First of all, Godzilla was a movie set in Japan. A fire breathing monster drops into a major city consuming men, women, children, houses, buildings, etc eating some, burning many, stomping them disrespectfully. The most vivid shots I remember from seeing this movie all those years ago are of the people's images getting burned into the wall behind them as they were reduced to ashes or terrified people looking up toward the heavens, mouths wide open, hands pressing cheeks, eyes bulging as they were stomped. Such destruction in Japan is rivaled only by the reality of atomic war. For the Japanese, Godzilla embodies the monstrosity of war that every person suffered passionately, nuclear war in particular, and the images from that movie drag each viewer painstakingly through the scenes they witnessed in reality or via media sources.
Cloverfield is about terrorism and each viewer's personal connection to the events of 9/11 and the war we still fight. As in reality, the setting is New York, and nothing is sacred. This blog is about symbolism. Please feel free to ask questions, add perspectives, identify other parts of the movie that I haven't investigated.
This is the part where you stop reading if you haven't seen the flick unless you want to lose the element of surprise.
- I don't think it was an accident that the first sign of a problem was an oil tanker overturned in New York Harbor. Oil, wealth, and Western ideals of freedom are at the base of our ongoing struggle with our enemies in the Middle East.
- Beheading the Statue of Liberty, read what you want into that.
- Footage of the Empire State Building collapse might as well have been straight from the Twin Towers' newsreel.
- The first targets and victims were civilians.
- The misunderstanding of what was going on and the repeated question of "why?"...any of this sound familiar? I know I asked that a few times on that morning of the 11th of September.
- Cutting the Brooklyn Bridge in half. There's no easy escape for us from this battle. There's no easy escape from the war we're in either.
- Plus it led directly to that cell phone conversation where our boy had to tell his parents that his brother/their son was dead. I choked up, but I'm a sensitive man.
The movie is scary because I rode that roller coaster in 75 minutes that I've been on for the last 7 years. At some point it became less about the on-screen presentation and more about how the movie was going to manipulate my gut reactions and memories.
- Not one frame is wasted in this short film.
- It is the latest in technological advancement for computer animation.
- The sound is impeccable; did you find it eerie when the credits rolled without a soundtrack?
- The lighting at 360 degrees as the handheld camera rotated and traveled from room to room: seamless!
- The best shot of the movie was when the camera slid to a rest as they lifted Beth off the rod that impaled her and all you saw was their feet. It could have been a bloodbath for the whole movie, but it wasn't.
- The gore that was there when Hudd's girl exploded was not as graphic as it could have been. Still I had a hard time with that much at the time. It was such a shock because it seemed out of place, all of the sudden, and unnecessary. At first I thought it was a compromise like they were obligated to make a chick explode in a monster flick, but then I remembered the last time I had that exact reaction: Remember when the Taliban beheaded those soldiers and civilians on the internet? Didn't that seem out of place and a little too gory and personal even for war?
- How about when there was no definite ending: did we win or did the monster? Is it destroyed or did it just go back to where if came from?
I've never been so happy to be manipulated by a movie; how refreshing that it's not a chick flick pushing the same old sappy love button over and over; Cloverfield is a pioneering success by all those involved. That's how I feel. Am I right or wrong? Join the blog...
