the Times, They Are Estranging

I've recently been preoccupied to the level that I went about three months without seeing a single movie in theaters. I saw Quantum of Solace (passable) with some friends, and then avoided the film world until I suddenly saw Watchmen (unimpressive). My reason for the distance from what I so enjoyed? Well, let me know when you figure it out.

Either way, Watchmen was an interesting return for me. Gratuitous, stylistic, whiny, and so close to being good it hurt. The graphic novel has such compelling ideas, contrasting human frailty and desire with the fantasy of super powers and invincibility. Irony and honesty seem to work together and simultaneously against each other. They point out goofs in life and idealism while maintaining that there is some magic in all the science. Unfortunately, in the film, the honesty only seems to emphasize the painful realities--something that is ironic as the movie itself is all about denial and trickery.

The characters that should elicit some feelings of empathy, but instead made me cringe with sympathy or antipathy (in all of this, I feel like I should note that the movie is all about pathology, which is what's making me go for all the pithy "pathy" talk.) Malin Akerman was uncomfortably bad to watch, and she was the worst of the bunch -- although the music was a pretty damn bad actor. During one "love" scene, the music took what was already an awkward, sloppy looking thing and made it downright creepy. I don't suppose that I'm picky with those sorts of scenes, they always have that hint of the ridiculous, but this one just made me laugh uncontrollably when the silence in the theater and the noise from the screen became too much to handle.

Carla Gugino and Patrick Wilson were either awful or they were just the victims of irritating, sad characters. Billy Crudup did all the footwork in making me dislike his character, but I think that was the idea. We were supposed to go from appreciating his humanity to mourning its loss, but by the time it was done, I thought it was better off than being in the world he'd so clearly left ages ago.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan was solid to Crudup's stolid, and his virtual insanity simply marked the times and developing (or devolving) society around him. Side characters were effective enough, I suppose, and Matthew Goode lived up to his own name, putting just enough sulkiness into the role to make me believe the incongruity in his words and actions. The best part though was the most human-like, messed up character I think I've ever seen.

It's funny, because I once saw a movie called the Lesser Evil and thought it was so innately true and frightening that I never made an effort to see it again. Some things are better left alone once learned, as the knowledge doesn't always do so much good as it creates fear when nothing can be done about it. Things like black holes are fine for some people to study, but I have no control over them, and the same goes for other natural disasters (or phenomenons, depending upon your point of view) and some diseases. Worse than those are the evils of other people that make us defend ourselves and our world. The fact that we must sometimes become a form of the evil we so disdain is terrifying and paralyzing in a way that FDR would address in a speech. We spend enough time worrying about such a thing that one of our most eloquent leaders made history by telling us, basically, to stuff it. He was right, too, because fear is the only thing short of death that keeps us from living.

The point of that hopefully-not-too-confusing tangent is to serve as a preface as to why Jackie Earle Harvey was so powerful in his role as Rorschach. The man deserves an Oscar for his role in a much-less-than-Oscar-worthy movie. He was so insistantly angry and retaliatory, but his motives never seemed wrong. It was unsettling to agree with someone who did things so violent and sharp, and who seemed to have let his humanity burn away with the first man he murdered. In the end though, it led one to think more carefully about such things as vigilantism and the criminal system. One is unnerving, one is simply the mob-mentality version of the other. Agreement, it seems, is what makes the world go round, and I don't think I want everyone agreeing on such actions. Even as I rooted for Rorschach in the movie, I knew that I wanted no part of that sort of reality. I am ambivalent towards vigilantism, but feel that for the most part, it won't work--and I think that in order for it to work sometimes, one must either accept all types or decry them. If no concordance can be reached, then I feel it is best left alone. There are simply too many people in the world for it to function, which is incidentally why I think there are such a large number of vastly differing societies instead of one human nation.

That said, Rorschach and his thought-provoking existence are the only part of the movie that really works or has any lasting effect. The fact that I could understand his horrific actions is a testament to Harvey's talent, and making a sociopath "relatable" is something to see. In fact, I'd recommend it solely for that performance--otherwise, this was a silly, interesting looking but otherwise rather empty attempt at bringing the written word to life. People need to either leave literature alone, or understand it before they try to animate it.