(2004) ***1/2This just made its American debut last weekend, but Nochnoy dozor hit the big time in Russia two years ago. When we meet our hero, Anton, he's heading into the apartment of what counts as a witch in 1992. Small room, red walls, lots of pictures pasted to the wall. Not posters, but placemat-sized landscapes, postcards, all jumbled in a casual collage. And I thought "Ah, good...this is such a Russian apartment."
I've never seen an actual Russian apartment, but I had a Russian landlord once, and through him I came to understand the utterly charming vibe of well-meaning, sometimes clumsy functionality that seems to permeate the Russian experience. A feel for street-level opulence, and certainly a good sense for using interior space thriftily. If you've ever lived in a tiny apartment, you know what I'm talking about. It's like living in a boat. This is what Night Watch has in spades, this wonderful humanity. Like the Tick and Arthur, these superheroes have apartments and refrigerators.
Things in the old babooshka's apartment take a crazy turn, the spell goes sideways. Anton comes to and sees the witch (seriously, this woman looks like someone who could've worked with your mom once) being interrogated by a fat bald guy and a fat hairy guy, both wearing dirty utility jumpsuits and sunglasses. "Who are you guys?" says Anton.
"Whoa, he can see us?" Enter the good guys. The set-up is deceptively simple: certain people are special beings called Others, the powers vary from Other to Other, and upon gaining their powers each Other gets to choose which side to fight for. The powers of Light and Dark have been holding a shaky truce for 1,000 years, due to the even balance of power that is slated to be tipped. I realize how similar that may sound to X-Men, Underworld, etc. but trust me: the imagination at work here is eyebrow-raising original. The rules of this supernatural universe are creepy and fun.
There's also a neat bag of tricks at work with the subtitles, with words emerging from behind passersby or dropping out of sight. It's not too heavily done, and it adds to the grimy groove of the movie.
If my rating were just about getting you to go see it, I'd give it a four and a half, easy. There are some slow snags at a couple of spots in the story, and the ending does get muddied a bit, with a bit too much whipping the camera around for my taste. But the vision is solid, it's a very original film and you should go see it.
You can check out the trailer and other good info at the website, there's also a good bunch of pictures at this Russian website I like.
7 comments:
I'm so psyched that you saw this! I've heard about this for a long time and AICN has been consistently saying positive things about it. However, EW gave it an "F" so I was a bit concerned that it might be a stinker. I defer to your judgment, Octopunk, and it looks like we have another solid entry for Horrorthon 2006. Night Watch is actually the first of a planned trilogy of movies. The second one, Day Watch is already in the can and the third one, Dusk Watch is reportedly going to be in English.
Ah, good. That was the bit of info I was too lazy to find out. You should check out the website, it's fun in a creepy way. The eye follows the cursor around (but only after the squeeze toy with the spider legs stops moving).
It's based on a series of novels; I imagine there are English versions around somewhere.
One of the amazing things about Nightwatch is that it's so gorgeous and charming that even its flaws were somehow turned into things I liked about it. It's kinda like when you go to a 3rd world country and you're like:"No running water? Goats everywhere? Adorable!" The script was clunky and convoluted, and brutally obvious. There wasn't a lot of originality, either. But this movie just plain kicks ass in lot of ways, big + small. Especially small, because it's the slow buildup of this movie's countless tiny details that makes it so hugely vital and engaging. I haven't seen any of Bekmambetov's other work, but from Nightwatch, it's clear that he's one of those rare auteurs that can keep his hand firmly enough on the tiller to wrest his singular vision out of a cast + crew of hundreds.
So, I think my absolute favorite scene was when our hero Anton was on the metro looking for the boy, and he sees the Cursed Woman--it just had every part of what was so great about this film. When he shines his spectral flashlight on her, the effect is basically her in a spotlight, with a fan blowing up her hair. Low budget, easy fx, but so perfect and totally gripping. The emotional tenor of the scene (and its impact) was huge--the director just nailed the whole vibe of a depth of ennui that is on the way to exploding into apocalyptic menace. Spooky, sad, electrifying. And I especially love how when we cut back to the outside-of-the-Gloom p.o.v. on the metro, and it's just Anton standing on a crowded subway car, holding a flashlight, screaming. Perfect. Hilarious--right?--but also horrifying, as it underscores how profoundly removed the Others are from the common human experience. It's these kinds of back-handed moments--when something seems funny at first, but then actually proves to be desperately sad--that I found at the heart of this movie. Bekmambetov knows how to use special effects at the service of the emotional core of the film, to carve out emotional landscapes in a way that few can do. I'm hooked.
Nightwatch also kicked my butt in the scene where Anton and Olga/Owl have to go into the Gloom to get the boy, and the scene starts with a backwards dolly shot down the apartment hallway, showing tiny glimpses of them in reflective surfaces--Ooh! Spooooky! Here we go!--but then the camera gets sucked into the gloom too, and everything goes red + black, which depicts this horrible, claustrophobic, and terminally sad dimension in an amazingly gripping kind of way. Yowza! Again, this isn't 200 Neos fighting countless Agent Smiths fx-wise, but it's infinitely more compelling emotionally. Like, at first, we're all impressed by how intense and cool the Gloom is, but then Bekmambetov brings it down to the human level of trying to save the boy, and it just loses all that titillating glamour and becomes desperate and horrifying and alienated and empty. Yikes, wow.
And that whole shabby Moscow vibe; it's not searingly original to depict metaphysical agents as a bunch of working-class shlubs, but here it's done so well and so charmingly as to grab you anyway. Like the witch who performs that spell for young Anton--ha! She's another of those layers of detail that keep getting built up, slowly adding meaning and dimension, slowly helping us build understanding. It's all about this slow accretion of revealing details that slowly bring us in to this alternate world. Like the Audi-driving Daywatcher that confronts Anton's rescuers after he kills that vampire. Of COURSE sinister minions of evil would use their powers to become like that, dumbasses. (Though I did think the Russian Spice character was a little throw-away.) It's just so brilliantly Russian that the good guys are all everyday Joes, and the bad guys are rockstars and pimps.
Also, the whole thing between Anton and his vampire neighbor across the hall. It's genius the way their whole interaction reminds us that these Others are also people--semi-human beings--and have motivations and connections that are more complicated and real than the binary simplicity of Good vs. Evil allows. So they can be on opposite sides of the eternal battle, but still be friendly neighbors. Genius.
I can't wait to see this again.
By the way, only the first novel has been translated into English. The other 2 are still only available in Russian. They're by hugely popular Russian SciFi writer Sergei Lukyanenko.
And that was the other bit of info I hadn't yet found out.
It's funny to hear Firehazard describe the Gloom as "desperate and horrifying and alienated and empty" -- what I recall from that point in the movie is Firehazard laughing his ass off as Anton hacks repeatedly into his own petrified arm in order to escape.
For the uninitiated, the Gloom is a dark and dangerous side-dimension that Others can travel in. It's this scene that makes clear the movie's motif of buzzing mosquitoes is actually a function of the Gloom -- if you stay too long you're drained by spectral mosquitoes. Brrr.
I completely missed the oh-so-Russian correlation between the working class and the side of Light, probably because Anton seems unemployed. Ha. I'm hoping/assuming that Evil Spice will be back in the further installments.
FH is right: it's the buildup of personal and emotional details that make this movie work so well. Something the following reviewer completely missed...
from USA Today: [with commentary by Octopunk]
These vampires speak Russian
By Claudia Puig, USA TODAY
Night Watch, the highest-grossing movie of all time in Russia, may appeal to a much smaller American audience. [Possibly true, as it happens with most imports that fare well in their own countries.]
Even though the sci-fi thriller has overtones of The Matrix, Underworld, Van Helsing and even Star Wars, it is more of a campy vampire film, and a particularly grisly one, with generally low-tech special effects. [Wrong on two counts: this isn't campy at all, there is a laugh here and there, but it takes itself quite seriously. Two: there are vampires in this movie, but this is not a vampire movie.]
Konstantin Khabensky, with Dima Martynov, is one of the good vampires [wrong, he's a seer who is able to track vampire's would-be victims by taking on their hunger] who battle dark forces — with English subtitles.
It doesn't break any new ground, except that it's in Russian, with English subtitles. [How completely sad that subtitles are the main thing she noticed. Clearly she doesn't read very fast.] The vampires are disappointing in their familiar clichéd guise: pale, long-haired humans with ominous, pointy canines, often dripping with blood [pretty inaccurate description]. And since the legend of Dracula originates from Eastern Europe, one might have thought Russia would have a different perspective on the story. [Again, what an amazing dumbass to miss the new perspective this movie pulls off.]
Based on a best-selling trilogy of novels (the second film is being made now), the story centers on a diabolical battle between light and dark forces. Living among ordinary humans are "others" who possess supernatural powers. Some of these others have chosen the dark side (does that ring a bell, Anakin?) [Holy crap! The crux of this movie is that the Light/Dark choice is only a part of one's life, hence you can have friends on the other side. The opposite of SW.] and are vampires who rule the night. Those who have chosen the side of light are supposedly good, but they can be just as violent as the dark ones. Their domain is the day. Not too hard to follow, but the movie manages to obfuscate those distinctions a bit. [Because you didn't get it.]
The film is set in present-day Moscow, where a centuries-old — if uneasy — truce between light and dark is about to be violated. We see a few bloody clashes with fighters clad in armor intended to connote a vague, turbulent past. The truce has been in effect since those seemingly medieval times, but both sides are awaiting the fulfillment of a prophecy of a cataclysmic battle.
Anton (Konstantin Khabensky) is the movie's main "other." As the protagonist, he is on the side of light and good, but narrowly avoids a terrible, dark act. His choice has repercussions later in the movie that evoke the struggle between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker [Sigh. There is a tiny, superficial similarity, but it "evokes" nothing of the sort.]
Night Watch (Nochnoy Dozor) is occasionally intriguing. An essentially low-budget film, it pulls off some bona fide scares and quirky technical effects. For instance, during sequences with vampires, an image of a character's intricate system of veins flashes on screen so quickly it's almost subliminal.
The film's mythology is a bit dodgy, and the dialogue is standard issue [wrong and wrong], but the over-the-top action sequences are occasionally fun, if gory. Ultimately, it's a formulaic, predictable take on a Hollywood staple: the vampire horror film [WRONG! Argh!]
That's a pretty tired genre, no matter what language it's told in.
[And here we have the problem, that we as sci-fi and horror fans deal with all the time: film reviewers who don't like or don't get the genre they're reviewing, yet who are still held to be some kind of authority on the subject. Would you hire your grandmother to review video games? No.]
Even wronger still:
The second movie, Nevnoy Dozor (Day Watch) has already been filmed, and is not "being filmed now." See the awesome-looking trailer here: http://dozornyi.com/news/dd_video/dd_tr1_ultra_dozornyi_ru.mov
And it's no longer the all-time highest grossing film in Russia, either. It was when it came out, but was recently surpassed by Turkish Gambit in 2005. (Night Watch was released there in 2004).
How the hell did such slack research find its way onto the otherwise-unimpeachable pages of USAToday?
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