Nochnoi Dozor

[sistermagpie]

So I started this one post in my head, but apparently it's not ready to come out of my fingers yet. I wanted to write about gender, and it's the most massive subject in the world.

Anyway, yesterday I went to see Night Watch, a movie about good vs. evil (or light vs. dark) in an Apocolyptic battle over the world. Original, no? Okay, not exactly, but I did enjoy it and I wouldn't even mind seeing the sequel, "Day Watch" (and the next one "Dusk Watch"-I kid you not). The idea is that there are these "Others," though I can't tell how you become one. On one hand it seems like you're born one, but I think they also explain that you can become one if you just go through something amazing, like fighting off a vampire attack. Or maybe doing something amazing just brings out your inherent Other-nature that might not have appeared otherwise. Anyway, after that you seem to get a power, and then you have to decide whether to use it to fight for the Light or the Dark, who are perfectly matched, until The One comes who will be more powerful than anyone (not played by Keanu Reeves in this movie) and tip the balance.

The main thing that was hard for me to buy in the movie was my usual question--why would anyone but the most crazy people choose the dark? I mean Eventually The One, who is a boy who turns out to be the main character's son, chooses the Dark. He chooses it because he learns his father once was going to arrange for him to be killed, back before he was born and before he knew he was his son. So his feeling was that the Light was worse than the Dark because at least the Dark were honest.

Me, I don't get that. Yeah, good people who are hypocritical are annoying (where have we seen those before?) but that still doesn't make evil any less relentlessly bad. Nor does it make evil honest. Yeah, they might be honest about not caring about people, but evil is not any sort of protection against being a hypocrit. In fact, often the difference is that Good acknowledges when it doesn't live up to its own ideals whereas Evil just gets sulky and denies it. The upshot in the movie was just that when the leader of the Dark told the protagonist that it was because of him that the kid chose the Dark I thought no way, man. That kid better not be blaming his long lost father for his choice. The Dark has been trying to suck his blood throughout the movie and the Light keeps saving him--including his father, so as far as I can see he's just decided to base his own destiny and the destiny of the world on a passing temper tantrum.

I think it works better if you're someone who believes the world is primarily dark. A character at one point says people choose dark because it's easier to kill the light in yourself than fight the darkness all around you, which I guess makes sense. It did make a change from the many Hollywood versions of this story--American!Keanu Reeves always chooses light! We LOVE fighting evil, the more outnumbered we can imagine ourselves the better.

Another interesting thing in this Russian movie (besides the subtitles which were creatively done--very much liking the subtitles, which were much better than the English voice over prologue and epilogue) was that there were several female characters but our hero was involved with none of them. He starts off wanting to get his wife back, but doesn't. She appears later, but they never see each other. Then there's this cursed woman who's causing a tornado over Moscow (yes, really) and he interacts with her but there's nothing romantic suggested. Then there's Tiger Cub, one of the Light people who turns into a tiger, but she seems if anything to be involved with Bear, another shapeshifter. The best character, imo, was Olga, a stuffed owl given to Anton (the hero) as a partner. The stuffed owl turns into a real owl, who then turns out to be a woman who was being punished for 50 years by being turned into that state. I don't know if her natural power was that she turned into an owl and the punishment was her being turned into a stuffed owl, but her transformation back into a woman is fabulous. She just sort of explodes feathers all over the apartment and winds up naked and covered with owl schmutz. You have to love a movie where the response to someone turning from a bird to a human is: "The shower...is that way."

I guess that's another thing that was a little different than what you'd expect. There's an X-Men theme there with everyone having these different powers, but you really can't tell what a lot of peoples' powers are because they don't much use them. Anton is a Seer, but there's nothing fun about it. Tiger Cub only once turns half-into a tiger and that's the most X-Men moment. There's no freedom or fun associated with having powers, even on the Dark side.

So my review is basically that I enjoyed it and got what I expected to get even though the storyline was pretty confusing and didn't really hold together.

Oh, and speaking of the dark side, somebody stole my InStyle and I'm really annoyed.

Also, RIP Don Knotts and Darrin McGavin, two guys in shows I like. The Night Stalker was my first "favorite show" when I was in kindergarten or first grade, and I have a big thermometer with Barney Fife on it in my office that my brother gave me. ::sigh::

Comments

[dorrie6.livejournal.com]

The main thing that was hard for me to buy in the movie was my usual question--why would anyone but the most crazy people choose the dark?

I think the problem is really that for the most part, conscious choices between "Light" and "Dark" only exist in fiction.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Wow. Yes. You're right--that's exactly the problem. Because of course people choose evil all the time, but they rarely if ever consciously choose evil. Like in this case, the way the kid was feeling could definitely lead him down the evil path, but to have him consciously say that because he was angry he was going to join with the people who spend their time tormenting others and will ultimately probably destroy the world just rang completely false.

[millefiori.livejournal.com]

I think another problem is that in real life we try to lay that fictional choice onto evil/dark behavior. (I'm thinking of Nazi Germany in particular, but it could apply to almost anything.) Evil people generally don't start out with a goal of being evil. They make decisions, unconcious choices (and non-choices) that lead them farther and farther down a dark path, without ever stopping to examine their lives along the way. With 20/20 hindsight it's so tempting to think that all of those people chose to be evil, and that judgement is a comfort, because we can tell ourselves that those people are different; we would never do anything like that. And no--we probably wouldn't ever consciously choose to do evil. But that fictional choice masks the fact that most evil people didn't consciously choose to do evil either, and that's not a comforting thought at all.

[q-spade.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's playing near me down at the Landmark – I think I'll check it out this week. (I wonder if it's playing in San Francisco – my friend over there would love it, she speaks Russian and totally digs horror movies!)

Yeah, good people who are hypocritical are annoying (where have we seen those before?) but that still doesn't make evil any less relentlessly bad. Nor does it make evil honest. Yeah, they might be honest about not caring about people, but evil is not any sort of protection against being a hypocrite.

I suspect it's a self-fullfilling prophecy for those who consider evil more "honest", because it's to be expected that evil will be dishonest and so there's no real disappointment. It's a letdown when "good" people are exposed as hypocritical, but a pleasant surprise when a "bad" person does something right. It's a pessimistic point of view, definitely!

That kid better not be blaming his long lost father for his choice. The Dark has been trying to suck his blood throughout the movie and the Light keeps saving him--including his father, so as far as I can see he's just decided to base his own destiny and the destiny of the world on a passing temper tantrum.

Yet that strikes me as being realistic because...so many people DO base major life decisions on heat-of-the-moment perceptions and feelings, for good, ill, or a myriad of results in between. Sometimes the rashness of the decision is regretted, or perhaps accepted as "where one's head was at during that time". Sometimes one isn't allowed the luxury of acceptance or regret.

I don't know if her natural power was that she turned into an owl and the punishment was her being turned into a stuffed owl, but her transformation back into a woman is fabulous. She just sort of explodes feathers all over the apartment and winds up naked and covered with owl schmutz.

Yes! Now THAT'S what I call metamorphosis! :D

On a slightly more serious note, shapeshifting must be an excruciatingly painful process. Think of all the bones, muscles, nerves...shrinking, growing, twisting and turning inside the skin. That's gotta hurt.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yet that strikes me as being realistic because...so many people DO base major life decisions on heat-of-the-moment perceptions and feelings, for good, ill, or a myriad of results in between. Sometimes the rashness of the decision is regretted, or perhaps accepted as "where one's head was at during that time". Sometimes one isn't allowed the luxury of acceptance or regret.

Yes, I think dorrie6 really hit it when she said it's because the choice itself being put that way only happens in fiction. People do "choose evil" in terms of letting their lives be ruled by these sorts of things, they just don't usually have it laid out this way. Choosing good or bad is usually more a series of choices, which often are influenced by just this sort of thing.

On a slightly more serious note, shapeshifting must be an excruciatingly painful process. Think of all the bones, muscles, nerves...shrinking, growing, twisting and turning inside the skin. That's gotta hurt.

When the tiger girl changes a little bit earlier on it's much more fluid--really, it's a CGI-moment where her face just gets tiger-like. But this is much more organic so it seems more real. It's like the perfect symbol of CGI vs. old-fashioned movie making. Even though the technology is probably far superior with the tiger girl, the owl girl is more "real" despite being presented through edits and tricks.

[trobadora]

I saw this film months ago, and I wish I could remember it better because I didn't have that reaction to it at all. I can't really say why - everything you say makes sense. The only thing I can offer is that at least my impression was that the Dark side didn't consider itself to be evil, so the argument of a conscious choice of evil wouldn't apply. It seemed more of an order/chaos divide to me, but that may be projection or mis-remembering. I'm really annoyed that I don't remember more! Watching something once just isn't enough for me.

That said, the owl transformation was really, really cool. :-) Easily the most impressive scene of the whole film.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I may be giving the impression my impression was different than it was. That is, it totally worked for me in the movie and I couldn't see it really working any other way. It was only afterwards when I thought about it in an isolated way that I thought this. So we may have been more alike in our reactions than it seems. I bought it completely within the movie.

[teratologist.livejournal.com]

Yeah, good people who are hypocritical are annoying (where have we seen those before?) but that still doesn't make evil any less relentlessly bad. Nor does it make evil honest.

This is only a variation on what was said before, but to me what it boils down to is that instead of Light and Dark, what most people get is a choice between two (or many more than two - another issue that isn't explored enough in fiction) Lights that are both visibly 'tainted' with Dark in some regard, or Darks that have some important flashes of Light - in which case, it could make sense for a certain person in certain circumstances to choose the side that at least acknowledged its own Darkness as more honest. Sadly, for a whole range of reasons, the idea of a choice between different sets of messy ambiguities sometimes doesn't seem dramatic enough - and I can certainly sympathize to some degree with people who feel like they get enough of that sort of thing in real life!

But if you forgo the ambiguities, then, as you said, you get the difficulty of creating realistic motivations in an unrealistic universe. Hence the falling back all the time on cliches of revenge, madness, and born-badness.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think that's true. And you could definitely feel the frustration of the hero, who was on the good side but was the one most annoyed by their behavior. I really think it's impossible to truly be "light" without acknowledging you your "dark," and to try to be wholly light or good without anything else is just impossible. It leads to the type of attitude that annoys me the most--the kind of people I probably would choose dark over. So I just contradicted my own idea there!

[hagia-sophia.livejournal.com]

I saw this movie and didn't like it precisely because the storyline was confusing and didn't hold together, as you say. But the movie is based on a book, and those who have read it say that the book explains all these things (such as how you become the Other, etc.) much better. Of course they claim that the book is way better, and since it's true about most books vs. movie adaptations, I believe them. I'm planning to read it some day.
By the way, the whole scene with the stupid kid choosing the Dark side over the Light was not in the book. The whole father-son subplot was written specifically for the movie; and I think it's the weakest scene in the whole movie.
On the whole, I disliked the adaptation because to me, the storyline is the most important part of any movie, and no CGI effects can make up for it. But there are some nice moments, as you have noted. And the part about the hero not being involved with any of the women around him - I think it's the best. A refreshing change from the cliche of the hero always ending up in bed with the woman he helps/the woman who helps him...

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Watching it I definitely felt like the book probably explained everything more. I could almost imagine how the scenes would be different and how we'd get more explanations of feelings and things. It was just one of those kinds of movies--I would be interested in reading the book as well.

I had no idea that storyline was added for the movie-now I really do want to read the book. Because it seemed almost like something stuck in just to give it a simple plot, or a more standard plot.

Book

[(Anonymous)]

*delurks*

Hello, I hope you don't mind an anonymous post but I don't have an LJ-Account. I recommend reading the book because the movie just covers roughly one third of the book. So if you want to know the reason for Olga's punishment, who really cursed Svetlana and Gesser's true agenda you know what to do.
I myself can't wait for the second book. It is supposed to come out in April in Germany.

CU Chris-san

Re: Book

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Don't mind the anonymous at all--I'm going to put that on my list of books to check out! (I really did want to know about Olga especially...)

[ackonrad.livejournal.com]

Another interesting thing in this Russian movie was that there were several female characters but our hero was involved with none of them.

Aww, you can't imagine how happy you make me with that comment. I've been praying to have a chance to see such a movie (well, if we exclude HP, of course), but whenever I find the time to go to the cinema, I always remain disappointed. It seems that Hollywood isn't able to include female characters in a movie without making at least one of them have sex, fall in love or at least kiss the main character. Very annoying. Of course, I don't expect a story lacking a romantic plot or subplot whenever I go to see a romantic comedy, but honestly, is it that hard not to have the main character fall in love exactly during the entire action or drama or whatever it is going on? Grrr. Maybe they think they are letting the audience take a breath during the action or feel better during the drama, but for me, it's simply annoying, at least most of the time. In some very rare cases, it works.

I remember watching that Batman movie and loving it and being happy that they didn't make Batman fall in love with Katie Holmes's character, and then just before the movie ended - bam! Was that really necessary? It nearly ruined the movie for me.

Tornado over Moscow? *dies laughing*

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yes, it really was a pleasant surprise! Granted the movie took place over, like, two days, but you know in a Hollywood movie that would of course be time to throw in some sex. It was nice to see that everybody had other things on their minds.

And yes, it was a tornado over Moscow. Don't ask me how that worked.:-)

[snorri-di.livejournal.com]

Tornado over Moscow - that's the fruit of imagination. It had to highlight Svetlana's extraordinary abilities.
Eight years ago there was a hurricane over Moscow, not as strog as it could be, but rather terrible for those who were accustomed to the climate of Central Russia.

[nemesister.livejournal.com]

Well, in that movie the light side is really pretty despicable. They are selling out that girl to the vampire for example. They are heartless hypocritical bureaucrats. I wouldn't want anything to do with them either, unless a vampire is trying to kill me and they protect me of course. :)
The evil side is honest. They say they take what they can get because that's in their nature. There is no space for dishonesty in that philosophy.
The good side is wishywashy "We have to protect the innocents, but, OK, that one girl you can have" That's evil and dishonest. Of course it's less evil than the evil side but if you judge by principle you probably find them worse.
Also, the only thing I really cared about in the movie was that Anton would get his comeuppance for the curse, so I'm fine with his son's decision and reasoning. I wonder what it was like in the book.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it definitely does seem like the best the light can do is...not much. I mean, at one point the vampire boy asks why the light gives the dark passes to get certain people and I wondered that too--does the Dark given the Light pass for certain things? Like do they lay off certain people or look the other way when the Light protects them? I don't know.

I think the thing that frustrates me is that there's light/dark and then there's good/evil. Personally, I tend towards dark but also good. So generally I do side with the dark--it's just I don't want to have to hang around people who are going to beat me up!

[nemesister.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think the dark side is pretty restrained. They have to follow the rules or they get killed. (I really liked that idea btw, better than I liked the film after I've actually seen it.) So they are fighting for their ultimate freedom now, which they can't have as long as the world is in balance.

I think the thing that frustrates me is that there's light/dark and then there's good/evil. Personally, I tend towards dark but also good. So generally I do side with the dark--it's just I don't want to have to hang around people who are going to beat me up!

Anton is like that though, isn't he? He is pretty dark but he wouldn't beat you up.:) I like dark and good too, and I often love anti-heroes.
I can't stand that guy though, because he is just too weak, morally and otherwise. Causing an abort for the woman you love, to get her back, might not be the most evil thing you could think of but it's easily the most pathetic one. And through the first movie he was still too much of a loser for my liking.

Now that it's some time since you reminded me of the movie, I remember that the ending was pretty weird anyway, how everything was suddenly just like in the computer game for no apparent reason. The boy joining the dark side because his asshole father was on the side of the light, and because he felt angry and vulnerable, was probably the one thing I could accept, but the script could have used some work in general IMO.

Anyway, I will watch the other movies because I want to know how it works out. I think the others will either finally destroy themselves or restore the old balance because you can't have good or evil win in a story like that. : /

[fatalseafood.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen the movie, unfortunately, but I've read the first two books in the trilogy (bought the entire series in hardcover for 5$ in Moscow. Yay, cheap, though badly written, entertainment) and, frankly, felt as though most rational beings would hesitate between Light and Dark, mainly because the difference between the two sides isn't that one is good and the other evil, but that both are equally ambiguous when it comes to morality. The Dark at least admits to the ambiguity. Both sides are motivated in identical ways, and both desire to achieve "the greater good;" the Dark is simply willing to admit to the occasional necessity of sacrifice.

But then, it's been 2 years since I've read Night Watch, and all I clearly is the "tornado" plot.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Ah--now, see, by that description I would totally go with dark. As I said above, in general I would lean dark instead of light, but that's because the two don't have to be good instead of bad. If Dark is acknowledging the balance and light is not, then I'd say the dark people are the way to go.

It was hard in the movie to tell just what was being controlled, though, which made it hard. Like, is being a vampire illegal in terms of the truce? Why? I have to agree that's a bit unfair--if you're the others, is it really your job to protect people all the time?

[guza.livejournal.com]

This movie sounds pretty cool - think I'll probably see it just because of the owl bit, hahaha. At first I thought you were talking about a movie based on Terry Pratchett's 'Night Watch' book. (if you haven't read that I'd rec it, although it's not my favourite of his books.)


Another interesting thing in this Russian movie was that there were several female characters but our hero was involved with none of them.

That's so strange to hear. :D

Sometimes I rewrite plots of movies in my head, taking out all the romance and keeping characters in only if they serve some other purpose. I think I'm a 5-year-old at heart in some ways (eewwww, kissy kissy cooties!!) .

Do you enjoy watching/reading romance at all? Of any sort? It's funny because I usually find romance aspects in a lot of stories incredibly boring, but 3 of my favourite movies (I have quite a long list hahaha) are full on love stories - Love Actually, Moulin Rouge and Phantom of the Opera, although the first is very different from the other two. :B Have you seen Love Actually?

So... that had nothing to do with anything, but since I haven't seen the movie, it felt like I couldn't really say anything about it. :D

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I rewrite plots of movies in my head, taking out all the romance and keeping characters in only if they serve some other purpose. I think I'm a 5-year-old at heart in some ways (eewwww, kissy kissy cooties!!) .

LOL! It's like the opposite of fandom where romance is everywhere!

I don't always hate romance-I liked Love, Actually a lot, in fact! I don't like it when people turn something that isn't a romance into one, like where people will be fighting against evil and fanfic will make it that it's more important for the guy to get the girl than to save the world---that's strange to me. But I've got nothing against romance itself, even as part of a larger story.

[strangemuses.livejournal.com]

I just got home from seeing Night Watch and Tristam Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story.

Night Watch to me, felt like an animated comic book. It had the same sort of hyper, exaggerated look and logic of a comic. The owl woman's transformation was lovely, but I was even more impressed with the cut to pure animation for the story of the cursed Virgin of Byzantium. That was so beautifully done, technically and conceptually, separating out this minature story-within-a-story from the rest of the movie.

As for the choice between Dark and Light... I got the impression that the choice wasn't between "good" and "evil" as we consider them. The choice was between how these "Others" regarded mundane, mortal humans. The "Others" reminded me very much of Clive Barker's Nightbreed. They are all supernatural, magical beings with their own history, mythology, and morals. What brought them to war was how they chose to deal with humans.

In that regard, the boy's choice of "Dark" made sense to me. The "Dark" side was dark because they chose to prey openly on humanity. The supposed 'hero' of the "Light" side coldly, hypocritcally chose to murder his unborn child because it was expedient. The "Light" side fed humans to "Dark" vampires as bait in order to tempt the "Dark" Others into breaking the truce. Morally, there was no difference at all between how the Dark and Light Others dealt with humanity -- the Dark were just more upfront about it.

BTW, if you haven't seen Tristam Shandy, I highly recommend it. It's hilarious.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

And there's another way of looking at it that I'd considered but I wasn't sure if that was the way to see it. If you're a vampire that preys on humans, it seems to me that's a bit like being an animal eating your prey. If they're your natural food, are you breaking a law by feeding on them? And is the Light really supposed to be watching over people? Or are they just sort of saying the people belong to them because they like using them to their own advantage--like by using humans to bait Dark Others into breaking the truce. Why would you do that?

I like your reading of it--it makes a lot of sense to me.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

The world-is-darkness-so-why-fight-it thing is a very common real-life Russian philosophy (especially in fantasy stuff! but really everywhere), so I sort of groaned when you said it was Russian and decided I'm glad I've never seen it and -will- never see it. Maybe this is my prejudice talking, but if I see one more depressed Russian I might have to shoot them on principle :P

Um. But yeaaah, people who think that in general (not just Russians but uh, angsty teenagers of all sorts) really annoy the living daylights out of me. Because yeah, sure, the world sucks, 'good' people are hypocrites sometimes, but yeah-- at least they wanna be better!! You can't say that about the petulant, destructive, EXTREMELY ANNOYING 'dark' people who're just like 'I don't like this game. DESTROY!'. That is seriously so immature-emo-teenager I can't stand it. GROW UP! -.-;;;; Um, sorry for the caps, I'm feeling emphatic, ahahaha :)

I think you can choose the dark consciously and not just in stories; I think it's just that dorrie6 has luckily not had contact with these self-pitying self-destructive narcissistic bastards as I have. They're not insane, they're just really pissed at everyone, convinced they've gotten the rotten end of the stick, and just a bit... uh, overdosed on testosterone. Visit certain types of gamers or music forums and you'll find tons of these assholes; actually, a lot of introverted teenage boys go through a stage like this where I think they -would- consciously choose 'Dark' (what they naively imagine is 'Dark') just for the thrill, the sense of self-justification and empowerment, the power-trip. God, when I think about it I just want to smack them upside the head, but I've known way a lot of them directly or indirectly. Girls like me (INFPs) are usually suckers for 'redeeming' and 'fixing' this type, because after all, WHO WOULD CONSCIOUSLY CHOOSE THIS, RIGHT?? ><;;;; *groans guiltily*

A big reason I'm so bitter about romance at times is that I know all too well the sort of whiny self-aggrandizing bastard who'd choose 'the Dark' just to be a rebellious asshole and avoid whatever female in his life and just do his self-destructive 'thing' to the detriment of all his human relationships. And they're not even psycho, just really going through their antisocial phase. Um. But the shape-shifting sounds fun :))

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Heh--the friend I saw it with sort of said the same thing: Yup, the world is darkness so why fight it...if you're Russian! Just ask my family!


Because yeah, sure, the world sucks, 'good' people are hypocrites sometimes, but yeah-- at least they wanna be better!! You can't say that about the petulant, destructive, EXTREMELY ANNOYING 'dark' people who're just like 'I don't like this game. DESTROY!'. That is seriously so immature-emo-teenager I can't stand it. GROW UP! -.-;;;; Um, sorry for the caps, I'm feeling emphatic, ahahaha :)

Yes, I also think of that with the whole idea that Dark is going to be more honest. Because in my experience people like that often *say* that they don't care and there's no point in having morals and they're just going to take what they want, but when somebody does that to them they're completely offended and betrayed. So often it comes down to wanting to do one thing yourself but of course you don't want other people to behave that way because you can't have a society that way! So that's why I think it's not really honest, it's just hypocritical in the opposite way. Maybe it's just because morality seems like the only logical way to go for me. I mean, I know different people can see ethnics differently, but it just seems so obvious that if nobody cares about anything else you just all die. You have no civilization. You can't get anything done. So any philosophy based on that seems also based on the understanding that *somebody* is going to be good because otherwise I have no society to prey on, if that makes sense.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

So often it comes down to wanting to do one thing yourself but of course you don't want other people to behave that way because you can't have a society that way!
Haha, yeah-- but I think they assume the other people will have their pesky little morals because of course they're not 'enlightened' and still trapped by The Man or whatever. Hmm, I think if people offended&betrayed them, they'd lash out, y'know, go out for vengeance whether or not it was one of the 'good guys' or not. They feel they're not hypocritical because it's every man for himself and survival of the fittest and cowing some underlings to hang out with you and tell you you're great. I mean, there's always a social pecking order even with emo losers :>

I mean, of course it's not practical, but since they're often being anarchist and destructive, generally they wouldn't care unless their actions directly smacked them on the ass, and even if they did, they wouldn't admit it. Logic doesn't have a big starring role in this sort of reasoning. It's like, they don't want 'a workable society', they want a system they can use and if not, abuse and punish for being corrupt-- usually both. They're not constructivist, in other words-- I mean, you don't need people to be -good- so much as you need people to be -weak- in this system, I believe.

[anthar.livejournal.com]

hmpf.
to me, the choice between the Light and the Dark has always seemed rather like the choice between altruism and egoism. in the books, the matter is much discussed. the Dark guys care for themselves in the first place, while the Light guys have to consider the whole world around them. in Day Watch (I mean the book here) for example, the Light guys have to gain "mana" by making people happy. they feed on positive emotions. the Dark guys gain power much easier: they just have to push or offend someone.
it's really difficult to be a Light guy and kill. even if you never kill, the Dark side promises much more freedom of thoughts and action.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

See, that makes much more sense to me as a choice between good and evil. Because when you're trying to think of others you're still going to have to sacrifice someone somewhere--personally, I don't find that hypocritical. It actually seems really childish to me when people act like if you're "good" you're supposed to protect everyone all the time, and never do anything that hurts anyone, and if you do you're a hypocrite.

[anthar.livejournal.com]

"when you're trying to think of others you're still going to have to sacrifice someone somewhere"

exactly. but the author justifies this idea through 4 books. that's one of his main points.
:)

[strangemuses.livejournal.com]

If the "Light" guys are truly only doing "good" in order to feed off of humans, then they are not acting out of altruism at all. They are acting solely out of their own self interest. They are feeding off of humans every bit as much as the "Dark" others do. It only 'appears' to be 'good' from our human perspective because we humans appear to gain by it.

If we humans gained something beneficial from the way that "Dark" others fed on us but not when the "Light" others did, then from our perspective, we would call the "Dark" beings "good."

[kto-to2.livejournal.com]

but they do not feed off the humans, they get their powers, and with this powers they do good things, like healing others or improving them. and for any good deed they need a licence and they receive it from the Dark, and in exchange the Dark receive from the Light licences for the bad deeds like sucking blood or killing. Balance!

the plot of the film differs much from the book and not only the story itself, but the world, too. and in the Day Watch the difference is bigger - it's just another story.

I would say that the film, although I like it very much, is rather badly cut - and it is difficult to understand the story because of that. everything becomes clear only if you watch it 2 times. I watched it in Russia, and the foreign version was re-cut, so I thought they had made it clearer. Seems like they hadn't %) because actually there WAS a romance between Anton and Svetlana. No sex - but they did fall in love and that is why this thing you call "tornado" disappeared. and it was not a tornado - it was some kind of magic funnel only visible in theit magic twilight world and in real world it was something like a magnetic field - when you get inside, something bad happens.

I wonder if the English translation of the book is good.

uh-huh

[anthar.livejournal.com]

that's why Egor calls the Dark guys honest. they admit that they care for themselves, whereas the Light guys seem to pretend they care for others and in the end they still seem to care only for themselves.
Lukyanenko's problem is that he tries to bring in some deep philosophy - and it appears to be quite primitive. he claims that the choice of "Dark" is easy and natural for a normal human being. he kind of insists that the Dark guys are not _evil_. they are just common people we see every day. while the choice of "Light" implies some grade of responsibility for the whole society and the consequences of your actions.