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July 29, 2005

George A. Romero's Land of the Dead (2005)

by Grouchy

Mild spoilers ahead.

Perhaps you people have noticed (if you actually give a damn, which I doubt) that I've been including sentences about George Romero or Dawn of the Dead in three or four of my last reviews, which, well, it's definitively obsessive - but for good reason. It's because this is my most anticipated movie of the year and as the Argentinian release approached, it was all I was looking forward to, even more than the uber-hyped Batman Begins. Well, I can safely say that expectations this huge haven't killed a film for me so far, at least not this year. There are things that bugged me, or to put it better, downright puzzled me, but we'll get to that later.

In keeping with the ambigous timeline of the Dead films, this one appears to be happening (well, take this with two grains of salt, it's only my idea) five years after Night of the Living Dead. The world has already settled in with the notion that there are zombies on the loose and that they have to be exterminated to save our asses. The initial shock has passed and groups have been formed. Civilization is rising again, although in a very crude manner. In the area described in the movie there's a fortified tower called Fiddler's Green. In there live the ones that can afford it, guarded by zombie wars profiteer Dennis Hopper, my favorite actor of all-time, who's weirdly subtle on this role, like he's purposefully going against what you'd expect of Hopper running loose with a character like this. Out of the tower are the slums where, well, most of the people live, and the mercenaries that risk their necks to bring back food and medicines to the tower. At the same time there's a biological evolution in the zombie world, as they have started grabbing ideas from the humans - as well as fire weaponry.

From the purely Horror/gore/zombies standpoint, this movie is brilliant, I can't count the times that I was effectively surprised by old Horror movie hat tricks that Romero simply manages to sell out of pure artistry. Hell, I jumped when a rat made a noise. The zombies are... awesome. I revel in Savini's work, but this Nicotero guy has managed to update the look of a Romero zombie, keeping the basics but making them look effectively threatening and surreal for a new era. The first shots of the movie with the zombies walking around are so overwhelming. Add to that the inventiveness that Romero and his FX crew keep showing at creating varied, bizarre and endearing zombies. My personal favorite here is a priest who, in Nearly-Headless Nick fashion, has his head hanging from a tendon and bounces it around taking ferocious bites. Really, it's hard to keep track of the times where I simply beamed in glee at the outrageousness of what I was seeing in the screen. If you've seen Dawn, well, this is actually on the same level, but it's so rare to see something so daring on any Horror movie these days that it shocks you all the same. And this is only the fucking theatrical cut!

But, it's time to enter what makes up for most of the actual Romero discussion and controversy - the subtext. Remember the stuff I wrote about the political subtext in War of the Worlds being so murky? Well, it's just a terrible pleasure to see how it compares to this. Romero has never been subtle about his ideology, and he's even less subtle than usual in this movie, but somehow that approach marries his stories perfectly. It doesn't feel forced and it's handled well enough that, if you want, you can ignore all about it and you still get a blast out of the saga. Zombies are tailor-made for symbolism, and, if Romero isn't above hammering his points home, he's well above doing so in an arrogant or clumsy way.

In here, for example, what I got out of it is that Romero is aiming all of his guns at the States external politics in a post-9/11 world, or at least that he has adapted his script (which has apparently been sitting around in early drafts since more or less the late '80s waiting for funding) to the new international situation. There's plenty of ground to think that Romero is lashing viciously at the conformist American idiosincracy that allows people to be sitting on their fat asses living the consumer's paradise while other countries have to pay for their ground. And, in a tragicomical scene that downright IS 9/11 for the Romero world, the people in the tower can't escape from the zombies because they're trapped behind the electric fences they put up themselves for their peace of mind. When staring at the zombies, pretty likely third-world inhabitants now, raging against the American dream they have been left out of, Hopper can do nothing but blurt "you have no right". The more pathetic thing is that the definitive downfall of his right-winded empire comes from the inside, from the internal segregation, both economical and racial, this model encourages, not from the zombies. The system is the one that destroys itself, not the foreign terrorists.

All this is the stuff of debate. What's important from a qualitative point of view is that a director who's over 60 now and that could be very well sleeping comfortably numb is still enough in touch with his times to provide this sort of provocative commentary better than anybody else in the world, and blend it so beautifully with well-crafted entertainment. The guy is pretty fucking far from a relic of rebellious times - he's the real thing.

Now we come to the grudges I have with some aspects of this film. Excessive comparisons with Dawn of the Dead are probably not recommended, but it is true, that compared to the fascinating foursome in that movie, the protagonists here are pretty much cardboard figures. I'm not talking about Dennis Hopper, who has quite the heavy burden of symbolism over his shoulders, or about the inspired zombies. I'm talking about the people in the middle. Charlie is a cool and different type of sidekick, yes, but what about the lead, Ripley? He's a heroic person, and I'm cool with that, but he's also quite the nothingness. A badass posture and a half-arsed brooding background. I'm at a lack of words to explain how great Asia Argento is for me, but she's totally wasted here as well. Her character is the whore with the golden heart and the tough woman without much purpose who's not only tough but also totally inhuman - unlike true empowered heroines like, say, I dunno, Ripley or even Dawn's Gaylen Ross. The rest of the main team is a bunch of cool, macho action figures that wouldn't be out of place in a Carpenter or Rodriguez action film, but that don't quite belong in this movie. It's funny, but this movie reminded me a few times of Carpenter - but of the more formulaic Carpenter, not the brilliant one.

To give closure to an already too long write-up, rest assured that I'll watch this one in theaters again ASAP and keep it in my head with the thinking cap on for some time. I have the feeling it can only get better from here.

Posted by icine.org at July 29, 2005 08:03 AM

Comments

Posted by: Jennifer at July 29, 2005 09:20 AM

Posted by: Grouchy at July 29, 2005 05:48 PM

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