TIFF Report: DIARY OF THE DEAD
Posted by Kurt Halfyard at 9:27am.
Posted in Film & DVD Reviews, Documentary, Horror, USA & Canada, Toronto Film Festival 2007.
Diary of the Dead is George A. Romero’s reboot of his own series of ‘...the Dead’ films after the less-than-classic Land of the Dead. Studio budget and expectations are replaced with a back-to-basics philosophy – in Romero’s own words, this is “one from the heart.” Unlike the earlier aging vet, Midnite Madness entry, Dario Argento’s Mother of Tears, Romero’s new one shows that the man is very much in fine form. Rather than the teeming hordes of undead encountered in Night, Day, Dawn and Land, the zombies in Diary are lone wanderers not dissimilar to the millions of folks browsing or writing on the internet (you know who you are). In going back to his roots he finds a different direction to take altogether. It is great to see Romero’s batteries recharged after the apparently difficult time had during the shooting of Land of the Dead. Smaller, more personal films, chock-a-block with enthusiasm and sociological riffing are what he does best.
At one point on the road, the group of students at the centre of Diary of the Dead, encounter an Amish man. Samuel, who is likely to become a fan favorite alongside of Bub, is deaf and mute - a not so subtle comment on the necessity of technology. He communicates with the filmmakers by scribbling on a chalk slate, and gets the films most sublime visual moment echoing Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues video snippet amid raining zombie parts. It may be 2007, but Romero is very much still the Flower Child.
The year is 2007 and judging by everyone ignorance, zombie movies do not exist. Several paramedics, cops and more than a few newscasters are the first to witness the dead rising from the grave as bodies are carted out of a building from a double murder. As they struggle with the undead, out of nowhere, one of the paramedics gives a zombie a standing high-kick to the head. The scene is a funny tidbit of physical comedy amongst the horror of the situation which underscores Romero’s particular style. These folks are not necessarily the first witnesses to an unprecedented rise of the dead, but in Diary, the newscasters are the first to capture it on video, and by the philosophy of the film, that makes it the first ‘real’ instance. That’s right, the sociological target here is the media. Not so much the traditional media, but new technology media: the bloggers, You-Tubers and millions of amateur image gatherers and commenters that is the modern media landscape. At one point, the group encounter an an Amish man. Samuel, who is likely to become a fan favorite alongside of Bub, is deaf and mute - a not so subtle comment on the necessity of technology. He communicates with the filmmakers by scribbling on a chalk slate, and gets the films most sublime visual moment echoing Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues video snippet amid raining zombie parts. This is a once Flower Child’s view on the young-uns.
Cut to the voice-over of Debra, girlfriend to student director Jason outlining that what you are watching is her ‘final cut’ of footage gathered over the course of the beginning days of the zombie uprising. The pair and a collection of friends, along with their very alcohol sodden University of Pittsburgh film professor are out shooting a horror film in the woods for a school project. In a bit of Romero clearly taking to the audience (something this film has a propensity to do a bit too often for its own good), director Jason is quite adamant that the mummy should shamble and not run. When they get the news that the dead is rising from the grave, there is a pretty healthy skepticism, but it scares the bunch enough to stop making their movie and head their separate ways. Two head for the rich-boy family’s mansion (a location which will come into the picture later on) and the rest of them hit the road in a Winnebago to find their way home.
Jason is a wannabe documentary filmmaker who decides to keep the camera running over the course of their road trip. This is done against vocal complaints from his fellow students who are both trying to process the apparent large-scale disaster and that it is becoming increasingly apparent that Jason has cast him self as a non-participant in many of the zombie encounters along the way. Despite crumbing infrastructure, cellular phones and television stations (curiously the internet in the film never experiences outage), he argues that someone has to make a record of things. The lengths Jason is willing to go for the sake of documenting things are best exemplified in a scene involving dead camera batteries where the action happens out of his reach, resulting in only hints of audio from down a corridor, as he is tethered by the power cord.
As the body count rises, the remaining survivors are more inclined to pick up cameras and start shooting too. The flawed logic at work here is that when are behind the camera you are outside participation, somehow immune. The on-paper pitch of the film invites inevitable comparisons to The Blair Witch Project which could not be more misleading. While that film was ostensibly ‘found’ footage with the intent of myth-making, here the construction is very self-aware and edited with the intent (expressed by Debra in the film) of making myth breaking.
The film is shot entirely as point of view, spliced images of the groups various camera footage, but also security tapes, cellular phone video capture. At times there are montages of video images reminiscent of Zack Snyder’s opening credit sequence in his Dawn of the Dead remake (the best part of that film). Despite many (irksome) expositional bits designed explain how the group got this piece of footage or that, Diary is still grounded in a traditional filmmaking, the handheld camera is not too shaky, the audio is clear and scenes for the most part are well lit. Most tellingly, the black and white security camera footage has audio. Romero wants to tell the story through all forms of video capture, but he is not obsessed with the realism of doing so, or caught up too far with style or visual flourishes. The exceptions to this are some wickedly inventive zombie kills courtesy of maestro Greg Nicotero. Perhaps Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s influence has rubbed off on Romero a bit, as the film is more ‘fun’ than scary. There are certainly no scenes equivalent a child devouring her father.
The only flaw in Diary of the Dead is that the allegory gets a little ham-fisted with Sarah’s voice-over, drawing too much attention to things. I think I preferred things in Night of the Living Dead, when the allegory was largely subconscious (Romero freely admits the much touted racial elements in the film were not pre-conceived). The humour is bled out of a good joke when someone has to rigorously explain it, and the allegory here suffers occasionally due to this. Also, Romero is clearly operating here with a safety net after the Land of the Dead debacle. All ‘amateurish’ elements in this film, particularly underwritten characterizations (everyone is a cipher here) and middle-of-the-road acting can be written off as being the product of the amateur filmmakers who construct the film within the film. All that aside, it’s a fun little adventure (will it become a zombie classic in the veint of the original trilogy, I think not, but time will tell) that aims to entertain as much as anything else.
In a instance of life repeating art, when the film was finished unspooling and Romero appeared for a Q&A, video-cameras, cellphones and every other image capture device was whipped out from enthusiastic audience members determined to get their own fractured slice of history.
Re: Diary of the dead di G. A. Romero (2007)
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Originariamente Scritto da Titus_silverblood
Direi che questo è il punto del contendere, e non so quanto sia possibile discuterci sopra effettivamente. Le storie sull'ambientazione e lo "staccare la spina", per quanto legittime, non mi appartengono, come all'incirca 20 pagine di topic-rissa sui robottoni speravo avessero chiarito!
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