Dear Diary: Braaaaains!

Back in the early '90s Roger Waters put out an album called Amused to Death. Like most of Waters's oeuvre, the album dealt with issues of alienation; in this he frets about the powerful technologies massed in the hands of a species not far removed from climbing out of the primodial soup: tribal warfare on a global scale, thanks to smart technology, delivered to your television 24 hours a day. Violence shades into entertainment; entertainment into violence. People still ruled by primitive gods at "command of a nuclear submarine."

If Waters is disturbed by humanity at a macro level, George Romero, in Diary of the Dead, has similar concerns on a micro scale: technology alienating individuals from each other, and from life, and death. This makes sense: in Waters's time the touchstones were MTV and CNN, worldwide corporate emblems of 24-hour television, infotainment. Now technologies have become personalized: YouTube, MySpace, iPods. The new media of the internet has created an army of citizen journalists.

If only Romero had grappled with the nuances of the Internet Age; instead his latest film comes across as redundant, inchoate ramblings. It's too little sharp social commentary and too much "You kids get off my damn lawn! And take your Internets with you!" Diary of the Dead is the stitched-together video of a film student, Jason, caught up in the first night of the rising of the dead: his only sure course of action being to record what's happening and upload it to his MySpace page (and taking note of the number of hits). His girlfriend Debra is frustrated by finding herself at the business end of a camera at all times, but she seems resigned to it more often than she fights it. And we know she's given over completely because it's her voice narrating the film.

Indeed, the first-person perspective isn't just alienating for the characters, it's alienating for the audience. Much of the violence and horror (there is actually not that much for a Romero film) is antiseptic. It's partly the POV, and partly that in creating characters distant from each other, Romero neglects to create characters interesting to watch on their own merits. The nerd, the pretty Texan (with an implausible accent), the alcoholic professor, all types lined up to play their parts. It's hard to blame the technology for not caring when they meet their respective fates: it's that they're boring.

Romero does have an argument, of course. He's not the only one to observe the potentially degrading effects of a world that interfaces through screens. But the nuances of the debate are given short shrift. When Jason argues that his videos might help people, Debra puts him down shortly by saying only that he always has an argument for what he does. It would be a good argument if he believed it, and that the camera was not a shield for him from the world dying around him, but he doesn't and it is. A video uploaded from Japan shows a woman giving advice on how to deal with the dead. But it's ultimately meaningless. Whatever valuable information there is to exchange is going to be lost on people who can't communicate with the person next to them.

And somewhere in there is an interesting film, but it's not this film, because (much like Waters, actually) Romero can't resist driving the point home. The scenes of Jason pissing off his friends by training his camera on them are repeated ad nauseum, as are Debra's observations about his disconnection. Other commentary, such as those aimed at the government and old media for failings in Iraq and New Orleans, are random and obvious. The film never feels like a coherent piece, but more like the frustrations of someone who knows things have gone wrong, but can't quite put their finger on just why, or how.

Empty Spaces

I'm not in a formalist mood these days, I guess, because the Coen Brothers' latest film, No Country for Old Men, based on Cormac McCarthy's novel, struck me as fantastic-looking and beautifully performed, yet strangely unsatisfying, devoid of humanity.

As much as it is about anything, No Country is about fate. Relentless, remorseless fate, sweeping humanity along a "dismal tide." But the film has nothing more to say about fate than that fate is and that free will is probably, at best, an illusion. There are two coin tosses in the film. In one, a man plays the toss, but doesn't know the stakes. In another, a woman, knowing the stakes, refuses to play. Who wins, who loses? Who lives, who dies? Fate decides.

Fate is embodied in Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a relentless, remorseless killer whose quirk is that he disdains ordinary guns for a hydraulic air gun. The breath of death, if you will. More Rutger Hauer's Hitcher than Hannibal Lecter, Chigurh appears from nowhere in west Texas and begins killing and does not stop, and when local Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) stumbles across the two million dollars that survived a drug deal shootout, Chigurh tracks him with a deliberateness that is more fitting to the walking dead than a live assassin; indeed, by the film's end Chigurh acquires a shuffling gait of which George Romero would be proud.

Did Moss--floating in on the tide--have a choice in his fate? Maybe, but even he doesn't believe it, telling his wife: "Things happen. Can't take 'em back." And once he starts his path is set. He believes, at times, that he can choose his destiny, but over and over it is made clear that he cannot. He's even told it. But he doesn't know it, and he never learns it.

Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) has grown old enough--by his own devices, maybe, but probably by chance--to learn it, and he oversees the proceedings with the detachment of one who is unhappy about life's meaninglessness, but who has come to terms with it. Invited to accompany investigative revisits to crime scenes, he demurs, seeing little point in combing over the petty details of life's atrocities. Bell sees the tide coming in, and he'd best prefer not to get wet by it.

There is a cold calculation to the film that I can't help feeling let down by. It is a marvel, in a way, filled with exquisite moments, Coenesque touches, as in the shot of smoky light filtering slowly through a blown-out hole. The tension is incredible, and achieved through exquisite timing. The actors, Jones in particular, are mesmerizing. And at the heart of it all is an empty space.

Don't hold me to these

Following the example of the Millman Prophecies, only with less perspicacity and more sports, herewith my predictions for 2008:

Politics/World Affairs

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney gain their respective party nominations. Obama wins the general election. There is no October surprise. Bloomberg does not run as a third-party candidate.

The investigation into the destruction of the CIA tapes does result in indictments, but only of minor figures. Bush will pardon anyone implicated before his term runs out (this prediction goes slightly into 2009, yes).

Pakistan eventually gets around to holding elections, and Musharraf wins them, but nobody believes they weren't rigged. U.S. policy continues to vaguely support Musharraf because no one can think of anything else to do, and there is at least one serious cross-border incident involving U.S. forces/missiles that Pakistan has to pretend it didn't know about in advance.

The Israel-Palestinian negotiations grind into nothing. No one is shocked. Olmert and Abbas both become, if possible, more marginalized.

Sports

In football (American), the New England Patriots will continue to irritate the self-righteous and the '72 Dolphins by winning the Super Bowl (over the Dallas Cowboys) and finishing 19-0. And Bill Belichick will still be boring about it.

In football (world), Manchester United will again win the Premier League, Rafa Benitez will be fired from Liverpool, and my team, Tottenham, will not be relegated, but they will also fail to qualify for European play. Barcelona regains the Champions League title. Croatia will impress by reaching the finals of Euro 2008, but they will lose to Italy. Marco Materazzi is not headbutted by anyone.

In baseball, the Yankees eventually acquire Johan Santana, Alex Rodriguez has another MVP year in the face of Yankee fan quasi-disdain, and they still get knocked out of the playoffs. The Cleveland Indians win the World Series over the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Miscellaneous

The writers' strike will drag on into early summer. The directors will reach an agreement with the studios, but it will fail to push the writers into a deal. When the actors are poised to go on strike, the studios will cave.

In spite of its stellar cast, Iron Man is a disappointment. Luckily, The Dark Knight is not at all disappointing.