Uncreated Conscience

Saw Watchmen again last night with Sir Gay, which he enjoyed. Bear and Sir Gay seem to be exceptions among people who have not read WATCHMEN who also enjoyed the film. (I am of two minds: the movie as a film was worse the second time around, but I can’t help loving it anyway because I’m such a fan.) “I’m impressed,” said Sir Gay, “Hollywood doesn’t make movies like this.”

Actually, they do. I think he’s referring to the subversion of “good” and “evil” which doesn’t belong to Hollywood at all, but Alan Moore. It’s very much a blockbuster Hollywood movie; it’s just that the source material is not, although I believe the transformation of Patrick Wilson into Dan Dreiberg was possibly the most impressive factor for both Bear and Sir Gay.

JJ: Dan Dreiberg? He was the pedophile from Hard Candy.
BEAR: Really?

JJ: Dan Dreiberg? He was Raoul from The Phantom of the Opera.
SIR GAY: The hot one? Really?

My friend Katranna made a post about superheroes, contemplating the swing in the pendulum from “glorious heroism” in comics to “gritty, realistic, and tortured heroes” (as so very nicely encapsulated in Watchmen‘s opening credits and no I won’t stop gushing about them), which had me thinking about the “antihero vs. the villain.”

I’ve perhaps documented too well my love of villains (Ben from LOST, Roger Chillingworth from THE SCARLET LETTER, Alec Stokes-D’Urberville from TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES, etc.) but I’ve never exactly considered the why of it before. It would be facetious to say that I find Evil appealing, so there must be something else altogether that attracts my interest.

In my comment I touch briefly on the concept of the hero as the champion of the individual. My favourite character in WATCHMEN is Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias who in nearly any other book would be considered an out-and-out villain (he touches on this topic briefly himself). And he is, make no mistake about that, but as with anything else Moore has written, that isn’t necessarily the only aspect of his character. (Spoilers again below the cut.)

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“Buckets of rain, buckets of tears, got all them buckets comin’ out of my ears.” Listening to Bob Dylan on the subway into work this morning (as it appropriately was pouring buckets of rain), I was instantly transported back to fall 2004 when I first truly took the time to set aside Blonde on Blonde and listen. Music, like smells, seems so closely tied with memory. In my ears, I am 19 years old again and writing with Robin at the Grey Dog, believing we could take over the world with the combined power of our prose and charm, hearing “Sara” come in on over the loudspeakers and pretending I’m a “Scorpio sphinx in a calico dress”, forgetting for the moment that I hate my given name.

Such is the power of images and song. The opening credits of Watchmen are stuck in my brain. Tonight Sir Gay are going to try and catch a screening after work. He hasn’t read it but has been interested since I made him watch the trailer repeatedly at Bear’s shore house when it came out last summer and I would like to see the movie again from a more comfortable distance (that is, not 15 feet away). I also wonder if I’ll find the violence slightly more palatable when it’s not DIRECTLY IN MY FACE. I will admit that gore bothers me, but only on living people. Torture porn movies like the Saw series? Make me ill. (Over the top gore doesn’t bother me much in movies like Kill Bill Vol. I.) Hordes upon hordes of dead mutilated bodies? Totally chill. (Dead people don’t bother me.)

Gore in print mediums like comic books and prose novels is less bothersome to me (I am glad I read WATCHMEN before I saw it; I knew when to avert my eyes!) and I think it’s the dimension of sound in movies that grosses me out. Wet, meaty sounds? Crunchy, breaking noises? Ew. Ew. The human body aurally reduced to food makes me nauseated. My gore threshold has risen over the years; I can watch bodies explode, brains dribble out, heads get cut off, etc. but I still have an enormous problem with knives. Knives make me nervous. Even if knife-violence is not portrayed onscreen, I’ll still hide behind my eyes, cringing with sympathetic pain. Hitchcock’s shower scene in Psycho must have made a huge impression on me as a kid. Or it might come back to the human-body-as-meat thing.

Watched WALL·E with Sofa yesterday and sobbed like a baby in my shrimp lo-mein. Again. (Unlike other movies that make me cry, I seem to cry more when I rewatch this.) I am more easily moved to emotion in films than in books because of the sound dimension. Music combined with images will make me choke up without fail, even if the movie isn’t particularly good (I think WALL·E is excellent, of course). I am easily emotionally manipulated: put on a sentimental song and some heartwrenching images and like clockwork the tears will come. However, words are far less likely to induce the same reaction, so when a book does make me cry, it’s a big deal. Thus far the only books to make me cry have been Marcus Zusak’s THE BOOK THIEF and Beverly Cleary’s RAMONA AND HER MOTHER.

Back to reading this manuscript for El Jefe.

I found the opening credits for Watchmen online which I’ve mentioned before as being brilliant despite–or perhaps because–being different from the graphic novel. It introduces so very well the rise and fall of the costumed vigilante, as well as explaining (without clunky exposition or dialogue) the alternate, pseudo-apocalyptic world in which WATCHMEN is set. Watching this the second time around, I noticed a few things I hadn’t before, such as Rorschach’s symbol and the sly reference to Andy Warhol.

Does Matthew Goode as Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias remind anyone else of David Bowie? Anyone? Anyone?

Bear came into the city on Friday night with the intention of watching Watchmen with me (the process of buying tickets for the movie was quite nearly a fiasco–movies sell out fast in Manhattan by god). We met up with our friend Jerry Who after I got off work and had dinner at a diner before getting to the theatre.

Of course, we ought to have known to get there about an hour beforehand in order to find decent seats, but the three of us got caught up in a discussion about the publishing industry and its business practices (Jerry Who went to business school) while debating the fiscal viability of a market based entirely on subjectivity (Bear, ever the scientist, doesn’t believe there is such a thing as subjectivity–it can all be boiled down to a formula). The result was that the three of us had to find a seat in the very front about 15 feet away from the enormous screen. My neck still hasn’t forgiven me.

Review of Watchmen

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Let me say first: I liked it. It exceeded my hopes and expectations, although admittedly the bar has been set extremely low for adaptations of Alan Moore’s graphic novels. (See: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and V for Vendetta) This movie is better than it really has any right to be, considering how Alan Moore has famously said that the graphic novel is “unfilmable.”

My feelings about Alan Moore have been fairly well documented so I needn’t go there. That being said, I’m trying to review this movie somewhat objectively, as a film and as an adaptation. As a film? It is uneven with moments of brilliance. As an adaptation? It admirably tries its best but I will have to agree with Alan Moore here: WATCHMEN is unfilmable. (Spoilers follow beneath the cut.)

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