The Daze After The Day the Earth Stood Still

The Day The Earth Stood Still (Robert Wise, 1951) Iconic sci-fi pic that managed to be just strange enough to be spiritual without having to explain itself. Edmund H. North's script (adapted from the 1940 Harry Bates story "Farewell to the Master") just assumed that any advanced civilization's technology would seem like magic to us (ala Clarke's Third Law). It's anti-nuke theme was somewhat off-set by it's Christ allegory under-pinnings: a human-appearing being from above comes to Earth with a "message," is killed and resurrected to give mankind a lesson in humility. That the alien--Klaatu (Michael Rennie)--walks among us under the guise of a "Mr. Carpenter" just nails the significance home.

Right from the get-go, The Day The Earth Stood Still announces its intention with a "spooky" theremin-laced score (by the brilliant Bernard Herrmann), quite at odds with its message of peace. Wise shows a global humanity surrounded by its current technology (radio, television, radar) spreading the news of an invader from space, which lands in the Mall area of a tourist-clogged Washington D.C. in Spring. 

Phalanxed by a wall of tanks and military might (with a larger crowd of tourists behind it) the alien presence reveals itself and is shot by a panicky soldier for its trouble. Before you can say "Kent State," the alien is taken to Walter Reed to be treated, observed and questioned, and the formal Klaatu--patient, curious, but with a hint of passive condescension--does his own analysis, escaping from the hospital and blending with the populace as "Mr. Carpenter"--taking a room at a boarding house, becoming involved with a widowed secretary (Patricia Neal)--it IS the '50's, after all--and her son, with the intent of seeing humanity first-hand.

Meanwhile, his Enforcer, Gort, a lumbering, laser-cyclopsed, soft-metal robot stands guard over the saucer, turning his evil eye on any hint of aggression, without any regard to how much of the GNP was flushed to make those tanks. If Gort could laugh when he turned on his eye-light, he'd probably do it with glee.

There are so many small details that delight: Patricia Neal's uncommonly common working Mom, with a wary eye towards Mr. Carpenter--there's not even the hint of romance there; Sam Jaffe's cameo as Einstein stand-in Dr. Barnhardt, looking at his business-suited stranger visitor from another planet with eyes of dazzled wonder; the whole design of the thing that has so permeated our culture with sleek silver surfaces that fold in and out of each other seamlessly; "Gort, Klaatu Barada Nikto!" which, indicative of the race's parsimoniousness, roughly translates to: "Robot, take Klaatu's body back to the space-ship and repair whatever damage has been done to it, bring him back to life, and oh! while you're at it, don't turn me into a smoking pile of ash, thank you very much*"--talk about "Three Little Words!"; Robert Wise's unerring sense of staging and for putting the camera in the exact, most effective place without making you aware that it's the most effective place. Wise is always given short-shrift as a director, implying a yeomanlike sensibility rather than an artistic one, but the Man Who Edited Citizen Kane also conceived beautiful, eerie, creepy shots like this:

Thanks to Glenn Kenny of "Some Came Running," who reminded me **

The Day the Earth Stood Still is a classic film—a time-capsule, of a kind—from a different time and place and space that reminds, yes, with great power comes great responsibility--but there's always someone more powerful, who might take yours away, and make you stop and smell the fall-out.

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Written at the time of the film's release...

"Everything New (Testament) is Old Again"
or
"Yeah. I'm Thinkin' I'm Back!"

So why remake it? Well, it's a question that Klaatu's United Planets couldn't negotiate--and Gort's Galactic Police Force would probably give you the eye. But the agent of Keanu Reeves saw a poster of the original and dollar signs swam into his head and here, we have it. And Scott Derrickson (who put a different head-spin on The Exorcism of Emily Rose) thought he could turn it into a warning about global warming, and Reeves thought that, though the original Klaatu preached peace, he did so threatening force, which he found "fascist."

Sigh.

That sounds noble in thought (if a tad simplistic). On-screen, it's a different matter entirely.

Because it's a "re-imagining" (rather than "a remake"), there is no "flying saucer," but a cloudy, spacy "orb" (all the better to remind you of the planet, but I kept wondering what kept it in place), and rather than the military, scientists are in the front line (with Princeton astro-biologist Helen Benson, played by Jennifer Connelly, as the point-person). The military is back-up.***

The scenario starts the same: Land-Bang-End up in Hospital. And there things start to change. The original Klaatu had no special powers. Gort was the "muscle" (and here, the robot is 20 feet tall, gun-metal gray in color, and a completely CG construct--it's actually simplified from the original's design--and, as with the first Gort, its unreadability makes it a genuinely creepy sight). Keanu Reeves' Klaatu has a nasty way with bio-feedback that does damage. So much for pacifism. But, this Klaatu isn't Christ-in-a-business-suit. This one goes back a few chapters, back to the Old Testament. Particularly those parts dealing with Noah and Moses. The threat is environmental, rather than nuclear, and to sustain one of "the handful of planets that can support life," Keanu-Klaatu's United Planets are thinking of a little Silent Spring Cleaning of the life-form doing the most damage. Good thing he doesn't carry around a cook-book!

The following section is SPOILER material, so if you want to be surprised how it ends—if you care—don't highlight the next paragraph which, like the Earth, gets blacked out:

That scouring consists of billions of nanite-sized metal locusts (why they have to specifically look like insects, I have no idea, but I'd guess it has something to do with why Klaatu's named "Mr. Carpenter" in the first one). So, this "plague" starts doing its damage, devouring metal of all kinds, sports-arenas and such, and one can only hope that it can distinguish "green" technology, like solar panels and wind-generators, from the other kinds, but I suspect not--that might involve thinking! Keatu, or Klaanu, or whatever you want to call him, decides at the last minute that because humans have the capacity for change, they maybe, just maybe, could save their environment, so he sacrifices himself sabotaging the plague, leaving humans with no electricity, no technology, and presumably the resolve to stop the global warming crisis with, as a much wiser alien once inventoried, "stone knives and bear-skins." Thanks, Kleatu or Kono, or whatever your name is, thanks a lot. Who's gonna pick up these continents of dead nanites corrupting the soil, Mr. "Ecology?" And they thought the first one gave off mixed signals?

Keanu Reeves has the most limited range of any actor who hasn't suffered a stroke, but he does have two specialties at which he excels: endearingly stupid, or robotic. The latter serves him well, as in Speed, the portions of The Matrix when he was portrayed by pixels, and this film. His strange visitor from another planet is a nice piece of craft, slightly more human than Jeff Bridges' Starman, and extremely efficient in his movements--when he turns his head to look you right in the eye, you'd better take him seriously. He's quite effective in the role. Jennifer Connelly delivers the techno-babble expertly (as she did in Hulk), but she really doesn't have much more to do than Patricia Neal did, as the role is basically reduced to "concerned mother." As the child she's concerned about, Jaden Smith at least doesn't fall into the "predictable child" category. He finds different ways of doing things than the "stock-child" role. Kathy Bates is too good for her role of Secretary of Defense, Jon Hamm, of "Mad Men," doesn't really separate himself from the pack, but Robert Knepper does a fine job as a Colonel in charge of trying to stop a tidal wave with a tea-cup. It's always great to see cameo's by James Hong, and John Cleese, who plays Prof. Barnhardt in this version.****

But, ultimately, there wasn't much point in doing this, other than to give people jobs, and give some Hollywood-types more "green" cred. The production was carbon-neutral (wouldn't that have been ironic?), which means they presumably paid carbon credits used to destroy old-growth forests for eucalyptus plantations.

"The Universe wastes nothing," Keatu says at one point.

He's never been to Hollywood.

* I hope there's a "please" in there, somewhere!

** Kenny has a wonderful illustrated tribute to director Robert Mulligan. It's far better than anything I could contribute.

*** There is one amusing bit--when Benson is shanghaied to participate in the landing investigation by the military, it's set-up and photographed exactly as it was done in The Andromeda Strain...directed by original TDTESS director Robert Wise. Coincidence? Nothing's a coincidence in a "re-imagining."

**** I hate playing the "If only..." game—it smacks of frustrated screenwriters—but, as they had an Albert Einstein-clone in the original, it would have been interesting to have a Stephen Hawking in this one—brilliant, but crippled, talking through a voice-box. If Klaatu wanted inspiration from the human race, who better? Then, imagine this scenario: the group leaves, but Klaatu hangs back, turning to look at the wheelchair-bound pysicist. "I could cure you..." Pause. The voice-box rasps: "Save...the...world."

But, they didn't.

The Book of Eli

The Book of Eli (The Hughes Brothers, 2010) Eli (Denzel Washington) trudges through a sepia-toned crater-strewn post-apocalypse in slow motion. He's been walking for 30 years, heading West, compelled by voices that a path will be made for him. He should fear no Evil.

Probably because he's the biggest bad-ass in the Valley of Death.

Not exactly chapter and verse of lines he says in the movie, but you get the point: we're talking about a religious-themed apocalypse story, more than a mere Christ-allegory, ala I Am Legend. And the way the Hughes Brothers have put it together, they're making a western of the Shane variety, but it could also be Mad Max (they're similar, especially The Road Warrior), another legendary loaner who must make his way being civilized after civilization has crumbled, like so many over-passes, into rubble.

Now, before we get too far, let us just say that, given what we see in the first five minutes of the film, its ultimate revelation is impossible, maybe the Hughes Bros. thought we'd forget or didn't care, but it's stretching things quite a bit. I could speculate (and give things away) but maybe it's merely sufficient to say that in the scheme of things, you have to take it on Faith, because The Book of Eli is all about Faith. Faith is what drives Eli, he is suffused with it. He has been assured by the voice that a path will be made for him and all will be provided.

He's pretty lucky in that regard. He manages to find potable water and to recharge his I-pod filled with classic rock* (It's all classic rock at this point in time!), and he's particular about weapons, bullets being hard to come by in a land where "one man's garbage is another man's treasure." When he chooses to fight (and he chooses not to a couple of times in the film, choosing, rather, to "stay on the path" than help the victims of an attack), it is with particularly nasty looking long knives—Kukri machetes (I love the Internet)—as well as bows, rifles, pistols (and probably boomerangs if he was in Mad Max's apocalypse), all aimed and fired with deadly accuracy.

So, he's not your typical man of Faith, using it like a weapon. Eli takes his place in the long line of men (and women) with no, or only one, name who have tumbled through the landscape of westerly-headed movies. 

The Hughes Brother owe a large debt to Sergio Leone for this one (and present the receipt by having one of the characters whistle "Cockeye's Theme" from Once Upon a Time in America), but also to John Ford, in an excquisitely composed showdown with the player on the other side who also uses Faith as a weapon, a town-kingpin named Carnegie (played with a Jim Jones quivering fervor by Gary Oldman), who, as in history, has this "thing" about books...and one book in particular that he can use to consolidate his power...three guesses what it is (and I'll be saving the other two for next time). 

But, it's a good respectable movie, although well-telegraphed, and forming a kind of post-apocalyptic "greatest nuclear hits" in one movie, with its "Wild West" motifs fitting like a lead-lined glove. Not a bad movie to watch in the shelter, really.  

* Another "take-it-on-Faith" detail.  Hate to tell you this, kids, but a nuclear pulse will erase all your mp3's, no matter how long you've been collecting.  They're right when they say a nuclear war can ruin your whole day!

He Who Must Die

He Who Must Die (aka Celui Qui Doit Mourir)(Jules Dassin, 1957) A French production of a Greek story directed by an ex-patriated (and blacklisted) American, He Who Must Die is based on a story by Nikos Kazantzakis (who also wrote the novels that formed the basis of Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ). 

The time is 1921 during the midst of the Greco-Turkish Wars. Turk forces are taking over Greek cities and if there is no cooperation from the populace, they are burned to the ground and its people forced to relocate. Such is the fate of one such nameless town, and its priest, Father Fotis (Jean Servais—the star of Rififi), gathers his flock to make them ready to embark on a journey by foot in the Greek wilderness, to find help and land to restart their devastated community and a new way of life in exile. One old man carries the bones of his father and grandfather in a sack on which to build the foundation of their new imagined town, the church being its center.

As they start their journey, it is a time of celebration in the occupied town of Lycovrisi, overseen by the Turk governor Agha (Gregoire Aslan). Every seven years, they stage their own version of the Passion Play, the participants chosen by the town priest Grigoris (Fernand Ledoux) and the mayor Patriarchos (Gert Frobe): a mendacious peddler Yannakos (Rene LeFevre) is chosen to play the apostle Peter; the mayor's son Michelis (Maurice Ronet) will play the apostle John; Kostandis (Lucien Raimbourgh), the cafe owner is chosen to play James; the town butcher, Panagiotaras (Roger Hanin) will play Judas, a role he rejects but is forced upon him; and the most surprising choices are the town's widow (and prostitute) Katerina (Melina Mercouri) to play Mary Magdalene, and a stuttering, shy shepherd Monolios (Pierre Vaneck) is chosen to play Christ.

At first, the players are unnerved by the heavy responsibility of their roles (especially Manolios, who is afraid to speak in front of crowds), but the authoritarian Grigoris will not change his mind. The Passion Play will go on and the die (and the Play) has been cast. 

But, the arrival of the burned town's refugees changes everything. Flotis implores Grigoris to help his people. They have walked for 21 days and many have died enroute. All they ask is a barren parcel of land and maybe some food to eat until they are established. But, the town priest will have none of it, banishing the refugees, and spreading the idea that the dead among probably didn't die of starvation or exhaustion, but of cholera. The refugees are stunned by the town's lack of charity, but decide to leave—lest they be attacked by the locals—and make their way to an area of the foothills of the mountain Sarakina that overlooks Lycovrisi.

But, their plight, and their priest's harsh attitude toward them, which borders on persecution, stirs something in the Passion players. Yannakos is the first to visit, on a mission from rich townsman Ladas (Dimos Starenios) who has sent him to see if he can take any of the refugees' jewelry in exchange for food or water. But, Yannakos has a crisis of conscience when he goes up the mountain and sees how destitute they are. Michelis soon follows, and then Manolios, who is so moved by the refugees that he finds his voice and implores the people of Lycovrisi to offer charity, despite the derision heaped upon him by Grigoris who tells him that the role of Christ has gone to his head and he's become an anti-Christ. He tells Michelis in private that it is dangerous for a Turk occupied city to help rebels against the Turks.

But, Manolios will not be deterred, and when Michelis, the mayor's son, says that he will help Manolios and the displaced villagers, Grigorios expels him from the village and threatens the shepherd with excommunication. It doesn't even phase Manolios, and Michelis confronts the angry priest with a venomous "If Jesus Christ came back to Earth, he would be crucified again again. And you would be the one to drive the nails in." His fiancee begs him to not go or she'll break off their engagement, but Michelis is steadfast. He will go with Monolios. His betrayal of his father and the town, causes the mayor to fall under ill health. But Michelis will inherit the town, the deeds, everything, when his father dies and such is his convictions that he is willing to give the people in the mountains the deeds to start a new life.

The priest, Grigoris, will not stand for that. His authority has been defied, and Manolios' message already shows the danger of spreading, further undermining his own power. So he goes to the Turk Agha and tells him that if he wants to keep control of the village and, eventually, occupied Greece, that he must quell the rebellion. He demands that Agha bring Manolios to him personally—for what purposes he doesn't say, but it probably won't be Confirmation. Probably more like Last Rites.

Agha takes an armed guard and goes to the compound in the city where Michelis has taken in some of the refugees and Manolios goes over the barricade to talk to him. The Turk tells him that Grigoris just wants to talk, that he (Agha) is a politician, not a fighter, but if Manolios really wants to do some good, he'll come quietly, so that Agha doesn't order his men to fire on the people behind the barricade. Manolios ponders, takes a stick, attacks the soldier manning the mounted machine gun and runs. Volleys fire back and forth—men on either side are killed, and Manolios is taken prisoner.

Dassin is in his element here. His years in Hollywood before the blacklist gave him ample opportunity to hone his craft and purge himself of any indulgences and take a harder edge with his subject matter. His approach is straightforward, unsentimental, but no less, for want of a better term, impassioned. And his work on social issues and the world of film-noir provides a bitter undercurrent to what is a religious film...in Cinemascope, no less.

I'm not sure what the issue is, but it is a tough road to buy a copy of He Who Must Die—you can see a rather dulled, sub-titled version online, slightly cropped of its full Cinemascope width, but at least it's not pan-and-scanned. Maybe the ideas are a little...revolutionary, but that's not stopped films before. It's safe to say that Dassin would later strive to make better films, more far-reaching films, but never one as powerful as this one. It might be his masterpiece.

Gran Torino

Written at the time of the film's release...which is why there's an afterword about the significance of the movie, which I couldn't mention in the original review because it would have been a major (major) spoiler.

"...Beats a Lonely Rhythm All Night Long"
ot
The Full Circle

Walt Kowalski—retired Ford employee—has just become a widower, hates his kids and despises his grand-kids. His late wife asked the fresh-faced parish priest to keep an eye on Walt and he despises that, too. And his Hmong neighbors? He's a Korean War vet, so that's a no-brainer..

What he loves you can count on one gnarled hand, merely: his old dog Daisy, a cooler of PBR on his porch in the evening, his mint-condition 1972 Gran Torino...and his privacy. Invade that, and his face, frozen into a perpetual sneer, starts to show some teeth, and...if you're lucky...he may respond to you with merely a low growl. Usually, what he issues forth is a stream of obscenity and invective with a few choice slurs thrown in. He's a reflexive racist with one saving grace—he hates everybody. He's not a happy man, and in perpetual attack mode, but leave him be on his front porch with a half-rack, a pack of Camel straights and Daisy, in the evening, and it's okay.

Leave him be. He has guns. Lots of them.

Clint Eastwood said he was retiring from acting at about the same time that Paul Newman announced his own retirement. For Newman, it was a quick decline to the grave. But Eastwood directed Angelina Jolie in the fine Changeling and after its premiere at Cannes began working on Gran Torino as both director and lead actor. He's 78 years old, and he's released two movies this year. That's impressive, but you can see why he wanted to do this role. The film, spare in its scope, hearkens back to the cinema of the 70's, when Eastwood began his directing career. And the themes raised in the film are similar to other projects he's directed, specifically The Outlaw Josey Wales and Bronco Billy, with their accumulation of "family" by accident. Additionally, Walt Kowalski is a neighborhood version of Eastwood's previous snarly outsiders who stand apart from polite society, acting--at the very least--impolite. Then, there's the vigilante aspect; Eastwood was pretty much the poster boy for taking the law into your own hands in the era before spandex superheroes on-screen. But, just as he's done in about every film since his Oscar-winning Unforgiven, he has turned expectations of what to expect from him and his movies on their ear.

One critic has opined (and been roundly criticized, I think, unfairly) saying that this is Eastwood's version of a "Rooster Cogburn" role. And it is. Just as John Wayne channeled a bit more theatricality into that role beyond his usual screen persona, Eastwood does the same, amping up the comic aspects of Kowalski a few degrees beyond the surly men of few words and violent actions of his previous roles. The growling may be laid on a little thick at times, but Eastwood, his hair spare and almost completely white now, his body slack with age, the furrows in his face as deep as canyons, and a voice full of gravel, still possesses a power few actors can carry off on-screen. Even approaching 80, he can still scare the crap out of you, as in a scene where after cold-cocking a gang-banger and repeatedly slamming him in the face, the camera looks up at his crazy-buggy eyes and bared teeth. "If I have to come back here, it's going to get fucking ugly!" he spits. And you believe it.

The story is about a Michigan resident set in his ways and his house as his neighborhood changes in ethnicity. To him, it's an invasion. But it doesn't stop there. After the families come the gangs targeting the kids, and Kowalski's neighbor Tao is assumed by his gang-member cousin to be a natural recruit. His initiation: steal Walt's Gran Torino.

Bad move. And only another bad move on Walt's part prevents somebody getting killed. Tensions escalate among the neighbors, and when Tao is nearly pulled into a gang-retribution for screwing up, Walt does some boot-stomping—they're on his lawn—and he becomes a reluctant hero to his neighbors, who begin piling his porch with flowers and food for saving "Toad"-Kowalski's kindest word for the kid.

What's great about this movie is that any other writer (Nick Schenk did the script) or director would begin softening up Walt's character and turn this into a nice, comfortable sentimental goo for general audiences. But Eastwood doesn't go there. His Walt is a bully, who knows that you intimidate by getting into people's faces and slamming them fast, making him on an equal aggressive and moral footing with the gangs (nobody mentions that Walt's bar-crowd and perpetually barbed shit-slinging—all done to ribald comic effect—is a parallel to the tough-talking hoods in their gangs, as they're both cliques and community sub-sets). It's just a matter of who's got the most cajones and least ability to blink under stress—like a Western gun-fight. Walt's history in Korea has given him body-bags more experience than the street-toughs will ever know. He understands intimidation.

Tao's sister is a smart, tough kid who stands up to the gangs...and to Walt...and she's the conduit to what understanding of the culture he can scrape up. He respects her strength and her sense of Family, far more than his own family can. But all this standing up and tough-talking and chest-expansion comes down to conflict and escalation and given Walt's history...and Eastwood's...it can't come to any good.

Except for this movie. There's going to be complaints about insensitivity and stereo-typing and bad language and slurs and lack of respect for the Church and all sorts of other drivel. There's going to be sniping about amateurish acting among the ethnic, young cast and, to be sure, there are flaws. But call me a troglodyte, I loved this movie, and it made me nostalgic for the stripped-down story-driven ones of the past.

And I couldn't help thinking "Jesus Christ, let's give the old bastard an Oscar for his performance in this one, can't we?" Mickey Rourke is basically stretching the same muscles as Eastwood does here, although less sentimentally, and much as I love Sean Penn's performance in Milk, he's already got an Oscar.

Eastwood was the guy who gave it to him...finally.

Afterword: As I wrote about in this "Don't Make a Scene" article, Gran Torino is the perfect "closer" for Clint Eastwood's acting career—one that really began with his starring role in Sergio Leone's  A Fistful of Dollars. That film marked the beginning of the Eastwood persona as "The Last Man Standing"—the trope where he'd stand off against a clump of gunslingers and mow them all down without so much as a scratch to himself. It's a joke, a conceit, and would run—somewhat consistently—through a great many of Eastwood's films (which always had a current of comedy of the gruff, beady-eyed variety) and sometimes softened (for the sake of verisimilitude) by distractions, or geography, or choreography, but boiled down to the idea that Eastwood was just the one with the most will to pull the trigger effectively despite the odds against him. Gran Torino turns that joke on its head: when Kowalski goes to confront the gang-bangers at the end of the film, he does so, deliberately, unarmed, and...for the first time in an Eastwood movie...ends up the victim, dying in a hail of bullets. In so doing, as was the plan, he manages to attract police attention and, in sacrificing himself, solve the problem of the bad guys mistreating his neighborhood. Just, like in so many of his movies where he was the unlikely victor. But, this time, he dies doing so.

It would have been the perfect "capper" for Eastwood's acting career (but, he did another movie—Trouble with the Curve and he's in his new movie-in-progress, The Mule. Oh, well. Who am I to argue with him?

Elysium (2013)

Written at the time of the film's release.

Zero Tolerance for Citizens
or
Spinning That Ol' Wheel of Fortune

I expect nearly everybody was looking forward to Neill Blomkomp's next film, after the gooey splash District 9 made.  His new one, Elysium, has the same kind of life-lesson—"what have you done for someone else lately?" and how one's perspective changes when you walk around in someone else's downtrodden shoes.  

The approach is slightly different, though, even if the futuristic milieu is still glum.  In this future, the current economic climate hasn't changed, only the locations have.  Earth, after years of neglect, is one big slum, there is no distinction between urban and rural anymore, the green spaces are dead, and there is a space-age version of urban flight—the "one percenters" have moved on up to an orbiting oasis called Elysium, and it is, as in Greek Myth, the isle of the Fortunate, a paradise, with estates and luxury homes perched inside it's rotating ring. It's the ultimate gated community. A large star in the sky, it is out of reach but never out of the sight or the minds of the stragglers of Earth who hope to get there by fortune or by smuggling themselves by shuttles, which Elysium's defensive perimeter either discourages or destroys.

The parallels to today's refugee and immigrant desperation is baldly presented, and obvious to anyone whose world-view isn't in spec-fic but down here on Earth, much as apartheid was morphed into xenophobia in D-9. Add to that that the penthouse in space also seems to have access to the ultimate in universal health-care, a medi-bed that scans you and...simply cures you (it seems). Other than those fanciful details, everything's played a little straighter, no doubt because you have big stars like Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, rather than just Sharlto Copley (although he's here too, bless him), so the financial risks are slightly more, so they make the stakes in the film a little higher, too. Higher in that the government (naturally) is up there in Elysium, in the form of President Patel, who has a rather prickly defense secretary (Foster, channelling Angela Lansbury from The Manchurian Candidate), who has a unique sense of how to protect The Ring, supplementing the force of robot-police with soldiers of fortune, like a particularly nasty one named Kruger (Copley), who would probably kill for a hobby if he wasn't being paid for it.

Down on Earth, it's dog-eat-dog, and former car-thief Max Da Costa (Damon) is trying to go straight, working towards the dream of going to Elysium by working in one of the factories mass-producing the robo-cops that keep the populace under their teflon thumbs. But an industrial accident leaves Da Costa dying, with only five days to live. His only chance is to somehow get up to Elysium and one of those miracle-med-things, so, with a few super-drugs pumping through his system, he signs up to do some dirty work for a former employer, which involves stealing industrial secrets—which just happen to be Elysium's security codes—that will unlock the station's defenses and allow a mass exodus from Earth to Elysium.

Da Costa allows himself to be merged with a powerful exo-skeleton and neural-net to download the codes, then, once there—well, let's just say things get personal, as these things are wont to do, but not selfish, as that flies against the "hero" sense that movies must have, so there has to be some deflection of need for Da Costa to some other....blah-blah-blah. Face it, the exo-skeleton could be a crucifix motif, so Da Costa has to do some sacrificing because...well, that's the way they do it in movies these days. There can't be any motivation of "self" because apparently that would make you as "bad" as the Elysium-buyers. So, ultimately, Da Costa has to do all the fighting and scraping for somebody else, and, as per usual, it's an acquaintance's sick child. Again.

And that's the main thing that makes Elysium less than thrilling: for all the "neat" visuals, for the interesting "take" on today's events, for all the good intentions and the perversions of such, it feels like every other sci-fi Christ allegory and leaves you feeling a little hollow while its trying to make you feel noble and unselfish while watching it. Well, I've seen that before, and I thought the intention of sci-fi was to show you something different. It is a noble effort, but ultimately, it suffers from story-sameness, and recycled ideas from the cookie-cutter school of script-writing. It's too bad because Elysium has a lot going for it.

Gotta say that Elysium has some pretty cool concepts for its pleasure-wheel

Midnight Special (2016)

"Y'All Have No Clue What You're Dealin' With, Do Ya?"
or
"They Will Race and Stumble and Crawl and Curse...and Finally, They Will Join You in the Sun." ("Better Lose the Bed-Sheet")

Maybe this is the issue: I did a search for images from Midnight Special, Jeff Nichols' new film, and an article caught my eye with the questioning headline: "Does Midnight Special Live Up to its Spielberg Roots?" (The answer, if you care, is the definitive and "useful""Yes and No."). Well, as is usually the case in this Age of Useless Click-Bait, they had me at the headline. I wasn't going to read the article because the opening already let me know that it was the work of an idiot.

Midnight Special might remind you of Spielberg—but not in the images it conveys or the pacing or its attitude or any sort of sense of wonder or anything else other than basic subject matter, and even then it's way off-base. But, it is science-fiction-y, so (*duh*) it must be like Spielberg.* It might remind you (as it did me) of the Superman mythos—Warners produced it—in fact, this is Nichols' first studio-produced movie—and they're not too subtle about the poster imagery there—but it's un-branded to the point that it's like M. Night Shymalan's Unbreakable, where it's just the core-story without all the baggage.™

Or, God forbid, it might remind you of something other than a movie. Like, maybe, a book, or a myth or, I don't know, the freaking Christ story?

Because that's the thing about Jeff Nichols. As opposed to a director like (let's pick a name out of a hat) Spielberg, Nichols makes parables for the modern age. In fact, they'd fit right in with a Bible study class...that is, a Bible study class that isn't concerned with pushing God. Because even though God may not show up in Nichols' movies, faith—and Big Faith, at that—does.

And where Take Shelter was Old Testament, Midnight Special is the New.

Two men and a boy are driving the back-roads at night with the headlights turned off in their car (the driver using night-vision goggles to see) so as not to be seen. There is an amber alert out for the 8-year old (Jaeden Lieberher), and a description of the man suspected of abducting him, Roy Tomlin (Michael Shannon), who is his father. Driving is Lucas (Joel Edgerton), whose relationship with them is not known, initially, but will be revealed later in the movie. They're on the run from The Ranch, a religious organization run by Calvin Meyer (Sam Shepard), that has evidently had control of Roy and the boy, named Alton Meyer, for the last four years. The defection by Alton and Roy has just been found out, and the group holds one of their night-time communal meetings, which has been preceded by Calvin instructing two cult members (Bill Camp and Scott Haze) that Alton must be found in four days. Time is of the essence.

But, that amber alert has come from another source, not the cult. That midnight meeting at The Ranch is interrupted by the FBI, who walk in, fully armed, stop the sermon, and announce that everybody—including Calvin—are going to be loaded onto school-buses and questioned. The questions are about Alton—what do you know and when did you know it—until Paul Sevier (Adam Driver) walks in. He's with the NSA and his questions are more specific—there are a series of numbers that Calvin has been using as sacred text and they came from Alton. "How did an 8 year old boy get this information?" "He'd have fits...speak in tongues...in foreign languages and languages we don't know. His words are the words of the Lord." "Or the federal government," says Sevier matter-of-factly.



Just what Alton is capable of isn't seen until Lucas and Roy drive into a truck-stop to supply up and make a phone-call. Alton has been told to stay in the car, But a light in the sky draws his attention and he wanders out in the darkness and stares into the sky. By the time, Roy gets to him and scolds him for disobeying, Alton, who is eerily calm, apologizes, as the sky starts to light up with orange streaks that get closer, and closer, and then begin to explode around them. The three run to the truck and swerve back onto the highway. "They were watching me," is all Alton says.

 

The next day, the FBI, still a day late/dollar short, helicopters onto the scene of the destruction; one of our satellites is missing, one of our spy satellites designed to detect thermonuclear events has fallen out of the sky, leaving a debris field of sixty miles, something unprecedented over land. Sevier can only look at the destruction and wonder: what are they dealing with here?



What, indeed? Throughout the course of the film, we will see this calmly mature 8-year old do some incredible things, not the least of which is have many adults in thrall to him—he'll speak in tongues, pull out radio transmissions from the sky and repeat them as they're happening, but the most visually arresting, and the reason why he perpetually wears tinted blue goggles—and Lucas tapes cardboard over any windows wherever they are—is the weird emanation that comes from his eyes, like an incandescent heat-vision that occurs when he locks eyes with another human being, the sensation for them producing a feeling of euphoria and peace. That may be what the subject is feeling, but around the two in communion, the world is shaking, seemingly to its core, exploding lights, shattering windows, and creating deep cracks in walls. This kid is "an other," born of human parents (Kirsten Dunst plays his mother, and is who Roy, Lucas and Alton are gravitating to), but the kid with power is a threat to those in power, and controlling him is their interest.

Their interest is of no concern to Alton. "They think you're a weapon." Sevier says to Alton when he finally is able to confront him (and Driver's tentative approach to him is just one of the wonderful touches he brings to the role). "I'm not" is Alton's simple reply. "The Ranch thinks you're their savior." "I'm none of those things," the boy says.

All well and good, for him and the story. But, for anyone with a background in anything more than Spielberg movies, it's a modern dress-modern tech version of the Christ story with a rather depressing answer to "What Would Jesus Do?:" These days he'd have no other choice but to flee...doesn't matter who he knows or Who he's related to. What part of the other early Christ story that hasn't been suppressed paints a picture of his parents avoiding authorities and keeping "The Kid" under wraps. And also with Midnight Special.



It is the human side of that story that has always fascinated me, the melding of religious faith and parental obligation. You have to have a kid who's really "wrong" to look on them as anything less than a miracle.** Every child is an object of worship in their parents' eyes. How much more is that devotion when that child is "special needs" (in all meanings of that term) and the parent is asked to perform miracles in order to see that child make its own. How many parents can share Roy's confession that "the only thing I ever believed in was Alton," and realize that, even if they are short, you still spend a lot of your time on your knees before them.

That's what I like so much about Midnight Special—its focus on the completely relatable parental devotion that has its own fervor, and its own "ever-lovin' light."

*That's the problem with pigeon-holing: this guy's going to ask if your film lives up to its "Spielberg roots" if it's science fiction or about the Holocaust or rampaging animals or historical figures. In which case, why make a bloody movie, if the only thing Johnny One-Note can compare it to is Spielberg?

** I have an actor-friend who was very self-actualized and when his first child was born said "I used to think I was the President of the United States. Now, I realize I'm just the Secret Service." Succinctly, perfectly, and humbly put.