Watchmen

• Rajeev
• March 13, 2009
• movies
• reviews
• 3 comments
• ★★★

You can’t please everyone. It is just the facts of life when constructing a project. It is even more true when the final result is based on material with a large, almost cultish, following. The thing is the director then has to straddle an incredibly fine line. It has to be nuanced to accommodate for the spirit of the material and yet not slavish to adapt for the new medium. And Zack Snyder, well he does a little bit of this and a little bit of that and manages to stumble his way into a solid “B” of a movie. Despite his own tendencies and against his own flaws he manages to make a movie that smacks of the graphic novel and yet displays glimpses of improvement. The biggest problem is that it is never consistent and constantly lurching. No, Snyder tried to make the very best Watchmen movie he could and I think he did his best, maybe the best that this unfilmable material will allow.

To truly enjoy Watchmen a considerable amount of suspension of disbelief is required. Alan Moore took a painstaking and careful approach to chronicle two generations of “superheroes” from the 1920s and into the 1980s. The era that one is left with can be called an “alternate reality” in comic book parlance, one in which Tricky Dick is still President. A review of the movie is not a review of the book, both separate and distinct entities. A review of Watchmen the movie is a review of its director and his failings and triumphs in bringing it to the screen. Zack Snyder does a fantastic job setting the stage and providing much needed backstory through a montage set against Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’”. This montage strikes the perfect tone, opening this almost three hour long movie with the right amount of gravitas and humanity. The problem is that Snyder then decides to let the graphic novel supersede his own judgement and what results is a decidedly roller-coaster of a movie in both tone, pace and quality.

Zack Snyder is a visual director and that his both his biggest asset and his greatest flaw. Much like his previous hit “300”, Watchmen is visually arresting. The problem is that many of Snyder’s actions as a director were aimed more towards the look of the movie than its feel. In particular, the casting decisions by Snyder for some of the most challenging roles are downright baffling. The use of Malin Akerman as Laurie Jupiter is just such a decision. Ackerman looks gorgeous in a spandex outfit, there is no denying that. However, her acting chops leave a lot to be desired and it is not just because she is working in front of a large, blue, naked computer generated man (Dr. Manhattan). No, Ms. Ackerman’s delivery is ham-handed and she displays nary an emotion no matter who she is starring against. Matthew Goode (Adrian Veidt) unfortunately displays this same characteristic as well. The lack of emotion from these two primary elements, who look the part for sure but don’t sound the part at all, destroys some of that humanity that Snyder worked so hard to setup at the start of the movie. Conversely, I should add that Billy Crudup (Dr. Manhattan), Jeffrey Dean Morgan (The Comedian), Patrick Wilson (Nite Owl II), and Jackie Earle Haley (Rorschach) do an amazing job of not just looking, but also sounding the part. Jackie Earle Haley in fact looks so much like Rorschach, sans mask, that I have come to believe that Snyder scoured the globe for the perfect Rorschach. The casting issues are symptomatic of Snyder’s problems in the movie, where the look of the film outweighed the necessity of the film to be good.

Where Snyder does triumph is in bringing the art of David Gibbons to life. Some scenes are so authentic that it feels like the novel’s panels are in motion. A great deal of the success must be attributed not just to Snyder, but his computer graphics team as well. The world is rendered realistically and the naked Dr. Manhattan comes off very believably on screen. The same can be said for the settings in the movie, whether based in New York or on Mars, the entire thing drips of authenticity and is a visual feast. The same sensibility was visible in Snyder’s “authentic” transition of Frank Miller’s 300. The problem is that where Miller’s work was rife in pulp and missing in texture, the world that Moore and Gibbons created is marked by subtlety. Snyder’s stylized world comes into sharp contrast here and not always for the better. Snyder professed through marketing and behind the scenes shots that he would be keeping strictly with the style and look of Watchmen, what made Watchmen, Watchmen. I think when it comes right down to it, what makes Watchmen a movie worthy of watching is because of the source material itself and has little to do with Snyder’s direction. In this regard, the screenwriters, David Hayter and Alex Tse, must given an award of some kind for distilling this dense and layered material into a coherent whole. Where they deviate from the comic, say in the final act, it is evident that they have pored over the material. They keep so truly to the spirit of the comic, ascribing actions and intents so correctly, that the lead up to the final events is irrelevant, as even with changes it all rings true.

When Snyder does interject his own judgement the results are far from even. The excellent opening sequence has been extolled, but the exceedingly bad music choices through the rest of the movie help suffocate scenes of tension and emotion. Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” destroys a scene of beauty and emotion, evoking chortles and leering instead of understanding. His use of Hendrix’s remake of “All Along the Watchtower”, juxtaposing the lyrics with the scene, is so literal that it is almost unbearable a choice. Snyder put great faith in his audience by not dumbing down the material, why he chose not to do this in his music selection bears some thinking. Then there are the more absurd period choices like “99 Red Balloons” as a prelude to a quiet dinner between two friends.

The last contention would be Snyder’s choice of over-stylized action and blood. In “300” Snyder used computer generated and stylized blood to achieve the effects that Miller set forth in his comic book. It was a resounding success. Miller’s work was bereft of any nuances and the large swaths of blood in this gorefest helped create a rather enjoyable world. Snyder unwisely brought this to the Watchmen and in many cases to disastrous consequences. The ripping of bone and cutting of flesh works okay in a number of sequences. They add little, but don’t detract too much. In pivotal moments, particularly those that function as character studies, much like the music they take a deep moment and turn it into the absurd. The huge swaths of blood revolt the audience, as that gut instinct is what they take away from the scene. Once again Snyder demonstrates his inability to handle the nuances of subtlety, choosing to swath the characters of Watchmen in broad strokes and over-done theatricality.

There is an argument to be made that Snyder merely apes the brutality of Watchmen. Moore in Watchmen seems to state that violence is one of the only actions available to the world. He copies Heinlen, saying that as a naked force violence is one of the most powerful weapons. Moore attempts to show that this violence can have a positive effect, creating a a better society. He asks the audience to grapple with ends and means, whether justifying mass death is logical and how far should ideals stand. There are no easy questions and the events of the plot only state what happened, they don’t prescribe the author’s attitude over these very important questions. Snyder’s violence in Watchmen is not for this rhyme or reason. In fact, one could go so far as to say that it is not for any reason at all. Violence in Snyder’s Watchmen is candy, a sugary sweet topping to entice the audience to partake of the larger issues. Unfortunately for Snyder he does not use his directoral hand carefully. He does not preserve the subtlety and message of Moore, and his violence becomes so indiscriminate and common place that the meaning is lost on an audience that doesn’t have the time between quick cuts to get past the sugary top and down to the fulfilling center.

It will be difficult to come away from this review without an overly negative feeling about both Snyder as a director and Watchmen as a movie. The fact is that for all of Snyder’s missteps he is saved time and time again by the excellent source material and the equally good adaptation that was produced in the script. These two elevate even the scenes that go horribly awry, because getting past Snyder’s mistakes one can see the beauty and the meaning beneath. Of course, that is too much to ask of the audience, but then again Watchmen asks a lot. Snyder set before himself an impossible task and I might say that a better director might have made a better movie. However, that movie may not have been a Watchmen movie and there in lies the rub. It is impossible for a lover of the graphic novel to watch the movie as an entity by itself. In every scene, dutifully taken from the panels, a love is evoked that engenders one closer to the movie. To love Watchmen the graphic novel would then be to love Watchmen the movie to a large extent. Even for all its flaws Snyder’s decision to stand so dutifully to the source material is worthy of admiration. One who has not read the original material might walk away from the film with a vastly different perception. But this movie was not made for those people and as it stands, our Watchmen is flawed like its characters, but ultimately rewarding in the end.