Exploring a woman’s worth..

“Captain Marvel” is an origin story. We first meet Danvers, here called Vers, as a Starforce member on the planet of Hala. She is a soldier in a battle we do not quite understand. Even she does not seem to quite understand it. And the first few sequences of the film are a dizzying riff on a retro Sci-Fi film until Vers crashes to Earth after a foiled battle where she must piece together the implications of a fight that extends across the universe. It is here that she will meet a youthful Nick Fury in the mid-nineties and piece together her identity and the beginnings of The Avengers initiative. If this sounds weighted with foreshadowing and like a film that benefits only from the knowledge of the future, “Captain Marvel” is a quiet surprise for the way it textually refutes any overemphatic dependence on context, legacy or history.

I admit to my occasional ambivalence towards the Marvel Empire, mired as it is with films that exist more as propellers for future entries than films with their own identities. Identity is what is at stake in this film. Carol is confused by memories of her past uncertain as to who she was before she appeared on Hala half a decade ago. She must navigate her life as a soldier on the planet and the most significant issue here is the way the film is not completely able to establish just what her motivation for being a soldier is. She is conspicuously opaque as a character, as if nothing really bothers her. It’s a reserve of calm that at first seems odd, but as the film develops, her steely mood becomes an essential part of its easy warmth. It’s that easy warmth that defines much of the middle sequence, where instead of a propulsive movement towards a great climax, the film feels discursive and ambling but in a way that’s warm and thoughtful and undeniably pleasant. When the requisite twists come, it’s significant the way the way the film takes current cultural issues, like the refugee and migrant crises, and contextualises them for its own purpose.

But “Captain Marvel” is not just Captain Marvel; the point is in its name and so the film must end with the note that “Captain Marvel will return in Avengers: Endgame.” The mid-credits and end-credits scene build up Carol’s relationship to the film’s lore, preparing us for the future. But, “Captain Marvel” is at its best when it self-reflexively goes small and ignores the context. The name feels like a misnomer (although the revelation of the name Marvel is a nice sequence). The film does not provide fireworks of marvellous antics in our anticipation of what it is to be a superhero. Instead, it gently reconfigures our focus to slight and tiny things, an awareness of things beyond the usual focus. The key heroic moment is not of our hero achieving success but a wellmade montage of her getting-up after a fall over a series of years. The film that surrounds her is a weird ambling journey of a woman trying to reclaim herself. And, it’s a pleasant ride.

“Captain Marvel” is now playing at Princess Movie Theaters and Caribbean Cinemas Guyana.