The Loveless (1982) and Near Dark (1987)
Sep. 28th, 2009 08:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
randy_byersSo now I've gone back to the beginning of Kathryn Bigelow's career and watched her first two feature films.
The Loveless (1982) was co-directed with Monty Montgomery (his only directing credit on IMDb), and it is completely different from anything else of Bigelow's I've seen so far. Well, it does feature a gang of outsiders, but the tone and pace of the film are far more languid than what I'd seen up till now. This one's about a gang of bikers who are on their way to Daytona for the car races. From the cars and the music, it seems to be set in the early '60s, maybe the late-'50s. The gang is stuck in a po-dunk town in the South somewhere while one of them fixes his bike in a local garage. They are bored. Nothing is happening. They are different from the townsfolk. Lots of shots of a young Willem Dafoe in full leather staring into the distance, smoking a cigarette. Shots of beautiful bikes, beautiful cars, beautiful women, men in leather. I read somewhere that this movie is heavily influenced by Kenneth Anger's film about gay bikers, Scorpio Rising (1963), and there's certainly a fetishistic aspect to it. This one slowly builds layers of tension over a base of repressed sexuality. Much more of an art film than Bigelow's other films.
So it was a bit of a shock to the system to move to Near Dark (1987), which is a pure genre horror film. It has quite a reputation amongst horror fans for being an innovative vampire film. I'm generally not much of a horror fan myself, although one advantage of coming to something like this after having seen District 9 is that the violence here seems relatively subdued in comparison. I actually didn't find this film all that interesting. Part of the problem may be that the Buffy TV show stripmined some of its best ideas, such as rowdy vampires driving around in daylight in cars with the windows mostly blacked out. It could be that I just wasn't in the right mood, too, and that it was the wrong thing to watch after The Loveless -- despite the fact that they both feature outlaw gangs (in Near Dark a gang of vampires terrorizing the countryside). The action sequences still don't have the Bigelow signature, although there's one chase in a field that has a bit of the subjective-camera feel of later films. I didn't really enjoy Bill Paxton chewing the scenery -- quite literally at times. If the film isn't a new step in the Americanization of vampires, it may be a step in the Westernization of vampires. Vampires as hicks, rather than aristocracy. One misstep, I thought, was that the vampires weren't old enough. There's talk of living for a billion years, but the oldest amongst them is just slightly over a hundred. But maybe that was the point: that immortality is an illusion even for the undead. I did like the way that the vampires are stuck at the physiological age of when they were "turned," so that one of them still looks like a child. There were some lovely, atmospheric visuals, but somehow it lacked the exhilaration of Bigelow's best films.
So the theme of outsiders/outlaws is there from the beginning of her career, but maybe it took her a few films to get to the self-destructive adrenaline junkies. Next up is Blue Steel (1989), which I saw on video probably not long after it came out and remember as being an unexceptional cop thriller. It's about a female cop, played by Jamie Lee Curtis. I'll be curious to see whether I like it better when regarded as a Bigelow film than I did as just something a friend wanted to show me. The Harvard Film Archive overview of Bigelow's films (which I see is also where I got the Scorpio Rising comparison for The Loveless) says: "With Blue Steel, Bigelow wrote and directed one of the rare contemporary police thrillers that can be read on another level—as a pointed questioning of whether the Hollywood action film, with its deep roots in misogynistic violence, can be used to critique itself. Jamie Lee Curtis stands out as a zealous rookie policewoman whose career choice poses an overt challenge to the patriarchal norm, a point provocatively made by Bigelow’s artful emphasis on the blatant phallocentrism of the policeman’s tools and trade. Frighteningly fast-paced and suspenseful, Blue Steel follows the increasingly disorienting cat-and-mouse game that suddenly unfolds between the novice cop and a vicious killer." Sounds more like the latterday Bigelow, and yet this film has no discernible reputation that I'm aware of. That is to say, it doesn't have the fanbase of Near Dark, Point Break, or even Strange Days.
The Loveless (1982) was co-directed with Monty Montgomery (his only directing credit on IMDb), and it is completely different from anything else of Bigelow's I've seen so far. Well, it does feature a gang of outsiders, but the tone and pace of the film are far more languid than what I'd seen up till now. This one's about a gang of bikers who are on their way to Daytona for the car races. From the cars and the music, it seems to be set in the early '60s, maybe the late-'50s. The gang is stuck in a po-dunk town in the South somewhere while one of them fixes his bike in a local garage. They are bored. Nothing is happening. They are different from the townsfolk. Lots of shots of a young Willem Dafoe in full leather staring into the distance, smoking a cigarette. Shots of beautiful bikes, beautiful cars, beautiful women, men in leather. I read somewhere that this movie is heavily influenced by Kenneth Anger's film about gay bikers, Scorpio Rising (1963), and there's certainly a fetishistic aspect to it. This one slowly builds layers of tension over a base of repressed sexuality. Much more of an art film than Bigelow's other films.
So it was a bit of a shock to the system to move to Near Dark (1987), which is a pure genre horror film. It has quite a reputation amongst horror fans for being an innovative vampire film. I'm generally not much of a horror fan myself, although one advantage of coming to something like this after having seen District 9 is that the violence here seems relatively subdued in comparison. I actually didn't find this film all that interesting. Part of the problem may be that the Buffy TV show stripmined some of its best ideas, such as rowdy vampires driving around in daylight in cars with the windows mostly blacked out. It could be that I just wasn't in the right mood, too, and that it was the wrong thing to watch after The Loveless -- despite the fact that they both feature outlaw gangs (in Near Dark a gang of vampires terrorizing the countryside). The action sequences still don't have the Bigelow signature, although there's one chase in a field that has a bit of the subjective-camera feel of later films. I didn't really enjoy Bill Paxton chewing the scenery -- quite literally at times. If the film isn't a new step in the Americanization of vampires, it may be a step in the Westernization of vampires. Vampires as hicks, rather than aristocracy. One misstep, I thought, was that the vampires weren't old enough. There's talk of living for a billion years, but the oldest amongst them is just slightly over a hundred. But maybe that was the point: that immortality is an illusion even for the undead. I did like the way that the vampires are stuck at the physiological age of when they were "turned," so that one of them still looks like a child. There were some lovely, atmospheric visuals, but somehow it lacked the exhilaration of Bigelow's best films.
So the theme of outsiders/outlaws is there from the beginning of her career, but maybe it took her a few films to get to the self-destructive adrenaline junkies. Next up is Blue Steel (1989), which I saw on video probably not long after it came out and remember as being an unexceptional cop thriller. It's about a female cop, played by Jamie Lee Curtis. I'll be curious to see whether I like it better when regarded as a Bigelow film than I did as just something a friend wanted to show me. The Harvard Film Archive overview of Bigelow's films (which I see is also where I got the Scorpio Rising comparison for The Loveless) says: "With Blue Steel, Bigelow wrote and directed one of the rare contemporary police thrillers that can be read on another level—as a pointed questioning of whether the Hollywood action film, with its deep roots in misogynistic violence, can be used to critique itself. Jamie Lee Curtis stands out as a zealous rookie policewoman whose career choice poses an overt challenge to the patriarchal norm, a point provocatively made by Bigelow’s artful emphasis on the blatant phallocentrism of the policeman’s tools and trade. Frighteningly fast-paced and suspenseful, Blue Steel follows the increasingly disorienting cat-and-mouse game that suddenly unfolds between the novice cop and a vicious killer." Sounds more like the latterday Bigelow, and yet this film has no discernible reputation that I'm aware of. That is to say, it doesn't have the fanbase of Near Dark, Point Break, or even Strange Days.
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no subject
Date: 2009-09-28 07:01 pm (UTC)Revisiting it as an adult is a very mixed experience. It's fun to spot how later vampire books and films have borrowed from it, but some of the performances are very dodgy and the resolution is very lame.
Still love the shootout at the motel, though. And I would still do Near Dark-era Paxton in a heartbeat (if only for a pause in the dreadful overacting).
no subject
Date: 2009-09-28 07:29 pm (UTC)And yes, the the final shoot-out is very cool and does a good job of playing with sunlight as deadly danger, which is a theme very conducive to film. I also liked all the sunrises and sunsets. The sun almost becomes a character in the story.
I need to watch this one again before I decide what I really think of it. Next time I won't be carrying the freight of expectations based on its reputation.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-29 06:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-29 02:55 pm (UTC)I really like Point Break, so you'll have to take my opinions of Bigelow's movies with that in mind. That said, I'm guessing you'd find Strange Days at least interesting.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-29 02:58 pm (UTC)