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

[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?