The Happening is M. Night Shyamalan’s latest flick, a “B movie” apocalyptic paranoid environmental thriller in the mode of The Birds, Children of Men, and all the zombie movies. The twist is that it is, and isn’t, like any of those movies. It’s its own scary little beastie. You’ll either like it or hate it.

Most of the critics hate it. I liked it. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gets it right:

For me, Shyamalan’s approach is more effective than smash-and-grab plot-mongering. His use of the landscape is disturbingly effective. The performances by Wahlberg and Deschanel bring a quiet dignity to their characters. The strangeness of starting a day in New York and ending it by hiking across a country field is underlined. Most of the other people we meet, not all, are muted and introspective. Had they been half-expecting some such “event” as this?

I know I have. For some time the thought has been gathering at the back of my mind that we are in the final act. We have finally insulted the planet so much that it can no longer sustain us.

William Arnold of the Seattle P-I observes that the script and direction is more than competent:

Shyamalan has cited “The Birds” and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” as his inspiration, but both of these nature-run-amok classics rely on imaginative visual effects. “The Happening” has absolutely none: The unexplained enemy here is wind-borne and unseen.

He further breaks with recent movie tradition by making his characters so incredibly ordinary. His hero develops in the story, but he’s mostly confused and indecisive, he’s not super-smart or pushed to any superhuman feat, he actually breaks down and cries like a baby.

The script is not at all complex or even remotely challenging but it is skillful and effective, combining fear of suicide (the impulse behind panic syndrome), fear of terrorism and fear of environmental retribution in a way that has a distinctly creepy impact.

I’m not saying The Happening is a great film. It’s a message movie that’s a bit too direct in spelling out exactly what the audience is supposed to learn from the tale. However, the opening scene, I think, is one of the most unforgettable in all horror movies. Indeed, the premise of the movie (and its depiction) genuinely creeped me out, probably because I carefully avoided all reviews of the movie and had no idea (beyond the vague trailer) what to expect.

If there’s something significant and meaningful about the movie it’s not really it’s message about the environment. It’s the disturbing notion that human beings are so much controlled by our brain chemistry, and therefore fully susceptible to a bizarre “neurotoxin” that we have no free will at all. Most sci-fi films pay homage to the notion that the human spirit is so indestructible that our will is enough to overcome even the greatest of threats (think Jean Luc Picard’s resistance to the Borg invasion). Not so in The Happening, where the most frightening thing of all is its view that our minds are no more autonomous than a honey bee drone.

Technorati Tags: free will, horror, movies, Shyamalan

The new DaVinci Code movie has been banned from filming in Roman churches. The Vatican’s reason? The film doesn’t conform to “common religious sentiment.” No word on whether the film conforms to uncommon religious sentiment.

Technorati Tags: Catholic, movies

Originally posted: July 7, 2007.

Sicko (2007) is Michael Moore’s best reviewed movie to date, a documentary earning widespread acclaim from Democrats and Republicans alike for socking it to the profiteers and heartless bastards in the US healthcare industry. Its greatest success isn’t in making a sustained argument for changing health care policy, but in creating a vehicle for the transformation of base selfishness into a higher calling for American selflessness.

The movie tells story after story of Americans getting cruel and inhumane treatment from their healthcare providers (not to mention the pharmaceutical industry). A young woman loses her child after taking the child to an emergency room (her HMO insists that the child be treated in an in-network hospital). A man originally from France must leave his home in the US to return to France when he learns he has cancer (like millions of Americans, he carried no health insurance). An American man without insurance must choose how many of his severed fingers he can afford to reattach. And so on…

Yes, as you might expect from a Michael Moore film, Sicko is manipulative, questionable, gimmicky, melodramatic, and it plays situations as often for laughs as for wisdom. It’s vintage Moore. But if it is his most successful film to date, it’s because Sicko takes on the most complex and divisive social policy issue of our day and produces a vision that is likely to win assent in degrees from moviegoers from all over the political spectrum.

It’s obvious that Moore favors a single-payer, government-run universal health system like those offered in Canada, Great Britain, France, and Cuba (the countries he visits in the documentary). Those countries have lower infant mortality and higher life expectancies than the US. They also spend far less per capita as a percentage of GDP than the US. And of course, they achieve full coverage for all their citizens, not just those who can afford and are eligible for private health insurance.

No matter one’s conclusions about government-sponsored healthcare, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Americans are paying far too much for health care and getting less than we deserve for too few. There seems to be a huge discrepancy between our present reality, what we can afford, and what our other industrial nations have been able to achieve.

To listen to Sicko tell the story, the difference between the likes of the US, Canada, and Great Britain is simple. At some point in their history, Canada and Great Britain each made national health care a top priority, and they marshaled great resources towards producing a mammoth social reform. Today, despite all the inevitable imperfections, few in Canada or the UK would change their system for one such as ours.

The United States, besought by entrenched and well-funded special interests (Sicko tells us that there are four health care lobbyists for each member of Congress), has failed to mount a similar Marshall Plan for health care. Historically, we attempted to treat health care largely as a luxury available to those who can afford it rather than a right available to all regardless of ability to pay. By and large, we have pursued a core system to protect the self-interest of the young, the healthy, the strong and the selfish over against the weaker and the older and the poorer. This is the root of the problems we face today over universal access to health care.

The way out, Sicko suggests, is not a mere shift in policy (as if that could happen magically). Even if it doesn’t frame the issue in quite this way, Sicko says we need a radical change in the consciousness of the American people. In short, we must pursue a less selfish and more selfless country. We must create a We nation, not a Me nation.

In short we must be willing to make sacrifices for the benefit of those who need a helping hand, because in the future that person in need could very well be us. The movie offers a spiritual vision, one calling each person to take a less egocentric perspective and to put others (especially the less fortunate) on a level playing field with their own concerns.

According to the film’s message, we must overcome the voices of cynicism and fear that create an epidemic of powerlessness and defeatism. We must have the humility as a nation to actually learn from what other countries can teach us, because in the area of health care they just might be on to something good.

The film is in itself an intrinsic part of Moore’s vision for creating a better society. The film enters the public consciousness and sows the seeds for a more reasonable and comprehensive discourse over health care policy. The film helps to create the change it advocates by elevating awareness and appealing to our better and most humane instincts.

Judged as a vehicle for creating an emotional, intellectual, and even spiritual call to transforming our health care system, Sicko packs quite a wallop into 113 minutes. It is most effective when it unflinchingly takes on the voice of prophet, and falters somewhat in donning the voice of pundit.

As a prophet, Moore shows us the injustice of our system in unforgettable ways that are virtually impossible to ignore or whitewash. However, as a pundit, Moore makes his share of cheap shots and unsubstantiated assertions that could fuel partisan bickering at the expensive of the film’s core concerns. Is it really necessary to go to Cuba? Can we do no better than to dismiss critic’s objections (say over the need for higher taxes) with a single one-liner instead of a sustained argument?

Perhaps the film’s greatest shortcoming is its failure as a vehicle for social transformation, not really a failure as a conversation-sparking documentary. Unlike, say, Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, there’s little effort to tie the audience’s participation in the film to concrete changes that they can make in their lives. The audience is left wondering what to do with their new convictions about health care, but provided with nowhere in particular to turn. Without that sort of link, there’s a greater risk that the Sicko message will be quickly inserted and recycled in the information overload and analysis paralysis plaguing our society. The film’s prophetic cry is far too urgent and essential to allow that to happen.

Technorati Tags: health care, Michael Moore, movies