Hello Dahlia

This afternoon, I went to see The Black Dahlia. The movie-going experience was great. The movie? Not so much.

As for the experience... this was the first time in over a year I got to go to the movies with Shocho and LWC, who are still in the unpacking process, but nevertheless starting to feel more like Colorado residents. It was a nice old tradition to return to.

In addition, because I was showing off "things about Denver" to them, we went to the movie at the Continental Theater. It's an enormous, four-story tall, curved screen theater that seats over 800, the place to see a "movie meant for the big screen." Over the years, I've seen Terminator 2, the classic Star Wars trilogy, Independence Day... really, more "big screen" movies than I can even remember, on this screen. The Black Dahlia, of course, is not really that kind of movie. But the new Denver residents needed to see it anyway. And strangely, I realized today that despite having been back in town for over 18 months, I had not been to the Continental myself in several years. So I needed to go too.

But... as I said, the movie was not so great. It was absolutely the epitome of a classic film noir detective story -- or at least, what someone like me (who hasn't seen many, but who has a pretty clear mental image of what they're supposed to be like in terms of character, style, and dialogue) thinks of as "film noir" style. Every frame of this movie looked like a million bucks and days of thought had gone into it. The dialogue dripped with the trappings of film noir, complete with "hard-boiled detective narration" (though at times, overdone, even for the genre).

Director Brian de Palma, notorious for incredibly self-conscious camera work, does a better job here of hiding his art in the art of the genre. Still, there are a few conspicuous uses of long, crane-cam "oners" (lengthy sequences shot in a single take with no cuts), and jarring uses of a split diopter (a special lens that is capable of presenting two different things on screen at two different distances from the camera in perfect focus simultaneously).

But even if you like film noir (and/or Brian de Palma's cinegymnastics), style will only get you so far. For me, this movie fell down for lack of an interesting plot. It crawled along at a pace that made Hollywoodland look brisk by comparison. I actually was dangerously close to nodding off once or twice, when a sudden loud noise in the film jarred me back to attention.

One point to be praised, at least, is that the story did take a strong stance on what it believed was the solution to a real-life unsolved crime. Hollywoodland tried to present multiple versions of the truth and "leave it to you to decide" what you believed -- and came out watered down for it. No such problem here.

Still, I really can't give very high praise to a movie that nearly put to me to sleep. Though the elements of the equation were quite different between this movie and Hollywood, it still adds up to the same result: I give The Black Dahlia a D+.