July 2 - July 9
The Night Eats the World, The Crazies, Blood Simple
- The Night Eats the World - 34
The Night Eats the World is an interesting attempt at remaking 28 Days Later, but shooting the entire thing inside a single apartment. It plays with concepts such as loneliness, rage, guilt, and suicide, but never delves deeply enough into any one of them to be particularly meaningful. At just over 90-minutes long, the screenplay for Night is certainly intriguing, but the execution feels entirely too bloated and slow. There’s no one thing to point to for the lack of engagement here, it’s all just very… boring. Adapted from a novel of the same name, The Night Eats the World is the first full-length work for both the writers and director, and it is interesting in that sense. It’s just very obviously a first work… which is a critique I’ll use again in a different light shortly.
- The Crazies [2010] - 74
A remake of Romero’s 1973 film of the same name, The Crazies [similar to the next film I’ll talk about] is one I wish I saw when it was new. 13-years later, it’s still quite good within its genre, it’s just a little trite when considered against everything else just like it. The weirdest thing about the film is that it feels just like a Stephen King story… but isn’t one. Campy jump scares, some good “are they/ aren’t they” tension, and a couple of really excellent kills makes 2010’s The Crazies a great October pick to consider for upcoming Halloween watchlists.
- Blood Simple [1984] - 83
I don’t like putting numbers on things of this age because they’re so out of context, but I’m already breaking format for reasons I’ll explain… So you get a number rating for a 40-year old film. Blood Simple is the inaugural work of the [in]famous Coen brothers. Viewed as film at large here in 2023, it’s a little slow, a little messy, and a little boring, but looked at as the start of a career, this film is absolutely stunning. It’s so clear how the rest of their work has spawned from this initial foray into feature-length filmmaking as, unlike other hyper-styled creators [looking at you Wes Anderson], their work has evolved and matured with time; further honing their skills, craft, and signature. I wish I’d been around/ seen this one when it was new and I could appreciate it as something more fresh. It reminds me [almost certainly not by accident] of 2020’s equally brilliant debut Blood on Her Name, and I hope similar success comes to those creators as time goes by.
Anyway, let’s talk about art.
The above image is particularly striking within the “seminal work of film” framework because of what I think is its intentional analogy to Michelangelo’s fresco, The Creation of Adam, as seen here. Spoilers ahead, if a 40-year old film can qualify for “spoilers”.
Obviously it isn’t a perfect recreation and this is a lot of opinion, but this scene marks an interesting turning point in the film and serves as a sort of quiet climax to the beginning of the ultimate conflict. Here, a man who’s been shot by the man he hired to kill another man is seen feebly letting go of the gun that killed him as he is buried [half] alive. The gun represents the convoluted knowledge that both moved the story to this point and forwards to its [semi] tragic ending.
In summary, the film is a “comedy of errors” type fiasco after Julian hires a hitman to kill both his wife [Abby] and ex-employee, Ray, for cheating. Said hitman fakes the job, rips Julian off, and kills him; staging the crime to make it look like Abby did it by using her gun and planting it at the scene. When Ray stops by to confront Julian over missing pay and discovers both the body and Abby’s gun, he assumes exactly what was intended and immediately begins to try and clean up the mess to protect her from the authorities. During this process he learns that Julian isn’t actually dead [yet] and has multiple confrontations within himself of how best to deal with the issue. Ultimately choosing to bury him in a newly planted field, Julian weakly produces the gun from his pocket, points it at Ray, and slowly pulls the trigger two times as Ray carefully takes it from his hand. It’s a very tense and interesting scene because we, as the viewer, know the gun has 3 rounds in it and only 2 have been fired. Fortunately for Ray, as the cylinder revolves, the hammer strikes nothing but air and all that he’s left with is the “knowledge” that his new girlfriend murdered her husband and he’s been left to clean up the body.
I like this scene both because of the way I think it represents the famous fresco and the way it exemplifies the beginning of an incredibly interesting and unique set of careers. When God gives life to Adam he, by proxy, sets in motion everything that comes next… And we all know how most of that went/ is going. Unlike most of the nonsense that the world has become [assuming you believe these origin tales] the Coen brothers’ careers have taken the life granted them by this film and done some truly great and intriguing things. Within the context of the film, however, I think there’s another interesting piece to this image comparison. Again, I’m not an art history major, so maybe there’s more and/or less to this. But, in the world in which The Creation of Adam was painted, language existed [more or less] in a similar format to how it does today [and 1984 for that matter]. This is to say that, in the format in which this was made, reading was typically done from left to right, meaning that it is entirely possible that God is not so much “touching” Adam and giving him life, but that what we’re seeing is actually Adam creating God. Taken this way, the scene from the film is even more interesting.
When Ray takes the gun from Julian he is creating a very rich [and very damaging] narrative for himself, an entire world that… doesn’t actually exist, and he spends the entire night in this field mulling it over, sitting on its implications, and stewing on its “facts” before going home and creating more confusion because of what he’s decided is true. [Am I talking about religion or film? Who can never be sure?] In the end, all this confusion, misplaced conjecture, and creation of fantasy leads to Julian’s death at the hands of the hitman and Abby’s ultimate revenge. While I’m sure there’s plenty more in the film I’ve missed, this scene stood out as particularly striking… So here we are. A short review and a layman’s art analysis.
You’re welcome.
