13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi and Crimson Peak

I’ve been playing catch-up the last couple of weeks, trying to see films from the last year or so that I meant to catch in the theater but just didn’t. In my personal movie marathon, I watched two films that were both perfect matches between director and subject material. Now, I’m a firm believer in auteur theory, the idea that a director has the ability to put his or her unique stamp on a film. I realize that filmmaking, especially in mainstream Hollywood, is a tremendously collaborative process involving hundreds of people and that it’s probably a little unrealistic to give too much credit to just one person. Nevertheless, in the realm of architecture, we talk about Frank Lloyd Wright’s vision for Fallingwater, the house perched over a waterfall in Pennsylvania, not the two hundred skilled craftsmen who actually built the thing. The director is essentially the architect of a film and what we end up seeing is often the vision that he or she wants more than any other single collaborator.

Anyway, the two film architects who found the perfect match of subject matter are Michael Bay with 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi and Guillermo Del Toro with Crimson Peak. I know it’s unusual to her the words Michael Bay and “perfect” in the same sentence unless the sentence involves the phrase “perfect piece of garbage,” but bear with me. 

 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi is the based-on-real events story of the band of security contractors assigned to a secret CIA installation near the American diplomatic compound that was attacked in Libya on September 11, 2012. The underdefended compound is attacked and set ablaze. The visiting American ambassador, Chris Stevens, gets separated from his security detail and dies of smoke inhalation. Everyone retreats to the CIA installation which then falls under attack too. The battle that lasts the night is chaotic and frightening. Rather than easily identifiable good guys and bad guys, the whole thing is a shifting mess of gunfire, shouting, ambiguous vehicles driving up to the battle and then driving away, and inexplicable lulls in the action. In its lack of elegant staging and comprehensible action, I assume it is probably one of the most authentic depictions of what an actual night battle in a country filled with insurgents might actually be like. This works for Michael Bay because they guy could never film a comprehensible fight scene to save his life. He got his start in music videos and never evolved past his love of image and disinterest in coherent story. In 13 Hours, it works perfectly because the story isn’t meant to make sense. The result is visceral and surprisingly effective. It’s not a partisan film, so don’t watch it expecting a political comment on how the U.S. government did or did not act. But do see it if you want to see the extreme circumstances under which brave, dutiful men and women acted that night. 

 The other perfect pairing was Guillermo Del Toro and the most gothicy gothic ghost story of all time, Crimson Peak. Del Toro is a master visualist who never lost his child-like fascination with ghosts, gore, and haunted houses. Crimson Peak is a supercharged blast of  gothic elements – neglected kids locked in an attic, secret pregnancy, specters and phantoms wandering through shadowy halls, a massive haunted house sinking into blood red earth, weighed down by secret sin. It’s kind of the Swiss Army knife of gothic stories – it’s got everything. Because Del Toro directed it, every visual aspect is refined and beautiful. You’re simultaneously grossed out and mesmerized by his combination of extreme violence and gorgeous production design and cinematography. Del Toro just loves movies, particularly scary ones, and his affection is on full display throughout the gory and definitely not family friendly Crimson Peak. If you like films as beautiful as they are horrifying, this film is the perfect combo.