If there’s one thing that cinema can convey arguably better than any other artistic medium, it’s a truly towering, epic scale.
While most stories aim for a particular tone or a specific emotion, the epic genre attempts to wrap it all together into a tale that transcends personal drama and places its characters’ struggles within the context of the full, wider world and society.
Novels, theatre, opera, and even modern television all often reach for that scope, but it’s only pure, unadulterated cinema that can fully present the staggering scale and histrionic emotion required to really make you feel the full epic size of it all.
But the cinematic epic can come in all styles, sometimes confronting the convoluted politics of family and society, sometimes examining the whole human conflict of morality and freedom in microcosm, and sometimes just trying to save all the people of the world from themselves.
It can be grand and operatic in nature, or brooding and drenched in atmosphere, or even hysterically funny and openly absurd.
An epic can be many things, but it’ll always be big.
So it’s no surprise that these big movies need to be seen on a big screen, and preferably with a big audience as well, and that’s exactly the opportunity that some OKC theaters and creative spaces are offering for viewers through June.
‘Ran’ – Oklahoma City Museum of Art – June 5th through June 8th
Few filmmakers could qualify for the title of “history’s greatest purveyor of epic cinema” more easily than Akira Kurosawa, and any others who could qualify would probably just defer to Kurosawa anyway.
The painterly, contemplative Japanese auteur is still considered by many to be perhaps the greatest filmmaker of all time, and it’s difficult to think of a greater offering from him than 1985’s “Ran,” the Oscar-winning epic combining Shakespeare, mortality, and war through the context and contentiousness of feudal Japan.
In “Ran,” a generationally powerful warlord confronts his age and prepares to abdicate his throne, granting a piece of his empire to each of his three sons, setting off a battle for supremacy, an escalating war, and a spreading fire of regret, grief, and fear.
It’s loosely “King Lear,” but it’s more accurately a condemnation of selfish violence, familial responsibility, and hunger for power in all its forms across all time.
Kurosawa famously hand-painted the storyboards for the full film, and he brings that same eye for color and depth to each and every frame. But he also brings that same deeply personal, singularly considered mindset, using his beloved setting of medieval Japan to at once confront the rampant greed and social militarism of his time as well as his own advancing age.
The already gorgeous and lush film has been newly restored frame-by-frame in 4K to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Kurosawa’s epic masterwork.
For times, tickets, and more, visit okcmoa.com.
‘Heat’ – Rodeo Cinema – June 19th
No one makes a cops-and-robbers crime yarn like the great Michael Mann, and his filmography is full of them, but “Heat” stands alone atop the podium for the most sprawling and influential of all his Los Angeles epics.
Marrying the untouchable talents of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro on screen together for the first time ever, “Heat” offers a deep dive into the lives and psyches of the obsessively intelligent bank heisters pilfering LA’s riches and the obsessively relentless police tasked with hunting them down.
It’s a film that works on level after level.
It’s an interpersonal tale of the men on either side of the law-abiding divide, highlighting the clear similarities between them and the ceaseless drive that joins them.
But it’s also about the social divides of late-century Los Angeles itself. It’s about the greed of men and the women caught in their wake. And it’s about the very soul of America and what constitutes the American Dream under the realities of capitalism: unyielding loyalty to the system or true freedom unbound by law or morality?
“Heat” is not a film that should be mistaken for machismo or action-oriented chest-beating. It’s an indictment of hyper-masculine violence in the service of gain, and it’s a masterclass in acting bolstered by one of the most broodingly quiet turns from the now sadly departed Val Kilmer.
For times, tickets, and more, visit rodeocinema.org.
‘Idiocracy’ – Mycelium Gallery – June 26th
Yes, even an 80-minute, comparatively low-budget, foul-mouthed comedy can be an epic, especially when it’s as retroactively regarded and endlessly referenced as a societal signifier as “Idiocracy” has become.
Mike Judge’s time-traveling look at the dystopian end result of America’s rapid dumbing-down was largely ignored in its initial 2006 release, relegating it to the simple status of a modern and infinitely quotable cult favorite.
But as the current world has begun to more and more closely resemble the world of “Idiocracy” – a world made dangerously moronic in the future by the lack of education, the celebration of selfishness, and the stigma of intellectualism in our present – the film has become a modern mainstay.
Yes, it’s becoming too easy and tired and reductive to point to everything as being “just like ‘Idiocracy.’” But the over-saturation of the reference doesn’t make it any less accurate, unfortunately.
And the whole scope and prescience here is just mind-boggling, covering the denigration of intelligence, the outright glorification and fetishization of violent masculinity, and the increasingly inescapable encroachment of unfettered capitalism into every single aspect and element of society.
It’s tough to think of another film comedy that so fully lampoons the whole sentiment and mentality of America itself on such a complete level while still being so absurdly hilarious.
Well, there’s “Dr. Strangelove,” of course, but we better hope that one doesn’t ever become quite as realistically plausible as “Idocracy.”
The event is free, but for times and more information, visit myceliumgallery.com.
Catch Brett Fieldcamp’s film column weekly for information and insights into the world of film in the Oklahoma City metro and Oklahoma. | Brought to you by the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
