I don’t normally watch zombie movies. I think the real world has enough real horrors to last a lifetime, and I don’t generally find it fun to imagine what fictional horrors would contribute.
I guess this is connected to the reasons I stopped reading science fiction a couple of decades ago, and only recently started reading it again, when I came across Neal Stephenson and Iain Banks. (Yes, I know, Iain M. Banks when it’s science fiction, Iain Banks when it’s not.) Namely, the world is so complex, so difficult, so heavy, that it’s enough for me to try to deal with the world as it is. History is more astonishing than fiction.
But these days people are occasionally using science fiction to talk about the real world, as opposed to escaping from it. You can see why this is dangerous: if we all started thinking about reality, telling the truth about what we see, and discussing what’s really wrong and what to do about it, “the planet might become more compassionate, and something like heaven might dawn”, as Bill Hicks said.
And a similar statement can be made with respect to zombie movies. No kidding. I saw one over the holiday. Perfect timing, right after Thanksgiving dinner; but this one has no eating of brains or feasting on human flesh. Worse: it’s about politics.
I should probably say to the movie lovers out there that I’m not one. I often go six months without seeing a movie. I used to watch more movies back in the days when story was critical; but these days all you need is one star (two if there’s a love story) and some computer graphics. A story would either offend someone or leave someone behind, so you avoid putting one in if you can.
The thing about “Homecoming”, a zombie movie that will be on Showtime this week (even, apparently, for those of us who don’t pay for Showtime; it’s that time of year), is that whether you don’t care about anything but story, or you go to zombie movies for the grotesque, you’ll be happy. There really isn’t much gore, but there’s lots of the grotesque: the iconic zombie walk, the universally crappy skin, etc., is everywhere in evidence. Dismemberment played for comic effect is not missing.
But what makes this movie spectacular, in my view, is the story. If you’ve been following politics in the US for the last few years, and I assume if you’re reading this you have, you’ll recognize a lot of famous phrases, on the order of “fair game” and “bring ‘em on”. It has a hilariously vicious caricature of Ann Coulter; and Robert Picardo, the holographic doctor from Star Trek: Voyager, plays a Karl Rove-style manipulator. The zombies are soldiers who were killed in an unnamed Mideast war, and are pissed off about it. They’re not coming back to eat people; they want to participate in the process.
It’s tightly argued, funny, angry, filled with amusing and telling detail (check the t-shirt logos and the names on the tombstones), political, and in the end moving. As one review put it, “every scene has a revelation or line of dialogue that adds new dimension to either the story or the satire”. If you count the laughter, it brought three kinds of tears to my eyes.
Posted by Chuck Dupree at November 27, 2005 10:34 PM