![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Watchmen, again
Apr. 18th, 2009 10:50 amSo we saw Watchmen last night as Patty hadn't yet, and I have to say, that eventhough the pacing problems were a lot more evident to me, I loved it more this second time around, perhaps mostly because it is the alternate universe story of my childhood.
From the earrings to the songs to Sally Jupiter indicting me with her own nostalgia ("the past just keeps getting brighter and brighter") I was entranced.
I also got to spend this viewing on the details, and they are pretty amazing. From photos on people's walls to advertisements in the landscape to the newspaper headlines strewn about. The set design is full of funny, nasty love.
What I was also struck by was how much the film has to say about body image. It's not just that Dan and Laurie only get it on for each other once they are in costume. Oh no. It's that all the masked heroes are wearing these deeply sculpted clothing items and without them -- well they are just like you and I. Adrian is too skinny without his fucking shoulder pads. The Commedian and Dan only seems like that's all muscle because of the shape of those suits. Even Sally Jupiter, as she unlaces from her outfit... even Laurie. It's about 800 times subtler than it should be, but this is America and Hollywood after all. But it's there, intentionally or no. And as someone who views all clothing as costume, and creates illusion in my own flesh with how I dress, it was mesmerizing. There are a bazillion verbal references to it in the script too, but you don't see them on a first viewing -- you've got too much else to do.
Finally, the performances. The woman playing Laurie thankfully doesn't have much heavy lifting to do (and maybe it's the script that makes it seem like she's a mediocre actress and not her, but eh), but the other performances? The details in them? If you see it a second time never watch Veidt's body language, just watch his eyes: the puzzlement, the lonliness, an almost childlike confusion are pretty much constant. It's an amazing performance.
The woman playing Sally Jupiter is also amazing. The rape scene? When juxtaposed with Laurie and Dan fighting that gang? I've never seen such a complex attempt to make the audience really, really uncomfortable (and I suspect the audience largely didn't bother to be), and it's all on the shoulders of the actress playing Sally pretty much. Great stuff.
The Comedian's performance almost isn't worth mention, not because it isn't great, but because it's a fucking sledgehammer of perfection. No nuance there. Nor should there be.
Dr. Manhattan. Wow. Billy Crudup's voiceover center of the film life out of order thing, is still a masterful short film in and of itself. It's hard as fuck to carry a voiceover that goes on and on like. Testament to writing and editing, yes, but also the tiny, tiny nuance in his performance, largely vocal. It, like the opening credit sequence, are two amazing self-contained films within the film.
Rorsharch. The performance is just amazing. And I felt more sympathy for him on the second go 'round. But I am sort of amazed by the fandom love. I love anti-heroes. But to me, he's just broken. Not tragically, but frighteningly. That the performance (that many of these performances) won't win awards is sad. It's amazing, internally scary-seeming work.
~
I hated not being an adult in the 80s. Hated it. The world was terrifying and alive and full or parties as we all fall down.
I read party magazines like Details, got to see the beautiful people at 2am at the Odeon when my parents would take me there for dinner when I'd awake in thunderstorms terrified of wind and bombs, and eventually snuck out to my own nightlife adventures: AREA and MARS
I remember a pudgy dude in a suit, -- so blond, so white, so entitled in his body language -- said he was in med school, said he was 27, and I was fifteen maybe, and he grabbed onto my wrist hard enough to break in a bathroom, trying to put my hand on his cock and sweet talking me, as if the 'nicety' of mere cajoling wasn't total bullshit with a grip like that. I was scared shitless, but I was boney and too flexy, and I twisted my wrist out of his grasp and shouted "ha!" in his face before I ran.
So I watch Laurie and Dan and Adrian and Eddie, and I think, god, I was supposed to be out there among them. Not a costumed hero, but someone happy to see their celebrity in the endless night that was New York in the 80s. But they didn't actually happen, here, in this universe, and I was a child. Twelve-years-old. Thirteen. But I had this whole adult life in my head and in my lies by '85.
Like Sally says, the past keeps getting brighter and brighter. I love this movie. I love visiting my 80s that never were with these terrible, terrible people (they are terrible people in a terrible world. The movie almost makes you forget it).
It still seems ridiculous to me, despite being a pure incident of math, that I never got to go to Studio 54.
From the earrings to the songs to Sally Jupiter indicting me with her own nostalgia ("the past just keeps getting brighter and brighter") I was entranced.
I also got to spend this viewing on the details, and they are pretty amazing. From photos on people's walls to advertisements in the landscape to the newspaper headlines strewn about. The set design is full of funny, nasty love.
What I was also struck by was how much the film has to say about body image. It's not just that Dan and Laurie only get it on for each other once they are in costume. Oh no. It's that all the masked heroes are wearing these deeply sculpted clothing items and without them -- well they are just like you and I. Adrian is too skinny without his fucking shoulder pads. The Commedian and Dan only seems like that's all muscle because of the shape of those suits. Even Sally Jupiter, as she unlaces from her outfit... even Laurie. It's about 800 times subtler than it should be, but this is America and Hollywood after all. But it's there, intentionally or no. And as someone who views all clothing as costume, and creates illusion in my own flesh with how I dress, it was mesmerizing. There are a bazillion verbal references to it in the script too, but you don't see them on a first viewing -- you've got too much else to do.
Finally, the performances. The woman playing Laurie thankfully doesn't have much heavy lifting to do (and maybe it's the script that makes it seem like she's a mediocre actress and not her, but eh), but the other performances? The details in them? If you see it a second time never watch Veidt's body language, just watch his eyes: the puzzlement, the lonliness, an almost childlike confusion are pretty much constant. It's an amazing performance.
The woman playing Sally Jupiter is also amazing. The rape scene? When juxtaposed with Laurie and Dan fighting that gang? I've never seen such a complex attempt to make the audience really, really uncomfortable (and I suspect the audience largely didn't bother to be), and it's all on the shoulders of the actress playing Sally pretty much. Great stuff.
The Comedian's performance almost isn't worth mention, not because it isn't great, but because it's a fucking sledgehammer of perfection. No nuance there. Nor should there be.
Dr. Manhattan. Wow. Billy Crudup's voiceover center of the film life out of order thing, is still a masterful short film in and of itself. It's hard as fuck to carry a voiceover that goes on and on like. Testament to writing and editing, yes, but also the tiny, tiny nuance in his performance, largely vocal. It, like the opening credit sequence, are two amazing self-contained films within the film.
Rorsharch. The performance is just amazing. And I felt more sympathy for him on the second go 'round. But I am sort of amazed by the fandom love. I love anti-heroes. But to me, he's just broken. Not tragically, but frighteningly. That the performance (that many of these performances) won't win awards is sad. It's amazing, internally scary-seeming work.
~
I hated not being an adult in the 80s. Hated it. The world was terrifying and alive and full or parties as we all fall down.
I read party magazines like Details, got to see the beautiful people at 2am at the Odeon when my parents would take me there for dinner when I'd awake in thunderstorms terrified of wind and bombs, and eventually snuck out to my own nightlife adventures: AREA and MARS
I remember a pudgy dude in a suit, -- so blond, so white, so entitled in his body language -- said he was in med school, said he was 27, and I was fifteen maybe, and he grabbed onto my wrist hard enough to break in a bathroom, trying to put my hand on his cock and sweet talking me, as if the 'nicety' of mere cajoling wasn't total bullshit with a grip like that. I was scared shitless, but I was boney and too flexy, and I twisted my wrist out of his grasp and shouted "ha!" in his face before I ran.
So I watch Laurie and Dan and Adrian and Eddie, and I think, god, I was supposed to be out there among them. Not a costumed hero, but someone happy to see their celebrity in the endless night that was New York in the 80s. But they didn't actually happen, here, in this universe, and I was a child. Twelve-years-old. Thirteen. But I had this whole adult life in my head and in my lies by '85.
Like Sally says, the past keeps getting brighter and brighter. I love this movie. I love visiting my 80s that never were with these terrible, terrible people (they are terrible people in a terrible world. The movie almost makes you forget it).
It still seems ridiculous to me, despite being a pure incident of math, that I never got to go to Studio 54.
