**SPOILERS AHEAD**
For a long, long time there were
(and still are today) certain cultures that believed that the act of having
one’s picture taken either caused harm to or robbed one of one’s soul. Possibly this is linked to the thought that
mirrors are both essential in communication with saints and spirits as well as
in their role as portals to other dimensions (which can function as either good
or evil, my favorite cinematic example of which is found in John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness). A
portion of how cameras work (at least the early varieties) is via mirrors inverting images, and even though
some societies may not generally know about the design of the apparatus itself,
their ability to duplicate one’s image (like looking in a mirror) takes on the
sorcerous role of spiritual jailer. But
we know better, don’t we? Like Arthur C. Clarke stated, “Any
sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” and so long
as we hold ourselves up as more enlightened, it’s easy to use this platitude to
explain (or explain away) just about anything.
Still, there is some part of me that wonders, with the preponderance of
people describing every last inch of their lives in graphic detail on the internet,
with the facility with which people will place so much of their most sensitive
information online, with the desire many people have to want to be someone else
in some imagined reality on the web, if we have perhaps robbed ourselves (or
forfeited, if you happen to place any sort of credence in the existence and
importance of actual souls) of our own anima?
Maybe that’s overreaching in a film review for John McTiernan’s Nomads,
but I think it has some relevance, considering the emphasis on photographs in
the film and main character Jean Charles Pommier’s (Pierce Brosnan, post-Remington
Steele [sort of] and pre-Goldeneye)
use of them in his role as an anthropologist.
Exhausted during a marathon
hospital shift, Dr. Flax (Lesley-Anne
Down) is called in to consult on Pommier’s case. The Frenchman (did I mention he’s French?) is
hysterical, shouting seemingly nonsensical sentences (it doesn’t help any that
no one in the hospital at the time speaks French), but before he collapses, he
manages to break free of his restraints and whisper something cryptic to
Flax. Next thing you know, Flax is
reliving the events that lead Pommier to this end as well as embroiling herself
in things she probably shouldn’t, all of which centers on a gang of punks and
their death-black van.
Like I teased with my opening salvo,
this film deals to some extent with the thin line between savage and civilized
worlds. Pommier moves to Los Angeles to
take up a teaching position, to live like a “normal” person. However, there is an undertone that Pommier
is fleeing something from his time among “savages.” One of the first images in the film is of an
Inuit, hood raised, face hidden in blackness.
As the credits end, the camera moves into that dark abyss, and the shot dissolves
to the city at night. There is a (arguably)
throwaway line that Los Angeles is a city built on top of a desert. Pommier tells his wife that he’s amazed to
see these eponymous Nomads “in a modern city.”
The Nomads literally wander around town, doing whatever they wish, including
defacing property and even killing people.
They are portrayed as punks (and interestingly played by
not-quite-so-youthful actors like Adam
Ant and Mary Woronov), and
really they are a perfect fit for the analogy.
They stand apart from society while traveling among society. They do not obey the rules of society, employing
the seemingly pointless brutality of a people with no ties to or use for civilization.
In this same way, the film plays
with ideas of perception and performance, notably through Pommier and his
camera. He comes alive when taking
photos of people interesting to him from an anthropological viewpoint. Nevertheless, the Nomads do not show up in
any of the pictures he takes, their souls already being both free of
corporeality and trapped by the land on which they dwell. As he follows the punks around, they tease
Pommier along. They look directly at him
and/or pretend to be acting off guard, allowing him to photograph them, knowing
his efforts are futile. At one point,
Dancing Mary (Woronov) even leaps up
on an automobile and does a little gyrating directly for Pommier and his
camera. Likewise, the film alters
perspectives constantly throughout its story.
Sometimes we are watching events in the present as Flax experiences
them. Other times we are watching events
Flax is watching in the past as she observes Pommier. Still other times we are watching events from
Pommier’s point of view, and the transitions between past and present, Flax and
Pommier, are fluid, often occurring within the same shot. The characters in the film are as much
observers as they are observed, and this, in turn, shapes the film’s reality
(quite literally).
On the flip side of this is the
concept that the film is possibly describing Flax’s mind as it
disintegrates. Yes, she is exhausted
from work, but there’s more to it than that.
She is also newly divorced, and she has moved (by all indications across
the country from Boston) to a new place where she knows few people (the major
[and somewhat dumbfounding] exception being the high-energy fellow doctor
Cassie [Jeannie Elias]) and into a
new apartment where she is still in the process of unpacking (her bed is
literally a mattress on the floor). Flax
is inexplicably fascinated by Pommier, and after he bites her ear, her slide
into surreality commences. It’s almost
as if his perceptual madness is passed on like a virus, all of which stems from
something ethereal in the desert landscape resting under the veneer of the city
of Los Angeles. It adds an intriguing
layer over the film’s narrative.
However, the filmmakers also don’t really bother to flesh out Flax
enough aside from these cursory tidbits to make her journey all that
compelling. It’s as if the film is meant
to be solely Pommier’s (and the heart of his narrative is his investigation,
not his character), with book end sequences featuring Flax. Developing her as a more substantial
participant in the movie could have gone a long way in enriching some of the
themes and adding a bit of complexity.
Instead, her throughline plays more like an extended lead up to the
“shock” kicker at the film’s end. It
makes the film experience more frustrating and banausic than it should have
been and consequently makes the film itself a very minor footnote in the
history of genre cinema.
MVT: The Nomads are great,
not only for the uneasiness they bring but in the casting of them. It’s not as if any of these thespians shine
especially, but that they cast people as old as they did subverts the typical
notion of punks as “youth in revolt” and augments the supernatural aspects they
represent.
Make or Break: I love the
scene where Woronov dances for the
camera. This is not only since I love
the actress in everything she does but also because the scene is both menacing
and entertaining simultaneously.
Score: 6.25/10
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