Stereographic Postcards from an Expedition

The new 3D “spectacular” from James Cameron is not really spectacular or by James Cameron. Less a “spectacular” than a soggy misadventure in moviemaking, “Sanctum” is loosely based on a true life adventure of David Wight, a diver and renowned cave explorer who helped Cameron develop and hone his 3D filming technology on the documentaries “Aliens of the Deep” and “Ghosts of the Abyss.”

Co-written and produced by Wight, with Cameron listed only as executive producer, “Sanctum” is a loose adaptation of an incident in which Wight led an expedition to explore and dive a remote cave system in Australia. Trapped underground during a freak storm, the expedition had no choice but to dive into the depths of the cave system to make their way out to the surface. Unlike what occurred in the real world, in which all 15 members of expedition survived, the Hollywood monsters survival-to-death ratio is heavily weighted on the death side of the equation – putting extra emphasis on “loose” in the movie’s tag line.

Re-imagined on the big screen in 3D, the expedition is pared down to five trapped survivors who must make life and death decisions through every step and turn of the caves craggy corridors and submerged caverns. The survivors are led by Frank, the head diver of the expedition, played by Richard Roxburgh with a moralistic streak of Ahab-like intensity and desire for exploration. Dan Wyllie is Crazy George, Frank’s long time diving partner who knows the depth and measure of the misunderstood dive leader. Rhys Wakefield is Josh, the estranged and resentful son who is forced to go on Franks expeditions against his will and has a chip on his shoulder against daddy the size of the escape-blocking-boulder. Don’t forget the requisite financier/playboy who has underwritten the expedition with the hopes of naming the cave system after himself, and his neophyte diver-cum-girlfriend whom he “one day plans to marry.”

What could have been a solid B movie blockbuster, a la “The Poseidon Adventure,” is quickly reduced to a setup game of chess in which the characters are lined up and sacrificed as pawns for the sake of the higher ranked pieces on the board. Will Frank and Josh repair their broken relationship? I don’t know, but let’s kill someone and let’s see what kind of life lesson that Frank can impart to Josh about “choices” one makes in life. Those who do not “measure up” quickly succumb to drowning or euthanasia. Constantly spouting lines of poetry from Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, Frank comes off as more of a nietzchean uber villain than pragmatic dive leader, and when one of the remaining survivors abandons father and son by taking the last scuba tank, the audience can’t help but sympathize since we know the fate that awaits him as the lesser piece on the chess board.

If the plot of the movie is as old as the geologic formation of the cave the 3D visuals prove no less disappointing. Aside from the obligatory vertigo inducing helicopter fly-over scene which all 3D films are contractually bound to include, and some brief visuals of the Australian fauna, the interior of the cave looks as flat and exciting as the storyline. When a new subterranean chamber is discovered and compared to the sanctum of a church not witnessed since the beginning of time the visuals consist of weak flashlight beams illuminating hanging stalactites in the distance.

Yawn.

Some of the diving sequences do have an immediacy and beauty to them, especially the last portion of the escape sequence but they are too late and too far in between to make up for the over-all drabness of what is purportedly a 3D spectacular.

Most disappointing is the complete lack of original spatial choreography, which was effectively utilized by Cameron in “Avatar”; a technique which would have been perfectly suited for the diving sequences in “Sanctum,” which mostly consist of obstacle navigating banality. If there’s a narrow passageway in which the divers can get stuck in, rest assured they will, and by the end of the film they have – what can one expect when the only thing Cameron had to do with this film creatively is his name in large type on the lobby posters?