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On The Apple--Why It Sucks
posted Saturday, 18 March 2006
Note: I've decided to continue where I left off a couple of days ago by briefing examining why--beyond just being really tacky--The Apple must be considered an artistic failure.
Getting to the Core of The Apple
Why It Sucks As Hard As It Does
Like most WWTTM, The Apple fails largely because it attempts to combine two elements that wiser folks would have determined worked to each other’s detriment. It wants to be a cult midnight movie in the same vein as The Rocky Horror Picture Show and to that end features a tale full of sex, drugs and rock & roll, along with a large dollop of gay camp aesthetic, but it also wants to be a moralistic allegory about the Biblical event known as the Rapture, in which only those who reject the path of sin know the glory of eternal righteousness. It’s a lethal combination since it is precisely this kind of condescending moralizing that kept midnight movie audiences away from the work of mainstream Hollywood. It also hurts the film since it ultimately suggests that there is something sinful about the camp sensibility the film embraces to tell its story. Even though Rocky Horror’s chief sexual transgressor, Dr. Frank-N-Furter, is killed at the end of the film, it is obvious that he is not dying for any crimes of sexuality, especially when you consider that at least one of his executors is just as much a transvestite as he is. But in The Apple the characters whose behavior implies that they are homosexual (the film is actually too tame to make these implications explicit) are clearly on the side of evil—allied as they are to Mr. Boogalow, who is supposed to represent mankind at its evil and most decadent. The result of this is an extremely schizophrenic film in which the audience is expected to be entertained by musical sequences that the film itself denounces as corrupt and sinful.
That’s not to say that this approach could not work in more talented hands. Bob Fosse’s Cabaret for example skillfully played with the audience’s emotions by presenting us with musical sequences that were—on their face—quite charming, but that were, beneath their surface, full of unpleasant subtext about human greed, jealousy, nationalism and bigotry. But in the case of The Apple writer/director Menahem Golan and lyricists George S. Clinton and Iris Recht seemingly lack the talent or sophistication required to make this approach work.
Another factor in the film's failure is its running time, which at 86 minutes is extremely short for a musical that features 12 songs. The result is a structure similar to many operettas, where the major narrative thrust of the film is told in song. In the hands of a Gilbert and Sullivan this can work marvelously, but here the structure only succeeds in highlighting the film’s complete lack of character development and logical motivation. Rather than present a situation where Bibi is seduced by Dandi and finds herself attracted to him, the film merely puts them together for two minutes and has Bibi wondering in song how the touch of his hand can make her tremble. And were it not for the song Pandi sings after she helps Bibi escape from Boogalow, we would have no idea why she suddenly decided to rebel against her manager, and even then the song never actually explains her change of heart, it only tells us that it happened.
In that same vein, we are presented with a villain who is supposed to represent the Devil and, as such, the personification of evil, but whose actions never rise to the level of malevolence most would associate with the Prince of Darkness. In his songs Boogalow comes across more cynical than evil and we never actually see him do anything that we wouldn’t expect a music mogul at his level of success to do. Though the film implies that he has taken over the government, the only evidence we see of him taking advantage of this power is through his forcing everyone to wear bim marks and requiring that they dance in the street everyday at 4 PM. This first act is obviously nothing more than a clumsy analogy to the Bible’s “Mark of the Beast” and the second is just an excuse to work in another musical number. It doesn’t help that Vladek Sheybal’s performance in the role exudes far more charm than menace. Even in the end, when he is talking to Mr. Topps, his eternal antagonist, he comes across more like an old friend who can’t believe his pal is taking such a tiny slight so seriously than someone confronting his greatest enemy in the universe.
But, as mentioned before, the film’s chief flaw is the way it embraces the camp aesthetic for its musical numbers in order to facilitate a story whose moral is a direct repudiation of that very same aesthetic. What really makes this hurt the film is that the few numbers specifically designed to reject this aesthetic are easily the worst and least entertaining in the movie. By far the worst song in the film is “Love is the Universal Melody”, which in any other movie would serve as a parody of the worst lyrical excesses of self-satisfied new age poseurs, but here is meant to prove the purity of Alphie’s heart and his connection to Mr. Topps. Alphie is presented as trying to fight to get his songs heard in a cruel, corrupt world that no longer considers the values of love and devotion to be marketable, but the problem with attempting to make this struggle seem heroic is that his songs suck so badly in comparison to such cheesily entertaining numbers as “Bim”, “Life is Nothing But Show Business” and “Speed”. That’s not to say that those songs could accurately be described as good, but they at least have the benefit of not being meant to be taken seriously.
One must assume that Golan knew that the film's supposedly “evil” characters were much more compelling than his “good” ones due to the scant amount of screen time these “good” characters receive. Even in 1980 the idea of presenting Hippies as a symbol of purity and freedom was a laughable one and it is easy to suspect that Golan chose them more because it would be easier to costume a bunch of extras as flower children than to come up with an original alternative. Still, as lame as they are, it is surprising that they are not given the benefit of a single genuine musical number. Beyond enjoying a quickly interrupted sing-along near the end of the film, the entire group remains mute in the picture, with only the Hippie Leader being given anything to say. We are meant to accept that theirs is a purer, better way of life not because of anything we are shown, but simply because it is not connected to the outside world, which—beyond the lame 4 PM dancing thing—appears to be far more fun and interesting than living with a bunch of dirty folks in a cave.
And then there’s Mr. Topps or, as I like to think of him, Mr. Deus Ex Machina. Truly this is a case of God out of the machine at its most literal and clumsiest. I would have to watch the movie again to be 100% sure, but I’m fairly certain that there is not one reference to this character before Alphie starts looking for him up in the sky, expecting him to appear. Perhaps Golan wanted us to be surprised by this ending, but the only result this sudden appearance by God to give the movie a happy conclusion inspires is embarrassed disbelief. Again it doesn’t help the film that Topps is so intent on finding a world without Boogalow’s “pollution” when that pollution doesn’t look that unbearable. In The Apple Golan has produced a film about the coming of Armageddon (which is the event that follows directly after the Rapture) in which neither the End of Days or its eventual aftermath seem all that bad or—at the very least—seems infinitely preferable to the alternative.
Uh and did I mention that the movie is really tacky?
Okay, so that’s why The Apple sucks. Tomorrow I’m going to take a look at why, despite these faults, I love it as much as I do. So until then:
Good
Evil
Which one would you choose?
Commentary From the Masses