Tilda Swinton and Benedict Cumberbatch (Marvel Studios)
“Surrender your ego, and your power will rise.” This old wisdom comes from the new installment of a cinematic universe that often seems designed to bolster the egos of the usual ensemble cast of highly-paid actors that populate these blockbusters. What makes Doctor Strange different is that fewer and smaller egos are competing, and they come from a talent pool at odds with the typical blockbuster: arthouse film.
Benedict Cumberbatch stars as Dr. Stephen Strange, a hot-shot brain surgeon who gets his comeuppance when his hands are damaged—irreparably, he fears—in a car crash.
Strange is a doctor whose operating theater routine includes a stump-the-surgeon playlist. His picture-perfect memory has the capacity for pop music trivia alongside life-saving surgical techniques, but he’s an asshole. The now-crippled doctor plummets into vocational despair, but is encouraged by news of a distant cure in Kathmandu, Nepal.
The movie is mostly origin story, its battles scenes almost an afterthought, though not without universal import. But what makes the movie interesting is its supporting characters—the arthouse stars providing the movie with heroes and villains. The evil Kaecilius is played by Mads Mikkelsen, a Bond villain who is at his best in offbeat fare like the revisionist Western The Salvation or the hilariously disturbing comedy Men & Chicken. The Ancient One who teaches our hero is a bald Tilda Swinton, who in 2013 slept in a glass box at the Museum of Modern Art for a performance piece.
These are strange character actors indeed, and they help make Doctor Strange one of the more human-scaled films in the MCU. As an origin story it’s not unfamiliar—The Ancient One comes from any number of martial arts movies, and the hero’s professional arrogance is a variation on Iron Man.
Even the movie’s dazzling visuals, shifting worlds folding in on each other like a living M.C. Escher illustration, is a big-budget retread of Inception and Dark City before it. Except that Doctor Strange may well be better than Inception. The Marvel producers respect their audience enough to not have an Ellen Page character around to explain everything that you’re seeing.
Swinton’s bald sensei is the opposite of the Marvel character who takes on a protective shell or cape; she lets go of it all, including her hair. But what if our powers are best nurtured by nakedness? (She’s not—yet). Such as it is, Strange’s spiritual journey is more interesting than the climactic multiversal fisticuffs.
Director Scott Derrickson is best known for horror movies like the effective Sinister, and if this doesn’t strike that kind of eerie tone, well it’s a Marvel movie. A Marvel movie that’s less cluttered and weighed down with battling personalities and that lets you concentrate on the ancient battle between good and evil. Still, Strange’s biggest battle may already be over: the battle with himself. Whether this promising turn can sustain the inevitable sequels (wait around for a pair of stingers) remains to be seen.
Doctor Strange
Directed by Scott Derrickson
Written by Jon Spaihts, Scott Derrickson, and C. Robert Cargill.
With Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachel McAdams, Tilda Swinton, Mads Mikkelsen
Rated PG-13 for sci-fi violence and action throughout, and an intense crash sequence
115 minutes
Opens today at a multiplex near you.
