things i've been watching: july edition

The Mist (2007. dir: Frank Darabont): Bleak. Bleak. Decidedly bleak. Lovecraftian tentacles from space meet Shirley Jackson's venomous terror of provincialism and those who embody it. EM Forster (in Aspects of the Novel) once famously called Ulysses "a dogged attempt to cover the universe with mud," and "a simplification of the human character in the interests of Hell." Those words spring to mind when holding one's nose and lowering oneself into the sewer that is Stephen King's reality. Joyce's, anyway, was brilliant mud. Reading Stephen King is like a bad love affair with a dangerous drug: the thrills get secondary to nausea and disgust all too quickly.

King pretends to be setting his fantasies within our modern reality, convinces us he is doing so by including references to brand names and current fads, but his humans are peculiar, I think, to his own mind. For instance, I've never heard of a Christian leader who cusses like a sailor in public. It seems to me a poverty of mind that the writer can't think of a way to make the Big Bad Christian Villain truly loathesome except by having her swear like the bedridden Regan in the Exorcist. The most chilling portrait of an evil Christian I ever saw was Paul Scofield's inquisitor in the Crucible, precisely because he exuded scientific rationalism. This one, in spite of the extreme talents of Marcia Gay Harden, is just a cartoon. But then, most of King's characters are. Our hero, well played by Thomas Jane, is an unabashed King alter-ego (well-to-do painter of fantastical movie posters living in a small Maine town). You come away with the impression that this story is peopled with caricatures as an exercise in revenge on King's part... the unschooled yokel who insulted him at the gas station, perhaps, or the African-American who accused him of racism in his books... the characters seem not so much people as little cogs in a personal vendetta machine.

(CAVEAT: Never having read the novella, I fully admit this may all have been peculiar to the film, for which he did not write the screenplay, in which case I'm being unfair to Mr. King and I duly apologize.)

In any case, the movie has much to offer. I will never forget the slow car-ride through the mist and the creature they see there. It also has the dubious honor of sporting the single most cynical ending I've ever seen in a motion picture, possibly barring Dr Strangelove... but that one was meant to be funny. This one is most decidedly not.




WALL-E (2008. dir: Andrew Stanton): I wept through most of this. Go ahead. Laugh. But once you accept that the robots are feeling and thinking, human in every capacity except biological mechanics, they seem so terribly vulnerable.

Of course, why would they be so humanlike? Why does WALL-E have such eclectic tastes and hobbies? Were they programmed into him? Why, since he was created as a trash compactor? Did he evolve into them over his 700 years alone on the planet? Then again, this is Disney, which is the answer to all these questions, including "and why is WALL-E so lovable?" Might as well ask why the cockroach living in the Twinkie is anthropomorphized. It's Disney! The real question is this: why do I have such a hard time accepting what my boyfriend calls "the Don't Asks" in this one? Maybe BECAUSE I was foully and egregiously manipulated into weeping through the whole damn thing, which strips one of any small vestiges of dignity. I suppose that Disney has been doing this forever (I remember the Incident Involving Bambi's Mom as being a traumatic but fruitful lesson in life's vagaries. If I were to watch it again now, would I experience it as PT Barnum-like emotional manipulation?) but it's been so long since I've watched one I'd forgotten that it treads the same emotionally blackmailing ground that Steven Spielberg frequents.

The first part, the bit on earth, is by far the best. There's some lovely silent (or, at least, quiet) comedy and WALL-E himself brings to mind an old favorite of mine, a little-lauded and independent sci-fi outing from the '80s called Android which also featured a robot enamored of old films and harboring eclectic and romantic tendencies.

Once the two robot-lovers rocket off to join the humans on the space station, the filmmakers' loving interest seems to fade a little, or the love gets superceded by the Message of the Piece. The space station is, however, where my favorite character resides, the little scrubbing robot called M-O. Adorable and hilarious.

All that said, I now feel unclean, and I'm going to watch some Peckinpah.




Weirdsville (2007. dir: Alan Moyle): I nearly turned this one off after five minutes. What saves it, what kept me watching, was the combination of Wes Bentley and Scott Speedman, so good they give actual dimension to the same stoner duo we've been watching in foiled-heist/drug-deal-gone-wrong/ODed-girlfriend-gotta-bury-her "comedies" for years. This one is just well-acted enough, just unusual enough, to keep me along for the ride. There's a Satanic cult, there's a gathering of dwarves involved in the Society for Creative Anachronism, there's an abandoned drive-in, there's a kidnapped rich hippie played by the inestimable Matt Frewer. There's a metaphor about a rat flushed down a toilet that I just half-remember and maybe I made it up. Pro-drug? Hell, yes, it's pro-drug. You know those "relationships are hard but you gotta keep with 'em" movies? The moral of this one is, "Life as a drug addict is not easy but it pays off if you commit to it. Don't give up, bro."