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Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End runs for nearly three hours and is almost perfect viewing for a wet Bank Holiday afternoon when you are desperate to relieve the boredom of having to stay indoors.
If you have seen the previous two films in the series, you will be familiar with the stars and their characters. In this latest version, they basically continue to swash their buckles and strut their stuff on and below the high seas.
It’s futile to try to summarise or make sense of the storyline. But here is an attempt! Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow and Geoffrey Rush’s Captain Barbossa are back from the dead. The pirates now have to sail to edge of the word to rescue Jack who has sold his soul to Davy Jones - played with fishy malevolence by Bill Nighy.
Jones has allied himself to the bad guys from the East India Company who wish to exterminate all pirates. The action switches from Singapore, introducing us - for no particular reason - to a dastardly crew of Chinese pirates, to frozen polar landscapes, typical pirate islands in the Caribbean, all-white beaches and waving palms, to a raging vortex in the ocean.
Everybody double crosses everybody else to get what they want, from Davy Jones who wants his heart back, Sparrow his freedom, and Orlando Bloom the love of Keira Knightly.
Little excuse is needed to unsheath cutlasses, swing high through the rigging, fire cannon and sink ships. But the pirates do make a half-hearted attempt to play by the rules using a thick book of protocols for fighting . They vote democratically for a pirate king - or in this case a queen, Keira Knightly, natch. Throughout the action, Johnny Depp wise-cracks, escapes his just desserts, eats peanuts and lives to fight another day. But perhaps the best actors are the wonderful monkey that helps to fire cannon and fireworks who sits on Barbossa’s shoulder, and the obligatory parrot who makes the odd comment and acts cool.
Art-house cineastes, tempted to make post-modernist deconstructions of the pirate stereotypes, seek connections with Dante’s Inferno, the search for the Holy Grail and ennui with the concept of empire should stay away. Pirates is pure hokum.
Just forget the plot line and enjoy, hugely, the spectacle of set piece panoramas. OK, so Orlando Bloom is nothing much more than a pretty-boy actor whose wooden style is cruelly contrasted with Depp’s vivacity; and Knightly, with her nearly perfect white teeth, is the statutory woman amongst gap-toothed grotesques. But the film is saved from a merciless drubbing at the hands of the critics by the magnificent Depp.
He is a monstrous size-queen who is beset by the need to have a bigger telescope than Barbossa. He minces in a butch way across the screen with a plethora of ironic comments, self-obsessed by the need to survive, come what may. Haven’t we seen his ilk in every metropolitan gay bar? He acts simply as Johnny Depp in costume - all flowing scarves, eye liner, a bandana, grubby frilly shirts (a sorted of faded Glam rocker).
This is a film about male bonding with plenty of bitching amongst the pirate league, led by a spiteful French pirate having a permanent hissy fit. Every gay boy who wants to be a make up artist or costume designer will ache to get on set to rise to the challenge.
We come away replete with pop corn (necessary to survive the screening time) and it doesn’t matter if you miss some scenes by the need to visit the loo. The message is that pirates are just loveable rogues who try to follow the rules, whilst uptight, bewigged English aristocrats are seen as small minded, prissy spoilsports. Yes, Mackenzie Crooke does sport an eye patch, people do drink rum, there is a dead man’s chest, the pirates hole up in Shipwreck Cove and collect pieces of eight (well nine of them): all familiar aspects of pirate lore.
Some resonances can be seen with the Bond genre (Depp has a compass gadget to get him to achieve his desires and a jigsaw-like map) - death and accidents are defied, evil enemies overcome with sang froid. Obviously the battle scenes are a sort of naval Star Wars. The British Empire, in line with modern day political correctness, is seen as nasty. But these are optional parts of film analysis.
For queers, Depp is an obvious role model to follow enthusiastically - live for the moment, have fun, don’t give a monkey for authority, an idiosyncratic follower of fashion with a complete dictionary of witty one-liners.
At the end he sails, in a small dinghy, (symbolic or what?) into the sunset, ready, perhaps, for number four when everyone will reassemble once more to clash swords, again and again. So put on eye liner and a bandana, ready to sit back and enjoy, me hearties!
At least the pirate crew are a jollier crew than the Big Brother House...
Nick Tyldesley
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