Ohio, 1979. A group of kids led by Joe Lamb are shooting a zombie movie with a Super 8 camera and to add "spectacularity" to a scene they decide to shoot at night at the station while a train is about to pass. At that moment, a van invades the tracks and derails the train, causing a disaster from which the boys miraculously emerge unharmed. The van was driven by a teacher from the local school who, still alive, warns the boys who come to his rescue about some indefinite dangers and then urges them to flee. The boys obey as some army vans arrive in a hurry. During the accident, something escapes from a container carried by the train and the boys realize they have filmed the event. From that moment, a strange being begins to wander the streets of the city, causing blackouts, making dogs flee, stealing electrical/magnetic devices, and attacking citizens.
Anyone in their thirties who has been a movie enthusiast since childhood is likely to have encountered at least once during their career as a viewer films like "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," "The Goonies," and similar works that explore the adventurous/science fiction universe aimed at a wide audience. The titles mentioned share a common matrix, Steven Spielberg, director of the first two and producer of the third, and it is precisely to Spielberg and the imaginary that his cinema has created in popular culture that the creator of "Lost" and director of this "Super 8" refers to and pays homage to.
J.J. Abrams, for his third film as a cinematic director (after the highly successful "Mission: Impossible III" and "Star Trek") is produced by Spielberg's Amblin and crafts a work halfway between vintage and nostalgia without being necessarily trapped in references and quotations, nor essentially addressing an audience that "knows." "Super 8" is a film that revisits a certain way of making cinema in the late 1970s - early 1980s: the atmospheres, the characters, the feelings are those, but it does so with a modern taste that looks affectionately at the past, reworking it with a current eye. The operation set up by Abrams is almost perfect. "Super 8" is an emotional and engaging film, a mosaic of true great cinema in which every piece fits perfectly with the other.
Watching the projection of "Super 8" for the viewer who "was there" at the time is a bit like being hit by the madeleine effect of Proustian memory. Your childhood starts coming back to you, those beautiful moments spent losing yourself in the armchair at home with your mouth open as the credits of "E.T." roll by on the notes of John Williams, or the flashes of social life, when you really tried to make a film with your courtyard friends without having the means and you took your first crush on that blonde girl who seemed unattainable. "Super 8" reworks and revisits those experiences that for a certain audience are surely part of a portion of childhood, but it does not overlook the younger viewer. In the end, "Super 8" touches those universal chords that convey emotion and fun, a bit of fright, and spectacularity.
Abrams stages a practically all-ages spectacle and takes advantage of a top-notch crew in which the music (very much like John Williams, indeed), is by the faithful Michael Giacchino, the spectacular special effects by Industrial Light & Magic, and the photography - rich in light refractions - by Larry Fong. The screenplay, written by Abrams himself, is perfect in narrative rhythm and character construction. But don't come saying that the young protagonists are stereotypical and that there is too much dedication to good feelings because "Super 8" HAD TO BE like this, it is part of the game. There is the protagonist with a recent loss behind him and an absent parent, there is the smart girl who inevitably falls in love with the protagonist to whom she is initially hostile, there is the chubby friend who is a bit of a show-off, there is the one who loves to get into trouble, and finally the coward who complains and vomits at every opportunity. Then there is a broken family destined to find new strength thanks to a supernatural event, there are the bad and obtuse soldiers, there is the American province where the most fantastic things happen, and there is the alien creature that is both victim and perpetrator at the same time. It's all been seen in "Super 8" but Abrams' intent is precisely not to create something new but to rework the old for a today and then audience. The operation in these terms is successful and even watching "Super 8" independently of the background it refers to is still a great film, one of those that stays with you.
Spot on is the cast of young and talented actors ranging from the protagonist played by Joel Courtney to the rising star Elle Fanning ("Somewhere"), through the "dynamite" Ryan Lee and the robust budding director Riley Griffiths. The adults are also good, among whom we can recognize Kyle Chandler ("The Day the Earth Stood Still") as Joe's father, and Noah Emmerich ("Fair Game") as the villainous Colonel Nemec.
Absolutely worth mentioning is the hilarious zombie movie the kids are shooting, a short film titled "The Case" that quotes "Night of the Living Dead," in which due to the polluting effect of a chemical industry - the Romero Chemical, of course - the dead come back to life. Don't leave during the credits because "The Case" is shown in its entirety!
And then there is the creature, a magnificent arachniform monster that Abrams wisely decides to show us only at the end and that recalls the alien and mutant monsters of the 1950s and 1960s monster movies, those from the Cold War (and indeed for some citizens in a panic and confusion, the Russians are to blame for the events taking place!) which then irreparably influenced Spielbergian science fiction to which "Super 8" openly draws inspiration.
J.J. Abrams gives cinema a small masterpiece, one of those films that aim to become classics, in which all the elements work in synergy to build a nearly perfect work. This is Cinema, guys, Cinema with the "C" capital.
Comments
Comments (0)
Comments