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Down in a blaze of gaudy glory

The third chapter of Pirates is almost back in form
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By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
May 30th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Periscope envy. Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush are back on the high seas.
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Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

Directed by Gore Verbinski
With Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Geoffrey Rush, Stellan Skarsgard and Chow Yun-Fat

As buoyant as the first Pirates of the Caribbean was (2003’s Curse of the Black Pearl), last year’s follow-up in the proposed trilogy, Dead Man’s Chest, gave viewers that sinking feeling. While the first was sheer over-the-top swashing and buckling, the second was pure box-office filler — commodity filmmaking that was as interested in selling toys as in playing with the new CGI toys at Disney.
Yet out of the sludge and silt of part two comes the latest installment, At World’s End, which manages to recapture much of the spirit of the original Curse. It’s far from a perfect film, but as a third outing it is vastly superior to the empty, ADD-addled Spider-Man 3.
The primary problem with At World’s End is that it has to make up for the lack of purposeful action and narrative drive in Dead Man’s Chest. So, from that Atlantic of trivialities comes a film packed to the gunnels with plot.
As Dead Man’s Chest clumsily revealed at its end, Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) had been raised from the dead, ready for more pirating. For Rush fans, this was the best news over the tedious two-plus hours of the film (in fact, the case could be made that it was the very absence of Rush that scuttled part two).
At World’s End will, in turn, set out to bring another dead man back from Davy Jones’ locker: Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp). To cross over to the other side to fetch him, Barbossa, Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley), Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and their scurvy crew will trawl the back canals of Singapore seeking the maps of the local pirate lord, Sao Feng (Chow Yun-Fat).
Though neither Sao Feng nor Barbossa like the cut of the other’s jib, they will find themselves forced to collaborate against that periwigged machiavel, Lord Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander), the very face of brutal British imperialism.
Tipped off to the pirate meeting, the redcoats arrive with muskets blazing. The pirates will escape, and steer out into Arctic waters toward the world’s end on their quest to liberate Sparrow.
It’s almost 20 minutes into this chapter of Pirates before we even catch sight of Depp’s Sparrow, and director Gore Verbinski has concocted a surrealistic, almost mescaline-induced, Davy Jones' locker for him. The Pearl is stranded out in the glare of a white sand sea surrounded by millions of white rock crabs. Onboard, Sparrow gives orders to his crew, all of whom are also Sparrow. Rather than hell being other people, it seems worse that it’s just Sparrow (that paragon of stoned hippie dandyism) alone with his own multiplying selves.
Barbossa’s crew will reach the shores of this dead sea, and ferry Sparrow back to the land of the living, where they will again be confronted with the nefarious Cutler Beckett, as well as the Flying Dutchman under the helm of the tentacled Davy Jones (Bill Nighy). And this is only the beginning.
There is, again, a groaning cargo of plot here, and At World’s End cannot always control the shifting weight of it all. But Verbinski has at least used the CGI equipment more sparingly and to better effect this time. There are some great scenes in this film, including one in the sea of the dead, where Barbossa’s boat sails through an endless school of lost souls, all floating just under the water’s surface in white shifts.
Verbinski early on strikes a more serious note than can be found in the earlier two films. The beginning of World’s End starts with a mass march of poor people to the gallows, while Cutler Beckett enjoys the enumeration of all the various rights that have been suspended, including habeas corpus (a term that may not be familiar to all American viewers).
The performances are adequate, though Depp signals a bit of exhaustion with all of the roguery and folly. But there is an hilarious moment when Depp’s Sparrow meets up with his dear old pirate dad, played by the very man whom Depp based his character upon: Keith Richards. “How’s mum?” asks Sparrow, to which Richards lovingly holds up a shrunken head he keeps in his pocket.
As with Spider-Man 3, it’s best to call an end to the Pirates saga. But at least this trilogy can go down with some small blaze of gaudy glory.

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


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