Blue (nerd) heaven?
Less obviously, but more importantly, the pleasures of Moore’s story often hinge on how the story is told – i.e. as a comic book. The unusual richness of Watchmen emerges from repeated reading, from skipping back to earlier pages and spotting clues and counterpoint. This revisiting of past events and discerning patterns is a theme of the story itself and is embodied by the character of Dr Manhattan (below). How this accumulation of detail might translate to a very different, more linear, medium wasn’t clear. Yet, despite this, it was tempting to see how Watchmen would look writ large. And, having now seen the film, it’s this curiosity to which director Snyder plays his hand. This is a film for fans and the morbidly curious.
Comic enthusiasts have argued at eye-watering length over what is absent from the 161-minute theatrical release. The Tales of the Black Freighter pirate story is gone, and not missed, and the infamous MacGuffin of the final act – an enormous psychic calamari that devastates Manhattan – has been replaced with something less outlandish and more economical.
What is felt as missing, at least by the film’s end, are the minor background characters and the sense of a world at stake. The newsvendor and his customer, for instance, are glimpsed only once before they, and much of New York, vanish into atoms, an omission that robs their last moments – and the film - of poignancy. Thus, when Adrian Veidt’s nightmare ‘solution’ is finally delivered, it’s visually remarkable but emotionally subdued. In the comic, Moore and Gibbons spend nine pages showing us the cost of ‘saving the world’. Snyder’s depiction is brief and oddly bloodless - a puzzling decision given his earlier, very evident, delight in viscera.
So, is Watchmen ‘unfilmable’, as Moore insisted? Well, Snyder’s impressive visual fidelity has come at a price. The film is frequently striking and surreal, often beautiful, but it’s also disjointed in tone and strangely undramatic. Despite its formidable running time, Watchmen is never boring – there’s always something to watch, some reference to spot – and the extended opening credits are close to nerd heaven.
However, this virtuoso montage is one of the film’s strongest sequences, which suggests that audience satisfaction may depend on familiarity with the comic. For detail obsessives, there are plenty of small joys along the way. Dr Manhattan’s luminous anatomy is lovingly rendered, John Higgins’ skewed colour palette is carefully reproduced, and even Veidt’s computer files make for interesting reading. But as the end of the world looms, the pervasive mood is one of stillness and detachment; only Rorschach’s prison scenes generate momentum.
Elsewhere, there is little tension or urgency. And, told as a film, this matters. Yes, Gibbons’ imagery is reproduced fastidiously and often to great effect, and much of Moore’s dialogue is used verbatim, with mixed results. But the lingering pleasure derived from reading (and re-reading) Watchmen remains somewhat elusive in this striking, uneven and ambitious film. What Snyder delivers is, above all, an arresting visual curio – surprisingly lifeless, but fascinating nonetheless. If the definition of a classic work is the urge to revisit it, then the Watchmen comic is a classic. Whether Synder’s film will reward repeated viewings isn’t clear. But see it, once at least.
Here’s the opening sequence:
March 9th, 2009 at 1:08 pm | by Dave
ok, so what’s actually graphic about Watchmen?
March 9th, 2009 at 2:13 pm | by David Thompson on Watchmen [Dan Collins]
[...] going to see it until then, unless my kids force me to buy it on DVD before I do that, I suppose. David Thompson’s carefully wrought review may help guide your own decision: So, is Watchmen ‘unfilmable’, as Moore insisted? Well, [...]
March 9th, 2009 at 2:17 pm | by Paulo Periera
A true test for this movie will be taking my wife to see it. She has no interest for comic books as I did (and still do). If she can follow the story line great I’ll view it as a success. But she’s pretty tough and I can’t be impartial because of the nostalgic connection I have to it.
-P
March 9th, 2009 at 3:36 pm | by David Thompson
Paulo,
“If she can follow the story line great I’ll view it as a success.”
I don’t think the storylines are particularly obscure. I went to see it with a group of people, one of whom hadn’t read the comic, and she didn’t find it hard to follow; though you do have to pay attention to various flashbacks and the opening credits. It’s more that the film lacks the customary narrative drive and has little sense of urgency or peril.
It is, however, very pleasing to look at. If you’re a fan of the comic, there’s fun to be had seeing how images you already know are rendered onscreen. The scene in the lab with Rorschach “dropping in” on an enormous Dr Manhattan is wonderful – it’s the comic brought to life – and there are literally dozens of visual treats like that. (We see a flashback of Veidt at Studio 54, there’s an amusing shot of a swinging toilet door, and Dr M’s apartment is a replica of the hotel room at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which for some reason tickled me no end.)
But that’s the thing. The details are great, and there are plenty of them, but there’s not much narrative momentum. The fate of the world hangs in the balance and yet it’s surprisingly hard to care.
March 9th, 2009 at 6:52 pm | by Paulo Periera
David-
One thing I did, (that I’m sure anyone who collected comics did), was re-read Watchmen. So it would be fresh in my mind when I went to watch the movie.
I did have a fear that the actors weren’t going to be able to sell themselves as their characters and you wouldn’t really care if they lived or died. How was the acting?
Thanks for the review.
-P
March 9th, 2009 at 7:34 pm | by David Thompson
Paulo,
“How was the acting?”
Very mixed. Malin Akerman looks like she’s reading lines rather than acting – she just has no presence. And Matthew Goode doesn’t really convince as the principal villain/temporary saviour of the world. Crudup, Wilson and Morgan are much better, and Haley is especially good as the unmasked Walter Kovacs.
March 10th, 2009 at 4:07 am | by Brown Line
I went to see it last night. The review is a fair one: in a sense, the whole is less than the sum of its parts. And yet, I found it very interesting as a work of art in its own right. You have to remember that Moore and Gibbons’ “Watchmen” is very much a product of its day, the mid-1980s, the end of the first Reagan administration. Back then, the economy was still in the stagflation of the 1970s, the Cold War looked like it would never end, nuclear holocaust was an everyday reality, the triumphs of Apollo program had been tossed aside like a candy wrapper, Nixon had resigned in disgrace, we’d had our asses handed to us by the Vietnamese, the Soviets were still in Afghanistan, and Iranian hostage crisis had shown the limits of our power. Crime was high, social problems seemed intractable, air and water pollution much worse than nowadays. Personal computers were exotic toys, cell phones something out of science-fiction. The world seemed much darker, colder, and crueler than it does today. That is the world of the original “Watchmen”.
Snyder’s “Watchmen” in a sense is a commentary on that time, and that work. The fading of the fear of total nuclear annihilation, which was in the air we breathed in those days, is just not with us now. For those of us who remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, the possibility that some nut would punch the button and kill us all was quite real then, and it isn’t now - or it doesn’t seem so. The plot that is uncovered had real thrust then; now it’s an abstraction, something that no more real to us now than Pearl Harbor or the Battle of Gettysburg - something long ago and far away, but not part of our lives.
I think “Watchmen” is a brilliant, accomplished film, a feast for the eye, and for me, a trip into the past. Be sure to see it on the big screen: unless you have the biggest big-screen imaginable, there’s no way you’ll be able to appreciate the richness of the images at home.
OK, I’m a fan. So sue me.
March 10th, 2009 at 8:50 am | by David Thompson
Brown Line,
“…in a sense, the whole is less than the sum of its parts.”
Bingo. Parts very good; whole, not so much.
“The plot that is uncovered had real thrust then; now it’s an abstraction.”
The Cold War premise now seems almost quaint and scarcely more real than Dr Manhattan, or Nixon’s rubber nose. And this problem is made worse by the absence of the comic’s minor characters, via whom that anxiety was conveyed. Without the “everyday” character exchanges – the newsvendor, the psychiatrist, the brawling lesbians – there’s very little sense of what’s at stake, whether Veidt succeeds or not. It just slips past, notional and abstracted. Thus the final moral conundrum has no real emotional weight.
“…a feast for the eye, and for me, a trip into the past.”
Ah, nostalgia…
August 17th, 2009 at 6:19 pm | by Eye blog » Missing pieces Watchmen director’s cut on DVD – better than the big screen?
[...] to my review of Zack Synder’s film of Watchmen, writes David Thompson, I thought I’d post a few words on the [...]