BEFORE: Richard Gere carries over from "The Jackal" - my choice tonight seems a little odd, since October is still a month away, and it's sort of a horror film. Anyway, why choose THIS film tonight, with just 39 films before break, leaving classics like "Touch of Evil" and "Rebel Without a Cause" unwatched? Well, I set up a plan for the month, and I'm trying to stick to it - why does any film get chosen, why watch one TV show over another? Why listen to THIS song over THAT song? I have no answers...
THE PLOT: A reporter is drawn to a small West Virginia town to investigate a series of strange events, including psychic visions and the appearance of bizarre entities.
AFTER: Well, this film proved to be timely since it dealt with disasters, and people's abilities to predict them, and/or fail to prevent them. This concept goes back to ancient legend, with the Greek oracles, who were probably just women getting high over volcanic fumes and speaking nonsense, which was interpreted as prophecy by onlookers - and Cassandra, the seeress whose predictions were true, but her curse was also that no one would believe her. (Don't get me started on that hack Nostradamus...)
This movie tries to deal in a certain kind of creepy - that odd feeling that something disastrous is about to happen. Maybe the wind picks up, or a dog keeps barking, or you feel the hairs stand up on the back of your neck. But you don't know exactly what's going to happen or when, but you feel that it will be bad. But does that feeling come across in a film?
Richard Gere plays a reporter touched by tragedy (one he didn't see coming), and maybe that affects him, drawing him to a small town where people seem to have premonitions, or hear voices with details of upcoming events. Then he starts getting mysterious phone calls, from a stranger with a very creepy voice. I won't divulge more details - but I had my own theory about who was making the calls, and the movie never confirmed or denied it.
Assuming that the calls are real, and that someone is intent on warning about impending disasters, what does that person or entity gain in doing so? The movie is unclear on this point - and also very unclear on what this all has to do with the Mothman, the subject of many urban legends. You can look up the Mothman on Wikipedia, numerous people claim to have seen him/it in the West Virginia area back in the 1960's, and it's been tied to cryptozoology, UFOs, all that X-Files stuff.
But unfortunately we're left to draw our own conclusions about the Mothman and what actually was going on in this town - the movie chooses not to fill in any of the gaps, or explain hardly anything, really. I know a movie doesn't have to pander to the audience, but jeez, give me something I can work with here.
Here's the conundrum in a movie such as this: A disaster is said to be coming. If you don't show the disaster taking place on film, the audience might feel disappointed. But if the disaster does happen, then what was the point of a character knowing about it in advance?
Here in NYC, we heard nothing but ominous predictions over the last few days - "If the hurricane does what we think it will do, expect 12-15 inches of rain. But if it moves a mile to the west, expect Manhattan to be under water." Who does this serve? Now it seems like the city survived with minimal loss of life, which is great. But today we'll hear the Monday-morning quarterbacking - did those 8 hospitals need to be evacuated? What about those nursing homes? And while the city's response may have been appropriate or even overly thorough, I still haven't forgotten about that blizzard last December, after which only streets with names beginning with "Q" got plowed. I bet our mayor runs for a (very illegal) fourth term after this, and he's already old enough to remember the original flood - the one with Noah.
Also starring Laura Linney (last seen in "Kinsey"), David Eigenberg, Will Patton (last seen in "Silkwood"), Debra Messing (last heard in "Open Season").
RATING: 3 out of 10 voiceprints
No comments:
Post a Comment