On Looking at Skyline from a Different Perspective

So, you’re an alien who likes to eat brains. You and your alien pals have travelled the universe eating brains and you come across this little planet called Earth. You do your research and realise that these ‘humans’ need their brains (although not for making Skyline) and aren’t going to give them up easily, so you decide to invade. Using your clever light/tractor beam technology and advanced weaponry you attack Los Angeles. Initially you’re all really successful and eat loads of brains, but then the pesky army attack and blow up your mother ship! So now you’ve got to use a lot of energy to rebuild your ship, which makes your carbon footprint huge. You like to eat brains sure, but you still care about the environment. Anyway, you rebuild your ship and suck up a load more humans, decapitate them and eat their brains. Remember to recycle their bodies.

But wait, what’s this; your alien pal has just eaten a brain that looked a little off. The others were all blue and this one was redder. Damn, you know what happened; he’s eaten the brain of someone who’s survived several attacks and has absorbed some of your alien powers and now his brain’s all weird and stuff and tastes like pumpkin. Now your alien pal has taken on the characteristics of the human whose brain he just ate. This is messed up. There’s nothing you can do, so you just watch as he hears the screams of his pregnant girlfriend who is about to get decapitated and kill the alien about to eat her. This is going to be a pain in the ass when you have to explain this to human resources. What’s this? It looks like his human girlfriend can recognise him; he’s stroking her pregnant stomach! This is getting really weird. We better end it here and not explain what happens next...

Take Independence Day (1996), War of the Worlds (2005) and District 9 (2009). Remove any talent, especially acting and writing and what do you get...Skyline.

On the Horror Codes of Let the Right One In

What does Let the Right One In tell us about vampire films? Many of the expected conventions of vampire films are present in this minimal, Swedish horror film, but director Tomas Alfredson presents them in such a way that Let the Right One In is an extremely original vampire films.

Fangs, crucifixes and garlic are all absent, but drinking blood, heightened strength and fear of daylight are all present. So why is Let the Right One In so special? Firstly it reverses our expectations of good and evil by defying our expectations of who is good and who is evil. Eli, the vampire, is a 12 year old girl who does not think twice about brutally attacking someone for their blood or sending out her daylight protector to cut the throat of an unsuspecting by passer. Yet when Eli meets Oskar an unexpected relationship emerges as the main story thread of the film. After the death of her daylight protector, Eli befriends Oskar to the point where she can admit her true identity to him without losing his friendship.

Oskar, also 12, is from a broken home and is bullied and violently abused by older students at school. Eli not only gives him the confidence to fight back, but also the protection he needs when he needs it. Oskar treats Eli like a girlfriend and a confidant after she is left alone. That their romance becomes so appealing and endearing is a feature that confuses any categorisation of Let the Right One In, but at the same time, makes it such a beautiful and touching film.

Despite its lack of ‘jumpy’ horror moments and its abundance of stylish cinematography and deftness in direction, Let the Right One In is horrific. A young boy hung from a tree and bled; a bite victim combusting; the distorted face of a self mutilated acid victim. Yet, the most horrific scene is left till the end. What we thought was a genuine relationship between two lost souls suddenly takes a sinister turn as Oskar runs away from home and becomes Eli’s new daytime protector. There is now the suggestion that Eli is grooming Oskar to take the role of the man she lost. As she is much older than she appears, it is perfectly reasonable that she met her last protector at a young age and befriended him until he was attached to her, just like Oskar is now. When we remember that Eli drank the blood of her last protector after the police caught him (no one can be a serial killer for ever), we suddenly see Oskar’s future as being in jeopardy and this beautiful film ends with a genuine moment of darkness, during the daylight.

Let the Right One In knows its place is amongst the horror genre and presents enough of the conventions to earn its classification. But the film’s unwillingness to be placed alongside every other vampire film has meant the bar has been raised for creating new and interesting ways to represent the vampire in film.

On the Brilliance of Shutter Island

“Which would be worse; to live as a monster, or die as a good man?” This is one of the last lines that Leonardo DiCaprio’s Teddy Daniels speaks in Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island (2010), right before he voluntarily walks away to be lobotomised. However, the meaning of this line is open to interpretation and that interpretation differs depending on whether this is the first or second viewing of the film.

Cultural theorist Stuart Hall determined three ways in which we absorb visual texts, such as film. These are the dominant-hegemonic reading, the negotiated reading and the oppositional reading. The majority of people will always absorb visual images as a negotiated reading; this means that they naturally complete a process of acceptance and rejection and can enjoy the visual images, in this case a film, but become a maker of their own meaning, rather than being influenced. This is of course possible with Shutter Island, but for certain viewers, after a second viewing, the film can exist of two very clear levels that fit in with Hall’s dominant-hegemonic and oppositional readings.

Shutter Island follows US Marshall Teddy Daniels and his partner Chuck as they investigate a missing person’s case on Shutter Island, the home of a hospital for the criminally insane. Daniels has an ulterior motive for taking the case as it is revealed that the arsonist who killed his wife is a patient and the House Un-American Activities Committees is investigating the hospital for its communist leanings and experiments. Daniels is still suffering with the loss of his wife and cannot move on, but wants to shut the hospital down. Added to this is Daniels’ own issues with his violent past; he was a soldier in the first wave at the concentration camp Dachau and murdered Nazi soldiers. A series of events lead Daniels to a lighthouse where he believes the experiments are taking place and it is here that the reveal is presented. Everyone on the island, including Chuck, has been playing a role, ensuring the Daniels is drawn closer and closer to discovering the ‘truth’ and takes himself to the lighthouse. Not unlike the residents in The Wicker Man (1973). Here Daniels discovers that this elaborate role play is a last resort to prevent him being lobotomised. Daniels, real name Andrew, has been a patient for two years because he murdered his wife after she drowned their children. Unable to accept the death of his children or the murder of the women he loves, he created his own reasons for being in the hospital; he is a US Marshall uncovering a communist conspiracy.

Dicaprio’s performance is so intense and emotionally powerful that we want to believe him and this is one of the many skills in the direction. Our first reading could very easily be the oppositional one. When the role play is revealed and we think back, everything points to the ‘truth’ being that of the role play, but Dicaprio draws us into his world so fully that we are with him every step of the way and to accept defeat is difficult. Therefore, when Daniels/Andrew complies with the doctors at the end we are shocked. But does that final line show an awareness he would not have if he had accepted the truth? With the oppositional reading it would follow that this line indicates he has accepted that getting off the island is impossible, but that he is holding onto his own sanity and his own beliefs and is willing to die as a good and right man, than live in the hospital with everyone believing he is a murderer.

Watching the film a second time, with the knowledge of the role play, reveals the brilliance of the script and the direction. Every second line, every glance between characters supports the idea that Daniels is in the middle of an elaborate role play. A dystopian version of The Truman Show (1998). With a first viewing such lines and interactions between the characters seem innocent. That Scorsese and writer Laeta Kalogridis have created such a layered film with two clear readings, one of which is hidden, is a testament to the work that has gone into Shutter Island and makes it Scorsese’s most complete film in years. With a second viewing it is difficult to see Daniels as the renegade US Marshall and everything points towards the idea that he is a patient – the dominant reading. Therefore, at the end he has accepted his true identity and now he knows the truth he cannot live with the memory of what has happened; he cannot live knowing what he has done. However, this being Scorsese, a master of his craft, there remains just a few indications that point to the opposite, to those of us who want the conspiracy to be true, who want Daniels to be right. Shutter Island is one of the best horror/thriller films to come out of America is a long time.

On David Fincher's Status as a Director

David Fincher has always been interested in complex male characters. Since 1995 and Seven, his first film which really cemented his style, Fincher has given us a canon of films with similar male leads (the exception being Panic Room (2002)). The serial killer in Seven (1995), Michael Douglas’ suicidal magnate in The Game (1997), Brad Pitt and Edward Norton’s anarchists in Fight Club, Jake Gyllenhaal’s determined reporter in Zodiac (2007) and Pitt’s age defying Benjamin Button. All these characters occupy dark worlds; worlds of danger and death. Additionally, they occupy real, recognisable worlds that are being manipulated by a force greater than can be comprehended. Jodie Foster in Panic Room must deal with the confinement of the room, forced upon her by the threat of three home intruders. Fincher is also occupied by the tangible threat of time, or more specifically, running out of time. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) is Fincher’s first foray into fantasy and exemplifies this perfectly as Benjamin is constantly running from time, from which he’ll never escape.

Fincher’s latest film brings together all of his idiosyncrasies in a world less familiar than his others. The Social Network is the story of Mark Zuckerberg and the creation of Facebook. This is therefore not only Fincher’s most contemporary film, but one that is also the most relevant film that exists as its history is not only the immediate past, but also the immediate present and the changing future. The film’s accuracy will always be debatable, but what Fincher gives us is a fascinating insight into the world of a computer genius who changes the world and those who try to ride along with him. Like the serial killers of Seven and Zodiac and the anarchists of Fight Club, Zuckerberg changes the world around him in a way very different, but just as immediate as killing someone. In one hour, the film tells us, Zuckerberg receives 22,000 hits on an early version of Facebook and crashes the Harvard database. Despite the law suits, the loss of friends and the insults, the only threat Zuckerberg feels is that of time, as he fights to keep Facebook relevant and cool.

There is much to admire in The Social Network and the relevance of the film to our changing online world, makes it all the more interesting.

On the Composition of Bright Star

There are few films as effortlessly beautiful as Jane Campion’s Bright Star (2009) the story of John Keats’ romance with Fanny Brawne. The romance, like all great romances is tragic, and Campion realises that the power in this story lies in her skill behind the camera, not in changing a classic narrative formula. Everything about Campion’s mise-en-scene compliments the story; the characters’ costumes reflect the seasons and their emotions and reflect Fanny’s trade as a seamstress. The framing of every scene recalls images of traditional painting and the same care has been taken here by Campion that Jean-Pierre Jeunet took with Amelie (2001), but without the syrupy colour addition. The score by Mark Bradshaw feels so relevant it speaks volumes about the characters while they say nothing. Campion’s direction is pitch perfect and the two leads (Abbie Cornish and Ben Whinshaw) turn in subtle, but powerful performances. Cornish is a revelation and her Fanny Brawne is strong and independent in a decidedly male time period, yet at the same time vulnerable; her reaction when she hears of Keats’ death is as powerful as any other portrayal of grief. At the heart of Bright Star, along with the romance is the poetry. Keat’s work is recited regularly throughout the film and other poets’ work is discussed. Knowledge of poetry, especially the meanings behind Keats’, would no doubt make Bright Star an even more enriching experience. However, without that, this remains one of the standout romantic films and a near perfect representation of a director at the top of her game.