When you hear the slogan ‘Together we will make it’, will
you laugh it off as a joke or a delusion? When you do something for a group out
of good will, do you expect your contribution will have exactly the opposite
effect? When you place trust on someone else, is it based on any rational
foundations or merely a blind faith? Is that a point that the paranoia inherent
in all of us will eventually consume all of us in a community? These appear to
be very dark, yet relevant questions to us to face, because they lead to a
better appreciation of what that means to be human after all. And, these are
the questions the great filmmaker John Carpenter explored in his masterpiece,
which is celebrating the 35th anniversary this year – ‘The Thing’
(1982)!!
What is interesting about the history of ‘The Thing’ is that
the film had its theatrical release at the same week as ‘Blade Runner’, and the
fate of the two films have also been very similar. Both films suffered from
initial mixed reviews and unsatisfactory box-office results, yet their
reputations elevated to the level of the greatest work in their respective
genre, and are considered modern classics by today’s standard. The similarities
do not stop here – if we look into the 2 films, we can find a lot of common themes
in the two great films. Another similar work is of course Stanley Kubrick’s
‘The Shining’, which appeared only 2 years before ‘The Thing’, and David
Cronenberg’s ‘The Brood’, which the director has stated as his version of
‘Kramer vs. Kramer’. One can have the impression that the style and world view
from these films are also very comparable to each other. These films were
misunderstood as they were first shown to the audience, because they defied the
audience’s expectation with regard to their alleged genre – which were sci-fi
and horror – and they have shown something beyond their genres, for which the
audience members were not ready for. If the viewer is willing to look beyond
the surface, he/she will find the films are not merely about scary stuffs or high-tech
wonders, but are about very elemental questions about human nature – that of
alienation, identity, family relationships, institutions, and most of all –
what makes us to be human.
When I first watched ‘The Thing’, like other viewers I was
of course fascinated by the power of horror and the numerous WTF moments that
has become legend for the film. The more I looked at it, I found it disturbing
because it addressed the reality that we all situated in – and Carpenter seemed
to have the foresight to realize what happened in ‘The Thing’ –the paranoia,
the faulty interactions and so on- could just happen in the real world, maybe
without the monsters itself. I see the film more as a psychological rather than
a horror film, as putting the scary bits aside, the film gives you a lot of
insights about human nature and how things can go wrong in human interactions.
If one is saying that ‘The Thing’ is merely about a monster devouring every
human characters he can cross path with during its 2 hours of cinematic life,
then I would say the film is more about a potential breakdown of community, or
civilization itself. ‘The Thing’ is great because it did not rely on cheap
scare tactic to unsettle the audience, it brings out and liberates the
innermost, and unconscious fear inherent in all of us. The film is beautiful
because Carpenter has painstaking installed a lot of ambiguities throughout the
film, meaning that the audience can not jump to simple conclusions regarding
the actions and underlying motivations of any characters in the film. An
apparent ‘good-natured’ action can just have the completely opposite motivation
in the film. Not only this will generate a continued discussion of the film for
the years to come , very much like ‘The Shining’ and ‘Blade Runner’, it can
generate a tremendous sense of paranoia in the
audience’s mind, as they have no definite point of reference they can
focus on when they try to make sense of the film.
I believe why ‘The Thing’ is so successful is not merely
because it is a scary or entertaining film – the real reason is because it
brings out some of the audience’s most fundamental concerns regarding
themselves, very much like ‘The Shining’ and ‘Blade Runner’. The film itself
represents the projection of the audience’s most intimate fear – the
interactions with others, the paranoia that drives and leads to mistrust and
nasty relationships, and the often futile attempts to stand up to problems that
have proven to be too big for them.
‘The Thing’ has influenced many subsequent films in the
horror / sci-fi lexicon, and its influence is not limited to these genres.
Quentin Tarantino, for example, is a big fan of the film and he has cited
influences of ‘The Thing’ in Reservoir Dogs and The Hateful Eight (which can be
seen as ‘The Thing’ of the American West).
A quick look at the plot. 'The Thing' is actually an
extraterrestrial life form, which is parasitic, and its only drive is to
survive, survive, and survive, no matter what destructions it will cause to
whatever universe it finds itself fall into. The untimely victim we have got is
an all-man team working in Antarctica. When
the man rescued a husky from the snowy landscape, they had absolutely no idea
that this 'man's best friend' has some unfriendly company - 'The Thing' has
always assimilated it and transformed it to a 'Dog-Thing'. When the 'Dog-Thing'
has killed all its canine mates in the kernel and transformed into a monstrous
being, all the men panicked. The power of this extraterrestrial monster was
just too much for the humans - it started to assimilate the team members one by
one, resulting in violent death (and spectacular WTF moments for the audience
alike). What was worse, however, was that the team could no longer work
together because of the unsettling fear and paranoia that has resulted. Who is
there to trust? Who is the cowboy with the black hat? Who is the enemy and who
is the comrade? And who is the next lucky guy to become 'The Thing'? As the
situation became more dangerous and hope became more futile, the remaining men
prepared for the final showdown with this monster - or, are they even aware of
the fact they have turned to 'The Thing' already?
The director of ‘The Thing’, John Carpenter has developed a
very early interest in cinema since his childhood, and he in particular likes
the Western genre and is inspired by the old great American director Howard
Hawks. Hawks was sort of an all-rounder of cinema, as he was adept in
delivering great work from a variety of genre. Yet, he was most likely
remembered for his work in the Western genre and a sub-genre known as screwball
comedy. At the surface, Hawk’s films are often about the spirit of working
together professionally towards a common aim, yet he also made a slight twist
through the introduction of a sort of characters known as ‘Hawksian woman’, a
few example being Lauren Bacall, Katherine Hepburn, and Angie Dickinson. It is
important first to be clear Hawks himself has no intention to place feminist
ideas in his work in the first place. The introduction of ‘Hawksian woman’ is
to challenge the way how cinema or the common people’s perception of female
characters in culture. Hawksian woman, while situated in an era where the
equality of sex was not a common belief, tended to challenge and destabilize
the power, and expose the underlying weakness and vulnerability of the male
character. That is exactly the reason why ‘Hawksian woman’ worked particular
well in Film Noir (which Hawks has made a few great classics) and the screwball
comedy, a genre where the writer-director Preston Sturges was famed for. The
film noir often required a femme fatale, whom presence would significantly
influence and contribute to the fate of the underdog protagonist. For the
screwball comedy, which was an extremely common sub-genre of comedy back in the
Hollywood 1940s, was about the
battle-of-the-sexes, often an (intellectually and spiritually) strong and
resourceful female characters versus a more ‘antiheroic’ or mellow male
character.
Why do I bother to talk so much about an old-school filmmaker?
Well, Carpenter has cited Hawks as an influence for his filmmaking, and one can
easily see that in many of his films, not just limited to ‘The Thing’. Indeed, Hawks
have also made a film about a monster based on the same source of ‘The Thing’
back in the 1950s. Both films seemed to deal with some form of paranoia, in
Hawks’ version, the allegorical paranoia of the Communist or the Red power that
haunted many Hollywood filmmakers in the 1950s, and in Carpenter’s case, some
people believed ‘The Thing’ served as an allegory for the cultural concern of
the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s (If we see ‘The Thing’ in a biological
perspective, its mechanism is very much like a biological virus), and more obviously,
the paranoia of suspicion and mistrust of others inherent in all of us. In a
number of films, Carpenter did agree to the Hawksian vision that one should
face challenges and problems with courage, and work together professionally to
combat the avalanche of problems that arise, like in ‘Assault of Precinct 13’,
which was considered as a remake of ‘Rio Bravo’ in the modern setting. Yet the
power of ‘The Thing’ is that Carpenter has struck the most intense
deconstruction of the Hawksian ‘teamwork and community’ value, and while in the
films all the characters (it is a rare all-men film) were at least shown to be
reasonably courageous and willing to get their hands on problems, Carpenter
questioned whether the idealistic belief of ‘working together to a good end’
would break down.
Many critics also believed that Carpenter’s film, like
Hawks’ older version, addressed the cultural concerns of his era, albeit with
different emphasis. In Hawks’ version, he was illustrating the paranoia of the
political climate in the 1950s – the
Communist paranoia and so on. In Carpenter’s version, he was addressing a
pathological transformation of the individualism back in the 1970s – people
became more self-interested, self indulgent and willing to strive for personal
gain, and falsely asserted this is a sort of individualism. Any senses of group
or community, or the pledge of co-operation or collaboration, were merely
appearance. Everyone wanted to be number one, and they had to shoot someone
from the back – indeed the taboo of classical Western film. ‘The Thing’ was
delivering a possible vision that everyone was so alone with themselves that
they would be no beneficial relationships with others around, and the only
interaction possible was mistrust and paranoia.
Let’s now focus on the visual aspects. Carpenter, while
famously known as a great director for the Horror genre, has a stunning gift
for cinematic composition. I believe this is an aspect being overlooked by much
audience because they often place their focus on the thrilling aspect of
Carpenter’s work. While the theme of his films is often about the horror both
inside and outside of humanity, the cinematic images from Carpenter’s widescreen
films can be of a tremendous beauty, and his unique vision regarding the
composition of cinematic images also addresses the themes he often tried to
convey through his films. This aspect is particularly illustrated in ‘The
Thing’, making it one of Carpenter’s signature films.
While Carpenter preferred the use of anamorphic composition,
which often gave a nice and photogenic shallow depth of field for the final
cinematic image, he often made efforts to stage the set so that everything in
the frame is in sharp focus. While he tended to emphasize the horizontal vista
in the wide screen, the composition is often sparse and not filled with a lot
of details and people, as opposed to the original intention of widescreen films
– to show epics and large scale activities. It afforded a sort of emptiness in
a vast area.
Carpenter’s composition relied on a lot of claustrophobic
framing, in contrast with the widescreen scope format he always preferred to
employ. He also did a lot of nice close-up shots of the character’s faces – an
attribute which was advantageous for anamorphic telephoto lenses, and the shots
were held so tight on the faces that they provided an intense atmosphere for
the narrative. Ennio Morricone’s sparse and minimalist score also contributed a
lot to the atmosphere – the notes were so simple that nihilism could be
detected, yet it was warning us that the truth was so deep that there was
always something beyond surface appearance.
It was also noted that Carpenter has used another of his
favorite camera techniques – a subjective, point of view and mobile camera (in
some cases, a Steadicam). What was interesting and quite frightening was that
this point of view belonged to none of the characters. It therefore seemed like
a ghostly vision, exploring around the complex the men lived in, ready to stalk
on any unlucky victims.
I feel that Carpenter's visual approach served a number of
purposes in terms of addressing his theme. First, this type of antagonistic
composition generated a very high contrast feel for the audience, and the
visual impact would defy expectations from the audience, and generate tensions
both in the scenes and the audience alike. Second, these arrangements
illustrated the fact one could not see things from the surface. Indeed, the
whole point of the film was about the sad fact that you could not figure out
who was The Thing and who was not, including the fact that you have become the
monster. The idea that a different arrangement would lead to a different
impression from the audience would induce fear and urged the audience to look
beyond the appearance. When two faces are held very close in a shot, it could
suggest intimate and heart-to-heart relationships, yet it could just be a very
tight face off. When audience expected a lively environment from the vista
provided by widescreen, all they saw were snow and lifelessness. Carpenter has
successfully staged effective scenes and used innovative photographic style to
generate unease from the audience, even before they encountered The Thing.
Finally, the preference to stage in depths would illustrate the power struggle
between different parties, and it was quite like the cowboy films, and The
Thing has clearly drawn influences from the Western genre. This would certainly
increase the tension in these scenes.
To be continued!
(1/2)
by Ed Law
16/12/2017
Film Analysis
