Dear Camille Paglia

Posted Week 07 by Don · No Comments

Usually I am a big fan and am glad you returned to Salon.com after a five-year hiatus. Recently, however, you wrote something that called into question your aesthetic taste:

A quite different film that I’ve recently enjoyed re-seeing and studying is “Revenge of the Sith” (2005) from George Lucas’ “Star Wars” saga. The climactic light-saber duel between Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi on the volcano planet of Mustafar (with footage of actual explosions and lava flows at Mount Etna in Sicily) is nearly mystically sublime in the High Romantic sense. The convulsive, manly passion between the two tortured Jedi is hyper-sustained by John Williams’ powerful music. Then there’s Anakin’s shocking mutilation and Wagnerian immolation, leading to the grisly Frankenstein surgery that turns him into Darth Vader and that is cross-cut with a parallel hospital sequence, as Anakin’s wife, Padme, dies while giving birth to the twins Luke and Leia.

It’s amazing how much primal emotion Lucas is able to generate from such scenes. The finale of “Sith,” with an adoptive couple tenderly cradling the infant Luke (separated from his sister) as they stand before a brilliant sunset, is reminiscent of “Gone With the Wind,” produced at a time when Hollywood could speak in universal emotions (rather than cheap irony) to a mass audience.

~~My God, woman, have you lost your mind?~~ To say you enjoy studying Revenge of the Sith is akin to saying you enjoy studying the back of a box of Fruit Loops.

The only emotion Lucas generates in the final scenes is astonishment. How could he accomplish so little when supplied with an abundance of film’s raw materials: story, character, and budget? The “light-saber and lava” eye-candy only distracts us from an awful love story and tepid attempt at tragedy.

There is more emotional resonance in Obi-Wan and Vader’s second light-saber duel in A New Hope. Sure, it’s now rendered implausibly tame by the prequels, but it stands for much more in terms of story and plot. Hayden Christensen’s acting doesn’t convince me of Anakin’s passion. Ewan McGregor, normally a fine actor, made the best out of a bad dialogue. You’d find more of the “mystically sublime” and “manly passion” playing the video game Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast.