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Do I even need to tell you I thought this film was fucking great?
But then, you know how I am about the End of the World, right..
It's not perfect obviously;
Whilst the script is undoubtedly a damn good yarn in the classic British sci-fi tradition, it's also pretty much entirely cobbled together from elements of previous books and films .. don't get me wrong, I think the very fact that such fine influences are being used in a big budget movie is pretty cool, but Garland seems far too much like he's trying to imitate Ballard, Romero, Wyndham, Kneale etc., rather than actually developing his own style - I mean, the odd homage is one thing, but the rips from Day of the Dead and Day of the Triffids are so obvious they almost constitute plagiarism.. also, the second half of the film gets a bit Hollywood, something I was hoping Boyle et al. would have the guts to avoid
[!!SPOILERS!!!]
I was banking on either an ultimate no-hope 'everyone's dead' doom ending (the kind Iain Banks does so well) or an ambiguous 'there might be something there, we just don't know but we've got to try' ending ala Day of the Triffids.. and the whole deal where our nervous hero suddenly becomes a strategic super-commando and wastes all those soldiers was really pushing the boundries of credibility I think.. especially for a film which had previously concentrated on human weakness in the face of unspeakable nastiness.. that sequence in particular seemed to have 'studio interference' written all over it.. at the risk of sounding like a gore-crazed maniac, I think the themes of the film would have been served far better if, after he'd (pretty damn brutally!) killed that last soldier, he'd pulled an "oh my god, what have I done? We're no better than they are!" just before Selina accidentally butchered him - real Heart of Darkness!
But enough of the complaining, let us not try to deny that for the most part, THIS FILM COMPLETELY FUCKING ROCKED.
I can't fault the film-making at all - direction, photography - in a very basic sense, it was *damn good*. For all that the film's made me dubious of Garland's writing, it's completely sold me on Boyle's style of film making .. even in the above mentioned scenes which I didn't like much - that was some fine film making shit!
As expected, the shots of empty London were breathtaking .. the whole of the opening section where he's wondering around with Godspeed.. playing in the background - beautiful!
I swear some of the imagery and ideas come straight from my unwritten novels - survivors slowly walking along the empty traintracks, hiding in underground stations living on junk food .. I can't describe how much I love that kind of stuff .. maybe I should seek help..
And I loved the way the locations looked so completely authentic - very little fancy lighting or stylised mise en scene - just places in England, looking exactly the way they would if you went and visited them today .. only abandoned, with zombies roaming around. Awesome.
And it was good that they didn't cop out on the violence - some of it was pretty nasty..
I think I've probably ranted enough. I'll stop now. |
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