It’s a load of malarkey. There were many many cringe-worthy moments, which I will list later. So cringe-worthy that I literally squirmed about in my seat, and a couple beside me burst into laughter at it. Needless to say, it was supposed to be a poignant moment.
I’ll start with broad impressions, and then list specifics later:
Some of the effects were very cool – although some were not so cool and not so well-done. Shocking, in a film which really is all about the special effects. I thought a lot of it was pretty shoddy, actually.
It amazes me how actors can still come up with shreds of their dignity intact when dealing with such heinous material as that god-awful script. Roland Emmerich should be barred from writing his own stuff. He CANNOT WRITE. But still – working with that really bad script – some of the actors managed to turn in some nice performances. Not GREAT, but nice.
And here’s my broad thought about the film (I am all over the place right now):
It has nothing to do with global warming. Or science. It has no social message whatsoever. Roland Emmerich might THINK that that was what he was doing, but I can tell, through my psychic powers, that this is not the case at all.
What he was ACTUALLY doing in that film was working out the nagging anxieties we all feel about our prospects on this planet following September 11. It may have been subconscious on his part – maybe it was – and like I said: I’m just giving you my psychic reading on the whole thing.
We all deal with anxiety in different ways. The post-September-11 world has affected everybody – but not in a monolithic way. Everyone has to cope. Life must go on. So we cope in different ways.
Some began to drink heavily. Some became workaholics. Some sold all their belongings and proceeded to live on houseboats. Some began to have indiscriminate sex. Some threw themselves into arts and crafts.
And some … decided to make movies about global disasters – featuring the ultimate destruction of New York City.
It’s an acting-out. A fantasy. Or a nightmare. A true fear being expressed – however spectacularly, and however coldly (I find all the digital film-making really cold and alienating at times, I have to say.)
Film noir, with its feeling of menace, its elongated shadows, its overwhelming feeling of alienation – the lonely hard-bitten detective – alone at his desk – fighting the forces of evil – but he, too, the detective, is also, in his essence, an anti-social man… All of these stylistic elements came out of a specific time and place. And it’s not like it was conscious – that a bunch of film-makers or studios had a round-table discussion: “Okay, we need to come up with a style now to express our anxiety”. It was a natural progression – a trend – coming out of the tenor of the times.
I think that all of the epics and myths and legends that we now are seeing come to the screen – Troy and King Arthur – and Alexander (saw the preview for that last night) – are all subconscious expressions of the fear of what happened on September 11, 2001. There is a straining in the mind to go back – to look backwards – way way back – to the ancient times, to ancient apocalyptic moments when civilization hung in the balance.
That’s how I interpret this trend, anyway.
Film-makers, writers, and also the audiences who flock to these epics – are all asking themselves – subconsciously: “How did we – the human race – get through THAT? We did … we did get through it … civilization survived … and whatever lessons there are to be learned from the story of Troy, the story of Alexander the Great … whatever lessons there are back then – perhaps we could use some of that wisdom NOW.”
Again, this isn’t a conscious thing. It’s something going on in the subterranean level.
Myths – or old stories handed down – act as repositories for a community’s hopes, desires, fears. It’s like Grimm’s Fairy Tales, for example. Life isn’t pretty. Beneath the surface, there are things that always threaten, life is potentially very very dangerous. But we can’t walk about KNOWING this at all times – and so we create stories, to let out some of that fear, to express some of it. These stories are like containers. We can pour into them our own fears, our own desires, our own questions …
That is exactly what I was thinking last night, as I watched the tidal wave destroy New York City in the film.
I mean, the effects were all right, I thought the best moment was the wave rising, rising, rising, around the Statue of Liberty …
But what I was really thinking was: Wow. This film is really about September 11, and the horror of watching those towers fall – on television if you were far away – I also made a guess that Emmerich was probably nowhere NEAR New York City on that day. This isn’t a criticism. I’m saying that: I know, at least from my friends who don’t live here, that their fears and anxieties are very different from mine, because their experience of that day was watching it on television and desperately, desperately, desperately trying to get in touch with their loved ones (me) who lived here.
Very very different experience than watching it happen.
And so – this film was expressing some of that terror of that day.
And by making it all much WORSE – New York City completely BURIED, DESTROYED – it becomes like a myth. A story, a legend. It becomes the repository for that free-floating anxiety about our prospects, about the fragility of our world, of our civilization … a giant wave could wipe us all out at any moment. Let’s imagine what that would be like if that happened!!!
None of this is a criticism – I’m just telling you what I thought and felt as I watched the movie.
I felt a deep alienation, in myself – something in me stood way way back from it. I was almost angry, actually. Like: our fair city, our fair city. Also, because the film was made post-September 11 – the skyline is our new and truncated one. And – I’m JUST NOT FUCKING USED TO IT, okay?? I can’t just look at the skyline calmly and think, “Huh. There’s the skyline.” No. There is always something missing, and something aches within me – It is NOT normal, I can NOT forget, I am NOT used to it (although, of course – life goes on) – but I am NOT accustomed to it. Long swooping shots of lower Manhattan, and … I’m sorry, but it just looks weird to me. It looks like an amputated leg. It doesn’t look RIGHT.
And so I guess I had some anger (really?? heh heh) – because the film glided over that – treated the skyline of New York as though it had always been that way – and then the film went ahead and destroyed the REST of it.
However: back to my original thesis: This whole film was like a little kid in the backyard playing a game in which he pretends to kill his father – the father who, in real life, has beaten him his whole life. The child is enacting a ritual, the child is playing a game where he can pretend to be powerful, where he can pretend that he is in charge, where he can lash out. He stamps on his father, he whips him with a stick, he jumps up and down, he feels no remorse. The child is letting out his rage, his fear, his sadness in his GAME. The GAME gets to be the container – the child gets to fill up this container with all of his conflicting emotions.
That’s what “Day After Tomorrow” felt like to me.
Good thing I didn’t go see the film on a date, huh?
Now for the cringe-worthy moments:
— I love Dennis Quaid, but his performance stinks up the joint. It’s overblown, it’s obvious, it’s badly executed. I felt bad for him.
— This was the worst: when the young girlfriend says to her soaking freezing boyfriend, “I’ll warm you with my body heat” – and then they embrace. The entire audience was snickering.
— Why on EARTH were they burning books, when there was all that wooden FURNITURE around? Not logical. Rip up the tables, rip up the chairs – use the WOOD. Dumb. It was just an excuse to have a conversation about burning books. And while – I liked elements of it (the black geek kid calling to the others, “Hey, here’s a whole shelf of Tax Law – let’s burn this!”) – it was dumb. Not logical.
— I thought the Empire State Building freezing like a popsicle was very poorly done. It didn’t look real, somehow, and (forgive the pun) left me cold.
— The music was over-the-top. Corny. Sentimental.
— The preachy statement at the end made by the Vice President was so dumb – and some man 2 rows in front of me actually groaned.
— The two lovers making out by the roaring fire was stupid. They are waiting out an Ice Age, she has blood poisoning, it is freezing, there is no escape, the snow has covered the ENTIRE building. Now, I completely believe that if I were in that situation – I would find a way to snog with someone. Disaster sex is quite common – end-of-the-world sex – no problem with that. It was just the scenario – it was too romantic. A roaring fire, of all things. If I had been directing the film, I would have had them huddled up in the darkness between book stacks, freezing, dirty, desperate, clawing at each other’s faces, trying to eat the life out of one another. True disaster sex. Nothing romantic about it. There’s not enough time.
— I thought at the very beginning when the ice cap crumbled and Dennis Quaid was dangling above the abyss … Has anyone else seen it? I thought it was so badly done. It didn’t look real. It looked like a B-movie effect. You could tell it was a blue screen with an abyss projected onto it.
— The beginning – with the slow pan over the ice bergs – was quite beautiful – but there was something missing in it for me – because it was so obviously all fake, and all digitally recreated. Now a REAL helicopter ride over some REAL icebergs – that might have given me an actual sense of danger and death. But the camera “moves” were too smooth, too sure, too fake. Left me cold. Again.
— At the very end – when Dennis Quaid and his partner – walk across the frozen Hudson to get into Manhattan. Member that part? They walk by the frozen Statue of Liberty – they see the frozen city – the emptiness, the snow drifts that go up 30 stories. Now, here’s the problem, though: If they come in from that side, then they are walking EAST. Their first steps into Manhattan are on what is known as the “West Side”. The West Side looks out over the Hudson to Jersey. Anyway. Here’s how the scene goes. They trudge to the side of the city – which, by my calculation, means that they are right on the West Side Highway, the western edge of the city. Dennis Quaid says to his partner, “My son is hiding in the library – where is the library?” His partner looks at his little gyroscope thing-y (whatever) and looks at his friend, with dawning horror (so cheesy): “It’s right here.” Now, I’m sorry, but that’s not right. The son is holed up in the New York Public Library – the massive one – with the lions in front – which is in midtown – it is smack-dab in the center of the city – on 42nd Street. It is not on the EDGE of the city. It is on 42nd and 5th – which means you have a good 6 or 7 block walk to get there from the West Side Highway. So I didn’t like that. If you’re gonna destroy New York City in your movie, then at least deal with the geography correctly.
Things I liked
— Sela Ward as the ex-wife of Dennis Quaid. She’s always good. There’s just something so substantial about her acting. Good, good, good.
— Ian Holm, as the scientist in Scotland, was also very good. He seemed to be the voice of true doom in the film (unlike Dennis Quaid’s more frenetic posturing). He looked at incomprehensible charts, as the snow piled around his building, and you could see on his face that it was bad.
— I did think it was funny to see Americans migrating into Mexico illegally.
— The ravenous wolves who escaped from the zoo were, to my taste, the only truly scary thing in the movie. I thought that was actually a cool detail to include: animals. The animals in the zoo knowing that something is coming before the humans do. And then – wild wolves escaping. They were scary.
— All of the birds filling the skies over Manhattan. Very nice effect.
And that’s about all I have to say. Phew!!
I think that all of the epics and myths and legends that we now are seeing come to the screen – Troy and King Arthur – and Alexander (saw the preview for that last night) – are all subconscious expressions of the fear of what happened on September 11, 2001.
Not to mention the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy came out post-9/11 (although I presume a lot of it was shot earlier in 2001).
Good review, Sheila. I’ve been going round and round whether to see this movie, good points and bad. I simply have no great desire anymore to see big cities and building destroyed.
Where Independence Day used to be one of my favorite popcorn movies, I can’t watch it again. The video sits on my shelf untouched for at least three years.
Similarly, I bought a new DVD of Wargames a couple of years ago, and have not had the nerve yet to even unwrap it.
I went to see A.I. and saw the Twin Towers sticking out of the middle of the ice (or was it an ocean? Can’t recall) and that scene chilled me to the bone.
Disaster movies that target cities have simply lost their appeal to me after watching the real thing, and I miss them…
I think one of the reasons Lord of the Rings has been so MASSIVELY successful – (and this is just ONE of the reasons) is the timing of its release.
It may have mostly been made in a pre-9/11 world – but it came out at just the moment when we all have been thinking about apocalypse, and survival of our race, and are we fit – are we ready for what will be asked of us in the days to come?
And Barry – one of my guilty pleasures has always been “Air Force One” – but I haven’t been able to get through it since 9/11. Something about planes crashing, presidents fighting terrorism openly (member his speech at the beginning?) – It makes me too sad and uneasy.
This may sound hokey, but Bill Pullman’s speech at the end of ID4 (“We will NOT go softly into that good night!!”) still moves me to tears everytime I hear it.
I know it’s a cheesy movie, he’s a cheesy actor and all that goes along with it, but still…..man.
Bill PUllman a cheesy actor? Have you seen Lost Highway? Have you seen Zero Effect? While You Were Sleeping may be a cheesy movie but he is hardly cheesy in it.
I know what you mean about that last speech – I only saw the film once – in the theatres, when it first came out – but I remember some of it almost word for word. It moved me.
Ok, he’s not a cheesy actor but he does a lot of – deliberately – cheesy roles. Wasn’t he Bette Midler’s idiot boyfriend in “Ruthless People”? And he was, of course, Lone Starr in “SpaceBalls” ;)
I haven’t seen Zero Effect. What’s it about?
II think part of the problem is that he looks like such a nice WASP-y guy, so he gets cast as nice WASP-y guys – when, in actuality, he’s kind of a freak. A weirdo. I saw him on Broadway in Edward Albee’s play “The Goat” – and he plays a nice WASP-y man who literally falls in love (deep soulful love) with a goat he sees in the country. I cannot describe how hilarious and awful and disgusting his performance was. None of his film work has come close!!
Zero Effect is a very cool, very dark little movie. Bill Pullman plays a guy named Zero, who is supposedly one of the best detectives in the world. He’s a genius at investigation, he’s like a really messed-up Sherlock Holmes. But he’s also a hermit, he can’t go outside – his brain is always clicking away at clues – he is an extremely damaged (and quite comical) character. It got GREAT reviews but kind of disappeared. Bill Pullman is awesome – a dark and frightened character – but also tremendously funny.
I highly recommend it.
I always balk when people make comments like “he’s a cheesy actor” and they’ve seen, what, one or two of their movies, and only the blockbusters? Come on, where are the real film fans?
I’ll have to check it out – thanks.
You have a great site, by the way. :)
Noir fiction was a response to the anxiety of the times, noir films were a result of noir fiction. Noir films existed pre- and during the war.
Michael – excellent point. Thank you.
But it had, as one of its salient points, the kind of anti-hero, right? The Sam Spade – who you can’t look at and say “He is a good man, without a doubt”. He is a good man with a dark side. This expresses the anxiety of the darkness in ALL of us.
If I’m interpreting it correctly.
The same duality obtains for the anti-hero’s moll as well, a hard-edged and cynical (or innocent and terrified) dame who gains our sympathy despite her status as a fallen woman.
hahahahahaha. Great review Red.
I totally agree about Sela Ward. mmmmmm. I would watch practically anything with Sela Ward in it. I pretty much ignored the acting by everyone else in the movie. What I really wanted to see more of was satellite shots and meteorological data. My favorite moment in the movie was when one of the other scientists argued with Dennis Quaid that everything he was predicting violated the laws of physics – the one clueful dude in the whole flick.
I actually spent like three posts talking about that stupid movie, but of course I look at it totally different than you do. My main thesis is that, perhaps inadvertently, Emmerich hit on something meaningful – the Younger-Dryas event of 11000 BC. Of course he got it from Art Bell and Whitley Streiber, so it came out all stupid.
I totally agree that all this apocalyptic movie-making is a reaction to living in uncertain times.
Actually, CW – I had meant to link to your post when it first came out – about the Dryas event, of which I knew absolutely nothing. I learned a lot from it.
Yes. Absolutely. But “the flawed hero” came from the original fiction. Filmakers took quite some time figuring out how to get it on the screen. Also, little known fact: it took ’em three trys to get Maltese Falcon right. The one just before THE ONE wasn’t even called The Maltese Falcon (and, I’m sorry, I don’t remember the title, but I think it had the word City in it.) Another interesting observation: in the-one-with-City-in-the-title, the dialog is almost exactly the same as in THE ONE, yet it didn’t work half as well.
One other observation: Second best actor in noirdom IMHO was Fred McMurry in Double Indemnity with Barbara Stanwyk and Edward G. Robinson. Old Mr. My Three Sons himself.
Michael – I actually saw one of the other versions, which is pretty bad – the one with Bette Davis – and I believe it is called “The Devil is a Lady” – which gives you some idea of the problems with that version.
Fred McMurry is the perfect noir actor because we don’t expect that darkness to come out of him. Billy Wilder has great stories about McMurry during the filming of Double Indemnity – McMurry was CONVINCED he was miscast, was going to mess up the film – and he accepted the role, but only by saying to Wilder, “You must promise to tell me if I’m bad.”
Beautiful.
CW – Just did a quick check of your archives – and I can’t find that post … could you send it to me? I’d love to link to it –
I love a post that links “The Day After Tomorrow” with “Double Indemnity.” My problem with Roland Emmerich is that his sequences are ripoffs without the love of “homage.” In “Stargate” the Turkish planes sequence from “Lawrence of Arabia” is ripped off but passed off as his own. And you are dead on about the BAD DIALOG. when Randy Quaid says his thing about “up yours” in “Independence Day” it is a joyless moment in screenwriting history. Of course, I see them all so I can write stuff like this. I like the scope of destruction, though CG’s moment of being good enough on it’s own is passing. It is like re-watching “An American Werewolf in London” and realizing it is a big Steadicam commercial. I’ll stop the babble here.
I agree with CW – I’d watch practically anything with Sela Ward in it. Thanks to your review, red, NOT THIS ONE.
I love your knack for making us see things we wouldn’t have if you hadn’t painted us your picture — we were all hurt by 9/11, but there’s something special, a strange ache, that New Yorkers must feel about the loss of the WTC, not just their friends, their streets, their feelings of well-being, but also their goddamm skyline. It makes me wish I’d managed to visit before the bastards took it from us. Took it from YOU.
The permalink is http://nosuchblog.blog-city.com/read/642273.htm…
I’ll email it also…
Thanks!
“I think that all of the epics and myths and legends that we now are seeing come to the screen – Troy and King Arthur – and Alexander…This whole film was like a little kid in the backyard playing a game in which he pretends to kill his father – the father who, in real life, has beaten him his whole life…”
Of course, Alexander surpassed Phlip of Macedon’s wildest dreams, and in the Arthur legend Mordred’s all-consuming desire for patricide basically succeeds, and certainly spawns total chaos and entropy to tear down a mythical golden age (though, of course, Arthur is supposed to return from his slumber in Avalon when Britain most needs him): the ritual, the game, is consummated. But then, it’s a myth: not a lie, but metaphorically, symbolically rather than literally true. I suppose there are a whole bunch of other things I could say, but that’s what immediately comes to mind.
Popskull:
If you ever stop babbling, I will personally beat you about the head and neck.
On the way to lunch (chili, a beer and the first two races from Belmont) a thought occurred about another possible contribution to the origin of noir: It may have been a reaction to the sunnyness and supposed cheeriness of California that made writers such as Cain, Chandler and Hammett think to themselves, “Yeah, well it may look all sunny and cheery out here with the palms and ocean and all, but let me tell you, pal, there are dark forces at work here too. Dark forces I tell ya’.”
I know I’ve been on that road that led to Geiger’s house a time or two. I just know it.
Michael:
Having just finished the book “Black Dahlia Avenger” (on the recommendation of Lileks) – I TORE THROUGH the damn thing like a bat out of hell – I can say that LA seemed to be, in the 40s, quite a dark and frightening place. A disconnect, perhaps, with the weather, and also the fantasy never-never-land of the movie studios.
That stands to reason. Remember, LA represented the last of running away. People running from the past had literally bumped up against the ocean and finally had to face up to whatever reality they had left. That made for a lot of desperation. Chinatown is one of the best LA movies about that time.
Scott: HAHA!!!
Well, I am perfectly ready to submit to anything – if the story is gripping enough – but for whatever reason, probably cause I live here – the incorrect placement of the New York Public LIbrary just GOT to me!
Yeah, you can definitely skip this one. Your head might explode.
Sheila,
Hailing as I do from the provinces, I didn’t learn of this until the day after I saw “The Day After Tomorrow.” But apparently the tidal wave ALSO hits New York from the west. Oops.
On an unrelated point, what I’ve never understood is why disaster movies always destroy large cities like New York and Los Angeles. If tornadoes, for instance, were going to destroy any city in America, they’d destroy Omaha. And since no one has ever been to Omaha, the filmmakers would probably have carte blanche to make things up and such.
Right, Ben, the tidal wave does hit from both sides. That’s not what I said, that’s not what I’m arguing.
The scene where Quaid and his partner enter New York is from the West side – and the way it is filmed makes it look like the NY Public Library sits right on the west side highway. That is not its location, and since it is quite a famous landmark, I was annoyed by that.
“I think that all of the epics and myths and legends that we now are seeing come to the screen – Troy and King Arthur – and Alexander (saw the preview for that last night) – are all subconscious expressions of the fear of what happened on September 11, 2001.”
Possibly in part. I believe that it is more an expression of recognizing the value of heroes, unlike the last few decades when heroes were out of fashion. The left has trashed heroes of all but their own chosen types, has made “heroes” of decidedly unheroic people, and attempted to portray any kind of “hero-worship” as infantile and simple-minded.
Now, it is once again okay to support the military and firefighters and police, and to recognize the heroic actions they perform every day. And it is okay to portray that in movies.
Ken:
I disagree. In my opinion, your comment sounds more like wishful thinking coming out of your political views and your chip on your shoulder about liberal Hollywood. You’re invested in your beliefs, and that’s fine, but I do not see it bearing out in film after film that shows disasters befalling the American landscape..
I sense ANXIETY in these films more than anything else. An existential “are we gonna make it??” feeling. It’s a catharsis, we imagine the worst, because we feel we are close to the worst. We wonder how we will do.