The Invisible Man is a bulletproof concept. On the one hand, it is pure gimmickry. On the other hand, the set-up provides enough room to explore the human condition and psychology of the individual with an unfair advantage over the rest of the world. The 1933 adaptation is just that - if you are going to make a film about an invisible man - this is the way you can do it - it is equally a commercial spectacle and intricate character drama.
The subsequent adaptations didn't exactly cleared the bar at the drama department but offered more of Invisibility Mayhem of all flavors and sometimes with Chevy Chase making Jeff Goldblum impression.
This year is marked by another Invisible Man adaptation directed by modern horror master Leigh Whannell. After a couple of months of casually avoiding watching the new adaptation of H.G. Wells' Invisible Man - I finally did it... and it was ok.
Invisible Man 2020 is not really a movie about The Invisible Man, it is more of an abusive relationship drama with a mystery peppered in, but as a gimmick, the invisible man works for the benefit of the story. It makes it different, which already an accomplishment. At least it is unusual to add all the invisible man shenanigans to the relationship drama. But it doesn't add much to the story. It is a cog in the plot, which is a damn shame because this concept deserves better than this.
So why not revisit the other Invisible Man movie that came twenty years ago and was actually about the Invisible Man?
***
In the canon of Invisible Man films, Hollow Man holds an odd distinction of being not the worst movie about The Invisible Man. After all, there are Memoirs of an Invisible Man, and Invisible Woman, and Invisible Agent, and Invisible Man's Revenge... All things considered - Hollow Man is not that bad. It is too crass and mean-spirited for its own good, but as a movie - it is surprisingly effective despite all of its apparent flaws.
This brings us to Paul Verhoeven.
By the year 2000, Paul Verhoeven decided that he needed to bounce back to commercially-appealing cinema after the rather tumultuous second part of the 1990s. He started the decade strong - 1990' Total Recall was an instant classic, 1992' Basic Instinct was a smash hit. His next movie was supposed to be another Schwarzenegger vehicle titled Crusade, but Carolco Pictures' substandard business sense killed them before the film could materialize.
In the meantime, Verhoeven did 1995' Showgirls, which bombed really hard and concluded the director's box office winning streak that started with 1987 Robocop. His next film, 1997' Starship Troopers, was a moderate success but nowhere near the blockbuster expectations. In this state of things, Verhoeven needed to prove himself once again, and so after some consideration, he chose to adapt The Invisible Man because it seemed like a surefire hit for him.
On paper, Paul Verhoeven and The Invisible Man concept seem like a match made in heaven. Verhoeven was all about the subversion and exploration of the human condition, and The Invisible Man gave him an ultimate playground. But the resulting picture was disappointingly straightforward.
On the surface, Hollow Man is a cookie-cutter slasher flick. You get an extended set-up that gets the conflict boiling, things slowly slip out of control and then blow up in the character's faces as the bloodbath commences. Still, obligatory happy ending persists despite all odds because of format.
The movie is populated with one-dimensional characters that, for the most part, serve the purpose of being objects in the set-pieces. They live for the concluding slaughter. It is not very complicated.
That's how I perceived this movie when I saw it in the past. My perception drastically changed when I rewatched the movie a couple of days ago for this review. It struck me how subversive the film is - all of its flaws: obscene unimaginativeness, cookie-cutter plot, one-dimensional character were not flaws - they were its feature. That was the whole point of the movie. And it is brilliant in that way.
The story goes - there is a top-secret military project about invisibility serum. Sebastian Caine and his team are working on it. They already managed to make animals invisible and visible, but the superiors are unwilling to proceed on the next level - human testing because of ethical concerns.
Despite lack of support, Sebastian and his confidantes go rogue and proceed with human experiments. Sebastian decides to be a test subject. Turning him invisible goes well enough; however, when it comes to going back to visibility - things don't go as planned, and Sebastian is stuck being invisible.
The very fact of being invisible and unable to go back to normal life takes a toll on Sebastian, and he slowly unravels. At first, he starts to mess with his colleague, then things take a sinister turn and then spiral out of control when Sebastian goes on a killing spree.
The narrative is very straightforward, but it is also very logical. This story shows a plausible scenario of how things would have turned up if they happened. You have legitimate concerns that were wilfully ignored, and consequences followed.
***
Then there are characters. One of the informal requirements of the dramatic narrative is characters with clearly defined motivations and dynamic arcs. That's what makes the characters interesting to follow along, engage, empathize, or identify with.
However, in real life, you rarely, if ever, meet interesting or colorful characters. For the most part, you meet some narrow-minded chums who don't have much going for them. They are full of themselves and don't really care about all this "existential shit."
If you look at the characters of Hollow Man from this perspective - it starts to make sense. These people are working a day job, which just happened to be a top-secret military project. But it is a day job, and they are somewhat bored with it - it is a chore, a series of routines that go on and on. You can easily identify with that aspect of the film.
Even the central character - Sebastian Caine (played by Kevin Bacon), is oddly uninteresting. He has an obsessive streak, and his work-life balance is definitely unhealthy and detrimental to his social life. Still, he is not extraordinary (outside of scientific achievement of discovering how to turn a living being invisible). If anything, Sebastian is a pedestrian. He likes being in the center of attention, and when everything goes as he wants it, he likes expensive cars and beautiful women—these rather common traits.
Sebastian is not a horrible person. He's just a regular middle-aged person with a hedgehog of frustrations tickling the insides with every successive breath and a bonfire of notions roaring upside down each time he notices his heartbeat. In addition to that, he works with his former partner, who is never a good idea. While it seems like everyone moved with their lives, Sebastian denies himself a closure of this relationship and still chasing ghosts of their collective past as a monument to his dedication to work.
His character is one-note because that's the extent of his personality - that's the way he is. His life revolves around his job. The job defines him, and there is not much left outside of it. The romanticism of making a difference still drives Sebastian, except now it stinks. It is a globster rotting on the shore and begging to explode. He is hollow and off-putting because of that.
The title of the film points out this aspect of the character - Sebastian Caine was the Hollow Man way even before he became invisible. The invisibility just powered up and perpetuated his already expressed tendencies and enabled the realization of his fantasies.
The other protagonist is similarly hollow. Linda McKay (played by Elizabeth Shue) is a weird example of a strong female character with her agenda that, at the same time, serves as a wilful enabler of the eventual antagonist, who is complicit in the affair and perpetuates its severity. She is a thorn in Sebastian's side and lovin' it despite slight annoyance once in a while when she actually needs to face Sebastian. Linda is permanently damaged by her job too. But unlike Sebastian, she tries to maintain a semblance of balance by actually having a life outside of her job (mostly). Linda was on board with Sebastian's human testing idea because she knew that if this whole thing goes well - there will be lots of career opportunities, so the gamble's worth the risk.
On the other hand, Matt Kensington (played by Josh Brolin) represents a less complicated character who is just doing his job day-to-day. There is not much going with him. He's doing his job well enough. He even got a girlfriend out of that, so that's good. He is plucky. All he wants is to do his job well enough so that he could do his job more and be happy to do it as long as possible. He enjoys doing science because it is a casual challenge. In the context of the movie, Matt is a far more surreal character than Sebastian.
The obscene unimaginativeness of the narrative works with such characters. Invisible Man shenanigans are one of the selling points of any Invisible Man film, and Hollow Man intentionally botches it.
Instead of playful pranks, Sebastian just plows through the tropes most straightforwardly and disgustingly. For example, being a voyeur who watches women in the restroom—or sexually harassing sleeping co-workers. Or killing animals, or watching his former partner having a life outside of the job. Or raping unwitting neighbor just because he can do it. Or killing a government official out of spite.
These things are less about Invisibility as a means of being a jerk to the world and more about what it takes to keep oneself from going off the rails. And it is horrifying how thin the line is and how little it takes to cross it.
The film culminates with a bloodbath rampage in the underground laboratory. It is more or less a slasher kill trope parade. Sebastian decides to put ends into the water and disappear, and so he proceeds to kill off his colleagues one by one. Finally! But it is a sloppy mess with barely a thought put into it - because it stems from a snap decision. Sebastian is not a mastermind. He is a vindictive prick. In the end, he fails because he can't restrain himself from gloating showboating.
That's why the Grand Guignol finale so blatantly misfires. It is a wish-fulfillment fantasy that slowly falls apart because it has nothing to keep it together. Sebastian self-destructs, and that was the only way it could have ended.
Even though there is a semblance of the happy ending (the villain is dead, the heroes are still alive), it is evident that even though the heroes survived the ordeal, they have to answer a lot of questions.
***
Hollow Man is a weird movie. It is very by the numbers and not really imaginative with its concept, but for some reason, it manages to subvert its weak points into strengths. That's a sign of a great direction. Paul Verhoeven more or less phoned it in, and yet the film retains Verhoeven's brand of subversion.
Немає коментарів:
Дописати коментар