"The immaterial has become material," announces the East India Co's scheming Lord Beckett (Tom Hollander) early in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. "He could be referring to the recent resurrection of the pirate Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), flush with life and his expanded role in the trilogy. Or he could be speaking of his newfound dominion over the Flying Dutchman and its squid-faced captain, Davy Jones (Bill Nighy), whose excavated heart is now in Beckett's possession.
More likely, though, the words are a subliminal reassurance from the director, Gore Verbinski. After the bloated shenanigans of the previous entry, Dead Man's Chest — perhaps the only pirate movie to see the need for a Ferris wheel — Verbinski is reminding us why we should ever trust him again.
This third and perhaps final episode in the swishy, swashbuckling saga goes some way toward achieving that goal. The cannibals, coconuts and landlocked locations have been replaced by the high-seas high jinks that made the first film so enjoyable. And the palpable relief as the myriad plotlines rush toward some semblance of resolution has made everyone quite giddy; even our passion-deferred lovers, Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann (Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley), appear marginally less bored with each other. Or at least less bored than we are with them.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF SONY
Filmed sequentially with its predecessor, At World's End is less concerned with ends than inversions, presenting a society where the lawless practice democracy and their rulers engage in tyranny. The crown has declared a state of emergency, civil rights have been suspended, and naysayers are lined up to be hanged.
In one of the film's most bizarre sequences, the condemned begin to sing, belting out a dirge among the rolling tumbrils and swaying nooses. (Tardy audience members may think they've stumbled into a performance of Les Miserables by mistake.) The song reaches Elizabeth, in a skiff heading for the Pirate Brethren Court in Singapore (I am not making this up), and for a while the movie becomes a watery opera with a distinctly Oriental flavor.
By the time Chow Yun-fat (周潤發) appears, as the grumpy pirate lord Sao Feng — complete with an entourage of old-Hollywood coolies — the Gilbert and Sullivan vibe is beginning to wear. After electing Elizabeth pirate king (the Brethren know who wears the trousers in this trilogy), the pirates set out to clobber the British before Davy Jones and his seafood-combo crew can do the same to them.
This will require the help of the priestess Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris), whose role has clarified but whose diction remains unintelligible. "Therr is a cahst to be ped en thah end," she warns mysteriously, mangling her vowels like a voodoo version of Inspector Clouseau.
Having blown Tia up to Godzilla size, however, the screenwriters, Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, have no further use for her; in her new incarnation as the sorceress, Calypso she amounts to little more than crabs and raging wind. Considering she is afforded only one conjugal visit every 10 years — and that from a man who breathes through a blowhole — her bad temper is entirely understandable.
But what of Johnny Depp's Capt. Jack Sparrow? Following his unfortunate encounter with a giant cephalopod at the end of the last movie, this one finds him trapped and hallucinating in Davy Jones' Locker, an arid limbo of rolling dunes and raging heat. Because he is Jack, his hallucinations are all about himself (the real love affair in these movies has always been between Jack and his mirror), and Verbinski fills the screen with an army of mincing clones in kohl eyeliner and fancy head scarves.
Forever above the fray and beside the point, Depp's devilish buccaneer is the lightfooted device that holds the franchise together; as he sashays from battle to bar, impervious to insult and musket alike, Jack's very narcissism is his protection. He's an inverse superhero.
Though the film is filled with the expected special-effects wizardry, its most stunning and surreal moments are also the most peaceful: an army of crabs transporting the Black Pearl over dunes and into the ocean, and a flaming sunrise viewed through tattered seaweed sails.
A disappointing cameo by Keith Richards, still alive and flaunting the look of hard-won dissipation that reportedly inspired Jack's personal style, is in a special-effects category of its own. Perhaps he should have taken notes from Mick Jagger.
Because of the abundance of unpleasant human characters, all of whom lie, cheat and betray one another at the drop of a flounder, the burden of creating an emotional connection with the audience must be borne, ironically, by characters whose humanity has long since evaporated. From the pathos of Davy — still playing the organ like an invertebrate Phantom of the Opera — to the tragic yearning in the barnacle-encrusted face of Bootstrap Bill Turner (Stellan Skarsgard), Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End reminds us that great acting can transcend even the most elaborate makeup.
Even so, if the story is to continue, its creators will need more than Jack's limp wrists and Will's limp resolve. In the prophetic words of Barbossa, "There's never a guarantee of comin' back, but passin' on — that's certain."
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