The one thing that I've always been a fan of is movie reviews. But since I'm not a huge fan of going to see a movie nowadays (read previous blog post if you are unsure), I guess that means I must review films seen elsewhere. On Friday mornings, I will be posting a film review to correspond with the traditional opening day for many movies in the United States, but they normally won't be of whatever comes out that weekend. For the inaugural post, I chose my absolute favorite film of all time: George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead.
Due to the success of the frightening 28 Days Later… and even the awful Dawn of the Dead remake, George A. Romero's relativity in the current horror landscape is at its most prominent since the 1970's. The creator of the modern zombie in 1968's Night of the Living Dead, Romero has made two entries in his Living Dead trilogy, 2005's Land of the Dead and 2008's Diary of the Dead, and with those successes comes renewed interest in his earlier work. Following Night of the Living Dead, Romero shot 1978's Dawn of the Dead and 1985's Day of the Dead, the latter not gaining as much praise as his first two, which seemed to take the wind out of Romero's proverbial zombie sails. The two most recent works in the Living Dead series certainly pale in comparison to his first three installments, but even a Romero not living up to his full potential is worth ten Texas Chainsaw Massacre remakes. While many continue to be entranced by his gritty debut feature, it is Dawn of the Dead that has inspired a cult following and many to suggest that it might be among the greatest films ever made. Let me add my name to that list right now: Dawn of the Dead is the greatest film ever made.
The film Romero produced on those cold nights in Monroeville, PA is not only relevant today, but also more than when it was released. The film takes place several years following Romero’s first Dead film, but one would not know it without background information on the entire trilogy. The film is designed to fit in with the series seamlessly, but without familiar characters, it can distance itself and attempt to be an entirely different film experience. At the end of Night of the Living Dead, it seemed as though the whole situation with the living dead was solved by a band of cops and rednecks. But in Dawn, Romero dives into the chaotic situation at a local television station with little disposition on the zombie holocaust occurring outside. The film starts out small, and remains that way throughout the running time. At its core, it is always about the plight and fight of the four central characters, who are simply trying to survive. Our group of survivors eventually make their escape via helicopter to a shopping mall, the film's most iconic location. There they attempt to clean house and set up a utopia where they could live for years. While the TV station may be little in comparison to the mall, the dramatic elements of the characters are always local and always intimate. The setting may grow over time, and it may increase in size, but it is always about Frannie, Peter, Roger, and Steven.
The one difference between Dawn of the Dead and other zombie films is that Romero treats his zombies fairly and does not use them as villains. The creator craftily creates the illusion throughout all three of his films that these “things” are not monsters but just a mirror image of our own society. They have families and friends, homes, children, and jobs just like all of us. The zombies in Romero films, in a way, represent the dystopia we understand but hurtle our populace at anyway. These “people” are not to be seen as alien creatures, but us without the ability to feel for another. But at the same time, they represent some of the more negative aspects of our culture, most notably the herd mentality that is fostered by excessive consumerism. They are just like us and, yes, they occasionally visit the mall.
Yes, the film is extremely bloody. Yes, there is a scene with a person's head exploding from a shotgun blast. Yes, those are real pig entrails. In complete seriousness, what truly makes this film so brilliant is not just the brutality of the image, but the complex nature of the inhumanity they paint. This isn't gore for gore's sake, but actually a tool to move the story along. To prove a point and to highlight the thematic worth of the picture. While most viewers would likely point to the physical brutality -- the arm-biting in the tenement building at the beginning of the film or the motorcycle massacre scene at the end – as the most disturbing elements of the film, it is the emotional and social viciousness that strikes the deepest. The scenes where our heroic band of outsiders fall victim to the consumer culture of the mall is by far the most devastating aspect of the film, fake intestines be damned. The four survivors devolve from their rebellious nature in the first half of the film into such a meaningless existence as they protect the mall as if it was another member of their team. The luxuries of the mall become more important to the protagonists than life itself. The true monsters in Dawn of the Dead are the living, and that is the most frightening truth of the film.
This tragic reality is just another diamond in the rough, which keeps distancing Dawn of the Dead from the mainstream and hurtling it forward into classic territory. Despite its notorious history as one of the most graphic narratives ever committed to film, it is one of the great American films of the past thirty years. The images in the film are unrelenting in gore and dismemberment, which accounts for most of its mainstream popularity, but it is also an intelligent satire on consumer culture and on horror films in general. The idea that stewed in director George A. Romero’s head grew into a monstrous exposé and, in the process, established the use of gore as a vital element in contemporary horror cinema. Romero’s understanding of human nature is quite surprising, as he is the creator of the modern zombie – a dead, lifeless, and emotionless entity.
No comments:
Post a Comment