If my reviews don’t seem timely it’s partly because my cinematic viewing schedule is determined by the availability of DVDs from my friendly local Ha Noi street vendor. He, I am sure, is a licenced proprietor of aforementioned DVDs
I’ve got three movies to tell you about. One is pretty awesome, the other two, in their heart of hearts, are poop burgers masquerading as art.
Another Earth
This won the jury prize and received a standing ovation at Sundance, which should make Robert Redford give himself an uppercut and ask himself how it all came to this.
Another Earth is pretentious, stultifying, and magnificently obvious. It’s basically Sliding Doors but with worse acting, worse writing, and a lot more studied pauses. If you’re asking: no, I’m not a fan of Gwyneth Paltrow.
The premise of the movie is that a second ‘mirror’ Earth has been discovered. On the night it is discovered, Rhoda Williams (Brit Marling), a brilliant young astronomer recently accepted into MIT, is driving drunk and has a car crash, killing John Burroughs’ (William Mapother) wife and children. After being locked up in jail for four years, she tries to make amends for the accident via the rather creepy means of posing as a cleaning lady and cleaning up John’s house once a week (for some bullshit reason he apparently doesn’t realise this is the woman who killed his family).
In an ongoing fit of self-flagellation after the accident, Rhoda also takes the job as a janitor at a local high school – which, if nothing else, should have earned Brit Marling an award for ‘Least Credible Janitor in the History of Cinema’ at Sundance.
The movie uses an Earth-sized metaphor for escape and the Sliding Door possibility of where a different choice may have sent us in life (oh if there is anyone out there who wondered why Earth Two didn’t change the tides on Earth One then YOU’RE MISSING THE POINT ENTIRELY).
This isn’t really science fiction as such, but another case of upper-middle-class angst being thrust upon unwary movie goers. It’s full of lachrymose, thunk-heavy sentimentality, a mediocre script, and turgid acting. Another Earth is a cool idea and noteworthy independent effort that got sucked into the black hole of its own pretentiousness.
Verdict: 1.5 stars (out of five)
Bechdel Test: Pass
The East
The East, like Another Earth, stars and was co-written by Brit Marling. It’s also another interesting idea gone bad. Indeed, the concept behind The East is far more interesting: that of a group of eco-terrorists in the US waging a campaign of retribution against corporations with abysmal ethics.
If the West hasn’t really seen the rise of eco-terrorism yet, it will in the future. It will because the moral equation becomes starker with each passing year: do we let the Earth heat itself to an uninhabitable crisp, or do we take radical steps against those who stand in the way of meaningful action to save the climate?
This is fertile ground for cinema, and it is surprising that there haven’t been more movies along these lines. Though in other ways, not surprising at all: the race-to-the bottom of prequel, sequels, reboots and Sylvester Stallone films has steadily bludgeoned the viewing public into a state of lobotomised docility. Maybe that’s why it stings so much more when a film with such promise, like The East, fails in its execution.
The main character in the film is Jane (Brit Marling), an ambitious former FBI agent who is just starting new employment at a private security company. The company – Hiller Brood – specialises in private sector gestapo operations that involve infiltrating radical protest groups that pose a threat to corporate profits. This apparently does happen in real life, and a rather ham-fisted example is currently happening in Australia (which you can read about here).
In the case of The East, Brit Marling makes a more credible high-school cleaner than she does an environmental terrorist. She is sent to infiltrate some eco-warriors at the behest of her employer and at no point does it looks like she belongs there: her skin is too perfect, her speech too affected, her manner that of a privileged valedictorian. The thought of her dumpster-diving, chaining herself to a tree, growing dreadlocks or wearing a pair of dungarees is inconceivable.
The movie is helped by capable performances from Alexander Skarsgard, Ellen Page and Patricia Clarkson, but in the end they can’t save what is a pretty mediocre script. Apparently the only reason one would become an eco-terrorist, for example, is to get back at one’s wealthy parents for being bad parents (and owning a company that lays waste the environment).
The film ends with a ludicrous montage that would leave any self-respecting political activist beating their head against the wall in frustration. The finale is exactly the sort of middle-of-the-road-imagine-all-the-people-living-in-the-world-I’m-ok-you’re-ok drivel someone who has never been part of a protest movement – or never been at the helm of a private sector gestapo company – would imagine.
The East starts with a compelling moral question; it ends with an unsatisfying clunk.
Verdict: 2.5 stars
Bechdel Test: Pass
Cabin in the Woods
Cabin in the Woods achieves the near impossible – it brings originality to the most worn of horror tropes: a group of university students on holiday in an isolated cabin in the American backwoods.
The five college students (a jock, a nerd, a slut, a virgin and a fool) systematically get killed off in gruesome fashion by one of the staples of the horror genre (in this case zombies – although the movie makes it clear that one of any number of fiendish antagonist could have appeared).
Yet the five are actually not stereotypes at the start of the film (except the fool, who is always the fool). Rather, a mysterious group manipulates events from the comfort of a white-walled control-panelled facility, using psychotropic drugs and other means to subvert the five into cliché characters. As the movie unfolds, we find out why these otherwise friendly and good humoured white-smocked technicians seem so intent on killing of the five in the cabin in a variety of violent and bloodthirsty ways.
It is, as you would expect from a Whedon project, very funny. In fact some of the dialogue is hilarious. It’s so enjoyable that it runs into a common problem with Whedon’s films and TV shows – the humour has the effect of distancing the viewer from the characters. No matter how dark the themes (and they are dark – most of the cast of the Doll House, for example, were either pimps, hookers, or assassins) there is always a certain levity attached to every scene. This is trademark Whedon and part of the allure of his shows – the razor-sharp wit and crisp dialogue. Yet it also means that he can’t ever really do horror.
Cabin in the Woods as such is never really scary, there’s always enough of an ironic distance between you and the characters that you never really fear for them. On the other hand, the movie more than makes up for this through an intriguing concept and story. I was riveted not because I cared for the characters, but rather because I wanted to find out what the hell was happening.
Amazing what a little originality will do.
Cabin in the Woods not only subverts the horror genre, it is also metafiction about the process of writing itself.
Under one interpretation, the whole film can be seen as a representation of the creative process. The writer thinks they have a choice, but is ultimately bound by genre. The technicians in the films are writers who control the story, but at the same time have to service the whims of the old gods. The ‘old gods’ in the film could be substituted with ‘the audience’ or ‘studio executives,’ or perhaps even ‘greed.’ Yet this metafictional element is delivered without the slightest pretentiousness or distraction from the tale itself.
Cabin in the Woods is funny, intriguing, original and above all, a good story.
Verdict: 4 stars
Bechdel Test: Pass
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