Welcome to my transparent attempt at being sophisticated! In this shocking and completely new series, I will be discussing various things about various movies, and probably saying things that will make film study majors suddenly burst into flame, writhing in agony as they scream to their god at how such atrocious things can exist in a true and just world.
First up, Cloverfield!
I'd like to discuss my views on the movie as a whole, but first I'd like to cover some of the bigger complaints with the movie I've heard and why I feel that they're unfounded or go against the nature of the movie itself. Cloverfield is a very unique kind of movie, and a lot of people seem to miss that fact. While this isn't a bad thing necessarily, it still causes some misguided theories on how the events unfold. (I'd also like to point out the obvious fact that this will be infested with spoilers. So... yeah...)
The first thing I'd like to cover is possibly the most controversial point; the Shakycam. A lot of people seem to have issues with the camerawork, how annoying it is, and how the fact that the camera is working this way restricts our view of what exactly is happening. While I can't defend the shakyness itself, I can still point out that this is highly necessary for getting the movie to work the way it does. The fact that the entirety of the movie is shown from this one handheld camera, and thus the reason why our understanding of the event is so limited, is the entire point of the movie. This movie isn't about the monster. It's about this small group of people that are trying to survive in a city that just happens to be getting destroyed by a giant monster. The specifics aren't important here, but the characters themselves are. I have more to say on this, but I'll do so when I talk about...
The monster. Ohhhh lordy is this a giant split issue. Nearly everyone that has problems with the movie points out how actually seeing the whole monster makes it less scary, and how annoying it is that we learn nothing about it. And boy oh boy do I have a lot to say about this.
First up: Fear comes from two sources: An understanding of how dangerous something is or how undesirable a situation can be, and the unknown. We fear angry, hungry lions because we know that we are likely to be killed and eaten by something that is faster, more powerful, and more ruthless than we are, while we fear the deep sea because we know next to nothing about it and what lives in it. Now, by the time we see the monster in plain view for more than a second or two, a lot of shit has gone down to make us realize how much we don't want to be around this thing. It's knocked over whole buildings, eaten swarms of people, resisted countless numbers of direct bombing runs, been responsible for the deaths of half of the main cast, and is infested with parasites that make you explode when bitten. We have plenty of reason to fear this bitch already, and our sense of the unknown is starting to dwindle. Plus there's the fact that if we DIDN'T see the whole beast at some point, everyone would be bitching about how we never got to see it. So it makes every bit of sense to show it to us, as a way to give us some kind of sense of completion. And losing that last bit of mystery naturally removes a source of fear, but at this point in the movie, that's ok, since the only conflict left is the fact that our two remaining protagonists are stranded in an area that's about to be destroyed. There's no hope of survival, so it makes sense to "make amends," so to speak, and clean up some loose ends before the inevitable and remove the threats that aren't actually threats anymore.
There's also the point that this movie is not about the monster. Allow me to compare this to the genre stereotype to make this point:
The stars of most monster movies are the people in positions of power. You have the scientist that's there to explain everything to you and reveal where this thing came from, what it wants, and how to kill it. You have the military general that is working to kill it and maybe save some civilians if he can. You have the spunky reporter that's right there to prompt the further development of information, and also acts as a way for us to see more of the monster via news broadcasts. In these movies, the conflict comes form the monster itself, and the people that are finding ways to handle the situation. The monster is the real spotlight stealer here, and is the entire reason that people come to see these movies.
Cloverfield is different. Our protagonists aren't people in any kind of importance; they're just some people trying to survive. Thus the movie stops being about the conflict of destroying the monster, and is instead the conflict of escaping with all your important loved ones intact. The story of the people fighting this thing is still there, but we're just not following it. We don't learn all about the monster's backstory because we don't need to know about its backstory. Our protagonists don't even have any way to learn about it. They only briefly have contact with the military, and it makes perfect sense for them to not fully brief every damn civilian they see. In short, elaborate explanations would just be out of place and would hinder the flow of the story. The fact that the movie follows these people and not the people fighting the monster gives us a rare chance to experience the other side of such a catastrophic scenario: the scared helpless person that has no idea what is going on.
Having said all of that, I'd like to finally discuss how I liked this movie. I normally find monster and disaster movies to be formulaic and boring, but Cloverfield was very refreshing. It took a tired idea and reinvented it into something completely different, and gave us something chilling that actually still has me a bit creeped out. Monster movies have always tried to show us how horrific this would be if it really happened, but none of them have succeeded in that. By putting us in the place of the helpless civilians, Cloverfield does an excellent job of doing just that. It also goes the extra mile by giving us a threat aside from a simple stomping or getting eaten: the parasites. These little bastards make every nook and cranny of the city truly dangerous, and are responsible for the one scene in any movie that just made me outright unnerved. Back in the day, I went on a huuuge scary movie binge, in order to find something that would actually scare me. Everything failed, and has continued to fail... until Cloverfield. The idea of being trapped in this situation is creepy, yes. But that one scene in the makeshift hospital with Marlena left me visibly shaken and on edge for a good while afterwards. So yeah, this movie gets big bonus points in my book for doing the extraordinary feat of getting to me.
However, I must point out the one thing that just pissed me off: Hud. Oh dear god how I hate this guy. Yeah, every movie needs its lovable goof, but its like they forgot to give him the "lovable" part. Everything he says is so goddamn obnoxious, insensitive, or just plain dumb that I have to wonder why these people hang out with him at all. Even worse is how he was clearly designed to be the vehicle for the audience to explore the movie. Aside from the fact that he's the one holding the camera, he's overly curious as a means for us to see what's going on all around him, which of course leads to asshole moments like eavesdropping in on private conversations and outright lying to people. It gets even worse if you pay attention to what exactly he's doing later on. He does nothing but scream and create movie trailer content as a means to pump up the audience, as well as constantly stopping to ask people "OMFG WHAT WAS THAT WHATS GOING ON HEY YOU GUYS HEY LISTEN HEY LISTEN." Realizing that he is serving as a tool to manipulate the audience's views of what's happening only enrages me more. And this is on top of how he never shuts the fuck up, even when his life may depend on it, or instantly asking the traumatized girl to describe what just finished traumatizing her like 2 minutes ago.
But in spite of that douchebag, I really liked the movie. It was a great unique experience that actually managed to disturb me, and I'd love to see more stuff that's not necessarily like this, but at least different like this was.
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I did like Cloverfield, but I also had one big problem. And when I say it at first, it's going to sound like a generic wah-wah-anti-US thing, but it's not.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with Cloverfield is that it was too American.
Let me explain. Cloverfield is an Apocalypse movie. Yeah, the world doesn't end, but the protagonists' world is teetering on the brinnk, so it counts. The thing is, once you've established that, the thing CAUSING the Apocalypse just becomes a plot device. The plot, the suspense, the drama of the entire movie then hangs upon making it connect with the Audience. It's the difference between the Apocalypse theme and the generic Sci-Fi flick - the "It could happen to you" feel.
To do this, you have to make a connection with the audience. Something to pull them in and drive the point home. Something to make them put themselves in the protagonists' shoes.
Lots of movies do this by having sympathetic characters you can see yourself as. Ordinary, plucky people struggling to survive against the odds. Not surprisingly, zombie movies are best at this, but the old-school Creature Features do it as well. Hell, most survival-horror flicks take a decent shot at this one, Cloverfield included.
But there's a second way. This is to tie your story to some iconic scenery, to have this terrible thing happening in an idyllic location that should normally never be associated with such terrible events. It's not a new idea; the Independance Day Aliens kerplodied the White House, Godzilla ripped Tokyo a new sushi-hole, King Kong gleefully teabagged the Empire State Building and bludgeoned fighter jets with a pretty actress.
This is what Cloverfield did wrong.
You tie in the scenery when you need something more. And with a whole cast of We're Just Trying To Survive characters, they shouldn't have needed to. But instead they concentrated on the scenery, and they let that overshadow the cast. Badly. It was in the entire movie. Seriosly, a commentary on the movie could be:
OH GOD THE MONSTER IS DESTROYING THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE oh and look a few people have died oh well SHIT NOW IT'S BLOWN UP THE STATUE OF LIBERTY THIS IS TERRIBLE oh and by the way it's killed a few hundred more civiliians HOLY FUCKBALLS NOW IT'S RIPPING UP CENTRAL PARK!
You may think this isn't a big deal, that I'm being pedantic, and that it makes no difference. If that's the case, I ask you: would you have found the movie anywhere near as dramatic if the Cloverfield Monster were destroying Melbourne, or Brisbane, or Perth?
What gets me is that this shouldn't matter. It really shouldn't be an issue at all. But by making such a big deal of the scenery, the writers made it an issue. They sacrificed characterisation and plot for the sake of dramatic scenery, and the scenery they chose was of the kind that only appealed to a certain audience.
I'm not saying this was a mistake. It was a great idea for the movie. And the movie was, no questions asked, huge fun. It was every bit as refreshing a twist on an old concept as you say, and it had so many good bits running through it. But for me, someone who will never be moved by the concept of a big green statue getting knocked over, Cloverfield will never get a score above 7.5 out of 10. Which is, frankly, a damn shame.
This is actually a very interesting point here that I never even thought of: A lot of Cloverfield's impact only works on Americans. I totally get your point that the movie spent a lot of time destroying landmarks, but the important thing here is that American viewers were seeing American landmarks getting destroyed. To me, at least, I didn't connect the "hey let's go for explosive shock value" thing because these locations are heavily carved into my brain. Here, even if you've never been to New York, it's still very prominently shown in all aspects of pop culture. We're bombarded by images and references to the city that represents America itself so much that it becomes kind of a weird 2nd home to us, even if we've never been ourselves. Which is unlikely, because chances are very high that almost all Americans will take a trip to New York at some point. This of course works best on people actually living IN New York, but there's still the fact that most American viewers aren't seeing "Oh man, it's rampaging through Central Park," but are instead seeing "Oh man, it's rampaging through where I proposed to Mary" or "Oh man, it's rampaging through that place I've seen my entire life."
ReplyDeleteI suppose that yeah, the movie wouldn't have been as impactful had it been set in London or Paris, for the exact reasons brought up here. But that's because, to me, Big Ben or the Eiffel Tower are exotic locales, thousands of miles away that I may never even see myself, and are always presented in a way that is showing how iconically different that country is from my own. Yeah, the Statue of Liberty being destroyed was kinda cheesy, but even then, the landmark isn't as big of a deal to people that live in an area where they can go and see it whenever the hell they want. In our case, destroying the statue is used as a shocking way to ground the viewer into a sense of "oh shit, it's killing my backyard," while a foreign viewer would likely only see it as a cheap way to grab the audience's attention. So yeah, I probably would focus more on the destroyed landmarks than the actual terror of the event if the movie was set somewhere else.
I guess in your case, this would have to be chalked up to being a foreign film not hitting the proper demographic. You can still, of course, experience the movie properly, but the fact that these are all foreign ideas of home safety is lost on you, as this is not your home. (Example: I loved Pan's Labyrinth. But I'm also very sure that I would have appreciated it more if I had a better understanding of Spanish folklore, history, and culture.) You say this probably isn't a big deal, but it actually is, and it's just one of the many many ways that film making is such an interesting and tricky art form to produce. The scenery DOES matter, but its also just a matter of using the proper scenery for the proper audience.
Coudn't agree with you more, and I'm glad you got my point so clearly. I didn't want to seem like I was posting an "I hate America because I'm foreign!" rant, and it's good that you understood.
ReplyDeleteLike I said, Cloverfield was a good movie that I thoroughly enjoyed. The scenery didn't detract from that at all. It's just... well, it's like this.
Imagine you're going to a restaurant. You, and the person at the table next to you, order the same dish. And when the dishes come out, his is about half again as big as yours. This does not, obviously, make your portion any less delicious, or filling, or well-prepared, or anything. But for the entire meal, you're consciously aware that someone else is getting something extra that you aren't.
That's pretty much the moviegoing experience of Cloverfield. It's genuinely exciting and thrilling, and it's a really fun movie. But the whole point of that first-person survival horror thing is to bring the point of the story home... and I could never shake the constant reminders that this was NOT home.
You're quite right about the example with Pan's Labyrinth. The same issue arose here, and with many other movies. And in most cases it's not a negative thing! It's a plot device, and one that works damn well. But the difference, I feel, is that Pan's Labyrinth was a local movie that then made it big overseas... whereas Cloverfield was always aimed at an international audience.
Nothing is taken away from the movie. Nothing's made negative by the scenery of New York. Nothing's in any way ruined or spoiled by this... except that I can never escape the impression that I'm missing out on something. And every time I see a famous landmark getting blown up, to me, that's time they could have spent fighting mini-Clovers, or having more fun in collapsing buildings, or anything that'd build up tension in a more effective way.
That all said, you're right, I did enjoy the movie experience. It was just... lacking.