Requiem for a Dreamer

Nochnoy Dozor (Night Watch) (2004 ; d. Timur Bekmambetov, s. Konstantin Khabensky). Hero with a Thousand Faces could be the death of me. Joseph Campbell's magnum opus and Robert McKee's Story are distinguished in my life as the most influential books that I have never read. What matters is a ton of people read these books, who I in turn watched and read made movies that I saw and thought about and emulated. Joseph Campbell helped George Lucas turn the high art of The Hidden Fortress into high adventure that still managed to be successful art. Campbell and McKee do everything wrong with art--they argue that plot dictates character, versus the other way around. (Keep in mind I am admittedly and purposefully getting this wrong--everything I know about these guys comes from internet postings and Adaptation).

Night Watch openly rips off the Star Wars, Highlander, and about 80 other fantasy films (although, sadly, not Willow), but it's got flaky ideas rooted in Russian re-interpretation of the ideas in American fantasy, which, as Campbell points out, is pretty much ripped off from myth in the first place. Night Watch is the kind of movie you're vaguely embarrassed to enjoy--not because it's a guilty pleasure (it's too well made for that) but because it's simple-minded and hits beats that you aren't supposed to hit and is old-fashioned and predictable, even in where its surprises will come. You can feel the structure of the ideas. It's the cinematic equivalent of Law and Order (Okay, it's 9:46--here comes the twist).

I enjoyed Night Watch. I might have enjoyed it less if it was more proximal to the movies it rips off. But the thing is, Americans don't do this anymore. Much of the 90s and the 00s have seemed to wrestle with character dictating plot, the way art should, but at the end of things, it's felt like awkward hybrids of the dramas of the 70s with the blockbusters of the 80s.

Which means we have fewer extraneous sex scenes happening in the third acts of movies. And more politics and monologuing. American film seems reluctant to be ridiculous. Meanwhile, this movie has vampires running around eating each other, instead of pontificating about it. And has little toys sprout spider legs and take off running. And thrives off ridiculous contrivances to keep the pedal to the metal. And somewhere in the universe, Luc Besson makes movies in which Jet Li is raised as a dog and Jason Statham is a driving badass fighting villains with terrible accents and it is ridiculous, but it's fun.

Night Watch reminds me of the old promise of a Lambert movie, a Seagal movie, an Adrian Lyne movie. It violates everything I believe in, it kills me that Campbell and McKee widescreen a complicated and nuanced process that grows and changes over time into an absolute blur of common structure. But it works.

So hey everybody, let's get retarded.

Next Time: Jacob's Ladder