II a progressive rise of the tension.
1-une simple and recurring structure which dominates it
spectator.
1.1- seminal works with work synthesis: towards
a definition of the Carpenter receipt.
1.2- entomological glance and time in advance of
spectator.
2- Threaten suggested and principles of avoidance
2.1- characters built on the mode of the observation: to
include/understand before facing.
2.2- a delayed threat bus suggested and incarnated.
3- flow and backward flow, a sinusoidal structure.
3.1- the swing of the stakes.
3.2 - management of the rate/rhythm and art of the opposite
course.
III a mythology of threatened America.
1- a purification carrying direction.
1.1 - suggestion and means of production.
1.2- open and ridiculous end, or rather ridiculous bus
opened.
1.3- towards a pure evil.
2- an alarming normality: the paradox
carpentérien.
2.1- the work of diversion of the daily newspaper and of
institutions.
2.2- Inversion which dissimulates a resemblance with
human monstrosity, a reflection on what
fact Humanity.
3- the human one with fantastic dimension, the fantastic one
with political dimension.
.
3.1- a new off-centering: the logic of
successive domination.
3.2- codes westerniens with the internal threats :
revisited America
I- cinematographic space: a variation of
door-closed.
1 - a space/time by closed and hostile
definition.
1.1 - a real or metaphorical closed space.
It is surely the most obvious observation that one can make on
the whole of work carpentérienne: each film has as a framework a space,
or a closed temporality.
Space first of all: the police station of Attack, the scientific
base of The Thing, the church of the Prince of darkness, the
penitentiary of New York in New York 1997, Los-Angeles in Los-Angeles
2013... As many closed places, closed on themselves, like half-compartments
of the world and of which it is difficult to escape. This use of closed space,
where besieged takes refuge to escape the attacker, is one of the marks most
easily identifiable of the catalog of films of Carpenter. One knows his
fascination for the scenario writer Howard Hawks, and in particular for his
Rio Bravo whose Assaut is a semi-official but asserted rewriting. As
we will see it later, Carpenter attaches in his cinema a cardinal importance to
the observation of the human nature: however what could be better than a closed
and closed space associated a crisis to reveal the true nature of each one? It
is in waiting, resistance and the combat which one reveals his doubts and his
faults then that they are exceeded. It is the major lesson, perhaps most
beautiful, that it will retain of the Master of the cinema of kind. Bertrand
Rougier (1) defines Assaut thus: «a small phratry of beings bound
by the desire to survive is imprisoned in a space being homogeneous to him:
closed, strangled, distressing. In this decoration (the police station), the
multiplicity of the camera angles, a run up against assembly, the exploitation
of the oblique axes and low-angle shots make a dense space, run up against,
wavering». Dense, run up, wavering... With the image finally of this
handle of characters brought to exceed their original differences to link
itself against the external threat as the paradoxical couple and for any
statement against-nature testifies some which form lieutenant Bishop and
Napoleon Wilson, i.e. a black policeman and a white criminal. This step of
worms the other will be the condition of their survival as space narrows and is
closed again on them (city, police station, hollow). The closed space which is
used as decoration is thus much more than one simple convenience of scenario:
placed at the center of the filmic device (Carpenter exhausts all the resources
of them, as well from the point of view of the scenario as of the setting in
scene) the use of closed space appears an essential data, fundamental and
carrying direction. Same manner, in New York 1997 as in Los-Angeles
2013, the character of Plissken is sent in two closed cities, truly cut
remainder of the United States, where it is difficult to enter, and from where
it is much more difficult still to leave. For Plissken, to enter these cities,
it is to enter closed universes, governed by their own rules: it will have to
learn how to identify these rules, to include/understand the operation of these
micros-universe (see the scene of the horde cannibal in New York 1997,
where a woman explains to Plissken that one should not be in this part of New
York the night and that «everyone knows that») and to overcome the
tests which will be subjected to him (the test of the tennis shoe in
Los-Angeles 2013), achieving a true initiatory course consequently.
This closed space perhaps also that, this metaphorical time, of
the city: not closed cities of New York and Los-Angeles in New York 1997
and Los-Angeles 2013, those concretely and being physically crossed
outside, but the open cities whose characters carpenteriens cannot however be
extracted. The mining of Ghosts off Mars, phantom city of inspiration
westernienne besieged by the spirits of Mars revanchists. The town of
Haddonfield, Illinois where one celebrates Halloween: in spite of the use of
the format scope and many outsides, the character of Laurie Strode seems
crushed, locked up, choked by this urban framework. To develop this idea of
door-closed with through same of urban space, Carpenter composes carefully of
the very geometrical executives, and especially uses the concept of framework
within the framework to remove any possibility of escape to the character of
Jamie Lee Curtis. A window, a tree, a car, any element of the decorations
perhaps used to limit the margin of movement of Laurie and to give the feeling
which it is truly captive of this city that Michael Myers returned to haunt. To
accentuate this oppression, Carpenter takes care well to associate closely,
almost organically the figure of Michael Myers at the city, as in the last
plans of film, where increasingly broad executives reveal Haddonfield, while is
made hear breathing characteristic of the killer... This city is his, and
Laurie is his prey. The town of Midwich in the Village of Damnés
also forms a closed space while being open: one will note thus that one almost
absolutely never leaves the city or his immediate environment. Only the
character of Kirstie Al has rare contacts with outside. The city seems crossed
rest of the world, in particular in term of communications, which still
reinforces the feeling of a «laboratory city» developed by the
subject of film, where the inhabitants and their children are only objects of
study observed «in-vitro». A sequence in particular translated very
well this idea of closed space: just after the invasion, all the inhabitants
are plunged in a deep sleep. However, the helps sent shortly after cannot
intervene: as soon as they exceed an invisible but very precise border located
outside the city they fall asleep in their turn: from where the very funny idea
to send a police officer attached by a cord brought back outside which it has
just collapsed. Hardly drawn out of this «contaminated» space, the
police officer awakes at once...
Lastly, one will be able to also speak about unexpected
space-closed film the Cave of the Madness. Of course, the character of
John the Trent travels, New York with Hobb' S End (city which cursed in the
center of the novels of Sutter Cane, where one penetrates by a tunnel after a
at the very least strange voyage, and from where it is once again, very
difficult to set out again...) but if reality in its entirety is only one
creation of the novelist Sutter Cane, can't one consider that all the film is
held in a closed space? That, metaphorical, of the spirit of Duck, demiurge,
Creator, and limit of any thing...
The question of temporality finally: in New York 1997,
Snake Plissken, interpreted by faithful Kurt Russell, does not have that 12
midnight to bring back the president failed in full New York, become
ultra-dangerous penitentiary district. Beyond this limit, it is, concretely, a
dead man. Even situation of «deadline» in Los-Angeles 2013,
continuation and assumed remake of the precedent. In Vampires, Jack Crow
and Montoya must find Valek the vampire before Katrina, a prostitute bitten by
this one, is not completely contaminated... By closed temporality, one thus
understands the idea of moment limits beyond whose the hero carpenterien cannot
continue his search strictly any more. Thus, that it is in space, temporally,
or métaphoriquement, Carpenter work on the idea of a closed filmic
space, suitable to develop the tension which will serve as revealing for its
characters.
1.2 - a progressive hostility: put out of order space and
contaminated.
The characters carpentériens thus fit
viscéralement in a clean space: the penitentiary of New York and the
hell of Los-Angeles for Plissken, again Los-Angeles for John Nada, the
«suburb» of Haddonfield for Laurie Strode, the scientific base and
the icy vastness of The Thing, the cursed city of Antonio Bay in The
Fog, Midwich in the Village of Damnés, the police station
of Attack...
This space can first of all seem for the character
carpentérien a space-refuge able to protect it from the external
aggressions. However this feeling can appear illusory; thus in Attack,
the characters, and Bishop at the head, are smelled initially in confidence in
the police station where they are taken refuge, initially for concrete reasons
(enclosing walls) but also on account of the order symbolic system: this space
is a physical representation of an institution, that of the police force,
therefore a space sacrilized a priori and inviolable. The taboo however will be
broken, because the threat which is profiled, as a purified representation of
the Evil, does not have (and cannot have) limits. The police station, taken by
storm, thus will lose its statute of untouchable sanctuary, and, worse still,
will be seen gradually «contaminated» by the mass attacker to end up
being closed again on its occupants. How will build this contamination?
Initially by the message delivered by the attackers, who indicates
«officially» the building like target. Then by their balls, which
will come to break the border symbolic system of the panes and to destroy the
interior of the police station (see the unreal succession of inserts on the
balls which comes to strike and demolish the elements of the decoration, giving
the feeling of an unlimited number of ammunition), transforming an ordered and
stable space into a field of ruins to the image of the blind violence of the
gang. By destroying this space they contaminate it and modify it with their
image. Then they will penetrate it, adapting it gradually and relegating Bishop
and his/her companions in an environment contrary more and more confined: the
final attack will be thus given in a very narrow corridor. Thus space initially
refuge, because of «contamination» of which we spoke, is closed again
gradually on its occupants. It is besides for this reason that to be extracted
from the police station will become a stake moreover for Bishop, Wilson and the
others, Carpenter directly borrowing this sequence from the Night of
theAlive ones, where the survivors, grounds in a house moved away, try to
gain a car posted with external in order to fleeing. In both cases, the failure
will be shingling. For Carpenter, one deserted step a space as easily as it is
invested, especially when this one let penetrate the Evil. Because the Evil
contaminates space and adapts it. Bertrand Rougier (2), if it does not speak
strictly speaking about «contamination», does not say another thing:
«Following the example majority of films of Carpenter, Assaut is
haunted by a faintness which deaf with all the corners of street, each piece of
the framework being mined by the promise of a drama. Archetypal figure of the
Western, the «dead city» of Anderson is inhabited by the destroying
forces. The slow disintegration of the walls released the spirits malefic of
the city.»
Space can also seem with the reassuring departure because the
character carpentérien is accustomed perfectly there, developing with
its environment a daily relation. Inhabitants of Antonio Bay (Adrienne Barbel,
Janet Leigh...) constitute a good example of these characters
carpentérien who will see space that they control (Janet Leigh is thus
the mayor, therefore that which holds the authority on the city, Adrienne
Barbeau is the guardian of the headlight, that which dominates the city
physically) to gradually put out of order. And in the same manner that in
Attack, in fact the malefic forces threaten the city which by infiltrating
it (once again by «contaminating it» thus) will cause its disordered
state: Helene Frappat (3) notes that «in the long credits in the form of
prolog (it lasts almost 10 minutes), the irruption of the phantoms makes run
off the line electricity (lamps and televisions which die out or light), damage
a supermarket and a weather station, reverses the cars.» In short, it
notes, «the phantoms threaten America through its consumer goods, i.e.
what it has of more invaluable». There still, the threatening force
modifies space with its image, the fog removing the modern means of
communication and electricity, returning literally the town of Antonio Bay in
the past, and thus to its past (guilty). To note finally that the image of the
fog, masses without matter which infiltrates, threads and spreads itself
correctly translated this idea of «contamination» which we evoked.
One will be able quickly to raise this same system of
«contamination-disordered state of space» in Prince of
darkness and Halloween: in Prince of darkness, Arnaud Bordas
(4) notices that «Carpenter thus locks up again his characters in a
besieged closed place of outside and undermined interior.» Developing the
malefic idea of virus, Bordas also notes that «the Evil gangrene [the
church] of the interior, by its attacks repeated on the protagonists, but also
of outside, by the many changes which it involves in the behavior of human
(threatening tramps) and of the animals (grouillement of insects) but also by
the modification of the climatic conditions («there is something in
the air» will say the priest).». In Halloween, it is the
character of Myers who will put out of order his ghostly presence the urban
framework of Haddonfield, Carpenter folding this space, by the simple fact of
its setting in scene, with the will of the killer. By a scientist assembly
clearance, Carpenter gives him the capacity thus to appear and disappear at
will, making it invisible with the eyes of Laurie during the three-quarters of
the film (only children being able to see the «croquemitaine»). Myers
impregnates space even completely (see for example the plan where it observes
the house of Laurie: a broad plan reveals us the house, with in the Myers
foreground beside a tree. Later, Carpenter will re-use the same plan, with
exactly the same value and the same framework, but without the killer. However
the visual memory of the spectator makes association between the two plans and
«inserts» in spite of him in the second plan Myers however physically
absent.) to end up amalgamating perfectly with him as testifies the last plans
to them to film, of the broad plans of the city accompanied by its
characteristic breathing: more than it is not in the city, Michael Myers is the
city as it haunts it. To finish, one will be able to raise in The Thing
a last example of space contaminated and modified by what the threat: when
Mac-Ready goes to the Norwegian base, it discovers a space completely
déstructuré, corrupted, in ruins (Carpenter qualifies itself this
passage of «sequence haunted house») but does not include/understand
what it passed. At the end of film, after Mac-Ready faced the thing, one of the
last plans reveals it to us wandering in the vestiges of its own base in ruin,
this destruction of space constituting the mark characteristic of the passage
of the thing. Let us note finally that the idea of
« contamination » and even of virus in the broad sense is
present through all the catalog of films of Carpenter : of Anti-God who
projects his green matter on the characters to fix them in the Prince of
darkness to the invaders who inséminent the inhabitants of Midwich
in the Village of Damnés (this idea of infiltration being already
present in the book which Carpenter took as a starting point as it reveals it
itself (5) : « The Midwich Coockoos written by John
Wyndham. The cuckoo of the title is a race of birds which put their eggs in the
nest of other birds so that they raise these creatures like theirs. Method that
the extraterrestrial ones apply among inhabitants of the Village of
Damnés. »), while passing by the waves radios which
control humanity in Invasion Los-Angeles, the vampiric syndrome of Vampires or
the spirits of Mars which travel of body in body in Ghosts off Mars.
This idea of virus of course finds its apogee in The Thing where the
creature absorbs the identities the ones after the others by simple contact,
its cells contaminating and destroying those of the body which the thing comes
to replace. By reading an article before even Carpenter turning will be
astonished besides by the similarities between the syndrome HIV which has just
made its appearance and its own creature.
Lastly, let us conclude this chapter by noticing all the same
that it can happen that the Carpentérien hero does not attend the
progressive disordered state of his space, but which he takes simply conscience
that he simply always evolved/moved in a space contaminated without the
knowledge. Thus, in Los-Angeles Invasion, John Nada discovers that all
the space in which it evolves/moves is governed by the extraterrestrial ones
handling humanity. The disordered state, already operated, instituted a new
order which is from now on the standard. While wanting to reverse this order,
Nada becomes itself the virus which puts out of order space, Carpenter turning
over his own cinematographic stereotypes here. Pursued by the police force and
the army, true immune system of the order founded by the extraterrestrial ones,
the foreign body John Nada (all the more foreign as at the beginning of film it
unloads in Los-Angeles) nevertheless will succeed in posing the bases of an
inversion of the situation likely to restore initial balance (i.e. before the
invaders do not seize the power).
2 - a space which obliges with confrontation with the
enemy.
2.1- a logic of confrontations and domination with
only one stake: survival.
To say that survival is the only stake of the universe
carpentérien is probably exaggerated... As we will see it later on,
other stakes (narrative, sets of themes, metaphysics even) come to structure
film while following one another and answering themselves the ones the others.
It would be probably righter of saying than this «survival» is the
principal stake, that which is the heart even film and from which all the
others rise. Precisely let us incline towards films of Carpenter in order to
check this logic of survival like central stake: in Attack, Bishop and
the occupants of a police station must survive the attacks of a gang come to
recover a father of guilty family to have exerted her revenge on one as of
theirs; in Halloween, in order to ensure its survival Laurie Strode
tries to escape from a masked killer and without apparent mobile; in The
Thing, Mac-Ready and a group of American scientists seek to push back a
protean creature come from the space which absorbs them the ones after the
others; in Prince of darkness, professor Birak (Victor Wong) and the
priest Loomis (Donald Pleasence, thus named in reference to its role of doctor
in Halloween) start a fight to the death against Anti-God and his
servant in order to prevent his advent; in Los-Angeles Invasion, John
Nada (Roddy Pipper) a coldly unloaded poor workman with Los-Angeles discovers
that reality is not what it seems to be and which the world in fact is
controlled by the extraterrestrial ones having reduced humanity to control,
which causes its engagement on the side of resistance; in the Village of
Damnés, invaders fertilize the women of the small village of Midwich
so that the children thus created take the control of planet; in
Vampires, Jack Crow seeks to eliminate Valek before it does not recover an
artefact which would make it quasi-invincible and condemn humanity to
disappear; in Ghosts off Mars, Melanie Ballard and his team must survive
the attack of the spirits of Mars, decided well to recover their ground... To
survive, here is the Master word of the dramaturgy carpentérienne. And
this survival is expressed first of all in the most concrete way, most
physical, most organic which is: does the hero carpentérien and force it
who threatens it cannot coexist, the victory of passer by necessarily by the
physical elimination of the other, all at least in space/pure time of measuring
(indeed we will see later that at Carpenter nothing is never really finished,
each victory of one or the other camp not being that a simple battle in immense
- the and eternal one?- war that the Good and the Evil are delivered), the most
convincing example being surely that of the thing in The Thing, which to
eliminate its prey takes its place strictly. Thus when the hero
carpentérien fails to eliminate physically what threatens it, the
victory escapes to him, because a simply pushed back threat is a threat
intended to return «to haunt» the character: thus is it of Michael
Myers in Halloween, whose final one suggests that the masked killer,
because it was not, once again, physically eliminated (but can it really be
it?), will still return still and to torment its prey, Myers becoming even the
hero of a ultra-profitable and universally known frankness (ten continuations,
including one new project which has just entered in pre-production!) even if it
does not maintain any more a direct relationship with John Carpenter. In the
same way, in the Village of Damnés, the survival of the small
David, humanized invader but invader all the same, probably announces a new
fight to the death to come...
But can the threat which weighs on the hero carpentérien
be éradiquée besides? While studying of close the catalog of
films of Carpenter, one can doubt it: in Prince of darkness, the
sacrifice of Catherine seems to condemn the advent of Anti-God, however a last
terrible final plan shows the uselessness of its act, which will have been
finally used only to gain a little time. One does not fight against a higher
force seems to tell us Carpenter in a report coldly pessimistic. Let us be even
further taking the example by Storm, one of rare films of Carpenter
where the hero carpentérien seems to completely destroy the threat which
weighs on him, in fact a gang determined to go at the end of his fatal action,
whatever is the price to be paid: indeed, Bishop and Napoleon Wilson, cut off
in the cellar from the police station end up purely taking all the risks in
«dynamiting» and simply their attackers. The victory seems total
then. But can Bishop, which grew in these districts and saw gradually
gangrenés by the corruption and the delinquency, really believe that
this anecdotic victory will be enough to put an end to the violence which sets
ablaze the streets? Obviously not. Even bitter report of Carpenter, who
acknowledges to have discussed this subject with the actor and ex-singer of
hip-hop Ice Cube (of the group NWA, Niggas With Attitude, resulting from the
hardest ghettos of Los-Angeles), at the time of the turning of his last
Ghosts film off Mars (6): «the situation today is not reluisante,
look at what they did with the police station here with Los-Angeles. There was
an article in Rolling Stone Magazine which affirmed that the gangs of
L.A. had infiltrated the police force. Why do they fight? Ice Cube tried to
explain me the situation, it said to me: «imagines that you sharp
pépère in your district. Only beside at home there is of the guy
which has large gauges. Ben be obliged to you of choper the equivalent to be
ready when they come to make shit. It is the war guy!». Worst it is
than they have only to make victims, they sprinkle the streets a point it is
all. The kids learn how to throw themselves by ground when they hear shots. I
do not think that my film (Attack) was so terrible when I see the
streets of L.A. today. «
A character in the work of Carpenter is particularly
representative of this idea of survival like even single major stake: it is the
character of Snake Plissken. That it is in New York 1997 or in
Los-Angeles 2013, Plissken is a being of which all energy is directed
towards only one goal, to ensure its survival costs which costs. A scene, which
made run much ink, illustrates this instinct of priority survival perfectly:
when at the beginning of film, whereas it has just entered New York, one sees
it passing beside a woman being made violate without it condescending to
intervene. Surprising on behalf of a «hero»? Not if it is considered
that Plissken is absolutely anything else only one survivor, and that thus all
that can divert it conditions of its survival does not exist so to speak.
Plissken is not above the concepts of good or of evil, it is
elsewhere: a character more amoral that immoral. Or more precisely, the only
morals which holds, it is that which will enable him to draw some. As explains
it Carpenter (7) : « I believe that this detail made cold in the
back, because it shows that Plissken is an contained man, even cynical, and who
places his mission above all. The only thing which interests it, it is to find
the president of the United States to save his skin. «. Besides to
summarize, Carpenter (8) defines thus the character: «Snake Plissken
symbolizes especially total freedom without the obstacle, without least the
forced social one. It is card-indexed to kill, to help people. It is terribly
bad, terribly innocent. Nothing can change it, it is incorruptible. All that it
wishes is to live 60 seconds more.» And indeed, Snake is perfectly
reducible with its instinct of survival. They are not by chance that it is
chosen by twice concluding the perilous missions, so to speak even impossible,
to cross spaces mortifères (translate: where death grinds with each
corner of street): by injecting a poison (or in making him believe, the placebo
effect appearing quite as effective) which corrodes it slowly, i.e. by putting
out of balance his life against the success of the mission which is assigned to
him (to bring back the president or strange to him limps black: missions that
Helene Frappat describes as «mac guffin» (9) to only live constituent
good its and single search), its employers profit his instinct of survival,
which, concentrating all its resources towards this only goal, enable him
literally to move mountains. Thus, Carpenter sows the worst obstacles on the
way of his character, drawing up an initiatory course to him which one can
describe as true way of cross without at any Plissken time does not even seem
to think of giving up: betrayed, kidnapped, coiled blows, humiliated, moving
away from its objective each time even as it seems to approach some, the
«snake» never ceases taking again its walk ahead, on a leg if it is
needed, ineluctably, in a strange reflection of the character of Michael Myers.
If the latter is led by a need to kill which transcends its statute of mortal,
it is the will to live which gives to Plissken a supernatural character,
quasi-miraculous; one can quote the sequence of the test of tennis shoe in
Los-Angeles 2013, where Cuervo Jones which has just captured it launches
him an insurmountable challenge: to carry out return tickets on a ground of
tennis shoe by putting a certain number of baskets in a time limited, which
nobody forever successful. All the more difficult task for weakened Plissken,
which however has only one basket of delay at the last second: a last basket to
mark... medium of ground! In a masterly broad plan, Carpenter shows us Plissken
to take the balloon, the not very orthodoxe throw in manner, almost with the
aveuglette and to make a success of the impossible one (the gang of Cuervo
Jones in remainder without voice during long seconds, in a silence deafening,
before starting to stress its name, validating its statute of
«mythical» figure), but finally in a perfectly foreseeable way. To
fail means to die: and for Plissken, here the impossible one. Indeed, this
character is the only «hero» carpentérien with being thus
virtually immortal: why? Perhaps because it is already in a certain manner,
always like a Michael Myers, already dead. Helene Frappat notes thus (10) that
in New York 1997» 'with each new meeting engages the same dialog:
«be to you Snake Plissken, I know you. I believed you dead.»
«- you be a cop? - Not me I am an idiot. - I know you, I had intended
to say that had died to you. - I am it.». This dialog in form of
running gag will continue obviously in Los-Angeles 2013 (...):
«Plissken died so much of time that one cannot all count them.»
With one of the enemies who threatens it: «if it arrives to me
something you died» Plissken, in all logic, answers: «I
already died».» Going still further, Helene Frappat (11) draws
up an association between the final one of Los-Angeles 2013 and the
ghostly statute of the hero: «Snake is the phantom of the hero,
and its ghostly nature emerges besides «in full light» at the end
of Los-Angeles 2013, when it sends to his adversaries a hologram, in
other words a lure of itself». Character thus particularly paradoxical,
and thus all the more interesting, who does not seek anything as long as to
ensure his survival by all the means whereas it perhaps already left the world
of the alive ones.
Lastly, let us note briefly that the combat for the survival of
the hero carpentérien almost systematically engages the survival of
whole humanity, making this hero, more than one last rampart of humanity, a
representative symbolic system of this one. The combat of the hero
carpentérien, it is the combat of humanity for its survival and that of
its values against the threat of the Evil, which it is Dr. Al Chaffee which is
opposed to the children invaders and to their will of standardization,
Mac-Ready against «the thing» and the threat which it makes weigh on
the human identity or John Nada resistant to the will of intellectual and
mental control of extraterrestrial... As final Cave of the Madness proves
it, the failure of the Trent, in particular to seize what makes the limits
of our perception of reality, involves the disappearance of the whole humanity
contaminated by the terrifying reality suggested like new model by Sutter Cane.
On the contrary in Attack, the victory of Bishop, it is that (temporary)
values of mutual aid, of honesty and of confidence on violence plugs...
2.2 - indistinct mass counters agglomerate of
identities.
It is a major characteristic of the threat
carpentérienne: its indistinctness. In Fog, the phantoms, always
plunged in the fog, do not distinguish physically absolutely from/to each
other. In the Village of Damnés, Carpenter exploits a perfect
standardization (of physics, of thought) and a perfect synchronization, in
particular in displacements, creating a homogeneity which the only element
different from the group will all the more come to disturb, the small David.
In Prince of darkness, all the homeless people under the influence of
Anti-God make watch of the same inexpressiveness of face, this absence of any
emotion withdrawing any concept of identity irremediably to them. Only the
marginal one incarnated by Alice Cooper seems to be slightly proposed, either
by its space position compared to the remainder of the group (some steps ahead
compared to the others) or by the fact that it is him which kills one of the
students has just ventured outside the church. One will be able to also note
that Carpenter works this idea of malefic threat like indistinct with the
metaphor of the insects. Anti-God is a being which incarnates itself: however
it is incarnated either in a group of marginal (as one said) indistinct of
which it takes possession, or in a cloud of insects: ants on the ground,
cockroaches on a TV, the face of a clocharde, towards on the pane of a church
and finally carnivorous cockroaches which devour a character completely. And
what it better image of an indistinct, confused mass and without identity can
one have that that of a heap of insects? This phenomenon of indistinctness is
particularly interesting in Assaut: as from the moment when the gang
attacks the police station, it will be exclusively filmed in broad plans, at
best in average plan, the scenario writer refusing to approach more close in
order to avoiding any existence with the members of the gang apart from the
identity of group. The action proceeding of night, the half-light still
reinforces this effect of mass, of pack with an almost animal side (see the
plans where they move around the police station, always with broad or remote
values.) One will note besides that Carpenter refuses to show us this one of
the attackers would not be isolated: individually they do not represent
anything, only the concept of gang gives them a reason to exist (beautiful
representation by Carpenter of what is actually the concept of gang in the
United States: a strong group which ensure a protection its members in exchange
of the sacrifice of their own personality to the profit of that of the group,
that passing by tattooings and other signs ritual intended to say to the face
of the world which one belongs to this gang.). In the same order of idea,
Bertrand Rougier (12) note very precisely that in Attack, «the
attackers succumb to the precise moment where the film captures their image
approximately plane (end of the seat)». In Attack, which value can
one grant to this mass attackers without faces on which the setting in scene of
Carpenter works? It is that the realizer voluntarily wishes to give a
surrealist aspect, supernatural with its attackers, the comparison which
carries out Bertrand Rougier (13) with the zombies of Romero («the
slowness of displacements of the attackers of Attack, masses unit and
homogeneous subjected to a permanent regeneration, the procession of the zombis
recalls Night of theAlive ones.» not being stripped of interest:
the attackers of Carpenter are a facet of the Evil, a pure image of violence
within the American company, the situation of social decomposition which Assaut
constituting underlies a disconcerting recall of the physical decomposition in
the center of the work of Romero. It is thus logical that Carpenter refuses
perfectly to individualize the threat which weighs on the police station, his
metaphor (at the same time political, social and metaphysical) by taking only
more smell. Jean-François Richet, by carrying out the remake of
Attack (Attack on exchange 13), completely occulted this aspect,
passing finally beside the major direction of film of Carpenter: by keeping
only the screen of original film (a threatened police station) but especially
by giving scénaristiquement an identity to the attackers, it delivered
only one «to actuate» without heart moreover, on the contrary he of
Florent Emilio-Siri seems to me who with his semi-official remake heading
Wasps' nest sticks to more close with the spirit and the universe
carpentérien.
Opposite this indistinct mass, Carpenter poses strong
personalities, true identities marked but different, which creates interesting
points of frictions from a point of view dramaturgic, which weaken their
resistance vis-a-vis a threat, it, homogeneous. Certain couples of characters
in particular emphasize well this concept, Carpenter not hesitating to work
over couples diametrically opposite: in Attack, it is the couple Bishop
(the black policeman which A grows in this district)/Napoleon Wilson (the white
criminal come from outside, Carpenter having fun to reverse the stereotypes);
in Prince of darkness it is the couple Birak (the physicist which makes
confidence with science)/Loomis (the priest which is based on its faith); in
Invasion Los-Angeles it is finally the couple Frank (the black workman
which wants to believe in America)/John Nada (the white worker itinerant which
discovered the «true face» of America). Thus, vis-a-vis the threat,
resistant individualities seem a priori rather with difficulty «to
agglomerate» to find a true coherence. But it is perhaps the combat to be
carried out which will appear genuine cement of these characters.
Finally let us note that a film of Carpenter seems to reverse
this relationship between «indistinct mass and agglomerate of strong
identities»: this film it is The Thing. This time, it is the
creature which is individualized (since single) and groups it American
scientists standardized. It is thus an entirely male casting, where at the
beginning few figures are detached: Carpenter will have thus quickly the idea
of affubler Mac-Ready of a hat of cow-boy (still a reference to the universe of
the western) in order to allow the spectator moreover more easily identifying
his «referent». However this report/ratio will change with the wire
of measuring, the resistant ones gradually separating while the creature
reveals its true nature, i.e. that a perfectly transparent being. Indeed, when
the creature absorbs a being, it is identified physically perfectly with it,
and on all the points: physical displacements, appearance, voices,
capacities... It can adopt all the identities, but in a movement it reverses
does not express any identity personally strictly. The absorption and the
destruction of the other forms of life seem to be its only project. The which
perhaps direction of such an existence? On the contrary, while individualizing
its characters (for example while isolating them gradually in space ones
compared to others, contradicting situation of departure where they all are
gathered), and this including through errors that they make (Mac-Ready which
cuts down human not-contaminated), Carpenter delivers to us in reaction the
true price of the human existence: that to be able to build its identity,
including in the adversity and the suffering, and to affirm its individuality
by carrying out choices which one assumes. Mac-Ready seized this price well,
him which plans to be sacrificed to prevent that «the thing» does not
contaminate humanity. Here thus a double reference (not inevitably voluntary,
but nevertheless well presents) to Sartre for Carpenter: reference to
door-closed the sartrien (the its famous «hell they is the different
ones», as testifies some the final plan leaving us on a terrible
ambiguity: y' has T it one contaminated among the two survivors?), and
reference to the morals sartrienne for which the Man «is condemned to be
free», i.e. it with freedom to act as good seems to him, but this freedom
is accompanied by a terrible existential duty, that to strictly assume all our
acts like their consequences, and in particular in the event of error.
«One is what one does»: here is a morals which, as we will see it
well sied with the universe carpentérien
3- a space which obliges with confrontation with the other,
therefore with oneself.
3.1 - door-closed sartrien with the construction of
one unit in the difference.
Thus Carpenter ingénie thus to confront its characters
with a crisis characterized by the confrontation of an external threat in a
space/closed and restricted time. But what is even more interesting, it is that
Carpenter will be further showing than the threat also comes from the interior.
And this threat will be born from the differences physical, intellectual,
morals which reign between the characters. Indeed, if the external threat is
characterized by its homogeneity and its «symbiotic» operation, the
resistant ones, them, must build coherence necessary to their survival. Because
initially, Carpenter goes to build door-closed all that it there has moreover
«sartrien», where each one will discover that if the hell is outside,
it is also present of each one of us, in our very human difficulty to coexist.
Thus, let us note that system of setting in scene of Carpenter, when it wishes
to translate the human reports/ratios which are built among the resistant ones,
rests almost systematically on a confrontation between broad plans and surtouts
plane means on a side, which allow to represent in space the reports/ratios of
force, of distrust and hierarchy enter the various groups or characters, and
systems of field/reverse shot on another side, this system being most capable
to translate the ditch which separates, ideologically and strategically, the
characters. Thus, when the characters discuss, for example, of the action to be
taken or the strategy to be adopted, Carpenter puts in scene «the
confrontation» through, therefore, a system of field/reverse shot without
almost never placing of starter: from this manner it even physically separates
the characters who do not coexist any more in the plan, accentuating the
«distance» (in the broadest sense of the term) which separates them
(one can note this effect in the first part of Attack, an example among
others). In the same order of idea, one will be able to be delayed on the way
in which Carpenter puts in image the tension and the psychological report/ratio
of force which are built in door-closed The Thing; let us listen to for
that the assembler of film, Todd Ramsay (14), speech in the way in which
Carpenter cut out the crucial scene of the perforated hematomas revealing the
fact that one of the scientists is «the thing»: «To put in scene
10 characters upright, in a relatively closed place, with four simultaneous
stakes (references of suspicions between Garry and Dr. Copper, the arbitration
of Mac Ready, the beginning of brawl between Childs and Palmer, the escape of
Windows) is in oneself an incredible narrative challenge. Any realizer would
have chosen the solution of facility, while placing his camera in the center of
a circle delimited by the protagonists. John, on the contrary, cut out his
space by emphasizing the interactions between such or such character, with an
incredible precision. I do not have the memory to have said myself:
«Ah if I could have such or such angle!». Its cover was
perfect. This sequence counts among my preferred in all my career. « Thus,
Carpenter gives a very detailed attention to put in scene in a very precise way
the reports/ratios a priori difficult which are set up between the characters,
eluding and éllipsant in an opposite movement of other types of
psychological relations (for example coils it story of Jamie Lee Curtis in
Fog is hardly suggested: it is taken in stop, one finds it in the following
sequence whereas it has just slept with Tom Atkins, then the subject will not
be evoked more. In the same way, in Los-Angeles Invasion, the friendly
relation that Nada seems to maintain with Franck is hardly outlined.) with the
profit of the points of friction. What does that mean?
What Carpenter makes us divide, it is the original off-centering
which any human being tries out in its life and in particular when, children,
we tie our first true social reports/ratios. Indeed, during the first months of
our life, we are in the center of all the attentions, in particular maternal,
and we do not make a difference between us and the others: or rather we confuse
the others with us even in a great fusion egocentric person (with the direction
first, our «me» being posed as the center of all). Then we discover
that there is different «ego» and that each «me» is the
center of its own world in which it «me objectivize», not hesitating
to judge me and to sometimes even condemn me. Off-centering founder thus, since
with the discovery of the alter-ego (i.e. with the clean direction «the
other me») it is my single and higher statute to be which disappears. It
is the same movement that one observes at Carpenter: by privileging the points
of frictions and confrontations between its characters, it obliges them to
become aware of the existence and the value of the other. And with this
awakening, it is the discovery of a different vision of the world, and even of
another possible reality. It is what Carpenter (15) describes as «reality
created by that which observes it», it is a relativistic vision of the
world, changing according to that which looks at it. It is this same theory of
a relative reality that one of the characters of the Cave of the Madness
develops when he says that «the truth it is what we say true
being». One of the keys of the personality and the work of Carpenter,
it is thus this question of relativity: «The relativity of time, space and
what one perceives, are things which appear completely normal. Later, they
again are included/understood, but from a more intellectual and less emotional
point of view.» (16). Thus we can see in professor Birak (Victor Wong in
Prince of darkness) a double metaphysics of Carpenter himself, because like do
Helene Frappat (17) says it, «of what consist «the relativistic»
theses defended by the Birak scientist in the Prince of darkness? In the
discovery that what we believe being reality does not rest on any
absolute» or «objective» base «.» At Carpenter, deaths
are raised, the extraterrestrial ones control us or us
«inséminent», and that these situations contradict or not
vision of world that have character (and what they think possible or not), it
will be necessary for them to make with and to organize themselves to resist.
Relativistic vision of the interesting life (and which perhaps justifies the
imperceptible character and «kaleidoscopic» of John Carpenter
himself) but dangerous. For the realizer (18), «it is a very complicated
trick and that made fear; many is unaware of it because that could call in
question all their assets about the world which surrounds them.»
But once exceeded this first difficult relationship with the
«other», the resistant ones truly will build a capable unit to answer
the homogeneity of the external threat, unit which is built across the
differences and even thanks to those. Indeed, the friction and even further the
confrontation is an essential data of the training of the difference, training
which is him even a stage necessary of the construction of a common identity,
that of resistance. This confrontation perhaps of a strategic nature (in the
Village of Damnés, how to be opposed to the telepathic children?),
ideological (in Attack, is it necessary to risk the price of its own life to
defend a perfect unknown?), physics (the urban combat between John Nada-Roddy
Piper and his friend Franck-Keith David, combat necessary so that Franck agrees
to give up his certainty in order to see beyond appearances, this combat a
foolish length - almost 10 minutes!- directly referring to the Quiet Man
of John Ford where John Wayne and Victor McLaglen did not finish any fighting.)
and finally set of themes as in Prince of darkness, where professor
Birak and the Loomis father initially seem to expose from the completely
different points of view: one being posed as explorer of the matter, the other
being posed like believing in the existence of God. However, the confrontation
from their points of view will be the source of an unexpected bringing
together, as Helene Frappat underlines it (19), because without their knowledge
they share the same ambivalent attitude: «These two men are ambivalent
because they oscillate between the belief and skepticism. On a side they are
believing: the priest believes in a God, the physicist believes in science; on
another side they do not cease doubting: the priest doubts because it
recognizes the «spiritual force» of the evil and the devil,
the scientist because it runs up unceasingly against the impotence of
science.». The confrontation and the confrontation from the points of view
are thus a condition of discovered and training of the other allowing a
possible bringing together. What does it occur then?
Then comes quite simply the moment to fight and thus to prove
its value in the action. By confronting the points of view and while
approaching, one erases the prejudices and a priori, in short one «gives
the meter to zero». Then charge with each one with subjecting its value,
this time through the confrontation with the external threat, with the
evaluation of the other characters as to that of the spectator, in
supposed Assaut criminal Napoleon Wilson thus reaching the statute of
hero very as much as Bishop the police officer. According to Bertrand Rougier
(20), «for Carpenter and Hawks, the action overrides the prejudices and
education, the value of a man appreciating himself with the ell of its behavior
vis-a-vis the adversity. Thus, the individuals posting a defect of competence
(attack of nerves, selfishness) are necessarily intended to succumb.» As
the employee of the police station in Assaut succumbs, eliminated because it
refuses to take the risk to pay her life the defense of an unknown. Finally, at
Carpenter, one is anything else that what one does, manner to some extent of
putting an end to the inequalities (social, racial, economic) which structure
and laminate the American company.
3.2 - To find its way and to choose human being.
Thus, as we have just seen it, to confront itself with the other
and its point of view is an essential stage for the construction of the group,
but also for the construction of its own personality, since throughout
measuring carpentérien the characters will carry out a true
psychological and metaphysical course, leaving necessarily transformed filmic
space : what Linda Seger, script-doctor and scenario writer describe as
manner General, and not only in connection with Carpenter, of arc
transformationnel. (21). However, Carpenter scenario writer, quite as
libertarian as Carpenter citizen, leaves the possibility to each one of his
characters of finding proper way, of a side or the other of the barrier.
Carpenter shows well that the two ways, that of the Good like that of the Evil,
exist ; thus, in Los-Angeles Invasion with the character of Nada,
excluded which revolts against the system answers that of the tramp between
outline the beginning of film and which Nada and Franck find at the end of
measuring : this one, while choosing to collaborate joined, all at least
believes it it, « the camp of gaining ». Why
resist, since, in all manners, « they' Re running the whole
show ! » like points out it one of the
collaborators ?
In order to prove its value ; while resisting, that is to
say, but especially by respecting a certain number of rules : for Bertrand
Rougier (22), « at the end of the film [Attack], the survivors
will owe their safety only with the respect of a code of strict honor, based on
courage, honesty and confidence », beyond the prejudices. While
resisting in the respect of this code of honor, the character
carpentérien proves his value, and in the same movement that of
Humanity, contrary to the Evil which fights with its unworthy weapons, namely
corruption (the Prince of darkness), dissimulation (The Thing)
and lie (Los-Angeles Invasion). That thus implies a Draconian choice for
the character, choice which engages any sound being in a camp or the
other : to yield to temptation and the facility, like the marginal ones
of the Prince of darkness ? Or to agree to sacrifice its life if it
is necessary because one knows the price of Humanity, like Catherine in the
John Nada or Prince of darkness in Invasion Los-Angeles ?
Whatever the way chosen by the character carpentérien, the way will be
long, difficult and possibly strewn with erroneous choices (Mac-Ready which
kill a healthy man and not contaminated in The Thing, act at the very
least shocking from the Hollywoodienne point of view for the Hero.) the error
will be in any case forgiven to the character as long as it is justified,
assumed responsabilized ; thus note Rafik Djoumi (23),
« Mac-Ready is definitively not bold Snake Plissken »,
which kills to him without sourciller. « The characters of The
Thing are afraid. None the settings to dead is easy, and a feeling of quite
palpable consternation invades the group after each one among it. It is not
useless to underline, for this reason, that only the persons in charge for the
group (Garry kills the Norwegian, Mac-Ready kills Clark which tried to attack
it). » All this belonged to an initiatory course of the character
carpentérien who, vis-a-vis the evil, must carry out the voluntary and
conscious choice human being.
As Helene Frappat (24) raises it, « the idea even of
survival is deeply ambivalent : the characters carpentériens can to
survive to make alliance with the devil (such collaborators of Los Angeles
Invasion or Vampires passed in the camp of gaining), or to
understand, on the contrary, that only true survival consists in a fight to the
death against the forces of the demon. » These forces of the demon,
it is those which physically threaten the hero carpentérien, but also
the share of evil which sommeille of each one of us and who only asks to awake,
Carpenter developing a progressive movement of focusing of outside (the
physical threat) towards the interior (the internal moral combat) ; for
Carpenter (25), « the most terrible thing with the devil, when it is
introduced into our heart, they is that we become creatures, animals, literally
of the demons, in what we do the ones with the others. To choose human being,
it is to seek the compassion, the love, passion, the every day, like a
long-term job ». « The idea, still says it, is that
brutality and brutality belong to each one among us ». Finally, which
translates Carpenter through this physical combat against the malefic threat,
it is, in a metaphorical and so to speak psychoanalytical way, the daily combat
that each one among us carries out with the dark share which it carries to
deepest of itself...
It is all the value of employment by Carpenter of certain
subjective plans : thus in the opening of the Village of
Damnés, the arrival of extraterrestrial is represented with the
screen by one of these famous subjective plans. In one of the last plans of
the Prince of darkness, the spectator subjectively finds on the other side
of the mirror to contemplate the character of Brian Marsh, adopting the place
and the point of view of the son of Satan (thus of the evil). In
Halloween, Helene Frappat (26) note that the realizer « alternate
the turned plans from the point of view of the killer and his
victims » and that « the creature without face is
dissimulated behind a mask because it can take all the faces :
the tien, mine- ours. » Forced by the realizer to adopt, even for
some images, the place and the point of view of the Evil, the spectator
viscéralement, closely is viscéralement struck with deepest by
the speech of Carpenter fundamental ambivalence human being, fruit of the
meeting complementary to Abel and Caïn, of the Good and the Evil.
Concluded Carpenter (27) : « my father said to me :
« I wonder whether God is not all- the good and the
evil ». Thus we are. The evil is everywhere. »
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