Cloverfield (2007) vs Silent Light (Stellet Licht) (2007)

This week the Monday Evening Political Slot combines a du(a?)(e?)l review, offering two for the price of one. With political commentary in tow. So, who will win the battle of these two behemoths? And, just as importantly, why?



Cloverfield first...

Much hyped and brilliantly marketed, this J.J. Abrams vehicle, directed by Matt Reeves and starring a bunch of unknowns, centres on an attack on New York. But by who? Or what?

Now, I'm afraid I can't really review this without revealing what or who the mystery attacker is, so if you don't know look away now and you'll just have to come back to find out the punchline of this political slot when you've seen it. Anyway, the movie was released on friday and it is now widely known what this attacker is.

It's a hacking great monster.

Anyway, this is a truly revolutionary film. Not really in the way that it uses handheld cameras and provides a first hand perspective, nor in regards to the subject material, characterisation, editing or direction. What then? It's difficult to pinpoint and describe exactly, but it's essentially the combination of incredible realism and utterly stunning visuals the likes of which have never been joined before to such incredible effect. It's a disaster movie crossed with sci-fi, but it is handled so perfectly I genuinely walked out of the cinema and drove home casting a wary eye towards the horizon in case a hacking great monster there lurked. Now, I would personally say that a fictional film starring a huge CGI creature which has this effect on a viewer deserves a huge amount of kudos. Never before have I witnessed the normal and everyday so dramatically collapsed by something that should absolutely, on the face of it, be absurd. Unbelievable. Could never have imagined a monster movie could ever make anyone feel like this. I expected to enjoy it (on the same kind of level I enjoyed War of The Worlds say) but I never expected this. I cannot wait to see whether it will stand up to a second viewing. I might even go back and watch it again before it finishes its run at the cinema.

It gets extra credit because, as I say, there is nothing spectacular about the basic plot, or narrative (it's a very basic disaster movie set-up) and the performances are no more than okay. They don't need to be anything more than that, however, as the dialogue takes care of that. One further aspect worthy of commendation is the very original way there is absolutely nothing (except one tantalising hint in the last shot) of monster backstory. Perhaps that's why it works so damn well.

A word of warning. This will split audiences straight down the middle. Some will simply hate this and find it laughable and part of me can see why, though I will not be able to accept the reasons for it. For 85 minutes you are living in a city attacked by a mysterious creature and it is completely believable and totally absorbing as a result and nothing will change that for me. Also, the camera work (literally) nearly made me sick, but that was all part of the fun for me. It won't be for others. All reservations aside, this gets a provisional:

A+



Now, Silent Light. This is a slow-burning drama, set amongst the medieval German speaking Mennonite community in Mexico, centred around the philandering Johan's (Cornelio Wall) extra marital affair with Esther (Miriam Toews). The film begins with a 7 minute long shot of the sun coming up and ends with a 7 minute long shot of the sun going down.

Could any two movies be more different?

No, and on two levels.

Silent Light represents everything that is bad about film making. It is an overly-indulgent, pretentious, vacuous, garbled, heartless piece of nonsense. It is a character piece without characters, an artistic piece devoid completely of any artistic beauty. The director, Carlos Reygadas, is the "enfant terrible" of Arthouse Cinema, apparantly. Perhaps it's because he makes such shockingly bad films like this which turn people away from the genuis that can be Arthouse Cinema.

Reygadas is clearly of the opinion that he has a real gift for cinematography. Who else could be so arrogant so as to presume his or her viewers will be completely captivated by 7 minute long shots of the rising and setting sun? But someone needs to tell Reygadas and his cinematographer Alexis Zabe that photography is about more than pointing a camera at something that appears beautiful. You still have to show the audience why it's beautiful, and therein lies the art. Reygadas possesses none of this skill, even though he clearly presumes he has it in abundance. He would do well to look at Roger Deakins' much lauded (by us!) efforts in The Assassination of Jesse James. Here images mean something and represent the larger, bleaker, troubled world they (in totality) capture. There is nothing of that here, even though Reygadas' film aims at a similar darkness.

The performances are okay, but the characters they portray are so utterly lifeless, unengaging and ultimately one dimensional that those performances scarcely matter. This just drags and drags and drags. Appauling. It never for one moment allows you to forget that you're watching a film.

It is not the none thing among arthouse lovers to say that slow, ethereal, (supposedly) thoughtful, 'artistic' films like this can be terrible. So, take it from me, they can be. If you don't believe me, go sit through this. I dare you.

F

So, then, it's pretty obvious which film wins the battle! This has been interesting for me, because I (obviously) did not deliberately go and see these two films with a post like this in mind, they just came to unexpectedly represent something that is constantly on my mind when I see and discuss film.

The typical response of arthouse fans to people like me who post reviews like this of such a 'glorious' film as Silent Light is that I just didn't get it, I'm not on the same plane, as witnessed by my hopelessly high mark for Cloverfield. To that snobbish reposte (which I'm sure most of us have heard at one time or another) my reply is this:

The true 'art' of film comes in collapsing the unreal into the real. The ironic thing about this, I guess, is that it is usually character driven arthouse films which are best credited for doing so, and yet a blockbusting monster flick can manage to do it so much more successfully than an artistic slow burner. And that says as much about the acheivement of Cloverfield as it does the abject failure of Silent Light. It is not a film's provenance that matters, only its result.