Change Your Image
Karnevil-2
Reviews
The Last September (1999)
Identity Crisis
Slow-moving and extremely melodramatic film, but still interesting. Rare in that it compares a girl's (as opposed to the more common male narratives) coming-of-age to a nation's coming-of-age.
There is a certain amount of James Joyce-ian cruelty and mocking towards the Irish, Anglo-Irish, and British identities depicted in this film. The British soldiers are portrayed as silly, superficial, self-absorbed characters. Yet they are also powerful in that they have shaped the identities of both the Anglo-Irish (or pseudo-British) family, and the lower-class Irish "freedom-fighters." Once the soldiers leave to return to the front-lines, both Irish "halves" lose their purposes and identities. The director asks harshly, "Who are you and what is left of yourselves once your audience and oppressor have left?"
Likewise, the coming-of-age experiences of Lois, and "the woman passing out of her prime" story of Marda (played really well by Fiona Shaw) are also critically assessed. Lois is just beginning to discover the power (sometimes dangerously misdirected) that comes with female sexuality, while Marda is experiencing the powerlessness of female aging. Again, the director makes the point that identity cannot sustain on the outside; it must come from within.
*******Spoilers*******
Unlike the Irish and the Anglo-Irish family, however, Lois does possess a very strong inner core of identity that remains untouched, and it is not because she is oblivious to or uninvolved with the complicated social, political, religious, and economic situations that she encounters. Her strength in knowing who she is remains steady throughout. Therefore, the fact that she leaves Ireland at the end of the film can be seen as tragic. And it's an extra dig that she leaves for America. The U.S. during the 1920s was generally regarded as place where you forgot where you came from so that you could become an "American." But had Ireland - as a country, as a nation, as a homeland - become a place where someone with so strong an identity would be left unsatisfied?
28 Days Later... (2002)
Humans vs. Civilization
*****WARNING: Spoilers appear throughout the following commentary*****
The infection is called Rage. Do they mean Rage as in the human emotion, or R.A.G.E. as some kind of acronym? (I.E. government experiment gone awry.)
Those infected with "rage" are not really walking dead (thus the unfair comparisons, imho, to the Living Dead movies) - they are mortal. Although it is evident that the infected die from starvation, they don't ever appear to be feeding on humans, only either quickly passing the infection on, or quickly killing their prey off.
On one level, the infection is less the dilemma in this film - almost like a side-note. The real problem lies in how the uninfected react.
The military was chosen very intentionally for this film to represent an institution of civilization. Major West demonstrates to Jim how well his soldiers have kept themselves organized; how civilized they have all remained with a boiler for hot showers and a fancy dining room in which to eat meals.
Yet West is not the noble officer he appears to be. He sits on a richly upholstered chair from the mansion his team has helped themselves to, and surveys his domain like a king. During the "toast" at dinner, he helps himself first to the meal (what kind of officer feeds himself before his soldiers have been fed?) During the attack, he remains seated at the table to finish his meal. He later informs Jim that he promised women - now meaning Selena and Hannah - to his troops (not that the promise was his to make in the first place.)
Even when we all have a common enemy, we still cannot get along and make ends meet. At the end of the film, the look of startled confusion on Jim's face in response to Selena asking him if the pilot had seen them this time seems to ask, "Does it really matter? Because what are we being save from, and where are we being saved to?"
********End of Spoilers**********
28 Days Later does a fantastic job of showing how civilization does not come from without - it does not come from luxuries, riches, or ownership. It comes from within - our acceptance of the responsibility to "maintain" no matter what. And it also challenges us to look at our own recognized institutions of civilization: have we built them upon false premises?
This movie will be enjoyed by readers of "Lord of the Flies" and "Heart of Darkness". Chris Eccleston is subtly excellent as the manipulative, yet still complex, Major West. Cillian Murphy, who plays Jim, possesses an amazing array of body language and facial expressions that augment not just his own character, but the general themes of the movie.