D: Roland Emmerich
S: Jeff Goldblum, Will Smith, Bill Pullman
Having visited the realms of Saturday-Matinee pulp sci-fi with Stargate
and found it hugely profitable, German director Roland Emmerich and writer/producer
Dean Devlin dipped into the well again with another retro-styled and self-conscious
but straight-faced homage to the history of American mainstream cinema and
found their cup running over. Generating huge response at the American box-office
and then following the same course world-wide despite everyone's general
dismissiveness about the whole thing, Independence Day went on to
become one of the highest grossing films of all time and irresistible even
to grumpy anti-Hollywood academics who had to take the time out to talk
about it even if only to complain. But they paid their money to see it like
everyone else, and the result is the commercial zenith of the sci-fi revival
of the 90s.
Essentially an update of The War of the Worlds
(right down to the alien defeat by a 'virus'), this film details a ruthless
alien invasion of the Earth and the responses of the indigenous population
to the threat; a combination of terrified panic and good old fashioned human
resilience. But what it lacks in originality it makes up for in size, scale
and scope. It manages to pull off the elusive trick of making bigger seem
better without reeking of bloated excess. Of course, some would argue that
it is excessive by definition to stage the apocalypse, and they may have
a point, but Independence Day is a remarkably controlled epic which
survives multiple forays into the obvious and some horrifyingly transparent
demographical pandering purely on the visceral impact of its beautifully
orchestrated mayhem.
With well over two hours to play with, the film takes its time to establish
tension before the fireworks, beginning with the dramatic shot of the shadow
of the mother ship blotting out the message of peace left on the moon by
American astronauts (rendering obsolete the symbolic pinnacle of human achievement).
The first hour of the movie is a slow burn which carefully sets up our array
of characters and crises which must be resolved with alien intervention,
and despite itself, it works.
The characters are a mixture of stereotypes and caricatures, from Will Smith's
sassy air force pilot to Judd Hirsch's hysterically funny ex-Rabbi, but
with a game cast including Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Mary McDonnell,
Margaret Colin, Randy Quaid and Robert Loggia hitting the right note at
all points, it never seems silly enough to destroy the suspension of disbelief
necessary to enjoy a film of this type. Each is introduced carefully and
their personal problems are clearly defined (from Pullman's necessity for
a show of strength in the face of public indifference to his Presidency
to Quaid's necessity for redemption from alcoholism to restore the faith
of his children) and the film leaps between sub-plots with ease, establishing
the emotional stakes while detailing the arrival of the alien ships and
their chess-board positioning around the earth (although the film's focus
is firmly American).
When the attack comes, it exceeds expectations: a mind blowing visual feast
of angry orange flames, multiple explosions and massive property damage
pumped up to the max by terrific sound editing and a portentous score by
David Arnold (whose compositions for Stargate were even more sumptuous).
The civilised world is destroyed in one fell swoop, and those characters
singled out for immediate elimination meet a variety of interesting ends.
It climaxes in a tunnel where the survival of a dog named Momar gives the
audience a moment of exhalation and a wry smile that they simply cannot
help.
This is the key to the film: it's hard to stop your buttons being pushed
no matter how eager you are to pick at the bones of the plot. It is riddled
with niggly mistakes and improbabilities, and when you get a chance to think
it out, it all seems like a long-forgotten juvenile fantasy. But Devlin
and Emmerich have wit enough to ensure you don't have time to begin doubting
when the action is in progress, and having drawn you into the stories of
the characters, then blown our your eardrums during some ten minutes of
alien attack, they allow you time to recover your wits, but not reactivate
your brain, before launching into the human counterattack which instinct
tells you must come.
The film is then propelled along by its own inanity. Every step of the plot
is inevitable given the set up and derived from previous films with which
everyone is familiar. Every character is readily identifiable and completely
devoid of ambiguity, and as the sub-plots get worked out one by one in the
manner of a 70s disaster movie, there is a tranquillising comfort to the
routine. The result is a stupid, happy grin (with the occasional wince),
which holds pretty much all the way as the film gets sillier and sillier
and noisier and noisier, climaxing with the orgasmic destruction of the
invaders' mother ship.
A full analysis of Independence Day would take years. There are so
many contexts and angles from which to approach any prospective close reading
that the exercise becomes self-defeating: ethnicity, gender, politics, narrative,
neo-colonialism, and so on. Each would produce plenty of material because
the film is so loaded with the standard elements of major motion pictures
which have been subjected to such study in the past. But the most dominant
idea to come from the film is of the restoration of masculinity.
Even the title and advertising ("The Day We Fight Back") suggests
the film's aggression and eagerness to repossess the high ground. It is
about breaking free of the political and social constraints which have held
masculinity in check for the better part of a decade (Rambo: First Blood
Part II may have been the last unabashedly masculine film made in Hollywood
before self-pardoy and self-consciouness set in in the action genre). The
film hinges on abandonment of negotiation (Pullman is attacked by an alien
and sees its thoughts, which are only to exterminate mankind) in favour
of action. It is in dropping the trappings of effeteness and 'new man' politics
that Goldblum and Pullman achieve their personal goals, and Smith's macho
attitude ("I'm just a little anxious to get up there and whup E.T.s
ass, that's all") is the only masculine strength exhibited from the
outset. It is no co-incidence that the film's climax is the destruction
of the 'mother' ship or that each of the female characters begin with a
degree of independence which is gradually eroded by death or marriage.
None of this is a judgment. In fact, this simplicity of concept may have
a lot to do with its success. It is a wish-fulfilment film in which mankind
overcomes the ultimate adversity by a show of strength. At a time when people
feel increasingly out of touch with reality and unable to determine the
direction of their destiny, cinematic catharsis is a blessed relief. Of
course every male in the theatre must then leave and face the world again,
where his control is far more problematic.
But this is exactly the point, and Emmerich and Devlin know it. Independence
Day is escapism of the highest order. Everyone concerned with the project
is aware of this, and pour it on in heavy, unapologetic doses (right down
to Pullman's full bore jingoistic speechmaking). It is in this awareness,
and in leaving out the expected 'winks to the audience' of postmodernism
(apart from the unfortunate cameo by Brent Spiner as a wacko scientist in
Area 51 which reeks of self-parody and upsets the balance of the film momentarily),
that it achieves its aims.
It has its many flaws, and when one begins to look closely at it, the film
falls completely apart. But there is a certain pleasure to be had from ignoring
the obvious deficiencies and simply letting it do its work, which is the
important task of playing out our fears and anxieties and making us feel
better about them. Leave it to other movies to closely analyse the postmodern
condition - Independence Day simply deals with it in the best possible
manner; which is to blow the hell out of everything and see what happens.
Review by Harvey O'Brien copyright
1997.