Wednesday, February 8, 2012

"Chronicle"

*****


The first image we see is Andrew Detmer (Dane DeHaan) reflected in a mirror on his bedroom door, standing behind his camera. Outside the door is Andrew's father (Michael Kelly), and the mirror shakes violently as he pounds on the door, demanding entry. "I'm filming this," Andrew tells him (and us), "I'm filming everything from now on." Dad backs down, and we hear him walk away. We sense he has just won a small victory, and in that moment, his camera becomes his shield. We quickly learn more about Andrew. He is a social reject, pale and sallow, bullied at school, on the street, and in the home (the camera does capture some violence from dad, and it is...upsetting). His cousin Matt (Alex Russell), a good looking but self conscious brainiac who quotes Plato and Jung just to make sure everyone knows how smart he is, is his closest friend, but even he is distant and socially embarrassed by Andrew. And Andrew's mother, who seems to be the one bright spot in his life, is slowly, painfully dying. I'm going to step up right now and say I understand Andrew better than any character in any comic book/superhero movie I've ever seen. In telling his story first time film makers Max Landis (writer) and Josh Trank (director) have established that they are a pair that will need to be watched. I am reminded of another documentary style sci-fi/drama that did the same thing a few year's back: Neill Blomkamp's debut and Best Picture nominee District 9, which was my favorite movie of 2009.

This one might even involve aliens. Or it might not (we'll get to that). When Matt, in a character defining display of social generosity, invites Andrew to a rave at a secluded barn, Andrew of course brings his shield, err, camera. Compulsive video-blogger Casey (Ashley Hinshaw) is introduced ostensibly as a love interest for Matt but really to provide us a second camera to see through, which will be useful later. After the expected social calamity, Andrew withdraws and sits by himself outside. There Steve (Michael B. Jordan), jock, class president favorite, and all around nice guy, finds him and enlists him and his camera to come out into the woods, where in a clearing by a ridge he and Matt have found an odd hole in the ground. Since they are teenagers and will never die, they go down in the hole, and the find... something. Its a crystalline, glowing something, that starts to affect the camera and then to affect the boys, causing nose bleeds. And then we jump to bright daylight and the boys catching baseballs thrown at their faces in mid air. They use their new telekinetic powers like teenage boys would: using a leaf blower to blow up shirts, pranking people at the mall. They soon discover they can lift themselves as well as others, and they take flight. Scenes like this are what I love about the first-person camera style, usually called (sometimes wrongly, like here) "found footage." We've never seen film flight from the point of view of the flier like this, and that immediacy, that "in-the-moment" sensation, makes these some of the most dynamic, most exciting flight sequences I've ever seen. It far outpaces anything in the recent Red Tails (also, incidentally, featuring Michael B. Jordan). All this creates a tight bond between the boys; they don't just share a secret, we find they can actually feel each other. And Andrew is opening up, and we are thrilled for him, even though we know it cannot last. He finds popularity. Suddenly girls are looking at him differently. A turning point is coming, and it pivots around that most damaging of events to the teenage psyche: sexual humiliation.

Trank and Landis nail every beat. There is no dawdling, no wasting of time. The movie moves with breathless momentum to the inevitable and awesome third act. They also invent a very clever way to expand the limitations of the format: Andrew begins moving the camera with his mind, opening up the scope, allowing wide shots, pans, whatever. Casey's camera offers another angle, and becomes very important toward the end. Indeed by the end the scope has widened much further, and we see through security cameras, traffic cams, police dashboard cameras, cell phones, laptops; nothing is outside our field of vision. We are privy to any lens that might capture the boys. And in the end they leave questions hanging. The movie has very little actual spoken exposition; the story is told through the action as it happens. Hence we have no explanation for what is down that hole, or where (or when, or what) it came from. When the boys later return to the hole it has collapsed (or been filled in) and rangers (many of them...too many) suddenly appear along the ridge saying they can't be there. Is it a cover-up? Good question, but not one that's answered. I love it when a movie leaves behind trailing riddles like this.

Before I finish let me call out Dane DeHaan. Though the movie is about three boys, its really about one boy. One very damaged boy on the verge of an incredible rise or a perilous fall; the movie would not have worked had his performance not felt honest and true. That incredible third act would be nothing more than an action climax, if you were not emotionally invested in Andrew. But DeHaan works magic here. He reminds me of Leonardo Dicaprio in The Basketball Diaries. We feel his pain, we see his rage, and we believe in his power. And it is an awesome thing.

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