Buy the ticket, take the ride...
I’d wager that most people have been to an amusement park at some point in their lives. My family was particularly into Disneyland (probably because we’re from suburbia). Now, when you think about it, Disneyland is actually more of a THEME park than an amusement park. There’s a difference between the two. What is that difference? A thin layer of exposition.
You see, when you take a ride at an amusement park, there really isn’t a whole lot of ceremony involved. There are a ton of roller coasters at Six Flags. Riding one of those is basically like picking up a prostitute: You both know what you’re there for, so let’s just get to it.
A theme park is something else though…at a theme park, most of the rides you get on are story based. What I mean is that sure, you still get on the ride, but not before being subjected to some thin layer of exposition as to WHY you’re getting on the ride. For example: in Disneyland’s “California Adventure” theme park, they have a ride dedicated to the Twilight Zone – the Tower of Terror. They strap you into a metal box, shoot you up into the air and then drop you back down. Lots of theme parks have this ride – in fact, the Tower of Terror is pretty tame in comparison to the versions other parks have. What separates it is this narrative you’re forced to listen to before you board the ride. Rod Serling comes out and does his little spiel from the show, telling you that the Tower was once home to famous celebrities but that something bad happened. The narrative continues as you board the ride, ending with him saying something like, “tonight, you, the audience, are part of the show…”
And then they drop you a few stories and you feel like you’re going to die.
That’s Cloverfield in a nutshell.
Now I’m not knocking the film, because I liked it quite a bit. I like going on rides at Disneyland too, but that doesn’t change the fact that the thin narrative before every ride is just a device meant to keep you and your group waiting while the ride cycles through the previous group.
What is the film about? Well, it centers around Rob and Beth, two friends living in Manhattan with a serious crush on one another. At the onset, Rob and Beth have sex, causing a whole bunch of awkwardness when Rob states that he’s heading off to Japan for some major promotion. Beth wants Rob to stay in New York, and Rob has no idea how to express his feelings for Beth. So he basically tells her to get lost at his own going away party.
After that, all hell breaks loose. Manhattan is being attacked. The military sweeps in urging everyone to evacuate. And it is in the midst of this evacuation that Rob gets a frantic call: Beth is trapped in her apartment and she can’t get out. So Rob decides to turn around and head back into the city in an attempt to undo the damage he has wrought on the girl he loves.
It’s funny too, because Rob and his friends are basically you and your friends. I feel that if the film succeeds on any level beyond the sheer thrill of its premise, it will be because these characters are just archetypes lifted from the myspace generation. They’re not particularly clever characters, but they are true to some extent.
I do have a large gripe with Rob though: Rob’s the world’s greatest bad decision maker. I once wrote a film along the lines of something like that, but I never intended people to like my character. The filmmakers WANT you to like Rob. They want him to really click with the audience – and he doesn’t. He’s a real bastard – the film even says so itself at one point. He’s resourceful and determined, but beyond that, not very likable…He’s just some self-serving jerk who decides, “hey, what the hell, I’d like to sleep with this girl again, so I’m gonna go back and get her.” You can get away with a real jerk of a character in your film, believe it or not. But the character has to be really freaking good at what he does. Rob isn’t…he’s just that guy in your group every Friday night who heckles prog-rock. I think part of suspension of disbelief allows us to have moments in films where characters do incredibly stupid things that pay off in unreal ways. The characters themselves literally state, “there’s no way in hell this is going to work, but here goes…” and then it does work. And yeah, you’re crying out “no way”, but you’re also with the character because they can’t believe it either. Rob’s just like that, minus the “it works” part.
Beth also isn’t terribly likable. There’s a girl like her in every group too: the pretty girl who contributes nothing. Her and your other friend have this “thing”, and he’s totally into her because she’s waaaaaaay out of his league and he’s pretty sure he can’t get anything better than that… I mean, why do we even let Beth hang out in this group? She doesn’t bring anything to the table – PLUS, we’re sick of all the drama she drags along.
Okay, sorry…got caught up in the film’s style for a moment there.
One of the better aspects to this film is its commentary on “the group” and on my totally useless generation. At Rob’s party, everyone’s buzzing about the weird relationship between Rob and Beth. They’re also doing shots of jagermeister and listening to Spoon, effectively doing nothing but idly gossiping about one another’s lives. There are a few stark moments in particular when the city is first attacked that basically sums up this youtube/text message culture in all its bloated self-interest. It’s hilariously human. Spielberg would be proud.
All 80 minutes of the film are a great way to spend your evening. It’s a real trip from beginning to end and it isn’t terribly consuming, so count me a fan. But still, like most rides, you can’t help but walk away saying, “huh – I’m not sure if I’d get back in line for that again.” Therein lies the difference between the greats like Spielberg and the new kids like Abrams. Spielberg never told you he was taking you on a ride. He never told you his characters were just like you and your friends. Goddard? Abrams? Reeves? They’re right there, telling you the entire way.
13 comments:
See, I knew J.J. would hook you up with a preview if you just called him up. It pays to be the preeminent Lost fan on the face of the planet.
As the writer's strike devolves television into a wastier-wasteland of wastelessness, my interest in Cloverfield has been piqued. I'll check it out Friday night, most likely. It sounds more interesting than Star Trek reboot, in any case.
I can't believe I bypassed such an obvious Godard swipe. :)
In Godard's case, he's whispering in your ear "Hey, look, I'm messing with every sacred rule of the cinema. Cool, huh?" I've even gotten a little tired of it, and started gravitating towards his films that are less self-conscious and more committed to the story.
Godard did a lot of interesting things that were interesting and worthwhile and have themselves become part of film grammer, but other experiments just didn't succeed. Everytime I see an overlapping edit (where the bit of dialog or action is repeated in cut A and cut B), I want to scream. I haven't found an instance yet where it actually added anything to the film, and it instantly takes you out of the experience. Remove those elements and I think you end up with better films.
While your thoughts on Godard basically align with my own, I am not actually taking a swipe at the French cinema icon...I'm taking a swipe at the Cloverfield screenwriter, Drew Goddard. Those last three names in the review are the writer, producer and director respectively. I should have clarified that.
But hey, let's talk about Godard, because it's more interesting then talking about this movie.
"Godard did a lot of interesting things that were interesting and worthwhile and have themselves become part of film grammer, but other experiments just didn't succeed. Everytime I see an overlapping edit (where the bit of dialog or action is repeated in cut A and cut B), I want to scream. I haven't found an instance yet where it actually added anything to the film, and it instantly takes you out of the experience. Remove those elements and I think you end up with better films."
That's basically my take on the man too. There are a few films he did where I feel that the absurdism and experimenting add to the feel of the movie, but at the end of the day, they are just devices used in absence of any actual interest in the story. That's Godard's problem - he has no interest in the story at all, he goes straight to playing around with the cuts and camerawork and lets that stuff dictate the story. Which is ironic considering that European film opposes the American standard of style over substance.
Godard ultimately gets off the hook with me because he admits time and again that he's just trying whatever comes to mind and that most of it doesn't work. At least he can recognize his own faults. Why the man has been praised as widely or talked about as heavily as he has been though completely baffles me. There are other filmmakers who are talked about far less and who are far more humble and methodical in their cinematic tests. Just a few that come to mind: Malick, Jules Dassin, Seijun Suzuki.
Now back to Cloverfield:
Yeah, thanks to J.J. for the hookup. P.S. MI:III was good and I liked that episode of Lost you directed. Otherwise, stop drinking your own hype.
Wow, well I guess I got really off-track there.
I think Europeans generally and Godard specifically get sold short many times for not having a "story," but I don't think it's true. The films have a story just as much as American films, what they lack is the American sense of plotting and plot development.
Take Breathless. A shady criminal guy pursues the cute foreigner, she gets entangled in his activities, they go on the run, and he gets double-crossed, to tragic ends. Yet, that's hardly how anyone has ever described the film. The story is there, but the plot doesn't get developed in the way Hollywood would do it.
That is precisely what has always intruiged me about Godard's films (and those of the Dardenne Bros.). Given the basic premise, how did he arrive at the scenes he chose to develop the plot versus what would typically be done? Why did he choose waht amount to the in-between moments that are left out of every other film? If you drew a linear timeline, Hollywood chooses moments A, C, E, and G, while Godard chooses B, D, F, and H.
Of Godard's output in the 80's and beyond, I have seen only one film, Passion, and as I recall it was basically devoid of all the distracting stuff, but was still 100% Godard. My Netflix queue is ready to go with other films from that period, so I can make a broader comparison.
I was able to navigate to the post a comment link without reading anything. I'm seeing this tomorrow night and I don't want anything ruined. I'll return next week and get your take.
Brock would have posted a spoiler warning if there were any. The man knows how to write a review, he has a degree in writing. Do you doubt his credentials?
Thanks dude.
Yeah -- I wouldn't put spoilers in a review when I assume most of you will be seeing the movie at one point. I know people like to get their money's worth.
Plus, if you have to resort to spoilers in discussing the basic elements of the film and its worth, then you're not focusing in on the technical acumen of the project like you should be.
HOWEVER -- if you avoid reviews until you've seen a film because you don't want to put a bias in your head before you see it, then I understand and even sympathize.
Some thoughts after seeing the film...
As an experimental film, I think Cloverfield works. The use of used tape and "tape dropouts" in order to tell some backstory and provide some closure was clever, since it actually serves a narrative purpose while soldifying the concept of a "found" tape.
I found it a little harder to believe that these people would keep rolling tape throughout this whole ordeal. None of them seemed the type to have the type of forethought to be driven to record this for posterity.
I was a little disappointed at the lack of development in the Hud character. He was our narrator and surrogate eyes for most of the film, and he just never "grew up" and kept cracking wise. It cheapened it. I thought that at a certain point the humor needed to be dropped.
I thought Rob was a real honest character and never thought of him as being driven by cheap physical ambitions in his pursuit of Beth. In fact, he seemed so pure about it, I was left wondering if Brock was projecting his own jaded views of love on poor old Rob.
All in all there were good thrills, and for a film that owes much to Blair Witch, I think they executed the first-person "found tape" aesthetic to near perfection. Well done!
One more thing, like an experimental film, I felt entertained and engaged, but unfulfilled at the end. I just sat through the end credits, waiting to feel something, anything. Good while it lasted, but no enduring impact, which may be much to Brock's original points.
I thought Rob was a real honest character and never thought of him as being driven by cheap physical ambitions in his pursuit of Beth. In fact, he seemed so pure about it, I was left wondering if Brock was projecting his own jaded views of love on poor old Rob.
Yeah, I was also worried about that when I was writing the review. However, considering that most critics have slammed the film for its "shallow characters", citing Rob and Beth as the primary examples, I think I deserve a little credit.
And if I was pissed off at Rob and Beth for some axe I was trying to grind, it would likely be because they are exactly the kind of characters that I would write.
And sure, maybe Rob's feelings towards Beth were pure, but that doesn't change the fact that he is a moron. And his friends are morons for going along with him on his stupid quest for a girl whom they have hardly any dealings with. Marlena didn't even know Beth!
And yeah, it's a great film to watch once on the big screen. After that, it's totally worthless and has nothing left to say for itself.
After Hud's outcome, I only wanted Beth and Rob to face the same. Therefore, I was highly satisfied with the end. Call me morbid.
I also want to know where they picked up this 24-hour battery! Amazing!!
Huh! I was thinking the same thing about the battery. Of course, the tape was only about 75 minutes long...
We missed the previews and walked in probably 2 minutes into it. The length struck me because I couldn't believe we walked about just 75 minutes after we walked in. As I thought about it, though, I was pleased. If they had stretched that to 2.5 hours like too many movies try to do it would have completely ruined the effect.
What a divisive movie. As soon as it ended I could hear the chatter ranging from "That was awesome!" to the woman behind me to flatly said, "That was the worst movie I've ever seen." I could understand both points of view.
So what happens in the first two minutes because I missed it? Anything critical?
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