Ethical Software by Alex Bunardzic

Being an avid admirer of the monster cinematography since my early childhood, I simply couldn’t wait for Cloverfield to hit the movie theaters. As soon as the film became available, I made sure to reshuffle things around my insanely busy schedule and set aside a couple of hours in order to watch this latest monster romp.

Ever since I’ve first watched the original Godzilla movie (I can’t remember how old I was then, probably five or six), I fell in love with huge, over the top cinematographic monsters. However, after the less-than-stellar remake of Godzilla in 1998, I felt that the genre is officially dead. I was that much more surprised when, sometime around Christmas last month, I caught a glimpse of the Cloverfield monster in a TV commercial announcing this film. The TV trailer was brilliantly done, opening up an enormous can of worms in mine, as well as many other monster film lovers’ minds. The unexpected glimpse of an enormous monster roaming streets of Manhattan was enough to send us all packing. I’ve started scurrying the web for the clues etc. Finally, got to see the film and the monster in person.

Cloverfield controversy

Since I was too busy to see the film on the opening night (01-18-2007), I had to resort to reading reviews. The thing that immediately struck me about the reviews that started pouring in on Friday night was how polarized the movie goers were about this film. I can’t recall any other movie that managed to divide the audience to such an extreme extent into two clear camps: either you adore it, or you can’t stomach it.

Intrigued, I couldn’t wait to see it myself. My expectations were running incredibly high. As usual, whenever you have inflated expectations, you’re in for a bit of a surprise.

Too alien?

There is no doubt that “Cloverfield” is a breakthrough movie. I compare it to another breakthrough movie — Alien. Both films have introduced completely new techniques of presenting the ‘being right there’ feeling to the viewers. Also, both films have tendency to make huge imprint into the viewer’s psyche, and tend to linger on in the viewer’s mind for days after the initial viewing.

I only regret that I wasn’t able to experience “Cloverfield” the same way I had experienced “Alien”. When I first saw “Alien”, I didn’t know anything about it. I went into the movie theater thinking that I’ll be viewing yet anther “Star Wars” wannabe sci-fi movie. My utter shock was that much more drastic, after witnessing an alien explode out of the human chest.

I wish I was in a similar position when I watched “Cloverfield”. I wish I didn’t know anything about it, expecting only to see some lame-ass futuristic Hollywood soap drama. I can only imagine my shock and awe witnessing the unsuspected but horrible ride that “Cloverfield” is.

However, since I went into the initial viewing armed with large knowledge of the viral information I’ve collected on the web, my initial reaction was one of annoyance. I felt short-changed, cheated, swindled out of what could’ve been a tremendous monster movie.

To begin with, I felt that it wasn’t really a monster movie. It felt more like a disaster/catastrophe movie. Yes, the cause of all that disaster was the monster, but he was pretty much nowhere to be seen for the entire duration of the movie, and my eyes were hungry to feast on the imaginary creature.

Then, I felt too constrained by the single-point-of-view cinematography. I didn’t really feel annoyed that the camera is moving and shaking and swinging, I just wished there was more than one camera employed. I wished I could compare various vantage points of the event.

Also, I must admit that I’ve kind of missed bits and pieces of the story line, being much more focused on trying to spot glimpses of the monster and listening intentively for the monster’s roaring. This fact alone warrants second viewing of the film, in order for me to ‘connect the dots’.

Nevertheless, one thing that I was amazed to witness was how my initial bland reaction to the film started morphing into something that I can only label as ‘fascination’. I simply couldn’t stop thinking about it. Several hours after viewing the film, I’ve realized one thing: the film is fantastic!

Too original?

Yes, despite my lukewarm reception upon viewing it, the aftertaste of the film left me enthralled. I am definitely going back and watching it again.

But before I do that, I’d like to express a couple of more points about “Cloverfield” that kind of came to me the next day.

Firstly, I think many people are missing the point. By looking at various clues and the lack of consistencies in the film, they miss the main clue: the film feels and reads like a dream. Or, a nightmare, to be more precise. It occurred to me after a while, after I’ve been wrestling with some of the glaring and very obvious ‘inconsistencies’ in the film, that it is futile to try and parse the events as if they’re supposed to be happening in the real life. It makes much more sense to try and grasp the film as if it is a recording of someone’s dream.

This is what makes this movie so phenomenally original. I can’t recall any other film that attempts to do the same. Yes, there are many movies that portray dreams, but only as a segment in a movie that otherwise purports to portray real life events. Here, for the first time (or, at least for the first time to my limited knowledge), we seem to be dealing with a film that portrays a dream, from the first opening frame all the way down to the last frame. The movie never seems to surface up into the realm of the waking existence.

It is precisely this fact that lends it its incredibly evocative power. If you think about it, the film reads precisely like some of the most typical nightmares that many people tend to experience, at least at some point in their lives: the dream always tends to begin as a random collection of snippets, most of them collected from the recent or distant events in our past. If the dream gains momentum, it usually tends to focus on some major event, usually very abrupt and disturbing. This is equivalent to how, after some feet dragging during the bland sequences of the party, the jolt comes in as a shock (explosion followed by the short power outage).

Pretty soon, the events the protagonist of the movie dreams abut take the left turn, and we find the crowd standing on the rooftop, witnessing the fantastic fireworks whose origin is completely mysterious. If you pay closer attention to what happens next, you’ll witness something similar to what tends to unfold in many dreams — what used to be a remote happening on the horizon all of a sudden and very quickly finds its way toward us. The fire and brimstone that was bubbling at the edge of the city horizon suddenly hits the neighboring buildings and forces everyone to rush into the staircase. Almost as if by conscious intention, the dangerous debris zeros in on our protagonists. That is one more of the many clues pointing to the fact that the film is actually depicting a dream sequence.

What follows are numerous glitches and illogical sequences that are the hallmark of a typical dream. Things go from gory to comical back to gory. Eventually, amidst the turbulence of apparently barely connected events, the dreamer finds himself flying high up in the air, witnessing an incredibly powerful and exciting scene of carnage that the monster is doing on the streets of New York.

The monster itself is absolutely fantastic. Nothing even remotely resembling that creature was ever seen before. The way it moves, the way it reacts to the attacks… Indescribable!

And of course, as in any dream, the abrupt and illogical series of events drastically change the vantage point, and the dream now continues on the ground. Sure enough, the creature, which was only seconds ago observed in midtown Manhattan, is now seen stomping the Central Park’s ground, towering over the dreamer. And as is the case in almost all nightmares, the creature somehow manages to zero in precisely on the protagonist. Out of the millions of people running and screaming in the streets of New York, the monster focuses straight on the witness himself. The monstrous creature forces its otherworldly gaze upon the observer, gives him the quintessential ‘evil eye’, before going for the deadly attack.

The dream continues, illogically, and then quickly ends, also quite illogically. One is forced to wake up, and scratch one’s head, wondering what was the nightmare all about in the first place?

This, in retrospect, portrays one of the most brilliant cinematographic experiences. Once again, I feel that the absolute novelty in the way this film was conceived and shot lends it too much of an originality, perhaps hurting its general perception a bit. However, with time, the techniques introduced in this movie will become more mainstream, at which point we’ll look back and recognize it for what it is — an instant classic.

Conclusion

In closing, I’d like to emphasize that this movie should not be viewed as a mock documentary, but rather as an imaginary recording of one person’s dream/nightmare. Once the viewer makes this shift from attempting to grok the movie as if it’s an intimate documentary of a horrible disaster that have happened in one of the largest cities in the world, to observing someone’s intimate dream, many things tend to resolve themselves spontaneously. The movie then ceases to be a frustrating, infuriating experience and starts feeling like sheer poetry.

The cues hinting that we are watching someone’s dream are amply scattered throughout the film. Perhaps the most convincing clue, at least the one that helped push me over the edge, is observing the way the monster moves as it is destroying the city. Simply put, the way the monster moves is nothing even closely resembling any other creature. One quickly becomes aware of the fact that these movements don’t seem to obey any laws of physics. And as is often the case with dreams, it is precisely this violation of the laws of physics that make our dream so compelling and so immersing.

Another tell-tale sign is that, instead of experiencing sheer horror upon witnessing the terrible carnage that the creature is enforcing on the city and its inhabitants, we get the exhilarating feeling of strange and inexplicable poetic beauty. Even though many laws of physics have been violated, and the creature is supposed to be doing something extremely menacing, we feel like we cannot take our eyes off its strange, lyrical ballet.

It is to the huge credit to the movie makers (and especially to the creators of this monster) that they have been able to evoke such strange and deep emotions instead of merely going for the cheap shots of jolting and shocking and grossing us out (as most viewers of lesser intellectual capacity are so angrily complaining about, asking for a more spoon-fed approach, where everything must be fully explained to them in the movie itself; apparently, people with low brow cannot withstand even a hint of intellectual suspense and indirection).

Well done, and I can’t wait to see how will this franchise unfold.