Dimitrije Vojnov on John Mctiernan

John McTiernan'semergence in the mid-90s revolutionizes American commercial cinema. In the mid 70s William Friedkin and Steven Spielberg - along with other New Hollywood contemporaries - enabled the B- movie plots to become A movie material. Ten years later, McTiernan added a significant touch of European cinema to these forms and the formal sophistication they hitherto lacked.

As a director educated on the courses of European immigrants in America (first on the courses of the Czech-born Jan Kadar) and with the New York experience of theatre and art cinema, where he learned some of Truffaut's and Felini’s film by heart, McTiernan landed in Hollywood; in a decade characterized by corrosiveness and excess, he created commercial films with aesthetic integrity. In the same period emerged Paul Verhoeven, bringing a similar European influence to the US (the Dutch director will have ultimately been McTiernan’s most important teacher among his contemporaries).

The breakthrough brought by McTiernan films changed industry standards. For example, the innovative editing in Die Hard was considered unconventional and unacceptable under the then film standards. On the other hand, as a passionate connoisseur of European classics, McTiernan also shattered the conventions related to the use of foreign language in Hollywood movies, in which foreigners mainly spoke in English, with an appropriate accent. Die Hard presented German characters speaking German with the film not being burdened with subtitles; The Hunt for Red October offered an effective visual cue when Soviet sharacters switch to English speakers.

What McTiernan didn’t change in Hollywood is the status of the stars. For starters, he “invented” (in Die Hard) Bruce Willis, a television actor who made it to the very top of the industry after several failed attempts on the big screen. Arnold Schwarzenegger refined with McTiernan what would later become his canonic phase, i.e. the comedian’s stance in stories filled with tension and violence. Sean Connery, on the other hand, became relevant again in the 90s with McTiernan and became the main character in ambitious films. Pierce Brosnan could also testify about McTiernan’s attempt to bring him closer to James Bond (in the 80s) and ultimately detach him from 007 in the late 90s.

Current “epidemics” of sequels and remakes of classics definitely bearsMcTiernan’s mark. While as many as three of his films have spawned to serials spanning over more than a quarter of a century, some of the best sequels and remakes were created with his signature - Die Hard with a Vengeance and the Thomas Crown Affair. Considering the success of these two films, that idea didn’t seem too bad when it was left to him to realize it.

The first of the deconstructions of what he himself had built, McTiernan made in the Last Action Hero, his first commercial failure that only recently received some belated (but well deserved) praise. That movie will serve as a foundation of other directors’ films such as True Lies, the film that only a year later fared great at both the box office and with the critics.

We don’t need French new wave critics to recognize McTiernan as an auter. It suffices to see the difference in the quality of the work of the same writers and actors, producers or the characters and plots, when interpreted without his oversight.

Despite a series of successes spanning over a decade and a half, McTiernan was still able to surprise Hollywood producers. For example, he refused to make the Patriot Games, the second film about Jack Ryan, because he didn’t want to portray militant Northern Irish nationalists as the bad guys, out of respect for his ancestors. As the gap between him and the industry gradually got wider, McTiernan moved Holywoodianplots into his own life. Still, we know that the man that guided John McClane through the hell of the “Nakatomi Plaza” is able to hold his own against a stronger opponent. This year, on FEST, we have the honor to host John McTiernan making Belgrade one of the stops of the path of his comeback.

He will come to Belgrade as a recognized author, a classic that had his retrospective screened in the French Cinematheque, but also as a mature director who has a lot to offer, both on the set and as an interviewee and a lecturer.

If you don’t like at least one of McTiernan’s movies, you are definitely ended up in cinema by mistake. This year’s FEST will be a good opportunity to hear his memories about the classics that have inspired generations of filmgoers some of which later became filmmakers. We will boast about how Serbian film critics were some of the first to recognize his creative mark and dedicated their first significant essays as soon as in the early 90s.

Nonetheless, his visit will not only be an opportunity for a retrospective. If we bear in mind that McTiernan’s films Predator, Die Hard and The Hunt for Red October are literarily built-in in the foundations of contemporary cinema (since today they still make films about the adventures of space warrior hunters John McClane and Jack Ryan), this will be an opportunity to talk to this author and attend his masterclass; this will hopefully bring us closer to the healthy roots of contemorary commercial cinema.

DimitrijeVojnov

McTiernan’s film The Hunt for Red October (1990, 135’) will be screened in the Yugoslav Cinematheque on February 28, at 7 PM.