There
is probably no film that has been talked about more this summer than Brad
Pitt’s self-funded World War Z. Plagued with rumours about reshoots and
gaining notoriety for potential failure, the film was looking like Costner’s Waterworld or Travolta’s
Battlefield Earth.
The
story begins with a really rubbish title sequence followed by one of the most
painful exposition set ups I’ve seen in a recent blockbuster film. The film opens in Gerry Lane’s (Brad Pitt)
kitchen as he makes breakfast for his wife (Mireille Enos) and daughters. A TV that is on the counter is showing
footage of global riots and ‘strange behavior’, whilst at the same time Gerry’s
daughter is asking him whether he ‘misses his job’ at the UN. If audiences can’t figure out what is going
to happen next then they need to watch more ‘90s action thrillers or give up
entirely. The plot then bursts into
action with the family having to escape a zombie outbreak in New York and then
make their way to a safe zone in the Pacific Ocean. Gerry is then told that the only way that the
military will look after his family is if he goes on a special UN mission in
order to locate ‘patient zero’ and try to figure out the disease.
There
is a brilliant moment in Shaun Of The
Dead where Shaun has a go at Ed for using ‘the Z word’ because it is
‘ridiculous’.
In
WWZ there is something more interesting going on: by trying to be as realistic as possible, the
filmmakers have conceded that the characters in their film live in a world
similar to the audiences’, and have therefore all seen zombies films – so
rather than to downplay references to ‘the Z word’, all of the characters seem
to use it as much as possible to highlight their intimate knowledge with
zombies and zombie resistance that they must have absorbed from TV…
On
a more serious note, the most interesting moments of the film for me were the
references to the events of the 1973 Yom Kippur war alongside the present day
(post-zombie) Palestinian/Israeli relations.
Having little to no understanding of the ’73 conflict, it still seemed a
little tasteless to use that tension as the catalyst for Israel’s prophetic
isolationism from the outbreak. It seems
strange that in the filmic universe of WWZ, everything else is geopolitically
the same as our reality, expect for a giant virus-proof wall surrounding Israel
(that no-one noticed). There is also a
sour moment where the Palestinians are blamed for being too noisy and alerting
the zombies… hmm. There is also a
reference to the disease being contained in North Korea because the government
have removed the teeth of all of the citizens.
Is that supposed to be a dark joke or biting political satire?
As
is to be expected from an American blockbuster film, the level of cultural
imperialism is spectacular. The
American military are immediately put in control of the rescue operation for
the whole world and, much like in earlier apocalypse films such as Independence Day and
2012, all other cultures are side-lined or ignored (Africa and South America
never get a mention). The strange
exception in this film is that the final third of the movie has Gerry relocate
to Wales in order for him to visit a World Health Organisation facility in
order to try and understand the disease better.
I haven’t read the book (although I am now tempted) but a quick skim of
the Wikipedia page offers no clue into any Welsh references in the source
material – could it be that the film was filmed in and around Britain to save
money so by using Wales they fulfilled to vital functions for the production:
1) by using Wales they saved money 2) by using Wales they gain credibility for filling
the screen with somewhere other than America / American army bases abroad.
The
strangest thing about this film is that the pacing seems to be in reverse of
most blockbusters. The film doesn’t
really bother with a beginning and has the zombie outbreak in the second scene,
and the most frenetic and exciting part of the film plays out for about half an
hour. Then the plot kicks in and Gerry
has to travel the world talking to people, which is punctuated with moments of
excitement but is mainly conversations and trying to undercover the genesis of
the disease. Then a large section of the
end of the film is spent trying to creep past zombies and stay quiet. This seems to be the exact opposite of what
you would expect from a tense action/thriller, yet it somehow seems to work.
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