herself, a female archetype in the gamer's head, and thus the narrative becomes a more complex one about female and male forces balancing when in search of one another. Alas, let us not get lost in this line of thought.
It is rather obvious that, though these narratives have an arguably complex symbolic base, they are not executed particularly well. The problem with all of the Tomb Raider films is symptomatic of a central misunderstanding and miscomprehension of what they are fundamentally trying to achieve. Though all of the films are intrinsically constructed upon this confrontation of the masculine imago, the drama is consumed by objectivity and rather blind to subjectivity.
I have talked at great length about the objective and subjective in cinema. So far, however, we have only covered this concept in regards to impressionism, expressionism, surrealism and realism. These are modes or approaches to cinema, and they can be characterised as objective and subjective as to describe the way in which characters are constructed. To construct a character with impressionism, the camera and story seeks to pull life out of them and bind this to the audience. To use impressionism objectively, characters become objects on screen, which is to say they become caricatures, archetypes or symbols - depending on their complexity. These characters are defined not by an illusion of humanity and free will (of subjective being), but are instead defined by the constructs around and within them; they clearly serve a writer.
It must be emphasised that we are dealing with mode, and also form, when speaking of objective/subjective impressionism, expressionism, etc. Mode concerns philosophy and approach; what a writer means to achieve in their script. Form concerns physical representation; what is on screen and how it gets there. Objective impressionism is bound to mode in that it is a way of approaching story. It is also linked to form as objective impressionism is manifested with the camera. Alas, what is missing in this conception of the objective and subjective is the fundamental basis of representation: drama. It is in drama that we find the fundamental meaning of any story. For a film to be manifested, its drama must formulate the foundation. The writer's approach manipulates the abstract representation and directions of the drama. The form manifests drama on the screen, attempting to provide the correct frame through which to see it. After this, the work is becoming art, and in becoming art, it must take on a genre, which is to say, it must have an established relation to all other literature. This does not necessarily provide a map of how a film is chronologically made, but this is the hierarchy of structural attributes that all films have. At their heart, all films are drama, forming their skeleton is mode, the form is their skin and musculature, genre is clothing. Let us nonetheless turn back to drama.
Dividing the heart of a film is a line between the objective and subjective, which is to say that drama can, itself, bear a subjective and objective quality. Drama, in turn, subjective and objective drama, concerns not necessarily character, but the life force of narrative; it is that which gives the spaces and frames of cinema time. To conceptualise of drama's objective and subjective faces, we must stress that it is the abstract motivation for story about which we speak. For this abstract motivation to be subjective it must be embedded with a sense of universal life: the universe's life. We speak now in great abstractions, but, if we follow the idea that drama is imitative of life, we must ask where life emerges from. We do not know. Yet, both science and the most central philosophies of humanity operate with the assumption that there are rules around us derivative of being beyond space and time, but are themselves space and time too. In religious doctrine, the rules and logic of the universe often exist in the domain of a god or universal omnipotence such as Tao; these are both transcendent of, yet intrinsic to, the universe. In science, one may ask a question of physical law. Did the laws of physics create the universe, did they pre-exist it, did they emerge simultaneously, did physical law follow the birth of the universe? I, of course, cannot answer this question, and it seems that scientists cannot definitively do so either. Physical law seems simultaneously intrinsic and transcendent; it both is the universe and it is beyond it. It is this dichotomy of intrinsic and transcendent that characterises life itself; life is an existent force within us and beyond us; life is the universe, life is also beyond the universe. To imitate this life with drama, we would have to imitate both its transcendent and its intrinsic qualities. Objective drama deals with the intrinsic and subjective the transcendent. So, when we suggest that subjective drama mimetically embodies universal life, we speak of art attempting to project the central rules of the universe's being as they remain in the abstract and beyond ourselves. Objective drama is left dealing with what is obvious, what is before ourselves, and so the rules of reality that are tangible and intrinsic to logic.
All becomes very clear with an example. In Tomb Raider, there are two major elements of drama. There is Lara's conflict with her father, and then there is her literal journey, which includes many fights, chases, traps, puzzles, etc. Her conflict with her father deals with a confrontation of the universal masculine, of archetypes that exist in transcendent spaces. Her fights and chases occur in basic physical spaces of an intrinsic quality. The subjective drama is in the themes, whereas the objective drama is the action and adventure. (It is important to briefly note that action can be transcendent and theme can be objective; the nature of this assertion will become apparent as we go on, but we shall save the particularities for another time).
Tomb Raider's central issue does not concern its objective drama. The realism and verisimilitude of Tomb Raider's physical character drama (fights, chases, etc) is its greatest strength. I enjoyed most the fight scenes for they capture desperation, a palpable feeling of fighting for one's life and a truthful fighting style - all without leaning too hard on contrivance. The integration of mixed martial arts techniques into the fight choreography as well as the writer's ability to embed into Lara weaknesses, yet have her overcome personal fault, secure a minor narrative. So, though the drama in the fight scenes very much so deals with rules of a very objective class, they do open up onto subjective themes ever so slightly. We see this with the arc that stretches across the fight scenes to see Lara become a smarter fighter; the notion developed here being one of fighting from within, fighting with reason and purpose beyond yourself, not just for grit and a game of confined self-development. Somewhat humorously, this is symbolically represented in a final fight with Lara's father killing herself to save her and the world, yet Lara going on to carry fourth his moral fortitude by defeating the evil masculine character--by punching him in the dick and then the throat, taking away his masculinity and his humanity. Humorous symbolism aside, the technicality, and so the spectacle, of the fights isn't outstanding - this is more true of the chase scenes - and so they don't make for masterful set-pieces, but are certainly impressive and absorbing as well as the deepest sources of characterisation that the film cultivates.
Whilst there is enjoyment to be found in the objective elements of drama in Tomb Raider, the subjective drama is lacking. To put this into words we have all heard and said before: the action scenes are good, and so watch this film for them, but there's not much to care about in regards to character and story. To take this formulation more seriously and truly ask what we're saying, we must elaborate on how and why the subjective drama is lacking.
Missing from Tomb Raider is a serious exploration and representation of who Lara's father is and what her relationship with him was like. Because we do not have a subjective understanding of the backstory - because it is objectively used in depthless flashbacks - this film has no symbolic-dramatic base, which is to say, it does not tap into those transcendent rules of the abstract universe. Because this film has no ability to capture deep, abstract, profound truth of any particular class or character, it fails in securing subjective meaning. (Better films that deal with female heroes confronting masculine archetypes are Moana, Mulan, Beauty And The Beast, Spirited Away and Amélie) .The result of Tomb Raider's depthless subjective drama is that we see not the humanity and feel not the abstract reality of the story, yet can appeal to its skewed (typholodramatic) representation of reality and the objective.
There are some elements of subjectivity in this narrative that have their effect. As said, they emerge from the fight scenes and Lara's arc through combat. The Jolie Tomb Raider films lacked this. Her character was constructed rather objectively. Thus, she mediates between a caricature and objective-archetype, catalysed into being by an imago; by a sexual, Amazonian (to reference Greek mythology) warrior woman archetype. In the language of the (Freudian) feminists, Lara Croft is objectified in the Jolie films also. She, too, is often castrated, revealed to be a man without a penis; which is to say she has a masculine shell that corrupts the inner femininity, her sexuality used a spectacle, her masculinity a novelty. In Uthaug's Tomb Raider, there is little to critique from a feminist perspective as sexuality does not come into the story, thus, Lara is not objectified by the feminist conceptualisation of the word, nor is she castrated. I would argue that masculine and feminine forces are balanced rather well and projected rather truthfully in this narrative. Alas, there is not much depth in the representation of masculine and feminine. Let us not get caught in a circle though.
To bring things towards a close, we now hopefully have a more complex, yet nonetheless revealing and clear, way of speaking and thinking of Tomb Raider's fundamental lack of material that makes us care about the story and characters. I'll then end openly. What do you think of Tomb Raider and all that we have spoken of today?
Previous post:
End Of The Week Shorts #71
Next post:
The Ballad Of Narayama - Life, Time-Honoured
More from me:
amazon.com/author/danielslack
A rich adventure's daughter, who has disavowed all of his wealth, investigates his disappearance.
Though I can say that Roar Uthaug's Tomb Raider was surprisingly good, it isn't a particularly special film; certainly above-average as a video game movie, but only by virtue of the fact that it seems to delve only into the cinematic, story-based elements of the games, which ultimately leaves this a pretty traditional action-adventure film. Furthermore, this is not very far removed from the Angelina Jolie Tomb Raider films. This is especially true in terms of the structure. The Jolie films all start with fun and games that are eventually interrupted by a call to action catalysed by a man - a father or a love interest of some kind - as attached to ancient ruins. These ancient ruins take Lara off to a different country where she encounters bad guys, but eventually has to side with them before, in a final climax, there is a huge conflict and all is sorted out. Uthaug's Tomb Raider follows this basic formula with very minor alterations and the expected dressing up (a unique selection of location, myth, ruins, etc). This leaves the narrative predictable, but this is not necessarily a bad thing.
The Tomb Raider narrative seems to be an incarnation of the hero's journey centred around a confrontation of masculine forces. It is then typical of the kind of narrative seen in, for example, Clash of the Titans. These kind of films are very much so about confronting male and female forces, both the positive and negative. (You can read about Clash of the Titans here). Tomb Raider is descendent of this basic narrative in that her father represents her central inner-conflict and motivation. In following this imago, this image of perfection that she holds of her father, Lara comes upon dangerous and evil men. Her task here is to wield the dangerous and to defeat the evil. Before this, however, she must exist as they do; this is why the 'co-operation with the bad guy' element of the plot seems so inevitable. It is having mastered the masculine domains she enters that Lara Croft can impose her moral fortitude by confronting ancient masculine/feminine archetypes (the ruins that she so often has to investigate). These ruins are tied up in her own interior conflict with her father, and in overcoming and mastering this domain, she takes an individuating step of the hero. So, in total, each Tomb Raider film deals with Lara Croft overcoming a subtle Freudian drama connected to her childhood and father by travelling along a Jungian narrative spruced up by a lot of Hollywood flash. It is fascinating, however, to step back and see how these narratives developed in the video games - and were played primarily by boys. From this perspective, Lara becomes an imago herself, a female archetype in the gamer's head, and thus the narrative becomes a more complex one about female and male forces balancing when in search of one another. Alas, let us not get lost in this line of thought.
It is rather obvious that, though these narratives have an arguably complex symbolic base, they are not executed particularly well. The problem with all of the Tomb Raider films is symptomatic of a central misunderstanding and miscomprehension of what they are fundamentally trying to achieve. Though all of the films are intrinsically constructed upon this confrontation of the masculine imago, the drama is consumed by objectivity and rather blind to subjectivity.
I have talked at great length about the objective and subjective in cinema. So far, however, we have only covered this concept in regards to impressionism, expressionism, surrealism and realism. These are modes or approaches to cinema, and they can be characterised as objective and subjective as to describe the way in which characters are constructed. To construct a character with impressionism, the camera and story seeks to pull life out of them and bind this to the audience. To use impressionism objectively, characters become objects on screen, which is to say they become caricatures, archetypes or symbols - depending on their complexity. These characters are defined not by an illusion of humanity and free will (of subjective being), but are instead defined by the constructs around and within them; they clearly serve a writer.
It must be emphasised that we are dealing with mode, and also form, when speaking of objective/subjective impressionism, expressionism, etc. Mode concerns philosophy and approach; what a writer means to achieve in their script. Form concerns physical representation; what is on screen and how it gets there. Objective impressionism is bound to mode in that it is a way of approaching story. It is also linked to form as objective impressionism is manifested with the camera. Alas, what is missing in this conception of the objective and subjective is the fundamental basis of representation: drama. It is in drama that we find the fundamental meaning of any story. For a film to be manifested, its drama must formulate the foundation. The writer's approach manipulates the abstract representation and directions of the drama. The form manifests drama on the screen, attempting to provide the correct frame through which to see it. After this, the work is becoming art, and in becoming art, it must take on a genre, which is to say, it must have an established relation to all other literature. This does not necessarily provide a map of how a film is chronologically made, but this is the hierarchy of structural attributes that all films have. At their heart, all films are drama, forming their skeleton is mode, the form is their skin and musculature, genre is clothing. Let us nonetheless turn back to drama.
Dividing the heart of a film is a line between the objective and subjective, which is to say that drama can, itself, bear a subjective and objective quality. Drama, in turn, subjective and objective drama, concerns not necessarily character, but the life force of narrative; it is that which gives the spaces and frames of cinema time. To conceptualise of drama's objective and subjective faces, we must stress that it is the abstract motivation for story about which we speak. For this abstract motivation to be subjective it must be embedded with a sense of universal life: the universe's life. We speak now in great abstractions, but, if we follow the idea that drama is imitative of life, we must ask where life emerges from. We do not know. Yet, both science and the most central philosophies of humanity operate with the assumption that there are rules around us derivative of being beyond space and time, but are themselves space and time too. In religious doctrine, the rules and logic of the universe often exist in the domain of a god or universal omnipotence such as Tao; these are both transcendent of, yet intrinsic to, the universe. In science, one may ask a question of physical law. Did the laws of physics create the universe, did they pre-exist it, did they emerge simultaneously, did physical law follow the birth of the universe? I, of course, cannot answer this question, and it seems that scientists cannot definitively do so either. Physical law seems simultaneously intrinsic and transcendent; it both is the universe and it is beyond it. It is this dichotomy of intrinsic and transcendent that characterises life itself; life is an existent force within us and beyond us; life is the universe, life is also beyond the universe. To imitate this life with drama, we would have to imitate both its transcendent and its intrinsic qualities. Objective drama deals with the intrinsic and subjective the transcendent. So, when we suggest that subjective drama mimetically embodies universal life, we speak of art attempting to project the central rules of the universe's being as they remain in the abstract and beyond ourselves. Objective drama is left dealing with what is obvious, what is before ourselves, and so the rules of reality that are tangible and intrinsic to logic.
All becomes very clear with an example. In Tomb Raider, there are two major elements of drama. There is Lara's conflict with her father, and then there is her literal journey, which includes many fights, chases, traps, puzzles, etc. Her conflict with her father deals with a confrontation of the universal masculine, of archetypes that exist in transcendent spaces. Her fights and chases occur in basic physical spaces of an intrinsic quality. The subjective drama is in the themes, whereas the objective drama is the action and adventure. (It is important to briefly note that action can be transcendent and theme can be objective; the nature of this assertion will become apparent as we go on, but we shall save the particularities for another time).
Tomb Raider's central issue does not concern its objective drama. The realism and verisimilitude of Tomb Raider's physical character drama (fights, chases, etc) is its greatest strength. I enjoyed most the fight scenes for they capture desperation, a palpable feeling of fighting for one's life and a truthful fighting style - all without leaning too hard on contrivance. The integration of mixed martial arts techniques into the fight choreography as well as the writer's ability to embed into Lara weaknesses, yet have her overcome personal fault, secure a minor narrative. So, though the drama in the fight scenes very much so deals with rules of a very objective class, they do open up onto subjective themes ever so slightly. We see this with the arc that stretches across the fight scenes to see Lara become a smarter fighter; the notion developed here being one of fighting from within, fighting with reason and purpose beyond yourself, not just for grit and a game of confined self-development. Somewhat humorously, this is symbolically represented in a final fight with Lara's father killing herself to save her and the world, yet Lara going on to carry fourth his moral fortitude by defeating the evil masculine character--by punching him in the dick and then the throat, taking away his masculinity and his humanity. Humorous symbolism aside, the technicality, and so the spectacle, of the fights isn't outstanding - this is more true of the chase scenes - and so they don't make for masterful set-pieces, but are certainly impressive and absorbing as well as the deepest sources of characterisation that the film cultivates.
Whilst there is enjoyment to be found in the objective elements of drama in Tomb Raider, the subjective drama is lacking. To put this into words we have all heard and said before: the action scenes are good, and so watch this film for them, but there's not much to care about in regards to character and story. To take this formulation more seriously and truly ask what we're saying, we must elaborate on how and why the subjective drama is lacking.
Missing from Tomb Raider is a serious exploration and representation of who Lara's father is and what her relationship with him was like. Because we do not have a subjective understanding of the backstory - because it is objectively used in depthless flashbacks - this film has no symbolic-dramatic base, which is to say, it does not tap into those transcendent rules of the abstract universe. Because this film has no ability to capture deep, abstract, profound truth of any particular class or character, it fails in securing subjective meaning. (Better films that deal with female heroes confronting masculine archetypes are Moana, Mulan, Beauty And The Beast, Spirited Away and Amélie) .The result of Tomb Raider's depthless subjective drama is that we see not the humanity and feel not the abstract reality of the story, yet can appeal to its skewed (typholodramatic) representation of reality and the objective.
There are some elements of subjectivity in this narrative that have their effect. As said, they emerge from the fight scenes and Lara's arc through combat. The Jolie Tomb Raider films lacked this. Her character was constructed rather objectively. Thus, she mediates between a caricature and objective-archetype, catalysed into being by an imago; by a sexual, Amazonian (to reference Greek mythology) warrior woman archetype. In the language of the (Freudian) feminists, Lara Croft is objectified in the Jolie films also. She, too, is often castrated, revealed to be a man without a penis; which is to say she has a masculine shell that corrupts the inner femininity, her sexuality used a spectacle, her masculinity a novelty. In Uthaug's Tomb Raider, there is little to critique from a feminist perspective as sexuality does not come into the story, thus, Lara is not objectified by the feminist conceptualisation of the word, nor is she castrated. I would argue that masculine and feminine forces are balanced rather well and projected rather truthfully in this narrative. Alas, there is not much depth in the representation of masculine and feminine. Let us not get caught in a circle though.
To bring things towards a close, we now hopefully have a more complex, yet nonetheless revealing and clear, way of speaking and thinking of Tomb Raider's fundamental lack of material that makes us care about the story and characters. I'll then end openly. What do you think of Tomb Raider and all that we have spoken of today?
Previous post:
End Of The Week Shorts #71
Next post:
The Ballad Of Narayama - Life, Time-Honoured
More from me:
amazon.com/author/danielslack
