While perhaps best remembered for emotional dramas like “Brokeback Mountain” and “The Ice Storm,” filmmaker Ang Lee has constantly been pushing and testing the limits of cinema through technology. The director adopted early (perhaps too early) motion capture techniques for “Hulk,” brought the visual dynamism and wire work of wuxia films to mainstream audiences with “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and enveloped moviegoers with the expansive 3D of “Life Of Pi.” We may think of Peter Jackson and James Cameron as the forerunners of modern day movie technology, but Lee is arguably running at pace. But with his latest film, the PTSD drama “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk,” his use of 4k high definition cameras and 3D, shooting at 120 frames per second (five times higher than the usual 24 frames per second), is a major miscalculation that causes an emotional distance from a well-intentioned drama about the bonds of brotherhood and crisis of identity, instead of engaging the viewer and enhancing the experience.
So let’s talk about that hi-def frame rate. Those familiar with the look of Peter Jackson’s 3D-shot, 48fps rendered “The Hobbit” will be acclimated to the artificial look of the film here, which is akin to high definition soap operas with the motion smoothing on, or the visual aesthetic of ‘80s British comedies like “Fawlty Towers.” This unattractive, even unintentionally comical look is hard to accept, and while the eye does grow somewhat accustomed to the visuals, the movie never really recovers from the stiff awkwardness of the look of the film.
Set circa 2004, “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” centers on the titular 19-year-old character having returned from Iraq to the United States as a national hero. Billy (Joe Alwyn) is captured on camera in a dynamic act of heroism, and this moment of valor crystallizes the Iraq war for Americans and transforms the soldier and his Bravo squad into exemplars of bravery.
Back in the U.S., Bravo company is trotted out for promotional glad-handing stops around the nation all the while knowing this furlough of temporary celebrity status will soon be over when they are deployed back to Iraq. As the company grapples with this schism they are brought to Texas, Billy’s home state, for one more appearance, this time during a fireworks-laden halftime show at a Thanksgiving Day football game.
But ‘Halftime Walk’ is about Billy, his identity crisis, and the constant anxiety glistening on his balmy face (which Lee loves to constantly hang on). The movie vacillates between three pegs: the arduously long lead up to the halftime appearance, the flashbacks to the struggles of war in Iraq, and Billy’s sister (Kristen Stewart) looking to convince her brother to get out of returning to the Middle East by encouraging him to see a shrink and claiming the burden of PTSD. “Who is Billy Lynn?” is the existential crisis that haunts the army specialist throughout the movie. Is he a soldier? Is this his calling? Or is he meant to take care of his family and his beloved sister? This is the struggle the distressed Billy faces as he flashes back to the past throughout the picture.
Lee did wonders with 3D in the spiritually moving “Life Of Pi,” pushing the medium forward with CGI tigers and plenty of green screen, with work that is right up there with what Martin Scorsese and James Cameron have done with the format. But it’s the high frame rate that kills the visuals in ‘Billy Lynn,’ taking a small, earnest picture and ironically rendering it flat and lifeless.
There are some pluses and those are mostly from the cast. British actor Joe Alywn is a total discovery and you’d never guess he wasn’t a good ol’ boy from Texas (he nails the accent) and the ensemble is uniformly solid from Vin Diesel and Kristen Stewart, to Garrett Hedlund (in one of his best performances), Steve Martin, and relative newcomer Makenzie Leigh (it’s a strange, motley crew, but it works). Most of the sequences in Iraq are strong, especially the harrowing but all-too-brief war and firefight scenes. In fact, like “The Hobbit,” the action scenes are so compelling, they make the case for the use of high frame rates. For drama? Not so much.
“Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” is literally that: the framework of a protracted entrance to a halftime game appearance intercut with would-be meaningful sequences in Iraq. In fact, the construction of the picture is not unlike the recent Clint Eastwood drama “Sully,” which plays out in the present, reaches back to the past, and leads up to the big focal point reveal which we’ve been told about from the very beginning.
Lee appears to be obsessed with capturing the nuance of faces and the emotional qualities that are communicated without words. Yet massive close-ups of Steven Martin and Joe Alwyn talking to one another, with each of them looking straight at the camera in an enveloping frame, is simply unappealing and the opposite of clear-eyed judgement.
Would ‘Billy Lynn’ have been a more captivating film shot and presented in 35mm? It’s hard to say, as some of the protracted picture is just trite (especially a subplot about a movie based on Bravo company). And the jocular levity, while occasionally funny, does lend the film a feeling of inconsequence. ‘Billy Lynn’ has its moments, but its critical and unexpected folly is that the cutting-edge technology diminishes the picture emotionally, its ungainly look trivializes the drama and indulges it with an undesirable air of superficiality. Lee’s clearly going for a hyper-realness with these images, but it undermines the drama and the few beats of moving honesty about who we are, duty and sacrifice. Ang Lee is undoubtedly a visionary filmmaker, but the distracting unpleasantness of his movie’s highly attuned visual clarity, makes for an undiscerning and artificial experience the eye just won’t follow. [C+]
This is a reprint of our review from the 2016 New York Film Festival.
I haven’t seen the film yet, but would like to offer some perspective on 120fps effect and what you may be reacting to. You describe the 120fps as “artificial” but the actual effect is hyper realism. Based on the pictures in the article, what I believe may be unravelling the effect is the lighting, which appears to be very traditional 24fps film lighting. Note the backlight in image 4 (main character and girl). That backlight is perfectly acceptable, in fact desirable, when lighting for traditional cinema, but it is going to strike you as fake with a capital F in 120fps. It is going to have the effect of making you feel as if you are watching actors on a stage. “Hobbit” had this exact same problem. It was the lighting, in conjunction with the 120fps that made it feel artificial.
Having done this sort of work for 25 years, my hunch is that for 120fps to truly shine, the lighting needs to feel equally realistic. Un-movie. Scrap the backlights and cross lights, and go very gentle with the fill. The lighting needs to feel “available light” and not at all sweetened or stylized. I think in that context, and with scenes allowed to play primarily in the master, and with the right genre, 120fps could be a real asset.
So far, I think the temptation has been to shoot 120fps with an eye towards also releasing in 24fps. Because the two formats have opposing visual requirements, the dp has to choose which format to execute properly. Because most audiences will see it at 24fps, it makes sense that the cinematographer would choose a more traditional approach. Good 120fps lighting would read as flat and lifeless at 24fps. And good 24fps lighting would look artificial at 120fps. For the format to be executed properly, the powers that be would need to commit exclusively to a release in 120fps or accept a subpar 24fps experience. As of yet, no one wants to do that. Maybe James Cameron or someone on that level will have the pull to make an exclusive 120fps release happen.
Once again, haven’t seen this particular film. Just my opinion based on the images.
With all due respect, but this line “Would ‘Billy Lynn’ have been a more captivating film shot and presented in 35mm?” alone (there are others too, see below) shows how uninformed and uneducated the person that wrote this “review” is about the technological aspects and choices that were made.
Shooting on 35mm has nothing to do with the frame-rate with which the movie was shot or projected. 35mm (assuming we’re talking about “Film” as a recording intermediate and not as a size reference to the film-stock or sensor) can be shot at a wide variety of frame-rates beyond the standard 24 which are being used for “modern”-day cinema.
Writing a review is one thing, but writing and judging technological aspects without the proper knowledge is irresponsible towards the audience, the filmmakers and the medium itself. Especially as it’s spreading wrong information and superficial knowledge.
If You don’t like HFR and prefer 24fps that’s absolutely ok.
But saying things like “hi-def frame rate” (you just combined two different things, High-Definition & (High) Frame-Rate, into one) and mentioning The Hobbit’s “artificial look” (less choppy and closer to what the human eye sees would be the proper expression) is just plain wrong and hence irresponsible.
I don’t even know what to say about this line “This unattractive, even unintentionally comical look is hard to accept”. Pretentious and condescending are two words that come to mind.
I think there are a lot of misconceptions about the format, the biggest of which is that it can be rolled out as an elective “premium” experience on a traditional 24fps release the way studios release in IMAX or 3D. That is, of course, a terrible idea. 120fps has its own specific visual (and, I suspect, performance) requirements that must be tailored to the format. The unsophisticated analogy would be that 24fps vs. 120fps is like a master shot vs. a close up. You don’t light the master the way you would light a close up and you don’t perform in the master with the same degree of subtlety that one would in a close up. A nuanced, eye twitch of a performance in the master would get lost and the broad strokes performance of the master would look over-the top in the close up. Same here.
That said, Rodrigo Perez’s observations, as inexact as they may be, serve as the canary in the coalmine. I suspect his criticisms are far more nuanced than the Twitter/social media audience reviews will be. Introducing the audience to 120fps in a half-baked way, as this film apparently has done, will only serve to stigmatize a format that has incredible untapped potential. I suspect that when someone uses it on a project that requires a heightened authenticity and/or immediacy (I am thinking “Cloverfield”-ish or “Hardcore Henry”-ish) or finds a way to use it to highlight a singular sequence in an otherwise 24fps film (Osama bin Laden raid in “Zero Dark Thirty” comes to mind), people will start to get it.
Until then, the best we can do is help reviewers and audiences to understand their own reactions and to help them to separate a less-than-stellar 120fps execution from the potential of the format itself. It would be a shame if they gave up on the format entirely.