Bloody update

No one says: braaiinnns here.

There are a few things that won't be touched on in this review. One is to explain the fascination with zombie films. If you don't get what is so scary and entertaining about a small group of humans struggling to survive against masses of cannibalistic undead, then it would take more space than here to explain it. The other thing that won't be done here is to compare and contrast the George Romero original with the update. I don't remember that much of it and frankly, except for the base concept of a small group of humans trapped in a shopping mall, there isn't much similar. There isn't much social criticism on consumerism (we'll have to wait for the Naomi Klein commentary on the DVD) and many of the same social issues touched on in the 1978 film - we're past that.

We are not past loving the spectacle of hordes of decaying corpses clutching and grabbing at desperate humans. We are not past humans taking up whatever weapons are on hand now with a good excuse to open up on their former neighbours with gusto. At least, I'm not past that. 28 Days Later revived that particular appetite for audiences last year, Dawn of the Dead, which cribs slightly from the Danny Boyle film in the similar title sequence, more than revs up the genre.

Tight plotting, thrills and plenty of frights is what moves Dawn of the Dead into classic territory. A great (though muted) cast in Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames and Mekhi Phfifer seem to have volunteered to be horror targets in a dying cause. Zombie films usually end one of two ways. Either everyone dies, or almost everyone dies. With such a low probability of coming out on top, I assume that most of the cast members liked the idea of dying in gruesome and memorable ways. Will we see Sean Penn in a remake of The Hills Have Eyes? Maybe if it's as fun as this remake.

Director Zach Snyder has the right idea here. Keep the plot moving. And when you come to a rest, keep the audience wondering what is lurking around the corner or hanging from the ceiling. Hit the creepy notes. There is some great balance here between black humour, chills, pathos and exhilarating heart-beating stuff. The wonderful first act that portrays society reeling out of control with as many deaths due to panicked drivers as due to ravenous undead builds slowly. The Sarah Polley character watches the world collapse out of the cracked windshield of her car. This is the scene that 28 Days Later couldn't depict either out of cost or because that hero was conveniently in a coma.

When the living characters begin to collect in the mall, an underlying sense of dread keeps the focus on survival. There are no scenes where the characters revel in having a shopping mall all to themselves. We know now that shopping malls are sterile, uninhabitable environments, not just the source of low-brow consumerism. Writer James Gunn is smart enough to always keep things not quite right, whether it is through inter-group conflict, or through red herrings. There's a silly distraction with a dog but this connects more meaningfully with an attempt to rescue a fellow survivor who is trapped in a gun store within sight of the mall. This also becomes the source for a hilarious scene of black humour that will sort your own friends out.

One of the most memorable shots of this act is the godlike view of the Michigan suburb in flames, following the heroine's car putting along down a straight away and then .. bang... an ambulance takes out the car just ahead. And then, for an added touch, the godlike view is shown to be a helicopter shot as a newscopter hoves into view. Digital effects have always been great at portraying the scale and awe of widespread destruction. It's totally at home here. Later when the humans are trapped in the mall, the new digital effects can pump the scale of the last humans' predicament up quite a bit in a shot showing thousands of zombies teeming in the parking lot. (And in the normal scale the zombie makeup from David Cronenberg's wife Denise is pretty juicy).

Snyder's Dawn of the Dead is a shorthand for the zombie genre. Not much needs to be explained, after all. We can assume the living dead didn't come to the mall to shop, and it's really not important to know what particular sin unleashed the dead on the living. Even the characters are a shorthand, maybe even a cipher for what we want to think of them even though there are the caricatures of the rednecks and the yuppie-scum who cares only about himself. For the others, shared apocalypse is the comforting, redeeming moral feature of disaster films. That is the extent to which there is a moral lesson here. Perhaps, in the post-September 11th world, survival is the only lesson.

Memories of Murder

Monster

One half of a monster performance

This is one of those trainwreck movies where you know that doom is just around the corner but you are unable to turn away from the fascinating final moments. In the case of the story of Aileen Wornos, the executed serial killer who had the distinction of being one of the few, most publicized female killers in criminal history, doom is coming from nearly the ten minute mark of the film. Monster is in fact a monster of a film, mostly due to the powerful, ferocious performance of Charlize Theron. In examining her performance it's hard to get away from the special effects of it, the makeup that transformed her from one of the most beautiful women on film into the battered (though nevertheless human) face of Wornos. There have been a good many opportunities for the audience both in the cinema and in the news to see the real Wornos. I haven't seen any so I won't be comparing the reality to the adaptation.

Theron as Wornos appears at the beginning of the film as a drifter on the edge of ending her life, one of her few possessions a large revolver. We learn later that she has been a prostitute most of her lfe, since the age of 14. We see her as an adult, a vulgar, repellent and defensive creature who is thoroughly alone in the world. It takes quite a job to soften her into a sympathetic character but really director and writer Patty Jenkins is not concerned with changing the final opinion on Wornos as a murderer as much as humanizing her. The 'monster' in the title is the failed human that Wornos has become and who can't break through because of her past, who has as few emotional tools as she has actual possessions. And, as we see later, she still has her gun.

Perhaps not willing to jig the real story too much, the turning point in the film comes very early but there are several points along the way where a more capable human could have turned off. It's a fascinating structure. Wornos meets the young lonely lesbian (Christina Riici) who she believes she can have a fantasy life with. Later she tries to go legit by searching for real jobs. Even later she can even escape her murderous trail if only she could just head for the horizon and keep on going. But , it's a trainwreck movie so she can't get off the track. Her character demands that she stay on. This is because 'the turning point' in the film, the event which drives all the action despite all these other opportunities to go in other directions happens early. This is the scene of the horrible rape that electrifies and casts its shadow on every event after.

This is the event where Jenkins believes 'the monster' was born. Wornos has picked up a bad trick, one of the men who themselves kill anonymously on lonely back roads. Perhaps this man has killed other prostitutes. Perhaps one monster has given birth to another. It's not explored. Wornos, tied and brutalized in a car, the woman who had no cause to live previously, now struggles like an animal and survives to kill her would-be killer. Her scream after blasting the human monster is filled with rage, triumph and hurt. It's one of the few raw, in-the-gut scenes that make Monster real and will likely echo in the memories of Academy voters.

Monster is entirely successful in such scenes where Theron/Wornos is ablaze with ferocity. The combination of anger and physical strength (her character towers over even most men), especially in the murder scenes in the rest of the film where the men are the victims - the tables turned, powers through the stark savagery of what has become the mean of her existence. This is what the killer movie has failed to become in other films. The killers are snide, speechifying caricatures of what we imagine these psychopaths to be. Or they are drooling hicks with accents. Theron/Wornos outwardly is the trashy, foul redneck wanderer, but she has an impetus that most other killers have lacked.

Where Monster is not successful (though it reaches) is in the other impetus in Wornos' life, her relationship with Selby, the shy then manipulating girl who Wornos takes into her life and for whom she ostensibly has been working for. It is not so much that Shelby's character seems so unworthy of love, it's that the bleakness of their existence never really breaks through into even an ideal of happiness. Even though the audience can see the reality of their relationship (the grubbiness of their motels, the selfishness of Selby's character), we deserve to see the ideal of how Wornos sees their relationship, their romance and dreams. We can see the idea but not the ideal of their relationship. Without that heart it's not possible even to grasp at what Wornos feels she is working towards when she kills on a lonely road.

SAVAGE STEPPES
THE FALL OF OTRAR (Giblel' Otrara)
IMDB
dir. Ardak Amirkulov

Miongols!

This is a Central Asian film that was recently rediscovered by Martin Scorsese's import distribution company and now making the rounds as part of the "Along the Silk Road: The Films of Central Asia" series. The headliner of this series is The Fall of Otrar, a stark and often brutal Shakespearan story of a squabbling multi-ethnic nation who refuse to believe the warnings of one of their exiles who has returned from the camp of Genghiz Khan. Filmed in sepia tones and color, the Kazakh film made in 1990 at first is off-putting. The print hasn't survived the fall of the Soviet Union that well and the subtitles are burned in over grand title cards. The director Ardak Amirkulov films much of the story in shadowy interiors, often in cramped conditions. Actually, unlike most epics with their concentration on travelogue-like photography, the tight, raw composition instead draws the viewer to think about the story and the unique history.

Told in two parts, Otrar begins when a member of the Kipchak people arrives at the court of the Shah of Korezem, a crossroads nation administering several ethnicities including the minority Kipchak. Visiting Arabs, Chinese, Christians all gather in the capital city plying wares and evidently scheming on behalf of all the surrounding powers. The Kipchak man, called the Arrow of Allah (Unzhu), has spent many years in the service of the Mongol army and now returns to warn the Shah of the impending doom gathering on the horizon. However, Korezem is rife with intrigue and the Shah is suspicious of his Kipchak subjects. Moreso, he is setting his sights on attacking nearby Baghdad in order to claim leadership of the Muslim faith and has heard little about the successes of the Mongols in Asia.

Suspecting a ruse, the Shah commits the Kipchak man to the hangman for a series of tortures in order to get the truth out of him. Unzhu passes through several hands as the various factions all try to use his doomsaying to their advantage, but few realizing that he is speaking the truth about the Mongol menace. Finally Unzhu is again amongst his Kipchaks but is scornfully treated by his king Kairhkan who wanted Unzhu to die a martyr so that his warning would receive the proper weight in court.

Ignored by the court and cast out by Kairhkan, Unzhu goes out on his own, wandering the steppes to await the coming of the Mongols. The film opens up both in composition and in story in this second part. More of the action now takes place in the stark snowy climes of Kazahkstan and in the impressive city of Otrar. Genghis Khan now sets his sights on Korezem, sending out spies amongst the traders. The Shah of Korezem is slow to mobilize his forces but the Kipchaks now prepare for the inevitable battle. Much of the film is a paen to the lost culture of these people who appear as footnotes in history. At the same time, the pride of the rulers is shown as a dust against the onrushing storm of the all conquering Mongols. The actual seige of Otrar is no Return of the King but it is quite impressive for its portrayal of 13th century warfare with its ruses, tactics and savagery.

The Fall of Otrar is marked by its unflinching depiction of the value of life and death in these medieval times. Many viewers will come away with an unhappy impression of the many tortures every people seem to employ, from holding a boiling brazier over someone's head to cruxificion to standing a man on his head in order to break his neck. The final torture which is the fate of Kairhkan tops them all, as Genghis has the man's face encased in molten silver as a sign of respect for Kairhkan's bitter opposition. Perhaps this is a Soviet attitude, but there is a lot of black humour amidst the horror. An old man finding the gates of a city opened by traitors, attempts to close the gates by himself but is too late as the Mongols stream past him into the open city. A Mongol warrior, thinking that the old man was trying to open the gates, rewards him with a golden tablet.

There are equal measures of Shakespeare and Kurosawa in The Fall of Otrar. Although Ardak Amirkulov lacks the resources and technique of Kurosawa, he does capture the same feeling of humanity struggling against fate that is in many of Kurosawa's parables. Both directors drink from the same source: Shakespeare. In Ran the daimyo Hidetora wanders as a ghostly presence through his destroyed castle. In Otrar the defeated Kairhkan tries to 'raise the spirits' of his dead soldiers in his wrecked city. There is a mixed message in all the epic imagery in Otrar. Kairhkan seeks to die gloriously, among the fallen bodies of his personal guard but the Mongols have other ideas and sweep him up in a net. Even the forlorn scout Unzhu is denied his place with his doomed people, rejected and cast out. The once proud people, now just an empty shell on the steppes.