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| The Happening -- "The Most Morally Abhorrent Film Ever Made" |
| 2008-06-15 |
| James Kirchick, "The Plank" blog @ The New Republic h/t Instapundit Chris [Orr] does an admirable (and hilarious) job of tearing apart M. Night Shyamalan's latest crime against cinema, The Happening. Go click through and read the review. It's possibly the best film review I've ever read. (The review, that is, not the film.) Maybe "review" isn't quite the word; how about "deconstruction" or "demolition"? It is incredibly awful, so laughingly bad that at one point during the screening I attended last night a man in the audience yelled, "I can't take it anymore!" No one shushed him. While Chris deconstructs the film's myriad absurdities, poor performances, and atrocious script, he didn't go after what I believe is its morally appalling premise: that the mere existence of the human race is a cause for great shame. As with most of Shyamalan's films, The Happening has an intriguing plot: centuries of human pollution has prompted nature to retaliate against us by form of a noxious gas released from trees, plants, grass -- it's never really clear. The toxin is first emitted in Central Park, smack dab in the middle of one of the most densly populated places in the United States. First, victims lose their critical faculties. Then they freeze. Then they killl themselves. From New York City "The Happening" spreads all along the east coast, from Boston to Washington. Shyamalan leaves little to the imagination in depicting man's nature-inflicted suicide. We see a woman stab herself in the neck with a hair pin. A man runs himself over with a lawnmower. On can't help but leave the theater thinking that Shyamalan derives a sick, masochistic pleasure in showing the deaths of all his bit characters, hopeless rubes are these human beings. They drove their SUVs for too long and had a big carbon footprint and now they're going to pay. "Repent, sinners! Gaia's gonna get'cha!" This isn't just radical environemntalist fare; it's perverse and anti-human. Shyamalan cuts immediately from the natural joy of pregnancy to its consequence: mass, nature-inflicted murder. It's not carbon output, styrofoam cups or the clearing of the rain forests that so angers Mother Earth and, thus, her self-appointed human spokesman. It's us. Some of the TNR commenters make similar points: You're right that the movie - which I saw last night - is morally abhorrent, but you're wrong when you imply that its message is outside the mainstream of environmentalism. What is the "environment," which is the standard of the good in this religion? Anything - animal, mineral, or vegetable - which isn't human. It follows that humanity is evil, a blot on an otherwise pristine natural world. There are plenty of prominent environmentalists who will say as much explicitly. Others don't quite get the point, but even some of them help to prove it: To be fair, the sheer mass of humanity, arguably already past the planet's carrying capacity, is in fact a huge problem. Shyamalan has apparently made a singlularly awful movie based on the conceit that we're outgrowing our Petri dish, but the bad movie doesn't discredit the idea. Nature will, in fact, cull the herd if it gets too large. I understand that your objection is a moral one, that you think Shyamalan seems to be saying that human presence is intrinsically bad. I dunno--haven't seen the movie and don't plan to, and I suspect your accusation is one of those highly arguable, eye-of-the-beholder things. But even if we grant that point, let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. (After all, water conservation helps save the earth! Throw the baby out and recycle the water!) At some point, we'll either have to manage our population growth (i.e. start offing people) or drastically increase the sustainable carrying capacity of the planet, or both--or we court disaster. . . . Strangely, I feel optimistic. If even the fiftieth-percentile-of-the-liberal-elite crew at TNR is realizing that radical environmentalism is "morally abhorrent" and anti-human (at least when encountered in the form of a crappy M. Night Shyamalan movie with a screenplay from the darkest fantasies of Al Gore and Paul R. Ehrlich), radical environmentalism (and all the global warming carbon footprint hysteria it's stirred up) is close to (if not already making) the old shark-jump. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #20 They aren't making films entirely for the U.S. market any more, JosephM, but for the rest of the world. Their last several anti-war films bombed horribly here, but I don't know how they did abroad. If poorly, then market reality will catch up with the unthinking idiots in Hollywood. If well, we'll be subject to more such nonsense. On the other hand, we saw Don't Mess With The Zohan last night -- very cute, very silly, and very pro-U.S. and the American Dream. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-06-15 21:31 |
| #19 I'm sorry, the new translate button didn't help with the latest post. Can someone help, or pass it around? |
| Posted by: Mizzou Mafia 2008-06-15 19:42 |
| #18 Are the makers of THE HAPPENING trying to tell OWG MADONNA + GOD that when the Japanese torpedoed Madge's Daddy and the Battleship OKLAHOMA at PEARL HARBOR, THE JAPANESE = NAGUMO'S PLANES TORPEDOED A FARTY/GASSY FLOWER PLANT! W *** T ** H*** IS GOING ON IN THIS WOT! Not unlike LAW-AND-ORDER's JACK MCCOY = SAM WATERSTON thinking its a GENERATIONAL THINGY when his ADA Charater finds RAP MUSIC "INCOMPREHENSIBLE" as perLW episode, THIS WOT IS GETTING HARDER TO COMPREHEND EVERY DAY??? |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2008-06-15 19:35 |
| #17 Supposedly, Joe, the suicides were caused by a neurotoxin emitted by trees and carried by a convenient dramatic wind. I think this bodes ill for Shyamalan's next movie. |
| Posted by: Abdominal Snowman 2008-06-15 19:31 |
| #16 I haven't seen the movie myself, but I'd talked wid a familiar adult restaurant patron whom had and claims he wasn't impressed by the film. He personally rated the movie a "C" or "C-", and proclaims the best part was a scene where a man wilfully layed himself down on the ground and was run over by his own 4-Wheeled grassmower. PROMO FOR THE NATIONAL VOLUNTEER SUICIDE MOVEMENT??? I would like to compare THE HAPPENING wid the original MATRIX [Keanu Reeves], aka WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE EARTH LOSES GRAVITY [K.jumping building to building, Windows, Walls, etc. like Superman]. D *** NG IT, WOMAN, THE GIRL'S IN LOVE WID A DEAD PLANT [man]! |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2008-06-15 19:23 |
| #15 The number of new movies I've seen in the last decade could be counted on the fingers of both hands with some spares. I'm so disgusted with Hollyweird and their damnable leftist idiocy I simply can't stomach watching most of it. The sooner those bastards go bankrupt, the better, because they're truly hurting our country. It's even worse in the eyes of the rest of the world. If all I knew of America was what I saw from U.S. movies and TV, I'd hate it too. |
| Posted by: Thaimble Scourge of the Pixies4707 2008-06-15 18:22 |
| #14 What did you guys think of Cloverfield? |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2008-06-15 18:08 |
| #13 Whatever man has done to the environment is vastly overshadowed by natural phenomena such as the ice Age(s), etc. do. There is a kind of arrogance in the environmental movement regarding the influence of man. There is also a kind of self-loathing in the environmental movement that tends to denigrate man. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2008-06-15 18:07 |
| #12 To get entirely serious for a minute, I am extremely tired of this dirty little religion that MNS and the other Hollywierdians have been pushing on the country and the world for what seems to be my entire lifetime. |
| Posted by: Abdominal Snowman 2008-06-15 15:12 |
| #11 Entertaining review, but I never planned to see the movie (or any horror/slasher-type movie) anyway. I've had the living bejesus scared out of me for free more than once - I'm sure not going to pay someone to do it. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2008-06-15 14:31 |
| #10 Well, mine was mistranslated from Tibetan into English, for the longest time. They couldn't figure out whether it meant "big-ass monster" or "big-assed monster." |
| Posted by: Abdominal Snowman 2008-06-15 14:14 |
| #9 I thought "Unbreakable" was awesome. An allegory for the unused and hidden talents we all have within us. Everything else? At best, a meh. |
| Posted by: Mizzou Mafia 2008-06-15 13:51 |
| #8 By the way, how bad must his first name be, if going by the middle name of "Night" is preferable?!?? His actual name is Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan |
| Posted by: john frum 2008-06-15 12:54 |
| #7 I saw "That Happening" Friday night. It ain't "Happening." |
| Posted by: badanov 2008-06-15 12:40 |
| #6 The toxin is first emitted in Central Park, Ie n ot that far from Ground Zero. Am I the only one who thinks this is one of those "Why they hate us?" or "Jihadi good, America bad" movies. |
| Posted by: JFM 2008-06-15 12:34 |
| #5 we'll either have to manage our population growth It's called Socialism. Shown remarkable success in reducing population growth. In fact it has shown the ability to depopulate future projected |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-06-15 12:13 |
| #4 I've never been able to endure any of this joker's flicks. By the way, how bad must his first name be, if going by the middle name of "Night" is preferable?!?? I think his parents hated him, now he hates himself (and everyone else). |
| Posted by: Scooter McGruder 2008-06-15 12:10 |
| #3 Green Fascists want to solve the |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2008-06-15 11:55 |
| #2 I hope so, but we won't be that lucky. |
| Posted by: Abdominal Snowman 2008-06-15 11:44 |
| #1 I see washed up directors... |
| Posted by: john frum 2008-06-15 10:57 |