HANNA

If you’ve been reading my blog entries of late you’ve probably noticed that I have a bit of an issue with timid filmmaking. I went on about it in my review of Duncan Jones’ inauspicious and gutless sci-fi failure Source Code, and have shown a tendency toward heaping praise on risky flicks like Dogtooth and Four Lions. Of course those independent, low budget films are of a different ilk from a movie like Source Code with its sizable price tag and lofty set of box-office expectations. When it comes to crafting a massive, studio funded, action oriented, release there exists a certain pressure to come through with a widely appealing crowd pleaser likely to show some financial returns. And as we all know, this is not an approach aligned with creating a climate ideal for any artistic adventurousness. Most of these pictures end up very much the same: bland, brainless, and ball-less.   

Hanna, the newest entry from Brit director Joe Wright, is a surprising exception to this rule. An ambitious globetrotting adventure tale, Hanna is an example of a film whose makers seem unafraid of pulling out all the stops for the sake of style and service to the story. It’s a sensory feast, packed with an excess of kinetic energy attained through the utilization of all the cinematic tools at a filmmaker’s disposal. There’s crafty camera work, a kitchen sink of editing technique, and an equal parts atmospheric and energetic score form The Chemical Brothers. There’s also an abundance of underlying intelligence; an element often elusive to the action genre.

Hanna opens in the bleak landscape of northern Denmark. Hanna (Sairse Ronan) is hunting elk. She is like a phantom, appearing and disappearing among the trees at will and easily striking down her prey with a homemade bow and arrow. When the wounded elk wanders off and falls to the snowy ground, Hanna coldly aims a Luger (at the deer and at the audience) and fires. She’s a stone killer.

Soon after we meet Hanna’s father Erik (Eric Bana) who we see is more drill sergeant than daddy. Eric spars with Hanna, trains her in multilingualism, and teaches her of the “world beyond” from the pages of an encyclopedia. When the subject of music comes up Hanna, unfamiliar with the concept, asks Eric what music is; but instead of humming a few bars or drumming his hands rhythmically, he turns the page and reads her the definition. It’s a cold, closed-off world where Hanna’s from. But as one would expect, this girl wants to see what she’s missing. So she flips the switch on a locator beacon and makes her presence known to the evil, witch-like CIA operative Marissa (Cate Blanchett), and the globe-trotting chase begins.

This inciting incident is a bit contrived and unbelievable, but I feel that it speaks to the overall thematic design of this film. Hanna is a children’s story about the death of childhood. Like a traditional fairy tale, the action is painted with a broad brush. With this in mind, one can disengage their reality detectors and go along for the ride. This isn’t a story told from an adult’s point of view.  It’s to be viewed through the eyes of a nubile world watcher. One of the things that makes the story of Hanna fresh is the ability of the filmmakers to not only create a technically proficient and lively action film, but to successfully meld that tricky genre with one that is no less difficult to pull off: the coming of age story. This balancing act is reliant on the filmmaker’s success in getting the audience to invest in the characters somewhere between the shootouts and chase scenes. In this case, they got a lot of help from their cast.

Much has been said about seventeen-year-old Saoirse Ronan’s acting abilities, and for damn good reason. She’s nothing less than a revelation. Ronan carries this massive action epic as naturally as Harrison Ford in his heyday. Her graceful style is so truthful that it gives this other-worldly character the nuance needed to make us believe every scene. The fact that Hanna is a super-soldier is incidental to the fact that she’s a very sheltered teenage girl wandering the world for the first time. The wide eyed wonder Hanna possesses is beautifully accompanied by her somewhat savvier friend Sophie (Jessica Barden). It’s in the scenes shared by these two characters where the bulk of humanity lies in the rather cold and calculative world of Hanna. The two young girls forge a real relationship which is sometimes touching, often humorous, and ultimately sad in its inevitable resolution. Hanna, being who she was made to be, can have no friends, no childhood, and no life as we know it.

The heartbreaking fact of Hanna’s destiny is made evident in the visual tapestry of the latter part of the film. After finally making her way to the rendezvous her father had set out for her, we find that it is a rundown, Grimm’s fairy tale-inspired theme park where she finds a small Hansel and Gretel like cabin inhabited by an odd and aged clownish character. When I first saw Hanna I actually found this segment to be a bit much. The fairy tale theme had been so prevalent throughout the film and I felt that the literal visualization of that element was a bit on the nose. But after a second (and third) viewing I came to see this motif as a manifestation of the girl’s lost childhood. When Hanna comes across a deer during the final standoff with Marissa she makes the same realization. She stops and stares at the deer and sees that she is back where she began. After everything Hanna has gone through in order to leave the forest, go out into the world, and try to become a human being; she is really just the hunter she was made to be. And when she coldly takes aim at a wounded Marissa (and again, at the audience) we see that she has accepted her fate.  

Wright’s choice to use such a visual metaphor as the theme park set-piece is one of the many things that makes Hanna such a refreshing and audacious departure from the bulk of today’s action adventure films. In this age of relatively naturalistic action like the Bourne films or the Daniel Craig Bonds, it’s nice to see someone unafraid of going back to the wellspring of fantastical cinematic possibilities without plummeting into the abyss of the ridiculous like the Transformers movies or some other such crap. Hanna isn’t a perfect movie, but its flaws are forgivable in light of its intelligence and adventurous attitude.

Check it out if you get the chance. As of now (May, 6) it’s still in theaters.