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Movie Review
by Rasmus Of The Dead 2009-2010
This is actually a reconstruction. I believe the old site had a standalone review of this movie, but it's not among the pages in the zip folder I have left, so I suppose I must have either deleted it by accident at some point, without including it in the "Scraps" as it should have been. However, I'm reasonably certain that this reconstruction is more or less a copy of the original movie review page.
It was written mainly, of course, as a tribute to the "living dead" movie genre in general, and the movie "Land Of The Dead" in particular, but also, not least, as a reaction to an 18th century piece in which the author of it expressed the view that anybody so called "deaf and blind" (by which, as far as I could understand, he was in so many words referring to anybody who didn't see things the same way as himself) did not have a soul and was therefor, in his opinion actually "dead" (no, this was not a satirical piece; he actually meant that). -Very well I shall not object to being counted amongst the "dead"; but rather I would embrace such a classification with pride. -It is my belief that the "Land Of The Dead" movie; as I try to make apparent in this review, has a somewhat similar rationale (as mine; of protesting the notion of perceiving other human beings as "walking corpses" whome it is seemingly alright to persecute in all sorts of ways), by stressing an underlying theme of class struggle; atempting to view the "dead" in a less antagonist light; as victims of oppression and of modern type extermination campaigns, rather than as mindless monsters in style with the vermin campaigns of nazi germany of the 1930s.
Modern movie monsters have had a tendency to develop from originally clearly antagonist characters into protagonist or semi protagonist versions or reinterpretations. Thus eg. the werewolf or vampire character types who, from the classic, blood thirsty versions; in movies like "Teen Wolf" or "Blood Ties" becomes more humane, and actually sympathetic characters, reminiscent of the superhero stereotype. Even the more bizar type of creatures from "classic" folklore have been subjet to this evolution. One movie monster stereotype, however, appear to have been left more or less left out of this development; namely the "Living Dead" type of movie monster. More or less. Though two movies in particular should be mentioned in this context: Namely "Shawn Of The Dead", and "Land Of The Dead".
In "Shawn Of The Dead" the resurrected corpses more or less follows the classic stereotype, as being portrayed as a mass of contageously "de-personalized" mob-people, mindlessly trying to eat the living; a plague which has to be struck down. However, at the end of the movie, when the living have gotten the dead under control, they do gain a more sympathetic look, as we now see the living hold their "died" friends and spouses as a kind of pets. In this movie the "deads" are no longer so dangerous once they have been tamed and subdued. "Shawn Of The Dead" is groundbreaking in that it transforms the originally unambiguous "enemy" gestalt, under which the living dead stereotype had hitherto been seen, into a more tolerant - or at least less intolerant - "slave" gestalt: It no longer appear like "the only good corpse is a dead corpse": It now seems suficient to submit and enslave the "sub-humans".
"Land Of The Dead" takes the step further and questions the implicit "sub-human" gestalt as such. The previous balance of viewing the "dead" as clear antagonists and the "living" as equally clear protagonists gets somewhat blurred in this move, by the recurrent theme of this movie; that perhaps it is not just alright to plunder and rape and commit the worst kind of atrocities against the communities of others unlike ourselves, and to use other people for live target practicing, simply because we have decided that they are somehow "dead" anyways.
Right from the beginning of this movie the "corpses" are portrayed with an amount of personality and even compassion. And the "living"; although still mainly the protagonists of the movie, as somewhat questionable in their battle against the "corpses", which in this movie has the form of assault and plunder: As one of the protagonists comment, as he and his peers are on a raid to get proviantation: "I thought it was gonna be a battle. But this is just slaughter." In "Land Of The Dead" the "living" have fortressed themselves on an island divided between the rich; living luxuriously in the City Of The Living, ruled by the rich antagonist; the self proclaimed "owner" of the city, and on the other hand the poor; living under crappy conditions outside the city.
At the end of this movie the "corpses", led by a living dead leader, eventually storm the City Of The Living; in what appear not so much as "hunger for human flesh" as rather in outrage against the tyranny of the city. At the end of the movie we see our protagonists; still "living", in the outland of the "dead"; looking across the water towards the destruction of the city. They get eye contact with the leader of the dead and one of them raise a bazooka, but the main protagonist stops him with the wise words: "Leave them be. They're just looking for a place to be, just like us." And the "corpse" leader similarly nods at them in recognition. Thus the overall theme of "Land Of The Dead" appear to be that perhaps it is not alright to persecute other people; using them as live target practice, etc. for no better reason than we simply have decided to view them as "dead meat anyways.
Although "Land Of The Dead" thus portrays the "corpses" as actually humane beings, and their leader perhaps even has at least potentially protagonistic features, this movie avoids falling into the ditch of the many other modern monster movies; of making a latent "master race" of "superhumans", or self-righteous "punishers of evil or unlawful vilains", of them: In so many words; the justification of the "Living Dead" in this movie is not being "better" than the others; but simply that they are suppressed and persecuted people fighting for their right to exist.
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Rasmus Of The Dead 2009-2010 |