The Invasion
Jack Finney’s 1956 Collier’s magazine serial Invasion of The Bodysnatchers is as vital an original work as George Romero’s first zombie movie in 1968. It’s imminently adaptable and re-adaptable, tweaking it ever so slightly for a whole new metameaning depending on society’s anxieties of the day. In 1956, the story couched its thinly disguised Red Scare tactics in the form of alien pod people (conformity to capitalism was OK, just conform with the Right People). In 1978, the enemy was conformity itself, a direct 180 from the previous ideal, but still terrifying with its implacable foe. In 1993, Body Snatchers seemed to put a shame-faced veneer on the Me Decade. Today, our invaders are a little bit more subtle, like our fears in this technologically advanced world.
Thankfully, German director Oliver Hirschbiegel decided to skip the hokey pods and instead transmit the viral invaders more like The Rage or Ebola (some recent terrors); once your hormones release in REM sleep, you’re gotten. Efficient, terrifying in a new way, and at least superficially scientifically grounded. We’re scared of pandemics and the fluids of strangers, but we’re also kind of nervous about losing our senses of self to antidepressants and toxins. That the sporelike virus, brought to Earth by the crashed Patriot shuttle, would naturally be dubbed the Patriot Virus (but never is) transmits a message quietly in the background.
As you would expect, the - well, they’re not pod people any more, let’s call them Citizens - the Citizens develop a peaceful hive mind (like the Borg), working on congress to infect/assimilate every human with the alien organism. The nightmarish result? Business as usual, but with no war, crime, prejudice, violence or fear; oh but we also lose love, joy, inspiration, warmth, individualism, freedom, privacy. So there are ups and downs, as with any global alien pandemic. How you interpret the danger (as with the previous adaptations) may depend on your politics or philosophy. Is it worth giving up your privacy and freedom to end war and rape and looting? Is it worth keeping our hatreds and our fears to keep our joys and passions? We’ll find out tonight on Fox News.
The Invasion lets you decide (though obviously it is rooting for our heroine to escape the change and does a smidgen of spoonfeeding as well); it also lets you take a different tack by choosing between bland, homogenized Prozac nation life or emotional, psychiatric necessity-riven life. It is amusing that he cast the legendarily chilly Nicole Kidman as practically the one person on Earth having to forcefully restrain her emotions. She actually has great chemistry with her onscreen son, Jackson Bond. As a former Scientologist and Stepford Wife, she seems an unlikely choice for the psychiatrist role and yet she is perfect.
The movie has great visual style (Rainer Klausmann is the director of photography and a renaissance man of the cinema). We float in the green droning monotony of fluorescent lights, the weird jangly unfocused discombobulation of sleep deprivation, interesting time overlapping cuts, and an overall exciting, suspenseful feel. I hope Klausmann does more work in the US as a result of this movie. The thing is, while you’re watching it, it feels new and interesting, and as soon as it’s over, you kind of feel like you’ve seen it before. It’s creepy and cool and stylish, meaningful, and forgettable. You have better choices for your movie dollar, but you have much much worse too.
MPAA Rating PG-13
Release date 8/17.07
Time in minutes 93
Director Oliver Hirschbiegel
Studio Warner Brothers
