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Land
of the Dead
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The Turning Point
In a world where the dead are returning to life, the
word trouble loses much of its
meaning.
– Kaufman
(Dennis Hopper) in Land of the Dead
Another
zombie movie from George Romero? From the late 1960s until his death at 77 in
2017, Romero served up a variety of zombies, disquieting and hilarious in equal
measure, and always changing in their significance along with the temper of the
times: zombies as anti-Vietnam War protestors; as mindless consumers; or as a
vast, American underclass. Like George Miller with the Mad Max series, Romero was
unafraid to wipe the slate clean with each new instalment, recasting the
premise of the fiction as necessary.
I
confess to never having been a rabid fan of Romero’s work. His skill as a
scriptwriter seemed to me sometimes half-baked, and his ability to flesh out a
clever conceit to feature-length lacking. I half-expected Land of the Dead to be a smarty-pants horror movie in the wake of Scream (1996) and its many woeful imitations.
I
was wrong – about Romero, and about this film. Land of the Dead is, at every moment, a jaw-droppingly audacious
film. In fact, it is Karl Marx’s Capital on the multiplex screen. George Romero’s anti-Bush (indeed, anti-American)
rhetoric is fearless and unrelenting: the embodiment of evil capitalism,
Kaufman, announces “We don’t negotiate with terrorists”; later his opponent,
the heavily ethnic Cholo (John Leguizamo), responds with: “I’m gonna do a Jihad
on his ass.” Only a supposedly trivial zombie horror movie – dismissed,
overlooked or treated summarily by many mainstream, middlebrow critics – could
manage to fly under the ideological radar so completely to work its savage,
subversive mischief.
There
is something pleasingly vague, confused, mixed about this film’s very
nationality. It is not quite American – indeed, it seems built like a Trojan
Horse to undermine the staid, conservative American studio system that
distributed it around the world. Shot in Canada, it has French co-producers,
and actors that come from Italy (Asia Argento) and Australia (Simon Baker). The
ethnicities of a multi-culture are constantly stressed: Leguizamo as a ‘Spic’,
the Samoan muscle-man, the Latin-American Motown, the “poor Mexican bastard”
with a shopping trolley, the African-American leader of the zombies named Big
Daddy (Eugene Clark) …
This
beyond-America dimension comes as no surprise; Romero was able, after many
difficult years of projects cancelled or interfered with, to put this film
together precisely because of his international, underground fan base that has
spread like a virus around the world over the past four decades. Of all
contemporary American directors working within genre cinema, Romero is the most
outward looking, the one most open to the wide world.
Indeed,
the mass of zombies in Land of the Dead embody not the Freudian unconscious, or one nation’s oppressed underclass, or
the kind of hermeneutic puzzle that Larry Cohen loves to pose in Q – The Winged Serpent (1982) or his It’s Alive series (1974, 1978 &
1987). These creatures are not there to be decrypted (in the ‘subtext’, as
horror nerds of the Diabolique nest today
love to mis-say) as only one thing.
Romero’s zombies are not just crazy, mixed-up, anti-social kids on a rampage –
although he serves up some good gags (which he must have been storing up for
years) for viewers who simply want to enjoy them on that level. What’s really
going on with the zombies in Land of the
Dead is that they represent, and emenate from, the entire outside world
that contemporary America ignores at its peril.
The
Marxist overtones in Land of the Dead find a very specific contemporary equivalent in the writing of the Australian
social theorist, Boris Frankel. In his book Zombies,
Lilliputians and Sadists: The Power of the Living Dead and the Future of
Australia (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2004), Frankel distinguishes three new classes
that go far beyond the old social divisions of race, gender or wealth; his
analysis has a general applicability to all contemporary Western countries.
Zombies are those who have been ground down by the system, by the mindlessness
of work, made passive by consumerism – they are still alive and potentially
capable of action, but out of touch with the times, nostalgic, hitching their
prevailing life-force to perverse religious fundamentalisms or resurgent
racisms. Lilliputians are those who think big and spout radical rhetoric (think
of the Irish radical in Land of the Dead who vows to “turn this place into what we always wanted it to be”), but never
succeed in changing anything – perhaps they even make the status quo worse.
Sadists – the true living dead, in which group Frankel includes ex-USA-President
George Bush and former Australian Prime Minister John Howard – are those who
find a way to wield power over others, whether through the old, established
paths of privilege or acts of sheer brute strength.
Frankel’s
sociological diagram is virtually identical with the scenario of Land of the Dead – except that, instead
of moving backwards into the past, Romero’s zombies turn to revolution.
Even
politically intelligent horror movies today often fall into the trap of merely
inscribing their meanings in the margins of the film-text – in throwaway,
ironic lines of dialogue, or in elements of the décor that provide a subtle
counterpoint to the central action (like the ‘No More War’ posters visible at
one point in Land of the Dead). The
danger here is that such grace notes, essentially detachable from the core of
the film, run the risk of being understood and enjoyed only by those who are
already aficionados of the genre, already converted to the cause of critical
commentary – while they are missed by most other viewers, who continue to
consume the film according to the conventional, conservative formula.
Romero,
however, achieves something quite different and far greater. The meaning and
force of his film inheres in its
deepest narrative structure, in the complex, headlong movement of each scene, plot-point,
event and gesture to the next. It is this secret of the most classical American
cinema – the cinema of Raoul Walsh, John Ford and especially Howard Hawks (for
this is a very Hawksian film) – that Romero has rediscovered, revitalised and
placed at the centre of his art in Land
of the Dead.
In Land of the Dead, Romero takes a
particularly bold step of rewriting his own, loose genre: the stroke of genius
is in making the zombies, at last, an evolving
species. Every key moment of the plot relates to some way in which these
monsters become more conscious, more communicative, more adaptive – no longer
simply the functional, static, closed beings defined as either stenchers (for
how they smell) or walkers (for the sole action of which they are seemingly capable).
In
terms of cinematic figuration, this progressively reduces the gap (the
difference) between the zombies and every other character in the movie: Charlie
(Robert Joy), with his facial disfigurement and mental disability, is easily
mistaken for a zombie when we first encounter him; and Cholo ultimately comes
to swap his upward social mobility – his hopeless, deluded dream to live like a
rich, protected citizen – for a more radical desire to join the zombie class
and “see how the other half lives.” The blurring of zombie and human species
leads to a key scene that would be literally impossible, unthinkable in
Romero’s previous zombie films: even though Cholo has already transformed fully
into a zombie when he confronts Kaufman in the underground car park, he still
has the guided intelligence to take his political revenge against the principal
embodiment of capitalist evil – and Big Daddy has become smart enough not only
to repeat his old gestures of pumping oil into the car, but also, more decisively,
rolling in a lighted canister to ignite the murderous flame. It is a superb
moment of narrative economy and resolution.
The
philosophical-political question these zombies raise is exactly the same one
facing all the human characters: what are we to become? Or as Riley (Simon
Baker) puts it in the closing moments: “They’re just looking for a place to go
– same as us.” Romero does not end up by asserting the need for a simple re-unification of zombie and human
within the one body, but the demonstration, once again, of a new social
multiplicity: each group of characters is left, at the conclusion, still on
their own road, trying to found their own collectivity and social formation …
The
narrative shape of Land of the Dead demands particularly close attention. The film alternates, in a masterful
fashion, three threads or trajectories: that of the zombies led by Big Daddy
towards the Fiddler’s Green tower; that of Riley and his team; and that of
Cholo. Each of these trajectories takes us through and into many different
social milieux, in different ways and in different directions.
While
Riley changes from being a man of the Law to a hired hand, and finally into a
visionary individualist searching for a virgin land at the head of a truly
Hawksian team (a prostitute, a disabled man … ), Cholo is the secret agent who
“takes out the trash” of the system, travels up the social hierarchy, and is
then brutally rejected from it – hence left to take his revenge as a zombie,
dying in the process. When all three trajectories are combined in the film’s
unfolding pattern, the logic of the entire social structure is laid bare, as
surely and as systematically as Fritz Lang did in M (1931).
There
is no kind of social space, real or symbolic, which Romero fails to include in
this vivid panorama: the trailers and automobiles of the underclass, the
official and criminal spaces of work, the aristocratic spaces of leisure
compared to the Medieval-style carnivals for the poor and dispossessed
(complete with a glimpse of a Punch and Judy show!), the transient non-spaces
of car parks, abandoned petrol stations, supermarkets, roads into and out of
the city … In fact, it is no mere flourish that Romero has now dropped his
time-of-day titles (Night of the Living
Dead [1968], Dawn of the Dead [1978], Day of the Dead [1985]) and
moved onto spatial metaphors: Land of the
Dead is among the great films about the social architecture of the modern
metropolis.
Observe,
for instance, how the metropolitan centre of Pittsburgh is presented as a
fortress: it keeps the zombies out, but also keeps its vast population down –
distracted with “games and vices”, as Kaufman proudly boasts. Above all, it
serves, finally as a prison for both
the wealthy and poor alike. It is precisely the gradual manner in which the
zombies come to breach the perimeter of this awful world that shifts the
balance of power.
In
the language beloved of the Hollywood scriptwriting industry, films should be
built on strong turning points –
actions or events that take the narrative to the next level of intensity,
tension and meaningfulness. Often, the turning points in American movies are
banal, predictable and formulaic (as in much of Spielberg’s cinema): a car bomb
blows up an innocent family; a hidden menace reveals itself and attacks. Romero
uses the narrative system of turning points – clinchers where something both
logical and surprising unfolds before our eyes – in an especially brilliant and
affecting way.
Let
us recall the stations along the way (in just under 90 minutes of action-packed
narrative) of the zombies’ evolution as a species. At the 15 minute mark, Big
Daddy picks up and straps on a rifle. At the 38th minute, he learns
to fire this rifle out of rage. At 56 minutes, the zombies face the Fiddler’s
Green Tower across the expanse of water that blocks them; Big Daddy, in a
seemingly senseless and suicidal gesture, steps into the water and disappears
under the surface, as his comrades remain immobile. After the gap created by an
intervening scene, we see, in one of the film’s finest and most rousing
moments, first Big Daddy, and then all the other zombies, raise their heads
above the water: they have figured out, logically, how to overcome the barriers
put in their way by the social formation.
At
the 63rd minute, Big Daddy transmits the know-how and the ability to
fire guns or use other weapons on to his colleagues. At the 71st minute, Big Daddy shows himself capable of an act of compassion: killing a
zombie who is on fire, and hence suffering horribly. (This scene is an answer
to the question once asked à propos John Woo’s action films: must one kill the dead?) At the 74th minute, the zombies use all the tools they have amassed to breach another
barrier: the glass doors and windows of the Fiddler’s Green complex.
But
the best turning point is left for last. Early in the film, the function of the
skyflowers – missiles shot into the sky to produce bewitching fireworks
patterns – is established: the mindless zombies are so mesmerised by the
spectacle that they can only gaze up at them, transfixed, forgetting whatever
murder or mayhem they were about to commit. Late in the narrative, at the 79
minute mark, a particularly bloody, imminent devastation of the fleeing city’s
human population is seemingly averted, in the nick of time, by the launching of
these skyflowers (“Thank God!”, proclaims one briefly individuated citizen.)
The zombies stop and look up, as expected. But then, in a terrific coup de cinéma, one zombie looks down,
and then all the others look down, to continue with their rampage: now, in
evolutionary terms, they are beyond being fooled by this cheap showbiz trick.
What
this magnificent scene evokes is not horror but a kind of triumph, a
celebration: when Romero’s narrative turns around so completely and powerfully,
it aligns itself – like Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932) at its similar table-turning moment of plot revelation – with the
oppressed, who now have the brains to take and wield power.
Romero
has stated that he regards his zombie films more as action-adventure pieces
than as horror movies per se. They
trade little in Gothic fear or fright – beyond a few punctual shock moments
that usually register more as Keatonesque black-comedy gags than as
manifestations of the abject. The action in Land
of the Dead is, as we have seen, all about one thing: political power (or
its absence: powerlessness). This has important effects for Romero’s reworking
of the horror genre. Traditionally, horror films have portrayed the
monster-figure (whether alien, vampire or zombie) as Other – embodying what
society excludes, demonises or ignores. The way that conservative thought deals
with its manifold Others is to brand them as Evil – precisely along an Axis of
Evil. But most filmmakers – even if they have a politically radical sympathy
for the devil – come up hard against the seemingly intractable limit of the
genre: ultimately the monster, even if it has generated some sympathy, has to
be annihilated, and the status quo restored (this is the King Kong syndrome).
Land of the Dead imperiously ignores such conventions. Although plenty of nameless zombies are –
according to the law of the genre – gleefully destroyed along the way so that
our nominal heroes can survive, the whole film moves towards the crowning
moment when Riley stops the tank gunner from taking aim and destroying Big
Daddy as he crosses a bridge with his fellow zombies.
The
significance of Land of the Dead in
the history of world cinema is already starting to be felt. (Romero’s own
subsequent productions, Diary of the Dead [2007] and Survival of the Dead [2009], are good but do not match or surpass it.) It is hard to imagine the
political extremity of either Joe Dante’s Homecoming (2005) from the Masters of Horror series – in which cruelly sacrificed American soldiers rise from the grave to
vote against their Government in an election! – or Bong Joon-ho’s Korean
monster-movie blockbuster The Host (2006), a vivid allegory of American
interventionism, without the lead that Romero set.
When
Leonard Cohen was asked his opinion of a late Bob Dylan album, he replied: “I
love to see the old guys lay it out”. No one laid it out like George Romero in
his 60s and beyond (he even signed my Land
of the Dead poster with “Come the Revolution!”). Indeed, Land of the Dead – a supremely radical
achievement in the context of contemporary mainstream cinema – recalls the
declaration, late in life, of another fine left-wing American whose career was
blocked even more than Romero’s: Abraham Polonsky. At the end of the
documentary Red Hollywood (1996) by
Thom Andersen and Noël Burch, Polonsky declares: “Capitalism is crime.” He
pauses and comments: “When I was young, that’s what I thought”. Then, with a
sly twinkle in his eye, he adds: “Now that I’m old, I know it”. Now, there’s another great turning point.
Earlier
versions of this piece have been translated into Spanish in Miradas de cine, no. 58 (January 2007),
German in Ray (June 2007), and French
in Jean-Baptiste Thoret’s book Politique des zombies:
L’Amérique selon George A. Romero (Paris:
Ellipses, 2007).
MORE Romero: The Dark Half © Adrian Martin August 2005 / September 2006 / May 2013 / September 2021 |
