Cloverfield

After months of drooling over the clever viral campaign and teaser footage, I finally saw Cloverfield last Friday. Sigh. Sometimes I wish all Hollywood features would only be a maximum of five minutes long, then it might be possible for them to just be on par with their trailers. I think Manohla Dargis over at the New York Times summed Cloverfield up succinctly when she said,

Like too many big-studio productions, “Cloverfield” works as a showcase for impressively realistic-looking special effects, a realism that fails to extend to the scurrying humans whose fates are meant to invoke pity and fear but instead inspire yawns and contempt.

What disappoints me, and this isn't the first time JJ Abrams has disappointed me, is that the basis of this film is an excellent conceit, but it seems rushed and not very thought through. I will admit that I loved Shyamalan's 'Signs', and one of the best moments in that film is when Joaquin Pheonix's character, sitting in the closet, sees the first glimpse of an alien on news, filmed in shaky hand-held at a children's party in Mexico. It's shocking because the reveal is unexpected, but more importantly it is exactly how we would be first exposed to something so strange in the real world, through badly shot footage on the news or the net. There was some hope that Cloverfield would capture that contemporary aesthetic, given the wonderful fake news clips and websites that were made as part of the marketing hype. Instead of making the film a mockumentary, piecing together the news and personal footage of a monster attack, which could have worked amazingly, the film-makers have shoe-horned Hollywood heroics into the hand-held gimmick. Instead of gradually witnessing this cataclysmic event through a variety of found footage, we are forced to endure a restricted set of clichéd characters whose plights become more absurdly unreal, hence disengaging, as the film wears on. Its all the more painful, because the special effects, and the deftness with which they are executed are undermined by this silliness. I want to be insulted when Hollywood tells me the only way I can engage with a film is through a heroically stupid protagonist, but it happens so much now I just have to take it for granted. Hollywood thinks I'm an idiot, and that's never going to change.

Some of the critics out there that are lambasting the picture for its insensitivity Dargis also has little time for) are being a(something bit too sensationally sensitive. There has been plenty written about the apocalyptic themes present in Japanese culture after the atom bombs were dropped on them, especially in those native habitats of sci-fi, anime and manga. Yet it is frequently seen as some sort of public catharsis, a way for Japanese society to come to terms with the horror it endured. The same thing is starting to be evident in US cinema. That is not to imply the references to 9/11 that we are seeing, and there are more then one (take the aeroplane shaped robot flying through the side of a sky scraper in 'Transformers') are meaningful, intelligent or adept, but some credit has to be given for the attempt, even if the film-makers aren't conscious of it. Dumb people need to come to terms with catastrophe too.

Having said all that, I still think it is worth seeing Cloverfield at the cinema. The stupid elements of the film are no more stupid then any of your typical Hollywood fare, while the rest of the film is well executed and fun. The film does try to challenge certain Hollywood conventions about story-telling, and for that its worth giving your financial, cinematic support, because though it doesn't necessarily succeed, at least it tried. These days the balls to do that in Hollywood seem to be very rare.