Well, I told you I was easy

[cleolinda]

Okay, you know what? I actually liked The Invasion. (Major spoilers:) No, it's not the kind of zombie movie where you have the pleasure of watching your heroes mow down the undead by the dozen (in fact, it's not the kind of zombie movie where anyone's undead at all. ETA: Folks in the comments are telling me it's not a zombie movie, period; I guess my definition of zombie is kind of loose. Yes, it really is an alien invasion). No, it's not a modern classic, but I'd say it's probably a solid B+, and add to that whatever particular enjoyment you derive from watching the lead actors for two hours (cough). Seriously, though, Jeremy Northam is completely wasted in this movie. I mean, I'm glad he got the paycheck and the exposure, but his American accent (which he had to have, given that he's playing a U.S. government official. Who thought that was a good idea, geniuses?), while 95% flawless, left his voice sort of dry and dead. You know, even before he became One of Them. If you've ever seen Emma ("Emma. Try not to kill my dogs"), you know what a crime that is. Daniel Craig, however, is allowed to be completely, randomly British, and thank God, although he's a bit strangely cast as a best friend Nicole Kidman cares about so much that she doesn't want to be romantically involved with him (I KNOW!). Kidman, on the other hand, is sporting some kind of Southern accent (I think she mentions something about her character living in Atlanta for a while?), and I will say, as a born-and-bred Birminghamer, she does have the Southern "I" down right. I was going to complain that her accent fades in and out, except that that's what my accent does, because many of us from metropolitan areas tend to speak more quickly and more clearly... unless we feel like saying something particularly sassy Southern. So yeah, a metropolitan and/or professional Southerner (and Kidman's character is a psychiatrist, after all) could have an accent of varying obviousness.

(But this is becoming a treatise on Accents in Film, and I digress.)

What I liked about the movie was that it gave you a zombie infection that was actually good for humanity. Yes, it dulled the infected characters in a way that we would describe as "inhuman," but throughout the entire movie, you see news reports in the background talking about how this or that global crisis (Darfur! Chechnya! Iraq!) has ended with peace treaties and handshakes all around. There's something in us that rebels at the idea of losing our free will, our personalities, and the very quirks and flaws that make us human--but do hundreds of thousands of people dying in the Sudan care, if it means they get to live?

I'd heard that part of the problem with the movie is that it's talky, and there is a dinner conversation with an obnoxiously philosophical Russian diplomat early on in the movie where I kind of wanted Craig to just reach across Kidman and stab the guy with a fork (Violence! It's What Makes Us Human!). But there are two other scenes where a character (a different character each time) tries to convince the Kidman character that the change isn't bad, and in fact is necessary. And there's a moment where you see that she's tempted to give in and stop running and finally get some sleep, and it could even save millions of lives--that's pretty good, isn't it? And I honestly felt at that point, during that last attempt to talk her down, that I would have had a very hard time resisting. (Well, for more than one reason, but let's save my shallowness for another day.) If you believe at all that there is ever a time that the greater good is more important, even the least little bit, you have to stop and consider it. And you can see that the only thing that stops her is that there's something that she in particular would have to give up, that they would take away from her, and she's not having it, not for one moment. But if that particular condition weren't in place? It would be extremely hard to argue. Or at least, I felt it would be. And at the same time, I felt this completely irrational panic--a hypothetical, what-if panic, I mean--at the idea of giving my humanness up, in a very "If this is wrong, I don't want to be right" way, and I think it's that humanness itself talking. There's something revolting about the idea of giving up our us-ness, for lack of a better word, our stupid crazy wonderful rough edges, even though someone might argue that it's the right thing, or the best thing, to do. There's just something irrepressible and implacable about it, the way that you can't hold your breath underwater indefinitely; some kind of survivor instinct will push you to resurface and breathe even if you don't want to. I don't know--I can't help but think that any zombie movie that made me write a whole paragraph of Deep Thoughts has got to have something to it.

But this is also a movie that's decided to try for the having-the-cake-and-eating-it-too ending, and in truth, it doesn't have the nihilistic jolt that a lot of true-blue zombie movies have (everyone's safe! OH WAIT)--maybe because we're too happy for the people in the movie right in front of us, and the Sudan isn't really something we see or think about in a way that makes us feel it. Many of us didn't care beyond "Oh, that's so terrible, what's happening over there, far away," and we still don't by the end of the movie. We care about the people who are like us, who could be us if we were a lot more attractive, who we just saw prevail over horror and danger and hey-hey-what-have-you. But the movie does try to ask that question: is it worth it, to be able to sit at our breakfast tables and hug our children and laugh if it means that millions of people will die, and will continue to die, and that war could have ended, but now it won't? Is that the price of being human?

Comments

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

Ebert said, "I don't have a clue what the movie thinks, if anything, about Iraq, which is mentioned so frequently, but it may be a veiled attack on cults that require unswerving conformity from their members. Which cults? I dunno."

I say, "Nicole Kidman, Ebert. You tell me which cult."

(But I haven't seen the movie. I'm just saying.)

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Heeee. I didn't really catch that subtext at the time, but it's pretty lolarious in retrospect.

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

To go with lolarious, I has a new word: lulzapalooza.

[serenenuit.livejournal.com]

This is a semi-remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, right? Or is this just something with a similar premise? The ending as you describe it doesn't sound at all like what I remember of the 70s movie.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm gonna have to go back on that link I quoted the other day--apparently it's really not a remake, or it started out being one and then it wasn't. I don't know, it seems to have had something of a tortured production. The ending is very un-zombie movie like, I thought--very up in a literal sense, and only a downer in a philosophical sense.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

That's one of the things I liked about "Minority Report," silly as it was.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I actually liked that movie as well.

[theatre-angel.livejournal.com]

Oh dude, that's intense. I was totally considering not seeing this, but based on what you've written, I think I'm going to. (I value your opinion over the NY Times' critics. Oops!)

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Heh. I do think that it can be a little dangerous to listen to negative professional reviews, if only for one inescapable reason: someone who has to see 400 movies a year is going to get pretty sick of a lot of things the rest of us might not mind. They're going to have seen it all and everything's going to start to blur together after several years of doing the job, whereas a lot of cliches are still going to be somewhat palatable to those of us who only see 10-20 movies in the theater every year.

Also, it can help just to know a critic's taste and be able to match it to yours. There are certain movies that, if Roger Ebert likes them, I know I will--and others where if he doesn't like them, I'll still probably like them.

I'll say this, though: if you dig Daniel Craig at all, GO NOW.

[supersyncspaz7.livejournal.com]

The Dallas Morning News gave The Invasion a B+ (http://www.guidelive.com/portal/page?_pageid=33,97283&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL&item_id=59225), by the way--which further made me want to see it, along with the fact that I love anything that involves aliens or alien-related things (and zombies) wrecking havoc (or, in this case, not wrecking havoc) on Earth and general creepiness, plus, Daniel Craig.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Huh--the exact same grade I did. Heh. I will say, though, Daniel Craig doesn't get to bust enough heads.

Nothing beats Abel Ferrara.

[kali921.livejournal.com]

Nothing beats Abel Ferrara's version of Body Snatchers. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106452/)

Nothing. At all. Easily the best; it makes Invasion look like horribly acted banal pablum.

Ferrera's version is highly, highly recommended. Much darker and brilliantly directed.

Re: Nothing beats Abel Ferrara.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Well, a lot of things could make Invasion look like banal pablum. I'm just saying I enjoyed it.

Because you left it open.

[fxchip.livejournal.com]

You're easy? Damn, wish I'd have known that sooner... ;)

(only kidding, only kidding. And I've yet to see this movie :P)

Re: Because you left it open.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Well, it only came out today.

[sennical.livejournal.com]

Liked your mention of the metropolitan Southern accent. I got home from college this summer and it was like my accent wanted to MAKE ITSELF KNOWN after spending so many months lying dormant.

[malenky-devil.livejournal.com]

Does this count as a zombie movie, though? It seems more of an alien movie as it kind of involves an extraterrestrial disease and not reanimated corpses. I don't know, somehow the description of it as a zombie movie doesn't quite fit. Yeah, the people seem zombie-like, in their drone sensibilities, but they are not zombies in terms of actual, ressurected corpsified folk.

I'm sorry if I'm coming off as nitpicky, I was just wondering.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Hmm--no, I suppose not. Wasn't 28 Days Later considered a zombie movie, though, and it was a "rage virus" rather than the undead? I'm using a loose definition, but yeah--it's not a classic zombie definition.

[malenky-devil.livejournal.com]

The creators of 28 Days Later and hardcore zombie fans don't consider it a zombie movie but people just lump it in with zombies in spite of the fact. Physically, they look like zombies, but that's about it. I don't think of 28 Days Later as a zombie movie, they're not driven by a need to feed, they don't eat other people, they beat them to death, kill them because of the rage infection. The Invasion seems like an infection of an alien conciousness, zombies don't have a conciousness. But I can see how 28 Days Later would seem like a zombie movie. The Invasion, not so much. I guess think of it like Inferi vs. people under the Imperius curse.

Oooh, double the nerdery. But yeah, I can see how the zombie thing kind of comes across if you use the theme loosely.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm not really a zombie aficionado, so I'm probably not using the term correctly. To me, any movie that has the heroine chased by mobs of blank-eyed, mindless people would have been a zombie movie. It's probably more correctly an alien invasion movie that uses some zombie *imagery.*

[mon-of-the-dead.livejournal.com]

(Here via friendsfriends)

Even though movies like Invasion and 28 Days Later are not, technically, zombie films, they do fall under "Survival Horror", which zombie films are as well. At least IMHO.

[meandstuff.livejournal.com]

Icon LOVE!!!

[ter369.livejournal.com]

.....but his American accent (which he had to have, given that he's playing a U.S. government official. Who thought that was a good idea, geniuses?), while 95% flawless, left his voice sort of dry and dead.

That's why I can't watch listen to House.

I just got home from The Multiplex On The Prairie, where the college kids where lined up, eight deep, for something called Superbad. I am too superafraid to even find out what it is.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Oh, that--it's supposed to be good, I think. A comedy about two teens, from the same people who brought you The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up. It's probably going to be quoted to death by Monday.

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

From your description and discussion this reminds me of Sherri Tepper's novel Raising the Stones. It's SF, about human settlers on a planet where there are only a few individuals left of the native intelligent species. It's an agricultural colony and everyone goes about their agricultural business, until someone notices that this one township over here has unusually high efficiency ratings and unusually low levels of violence and minor disturbances. Not that there's any place on the planet with a lot, but still, it looks odd. And it turns out that there's this Alien Influence that makes people more empathetic toward each other and more likely to cooperate. Except for the people who just Can. Not. Deal. with it -- the few who'd be violent, bullying morons no matter what culture they grew up in -- who turn into monsters and end up killing each other or being killed by normal people who think they're killing monsters no one had run into before because it is an alien planet after all.

There's a lot going on besides that, of course; it's a pretty typical Sherri Tepper book, but one of my two favorites of everything she's written. If you liked this movie, and considering why you liked it, you'd probably like this novel too.

Angie

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Not reading the post because I don't want to be spoiled, but I thought the film looked kinda interesting, and your saying you liked it will probably get me to go after all, thanks! (Won't blame you if I don't like it, either. ^_^ )

[wirrrn.livejournal.com]

Who wait what? They're treating it as a Zombie thing, rather than the alien pod-peeps?!
Looks good, but the definitive version will always be the Seventies one with Leonard Nimoy, Jeff Goldblum, Veronica Cartright and Donald Sutherlund. The final shot? It's a good thing they can't convert the awake, because I was unable to sleep for *weeks*!!

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Actually, Veronica Cartwright's in this one too. Also--I was talking about this with someone else--I may be using an extremely loose definition of zombie. It really is an alien consciousness that's taking over.

[meandstuff.livejournal.com]

I don't get why people are so surprised by this being 'preachy' or whatever - wasn't the first film essentially an allegory for communism?

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

I wasn't surprised that it would be "preachy," because if you don't have some kind of Dread Moral Lesson, it's just two hours of people chasing Nicole Kidman through parking decks. I did hear that it would be talky on top of that--preachy at length, if you will--and maybe because I was warned, I didn't find it too talky. I mean, you've got to have the Come to the Dark Side speeches, you know? But like I said--the one part where I wanted to slap someone was early on when the Russian diplomat just hijacked the movie for like five minutes solid and would. not. shut. up.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Two years later, but I want to post this to discuss on Twitter: the funniest part about "The Invasion" to me is that all the people Nicole Kidman kills--it turns out they could have been cured. So now that everyone infected's getting cured, she killed them all for nothing. I mean, yeah, self-defense, except that she manages to punk out of actually killing Daniel Craig and just shoot him in the leg, so of course he gets to live. OOPS.

[diddakoi.livejournal.com]

Now compare with the end of Watchmen. Discuss.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Sadly, this also occurred to me. Rorschach wouldn't get along too well with the aliens, IMO.

[mercurywater.livejournal.com]

Oh....I want to see this discussion...Wait...where is it? *feels stupid*