Towards a Proper Appreciation of The Spirit

Alexander S. Peak

12 June 2009

The Spirit, directed by Frank Miller and based comic by Will Eisner, was released on Christmas day, 2008. Since this time, it has received mostly bad reviews.

Currently, the film has a 14% freshness rating at RottenTomatoes.com, and Roger Ebert has said that “[t]o call the characters cardboard is to insult a useful packing material.”

But I think that was the point.

The problem here is that the typical viewer of The Spirit has seen, and is expecting another, Sin City.  But the purpose of this film does not, in my opinion, appear to have been to make another Sin City at all.  This film is campy, and purposely so.  While it shares a somewhat similar visual style to Sin City, as well as a use of neo-noir voiceovers, the similarities end, and where intended to end, there.

To obtain a proper appreciation of The Spirit, one must therefore forget Sin City.  Rather than being an attempt at “another Sin City,” The Spirit—properly understood—should be seen as a cross between Sin City and Dick Tracy.  The characters, moreover, should properly be seen as intentionally stereotypical.  There are no nuances of layers to the characters at all—surely, this cannot be a mere oversight on the part of Miller; this had to be intentional.

Once one accepts that the film is supposed to be campy, one can see it for what it is: a post-modern reflection of the films qua comics phenomenon.  Or, perhaps more simply, one can see it as a fun reflection of the comic-book-made-into-film, one that—like Mars Attacks! did for science fiction—tries not to take itself too seriously.

None of this is to say, of course, that the Spirit is some sort of masterpiece.  By no means!  But the film does deserve, as all films do, to be viewed with a proper perspective.  It is not a mature, brooding flick like Sin City—but then, it was never intended to be such.  And that’s the point.

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