The Belated and Unnecessary Watchmen Review Nobody Asked For

 

Uh... I got nothin'

 

Okay, so it’s been nearly a week to the day that I saw Watchmen at the beloved Alamo Drafthouse Enema, and I’m typically late to weigh in. I won’t go into the bugfuckery of litigious paperwork which has kept me away, but rather cleverly disguise my unreliability with some comment on how this film will likely affect all who endeavor to see it. I’ve been thinking about Watchmen a lot since I saw it. I’ve spoken to a lot of people from a pretty big cross-section of society who’ve seen it as well and all of the input kind of brings me back to my initial feelings on it. Without self-editing or over-framing (but with over-hyphenating), I’ll boil it down. It’s an imperfect mess that I think everyone really should see.

On the face of it, Watchmen hit and didn’t hit an equal amount of notes for me, as a film. It’s funny just how muchof my initial take from my earlier Watchmen post was dead on concerning my feelings on the film once it was over. I would choose now to kind of reference specific points made in that post regarding both the problematic nature of adaptation from one medium to another and how obvious it is just how much the filmmakers seem to get Watchmen on every level. Without going too far into self-plagiarism, you could use my earlier post as a preamble to this review, such as it is.

That said, Zack Snyder really, really loves Watchmen. From every perfect interpretation of a visual progression in a graveyard, to all of the parts of the story that he fought to keep in despite studio hesitance, it’s clear this guy is as obsessed, if not more-so, than every fan-boy (or girl) ripping him a new one or praising the sanctity of his sack for such a literal translation. This slavish love is so represented onscreen that it clearly separates those who’ve read the beloved source from those who haven’t immediately as the final credits begin to roll. If you see this in a theatre (which I desperately encourage you to do, despite any misgivings), just listen to the conversations occurring around you as it ends. Depending on whether or not the people discussing it have read it, you will hear a vastly different conversation about what just unfolded. The one difference of opinion you likely won’t find between these camps however, is the culmination of how it all worked for them as a whole. What everyone is likely to agree on is that to a larger degree this thing is bug-fuck nuts insane and none of us really knows what to make of it. I am amazed on a lot of levels that this film was ever made. When you think of the level of commitment and involvement necessary, both financial and creative,  to produce film at this scale it’s pretty hard to grasp. I both love and am confounded by this film in probably the exact degree of certainty as nearly everyone I’ve spoken with. I’ve learned to take both dissent and praise with an equal level of salt, but I’m still left with a schizophrenic adoration for this project, and I have to say that on some levels it’s refreshing to be this engaged with a major release film (biggest R-rated opening ever, if I’m not mistaken), and that I can love something and still destroy it on such a cerebral level. It’s almost critic-proof since nobody but the viewer can judge it in any personal way without first-hand exposure. Simply put, Watchmen is both brilliant and misfire all in one, and everyone needs to see it for themselves. 

For the meat of it, then: The acting in this film is phenomenal almost to the person. Nearly every actor just kills it. Jackie Earle Haley’s work as the deadly, uncompromising Rorschach here is simply unmissable. You will not be able to take your eyes off him at any point at which he is onscreen, mask or no. He got this property on the same level that Snyder did, and it’s plainly obvious every time you watch him interact as this character. Mix that up with a really perfect and initially pathetic performance by Patrick Wilson as Nite Owl II (who Haley shares the most screen-time with), and one of the biggest problems with this film becomes readily apparent. That problem being that for every expertly crafted sequence that Zack Snyder creates, there are moments when the wonderful cast, who give it everything they can in nearly every scene, are badly in need of a director more capable when it comes to editing. Scenes where Wilson and Haley are both eating up dialogue and oozing chemistry sorely miss an attention to pacing that is replaced with slavish devotion to literary beats that maybe shouldn’t have been so strictly adhered to. The pacing throughout is nearly totally consistent but the natural gravity of moments with these actors, and those of Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the Comedian, often suffer due to the fact that the movie somewhat resembles a balanced wave. Artistically, I think this is one of those confoundingly endearing aspects of the film that will one day be dissected as both detriment and perfect choice, which matches the progression to the detached way in which Billy Crudup’s Godlike Dr. Manhattan (more on him in a moment) views the world around him. But the structural narrative cannot hope to engage a larger audience at such a robotic gait, especially when such a character driven movie must sacrifice character-driven beats. On the same token, this kind of cements my weird relationship with the film and why I think that it will find it’s audience in years to come, if maybe not with the immediacy which the creators might have hoped. In being so devoted to preservation of source, Snyder both triumphs victoriously and shoots himself in the foot, as just when the wave upon which the movie could be structured hits a trough with an awkward scene, it then crests magnificently with another. Just for example: Any moment when Carla Gugino hits flat note after flat note as the elderly Silk Spectre I in age makeup, she has already nailed another scene perfectly as her younger self opposite a truly fantastic Jeffrey Dean Morgan in Comedian garb. For the one awkwardly spat line about the American Dream that Morgan gives, Billy Crudup delivers an expert and glorious rumination on his life as it happens, past, present, and future, right in front of his lonely eyes and with simultaneous immediacy. Crudup as Dr. Manhattan is this film’s secret weapon in more ways than one. Crudup’s soulful, yet detached voice and mo-cap work in this film sells all of it’s big ideas and small human touches as the perfect vehicle for exposition. To be this underrepresented physically on screen, and yet still so utterly present in the performance of a literal God-made-atomic-flesh really shows the level of imagination and understanding that this actor is capable of, and it’s slightly telling that Snyder seems at his best when dealing with the themes of the film in a manner relying on Manhattan’s visual-heavy narrative plot points to get across very human concepts and struggles that are just as easily flubbed in a different scene with a couple of actors working on a set.

Some of what I’m saying may seem like backhanded praise, or even a mixed bag of connections with the film, but I meant it when I said that I think people are really going to devote some study to this thing. I truly do appreciate all of the things this film did and chose not to do, no matter how mystifying the end-product can be. In a lot of ways I think that actually works, or will eventually work, to the film’s advantage. In staying so slavishly devoted to Alan Moore’s classic cold war experiment, all of the ideas that made that work so important have been translated to screen intact, if sometimes muddled or crammed together. The mechanical, translated structure of the film manages to throw just about everything it can think of at the viewer, sometimes in near shot-for-shot imaginings of the very symmetrical nature of the book’s imagery. But in staying with that structure, sometimes perfect, sometimes empty revelations between all of the major characters have to conform themselves to that framework rather than inhabiting and driving the structure with the truly awesome range of human concern which is attempted. Everything here from a man’s inability to have a natural relationship without the need for fetish, to the unanswered question of how far we’re willing to go for peace is explored to varied success in Watchmen, just as in the book. And despite the fears of faithful fans about how the changed ending would compromise the story, the opposite turned out to be true for me personally, as I felt the film was never more alive than when Snyder was able to play with new elements and forge his own path through this diamond-dense exercise. When allowed to take new material, and use his own instincts to craft an interpretation more Snyder than Moore/Gibbons, there’s an almost audible shift while the characters step into our consciousness and the events are driven more by their actions and reactions and less by a fatalistic script device meant to show utter fealty to another’s work. (SPOILER) Even though we miss the private triumph and brutal realization by Ozymandias of just what it is he’s done to the world, and Dr. Manhattan’s arc is realized by having another character tell us about it, the end result is that I don’t think this movie could have been made by any other director in such a devoted fashion. This of course begs the question of whether it should have been attempted at all, but in the most realistic sense, and given the fact that graphic novels and comics are still being bought up and sold like crack to the movie industry, there was no way this property wasn’t going to be made into a film eventually. With that in mind, I am thankful that the movie that we finally got is at least as provocative as the source, if perhaps for different reasons. I think that this is specifically because this director was able to helm Watchmen, and the lack of compromise apparent is obviously to be praised, despite any of the possible missteps that it may have necessitated. It will be left to the audience who finds this film to interpret whether the flaws in the final film overwhelm it, or if they actually enhance its beauty as a whole, such as with films like Blade Runner. Oddly enough, while watching Watchmen it was Blade Runner that came to mind most often. Now, this is not to immediately throw these films up together (and hey, it could have been the Vangelis-like scoring at points… and all the rain) in a real comparison, as Watchmen will have to earn that right when it earns an audience. With all honesty I expect it to find one, too. I may not be sure of who this film can really be geared toward or recommended to specifically, but I do know that I’ve really been desperate to hear all new viewpoints on it, and I am actively campaigning everyone I know to see it. Here’s hoping, but my dearest desire right now is to get DeekGeek to post her somewhat uninitiated (she hasn’t read most of Watchmen) perspective up here ASAP.

‘Inna final analysis’, Watchmen is near impossible to be ambivalent about, as per my previous statements likening it to a signal wave with equal parts engaging and momentum-crushing. Here’s hoping they never attempt a sequel, but actually deliver on that (so often promised with these types of projects) DVD version of the film with the original, comic book ending and Tales of the Black Freighter reincorporated. That would just be impossible to resist in so many ways. Hope you all enjoy it, and please, feel free to hit me with your views. When it comes to the nerd discussion (and to a larger extent, my reviews), ‘nothing ever ends’. Peace out, y’all.

PS. GeekTyrant alerted me to a very funny take on Watchmen by Patton Oswalt, which I suggest you all check out, HERE.