Annihilation
(2018)
(SPOILERS) It seems I’m forever destined to miss what others
find so remarkable about Alex Garland’s work (I was also the one who didn’t
love Ex Machina). Annihilation left me mostly cold while most
appear to have done little else but rave about it. Tarkovsky’s Stalker has been invoked, but they’re
chalk and cheese, one meditative and elusive, the other transparent and over-didactic.
I will say this for the writer-director-auteur, though: he’s finally made a
movie where the third act is superior to the preceding portion, even if this
time it’s qualitatively inverted. And, he still
can’t escape his Apocalypse Now
obsession.
The success or otherwise of Annihilation for you will likely come down to whether your find the
groundwork for Garland’s ultimate trip provocative and his characters
stimulating. Unfortunately, the latter are mostly paper thin, rudimentary types
– “all damaged goods” – fostered
reductive issues so as to explain away their fates. Those fates – of Anya (Gina
Rodriguez), Cass (Tuva Novtny) and Josie (Tessa Thompson) – vary in method and
intensity, the properties of The Shimmer operating as a variant on The Empire Strikes Back’s “You only meet
what you bring in with you” Jungian tree, only with a whole lot more on-the-nose
exposition courtesy of Bendict Wong’s scientist throwing us out of what might been
a more immersive experience with join-the-dots questions every five minutes;
Lena (Natalie Portman) even helpfully wraps their demises in a “I had to come back. I’m not sure any of them
did” bow.
Ventress: A religious event. An ET event. A higher dimension. We have
many theories and few facts.
There are subtler touches in here that might have worked in
a more nebulous movie – the Ouroboros tattoo that lends itself to various arms
of those entering the Shimmer, the bear one on Kane’s (Oscar Isaac) chest,
suggestive of the creature that at one point is belowing Cass’ alarming scream
(again, helpfully explained, this time by Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Ventress – “I think
as she was dying part of her mind joined part of the creature that was killing
her” – so no room for ambiguity there) and that the house they arrive at is
a representation of Lena’s. But then, it’s been laid out on a plate that this
force is instinctively replicating the architecture of visitors’ minds.
Lena explains to Lomax “I
don’t think it wanted anything… It mirrored me. I attacked it. I’m not sure it
even knew I was there… It wasn’t destroying. It was changing everything. It was
making something new”. The only ambiguity here is the personal ending
between Kane (Garland with his homaging again, this time to Alien, where the namesake character is also
irrevocably changed by an ET force) and Lena (“You aren’t Kane… are you?”: “I
don’t think so”). Itself a more intimate version of the ending of John
Carpenter’s The Thing, in which the
exact nature of who has survived and in what state is left undefined
(apparently, in an earlier draft of the screenplay, it’s clear that Lena’s copy
blew herself up, which is as it would appear
here, but it’s at least a shade more interesting if it’s possible that both
are copies; instead, the implication is that she has been altered by the
Shimmer, whereas he has been entirely replaced. Either way, with the “overtly”
established Shimmer miraculously destroyed, Kane and Lena will presumably take
on the business of engulfing the planet by stealth).
Like The Thing, Annihilation is an end of the world
movie (“I don’t know what it wants. Or if
it wants. But it will grow until it encompasses everything”) but unlike
that film, a remake that entirely has its own identity, Garland gets bogged
down in his references. How else to explain an earlier scene in which three of
the scientists are tied to a chair while the paranoid other presides over them,
a scene that culminates in a monstrous
other intruding on the quartet? Or the mutations and self-immolations suggestive
of Event Horizon (in particular, the
video footage)? Or the theme of memory and love lost (Solaris overlaid onto Garland’s Stalker
template)? And that, yes, Kane is essentially Kurtz, with Lena his Willard
heading up the river/Shimmer to find what became of him.
And being Garland, Annihilation
is much more visceral than cerebral – look at how he ended Sunshine, for goodness’ sake - while Tarkovsky lingered between
the spaces of his characters, Garland delivers leaden exposition and rote
dialogue amid a first hour that’s all-too familiar gun-toting mission dynamics
(of which, Lena proves to be super-capable in a kind of Arnie-commissioned-rewrite
way; she’s a scientist who was also formerly in the military), with little
beyond the production design to really mark it out as something different.
Kane: God doesn’t make mistakes. It’s somewhat key to the whole
being a god thing.
Lena: I’m pretty sure he does.
Kane: You know he’s listening right now?
The problem I have with Garland is his aspiration towards
being something more than that, which always outreaches his grasp, exposing him
as ill-equipped. Annihilation is pseudo-intellectual,
vaguely philosophical and not really especially deep or penetrating; as with
his earlier work, it bears the demeanour of the student philosopher, one who
has arrived where he is through taking some really cool drugs, man: a mind that
sees hallucinogens as the ultimate gateway. Which is obviously why he ends with
a 2001 trip experience in the final
reel.
Which I liked much more than the preceding material, but
even here, the inability to resist vocalising Annihilation’s themes punctures its potential (Garland even lays
out his stall in interviews, breaking the premise down to “how hard it is to be a person”, which as profundities go, isn’t
exactly breaking new ground). There’s some striking imagery throughout the
picture, but there’s also much that is rather over-telegraphed and
heavy-handed, most notably the glass that refracts the conjoining fingers of
Lena and Kane in an early scene (“The
Shimmer is a prism but it refracts everything – animal DNA, plant DNA, all DNA”).
In the final reel, at least, there’s a greater uniformity of
approach, even given the variable quality of the CGI. In particular, the human
topiaries and the dance of Lena’s mirror self as the former comes to realise
what is occurring. There are also some cute moments such as the mutating manner
in which the “infection” is passed on from person to person, or Kane
instructing his double to find Lena (kind
of cool, but in a very, very
Garland “cool reveal” way). Under the
Skin sprang to mind on several occasions, but as a less complimentary reference;
Jonathan Glazer is entirely comfortable leaving meaning unspoken or unresolved.
Garland, even when he’s looking for an open ending, wraps everything up.
Still, Annihilation
appears to have done its job of cementing Garland’s rep as a fiercely cerebral
writer. And unlike The Cloverfield
Paradox, its warm reception will likely do him the power of good through
all that Netflix exposure. For me, I find myself ironically in the position of
preferring Garland’s earlier, more juvenile experiments, flawed as they are (28 Days Later, Sunshine) than this self-conscious and under-nourished mature
phase.
Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.
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