New Superhero Flick Not for the Uninitiated

By Bruce Collier
March 5, 2009 Issue

Zack Snyder's Watchmen is based on a series of graphic novels—12 in all—by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. I have not read any of them, and that's usually not a problem with film adaptations. I enjoyed Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, and I still haven't read a word of the novels. People I have spoken with who have read the Watchmen books have made the same comment: "The books make it more clear."

Sorry, Zack and the four guys I saw on screenplay credits, you have to make it clear for everyone. Watchmen is close to three hours in length. The acting is more than competent, and it's full of gooey eye-candy special effects, but it's as pretentiously muddled as a French constitution. The story defies encapsulation, but it's essentially the tragic saga of a group of costumed heroes—Silk Spectre, The Comedian, Nite-Owl, Rorschach, Ozymandias and Dr. Manhattan—and their progress from the 1940s to an alternate-history 1985 America. In this world, Richard Nixon has stayed in office for four terms, and has outlawed "masks" (costumed crimefighters) in response to a public outcry against vigilantism. Some are dead, some are retired, some have passed the cape to apprentices, and some are still out there catching crooks and dodging cops.

And committing enough mayhem for a Saw retrospective. Watchmen is rated R, not so much the language (fairly tame) or the nudity (spare and generally tasteful), but for an onslaught of sawed-off limbs, cleaved skulls, scalded flesh and gallons of spurting blood. The story—a melange of Cold War paranoid politics, Orwellian corporate tyranny and doomsday tech—takes so long getting on course that I did not care how it ended, as long as it did end. Curiously, I'm told the graphic novels aren't nearly as, well, graphic.

Mine may be a minority opinion, and maybe no one but fans should see movies like Watchmen. Still, if you can't enjoy a film without studying for it beforehand, someone failed.

DVD OF THE FORTNIGHT
Mike Leigh may be the closest thing to an auteur in modern cinema. His largely improvised character studies are immediately recognizable, despite the ever-changing repertory companies and locales. His latest, Happy Go-Lucky, benefits from Sally Hawkins’ remarkable performance as carefree primary schoolteacher Poppy. At 30, Poppy isn’t about to start growing up, and if she had a theme song, it would be Kris Kristofferson’s “Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down.”

The movie is populated with perfectly realized characters, from the apathetic bookshop clerk Poppy meets in the opening sequence to the self-loathing driving instructor whose teaching methods include quasi-Satanic symbolism and racist tirades. Best of all is the man-hating flamenco dance instructor—you’d swear that Leigh had been studying the classic comedies of Preston Sturges.

There’s no conventional plot here, but each successive episode reveals new dimensions about Poppy and her friends, family and co-workers. Hawkins is so completely engaging that when one of the supporting players finally does get to her, it’s enough to break even the most callous viewer’s heart.
- Christopher Manson

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