Wednesday, February 6, 2013

The Deadness


* * * Warm Bodies. Written and directed by Jonathan Levine, based on a novel by Isaac Marion. 

Corpse (Nicholas Hoult) meets girl (Teresa Palmer) in Warm Bodies.
Before the craze for the undead at the multiplex, you were most likely to hear about zombies in the context of philosophical thought-experiments on the nature of consciousness. That is, how do you know that other people have minds like you, if all you really know is their outward behavior? If a zombie goes through all the motions of being a person with a full inner life, but really has no mind at all, could you tell the difference? More disturbingly, what if your brain were set up to make you believe you are conscious, when you’re really just a zombie yourself?
            Not that Jonathan Levine (50/50, The Wackness) necessarily had any of that in mind when he made his zombie romance, Warm Bodies. Outwardly, this is just a twist on what has become a too-familiar genre. After the usual zombie apocalypse, we meet a dead-ender with a difference: known only as “R”—from a fragment of his forgotten name—the hero (Nicholas Hoult) is an ambulatory corpse with a full set of existential hang-ups. Bemoaning the monotony of being dead, R shambles around a wrecked airport, wondering if there’s anything more to post-mortem life. Mere teenage self-consciousness isn’t enough for this zombie to suspect he is, in fact, alive. He hungers for brains, yet he hungers for something more.
            “More” finally comes in the person of Julie (Teresa Palmer), a living, breathing female vaguely resembling Kristin Stewart, but with the spunk to wake the dead. Smitten at first sight, R doesn’t devour her but saves her life. She, in turn, becomes intrigued by her unusual savior, who lacks a pulse but seems more humane than her “shoot ‘em on sight” vigilante father (John Malkovich). Love, you see, has the effect of reversing the zombie plague—an effect that starts with R and spreads through other corpses that are still on the fresher side. “Don’t be creepy…” the zombie tells himself as he tries not to stare at her.
            True, in the abstract this sounds like B.S., and even worse, high-concept B.S.. But Levine’s script, based on Isaac Marion’s novel, is witty enough to distract from the wackness of its “love conquers death” theme. Instead of Night of the Living Dead, the classic he seems to have in mind is Shakespeare’s tale of star-cross’d lovers, compelled by their passion to defy their warring clans.  (If Julie = Juliet, then R obviously doesn’t stand for “Randy”). Levine even gives the couple a balcony scene.
            In short, the film is mildly hokey but also mildly clever. Indeed, the latent humanity of Levine’s walking dead raises bigger questions than a mere rom-com has any business asking. Instead of the usual raging virus, it’s the lack of real interaction that makes zombies of us all; in a flashback, Levine shows us the world shortly before its collapse, as the living ignore each other  in favor of smart-phones and tablets. The zombie next to you may not want your brains as much as he wants to squeeze in his next move on Words With Friends.
            Today’s zombie is just the horror equivalent of all the robots and replicants and cyborgs of science fiction, challenging us to define what it really means to be human. In most instances, the deep issues are never explored, because the humans always respond first by blowing zombies’ brains out. Sometimes the shooters even seem to enjoy it—a pleasure that, in a more reflective treatment, might prompt the question of who is really dead inside.
            For exhuming these and other  hidden themes, Warm Bodies isn’t wacked.
© 2013 Nicholas Nicastro

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