An Invasion Footnote: A Review of The War of the Worlds

[Curt Chiarelli]

An Invasion Footnote: A Review of The War of the Worlds

(Bread and Circuses: Installment #1; Dateline: Thursday, June 30, 2005)

I indulged myself in the mixed blessings of viewing both Batman Begins the Beguine and My Favourite Thetan last week at the local house of cinematic iniquities. Although I'm certainly more partial to our dark, bat-winged crusader (a deeply gratifying film about integrity and personal responsibility); at present I wish to forego the particular delights of reviewing the former whilst rolling up my sleeves to prepare for major surgery on the latter.

Oh, boy.

For this, the latest outing from Mr. Spielberg and Company, I have harsh criticisms which have little to do with its seamless craft used so skillfully and to such convincing visual effect, but rather involving my intense dislike of Mr. Top Gun's unctuous acting style, the lack of convincing locomotion of the war machines' tripod legs (just what does a tri-legged beastie look like when in motion? Outside of a dog that I know of, there is no terrestrial analogue), gaps in the underlying logic of the story's premise that you could drive an unarmoured Humvee transport through and the silly, uninspired alien designs which did not even raise a dram of gooseflesh on my curmudgeonly hide.

Having warmed to the grisly task before me with the foregoing apertif, I now turn to the main course: Tom Cruise's fictional whelps, played by a fragile, hollow-eyed Dakota Fanning and an obtuse, sullen Justin Chatwin, both of whom annoyed me in a manner much akin to taking a cheese grater against the nape of my neck. Perhaps their portrayal was a bit too close to the bone for my comfort, too accurately capturing the zeitgeist of our times with its crippling political correctness and a perverse drive to transform our children into a zombie herd of emotionally-arrested, solipsistic whiners. Or perhaps Mr.Cruise's character, Ray Ferrier, should have merely "audited" them with a robust spanking and a stern fireside chat. (The mind reels at the delicious possibilities of having scriveners David Koep and Josh Friedman write Brooke Shields into the storyline. She could feed the little scamps a heaping bowlful of sugared Ritalin to ease their post-traumatic depression as the human race gets snuffed while Tom throws a hissy fit on top of the kitchen table in protest: "Do you know what you are Brooke? DO YOU? You're glib Brooke, GLIB!!! . . . .")

If confronted with the choice of lugging around these two millstones, a duo of petulant brats with nary enough commonsense between them to constitute a village idiot or burrowing into permafrost with a shotgun-wielding, demented ex-paramedic, I think I'd take my chances with Tim Robbins' Harlan Ogilvy, thanks very much. (Our conversations would be a little more metaphysical in nature - transcending the inane "Are-We-There-Yet" and "This-Is-Your-Space" sanctimonious drivel so well known by modern parents everywhere - freaky yeah, but darkly compelling too and a step up in quality, nonetheless . . . . even though Ogilvy was turning into a queasy hybrid of Captain Queeg and Morocco Mole before my very eyes.) That these kids survived this tale is a gross violation of every principle set forth by Darwinian evolution.

Here again, amidst scenes of awe-inspiring, apocalyptic devastation and seamless compositing we find - like some winsome hussy wearing a 180 grit sandpaper tampon - the ever-present irritant found in most popcorn movies, a flaw of which no amount of money ladled upon them seems to remedy. Like the bacterial organisms which humble Wells' invaders, the simplest storytelling elements - internal consistency and the maintenence of logic throw a spanner wrench into the workings of these clanking, creaking, colossal, multi-million dollar, artificially-manufactured "event" movies.

Pursuant to this line of inquiry, why would the aliens decide to strike now? Also, how could every miner, catacomb tunneler, sewer worker and civil engineer of every major human settlement since Tarquinius Priscus built the Cloaca Maxima in 578 BC somehow manage to overlook the presence of these machines buried beneath us, waiting with malign, aeon-long patience for their cue to deep-six mankind? Why not invade during, say, the early Triassic to avoid any kind of armed resistance while still being able to fully exploit an ecosystem sufficiently developed to support the alien lifeforms? I suspect that the answer lies somewhere between Spielberg's need to indulge himself in self-agrandising, manipulative spectacle, Universal's greed in pandering to the monkey masses' unquenchable bloodlust (and this reviewer's deeply-rooted misanthropy) and, not to mention, the need to dodge the certitude that Mars was never inhabited by an advanced civilization in the first place.

John Williams' score became another casualty of our society's trend toward purging itself of anything of substantial emotional and artistic depth and replacing it with a mindless, grinding, contra-bass pulse. An excellent example of what I'm speaking of is the ferry sequence. A perfect opportunity to make a strong emotional musical commentary on the tragic grandeur of this scene - to, in effect, raise this scene to the level of poetry - was shunned in favour of playing up to the raw violence - and down to the lowest common denominator. Here - as elsewhere in the score - he merely apes Stravinsky's Le Sacre Du Printemps and left it at that. Apparently, Mr. Williams has been listening too much to the self-annointed arbiters of hip who detest the rich, Post-Wagnerian stylistic tendencies found in his compositions for the last 30 years. And that's a crying shame because his score could have forged an emotional cable line to its audience's heart and infused this clinical five-finger exercise in computer graphics into a movie with some discernable trace of humanity.

On the bright side, production designer Rick Carter's conceptualization of the war machines produced a genuine frisson - they were terrifyingly iconic in a Cyclopean fashion, ultra-modern, yet eerily suggestive of the primordial. Wells' would be beaming. Fellow Columbia College alumni, Janusz Kaminski once again provides us with his speciality: a grim, desaturated palette and long, deep shadows for the proceedings that take place onscreen. However, with all due respect to Mr. Carter (of whose talent I'm a big fan), Mr. Kaminski and the legions of talented people who contributed to this film, the final result wasn't enough to hang my Buck Rogers space helmet on and I left the theatre in a stew of frustrated expectations.

Okay, so paint me the nitpicker and the fussbudget, an arch-equivocator and a latter-day Momus! The movie certainly didn't bore me, but it sure in the Hell didn't satisfy either. In the final analysis, it's emblematic of how far this movie has failed to say that its makers demonstrate about as much empathy for their audience as the Martians did for us Earthlings. Otherwise, it is about as sterile as a landscape blasted by a Martian death ray. And at the usurious rate of nearly $10.00 per ticket I hardly find that an equitable deal. I immediately raced home and watched the George Pal 1953 original on DVD to flush the bad aftertaste out of my system. And it did the job better too - poor transfer, lousy colour correction and all.

Until the midnight hour tolls again and we here at Muppet Labs figure out why Hemingway's leopard turned himself into a cryogenic popsicle on the slopes of Kilamanjaro, good night and take good care of yourselves.



The title Bread and Circuses and essay content are Copyrighted 2005 by Curt C. Chiarelli.

[polymath]

Bravo Curt! Witty, erudite and well-argued. Whether I agree with the thrust of your gravamen or not, that sort of thing is a pleasure to read.

[Curt Chiarelli]

Hi Polymath:

It's been a Tom Cruise and George W. Bush day so far hasn't it? Thanks for the compliment, you've made my day!

[I, Brian]

Just to let you know I thought it best to remove the formatting tags from the the thread title - they don't work there.

[Curt Chiarelli]

Originally Posted by I, Brian

Just to let you know I thought it best to remove the formatting tags from the the thread title - they don't work there.

Thanks Brian! I suppose someone had to prevent me from publically exposing myself as computer clod of the century!

[Jives]

Yeah, Curt. I have to agree with you on Tom. He detracts from the movie because it becomes very difficult to suspend disbelief. I never forgot I was watching a movie because every time I saw Tom, it drew me right back to Earth.

The two kids worked, though.

Honestly I thought that casting an unknown for the protagonist would've worked better. (Although I thought the cop played by Tim Robbins was well done.

I had the advantage of just rereading the book before the movie and I was glad that Speilburg stuck as close as he could to the actual plot. The ferry scene was one of the best in the book, as was the "blood-sucking" scene. (Which was even more brutal in the book.)

Unfortunately, like the book, the ending was a complete letdown. Pfft.

[Curt Chiarelli]

Originally Posted by Jives

Yeah, Curt. I have to agree with you on Tom. He detracts from the movie because it becomes very difficult to suspend disbelief. I never forgot I was watching a movie because every time I saw Tom, it drew me right back to Earth.

The two kids worked, though.

Honestly I thought that casting an unknown for the protagonist would've worked better. (Although I thought the cop played by Tim Robbins was well done.

I had the advantage of just rereading the book before the movie and I was glad that Speilburg stuck as close as he could to the actual plot. The ferry scene was one of the best in the book, as was the "blood-sucking" scene. (Which was even more brutal in the book.)

Unfortunately, like the book, the ending was a complete letdown. Pfft.

Hi Jives:

Yeah, I always get this overwhelming impression watching Cruise perform that he's trying to desperately overcompensate for some deep personal flaw (I mean, other than toxic-level narcissicism, of course). And in the process of overcompensating he overacts and calls too much attention to his own presence in the movie. Maybe if his sisters bought him one of those three-way, full-length mirrors you find in tailor shops he would become so engaged with his own image he would quit plagueing the lives of movie-goers and beautiful, but dimwitted, starlets forever.

Wells' ending was a double-edged sword, now wasn't it? Altogether brilliant, witty and, yet, an anti-climax. To place everything within context, consider the alternative options available to Wells: have a large (and predictable) battle set piece where humanity wins or a nihlistic one where Martians assert themselves as the dominant lifeform on our planet.

As you can see, following the logic of his own construct to its inevitable conclusion, Wells painted himself into a corner on this issue. Wells had too much integrity as a man and writer to fall back on a cheesy Deus ex machina strategem and so micro-organisms conquering an advanced race it was. It's also pretty clear that Wells got his rocks off submitting mankind to the humiliation of seeing all his most precious, arrogant illusions go up in flames.

[genisis2]

I wont say I laughed out loud but I did laugh. I enjoyed your caustic review & I hope I never get on your nasty side Ohh I forgot I didnt hate this movie but I was distracted by Cruise because of all the nonsense he caused prior to the release of the movie. I coudnt get past the nitwit Cruise to get into his character or enjoy the movie.

[Curt Chiarelli]

Originally Posted by genisis2

I wont say I laughed out loud but I did laugh. I enjoyed your caustic review & I hope I never get on your nasty side Ohh I forgot I didnt hate this movie but I was distracted by Cruise because of all the nonsense he caused prior to the release of the movie. I coudnt get past the nitwit Cruise to get into his character or enjoy the movie.

Thanks for your feedback! You may not credit this after reading some of my postings here on this forum, but as long as my gag reflex threshold limit for dishonesty, cruelty and stupidity aren't reached, I'm actually a very pleasant guy. Good around domesticated pets and small children too!

Yup, Cruise is the speed bump on the freeway of movie entertainment for me also. And the less said about Tom being in touch with his inner Thetan, the better. Goddamn you L. Ron Hubbard! Goddamn you to Hell forever!

[genisis2]

LOL now youve peaked my interest! Ill have to go through all your postings.