Watching the Watchmen

I lived in the Midwest for quite a number of years before I moved to L.A. Yet somehow, in the eight year period of time that I lived in California, I managed to forget that just because you have a nice day in March doesn't mean that Spring is here. Yesterday, it was 75 degrees. It wasn't terribly sunny but the air had that balmy feel that made you want to stand outside and let the breeze wash over you. I stood on my balcony last night and had a glass of wine and it was as warm in the dark as it had been in the day.

This morning, it's freezing. My temperature gauge on my car read 39 degrees. That's a big difference. Instead of strolling from my car and enjoying the warmth, I scuttled, trying to stop my nose from getting cold. My nose gets really cold and I hate it. Just one of those odd quirks I have.

Yet in a way, it's quite nice to have variety. There's something quite nice about unpredicability. It's always there to surprise and sometimes you need that. Same goes for variety. It'd be nice if it were Spring but I'm still not quite ready to relinquish winter. I've missed it too much.

I tend to be a creature of habit. I have my comfort zones and I rarely like to stroll out of them. Yet, occasionally, I will try something new just to see if I like it. For example, this weekend, while I was flying on my oh-so-relaxing trip, I read a borrowed copy of the graphic novel, Watchmen. It's not the first graphic novel I've read. I wouldn't be much of a Neil Gaiman fan if I hadn't read his Sandman graphic novels which are amazing. I've read a few others too just because I'm fascinated by how great writing can be combined with great art. I knew Watchmen was highly regarded yet I wasn't sure what to expect. I figured it'd be a quick read but as soon as I encountered the first text-heavy excerpt from the fictional Behind the Hood novel, I realized it was going to take a while. I did still manage to read it on the plane but, by the time I was done, my head was spinning. It wasn't like anything I've really read before.

Watchmen is not a superhero novel. It is, in fact, an anti-hero novel. The main characters are a second generation of a group of masked avengers who originally banded together to stop crime in a way that the police could not. This generation is not so naive. Except for two of the Watchmen who now work for the government, the rest have been forced to retire or go into hiding because of an amendment added by Nixon that outlawed masked heroes. Now these former superheroes are a group of bitter, nihilistic wanderers who can't quite let go of the past but are trying to find their place in a world that supposedly doesn't need them

My favourite character is the tragic Rorschach, a man who now believes the mask he wears is he real face. His mask is an Rorschach inkblot, seemingly alive as it changes shape constantly with the movement of his face muscles. He is the last true avenger, refusing to go into hiding and executing vigilante justice because he feels the world is a morally blank canvas and if he rids the earth of the scum, it might at least have a chance. He's called a sociopath yet he seems to feel so much that it's turned him inside out. He's violent and cruel but his moral compass will never let him betray the belief that the world is black and white and you are either against evil or against good. He's a fascinating man, the only one of the Watchmen who doesn't give up on trying to save the world one villain at a time.

I saw the movie last night in Imax. I wasn't sure what to expect. The graphic novel is so long and intense that I couldn't imagine how it'd be adapted. However, I must say, I was impressed and amazed at how well it was done. There were shots that were real-life exact replicas of panels from the novel. The nihilistic tone was there, the characters flesh and blood rather than inked figures on a page. I don't think it's a movie for anyone who doesn't like a dark and twisty story and definitely not for someone who is uncomfortable with violence because it is spectacularly violent, gory and slightly twisted. They left out a couple of the story lines which I think was to their credit. Yet they kept everything tight, respectful of the original material and added just a touch of humour with some of the music choices.

I read this weeks Entertainment Weekly review of the movie. I don't know why I do that, honestly. Rarely do I agree with the reviewers who seem to have put themselves on a pedestal and have lost complete touch with what makes a movie good. They have their own ideas but they seem to forget that movies are supposed to entertain and inspire thinking rather than to have thesaurus-heavy meanings. The Watchmen review was written by Owen Gleiberman who said at the end of the review:

[Director Zach Snyder] doesn't move the camera or let the scenes breathe. He crams the film with bits and pieces, trapping his actors like bugs wriggling in the frame...

...On the page, Watchmen was a paranoid, mind-tripping pastiche of everything from The Incredible Hulk to Naked Lunch. But when characters who are knowing throwbacks are literally brought to life on screen, they can seem more like half-hearted ripoffs. A no-future nihilism bled from the very grain of Moore and Gibbons' pop vision of the 20th century. But that's a real problem for the movie, since the Cold War nuclear fears of the '80s never did come to pass. Watchmen isn't boring, but as a fragmented sci-fi doomsday noir, it remains as detached from the viewer as it is from the zeitgeist.

Here's the thing: If Mr. Gleiberman really did read Watchmen, he should have felt the exact same way about the graphic novel. The novel doesn't let you breathe, it's so crammed with action, emotion, metaphor and horror that you feel like you need to put it down just to be able take a full gulp of air. And the entire time I was reading, I felt detached from it and I think that was the point. I loved it, I devoured it but I never felt like I was part of the story. Rather, I felt as though I were being warned. So what if the Cold War fear of the '80's never came to pass? It still could. It's not like nuclear weapons have become tame little puppies that just need a little love. They can still kill us in a second. It's not Russia anymore, it's the Middle East.

No, I think what Mr. Gleiberman fails to recognize is that Watchmen in movie or graphic novel format is not about the Cold War, it's about human nature. It is doomsday noir but that doomsday is a darkness that has spread through human nature until the American Dream realized has become the American Nightmare. It's a long-distance warning, something that doesn't seem possible because it's so other, so fictional that it doesn't seem plausible. Yet, like with every good work of fiction, if you peer closely, you'll see that the fibers that hold the story together are familiar, something that we see every day even if we don't want to.

If you're into fiction that is so dark that it sometimes makes your skin crawl, I highly recommend reading Watchmen. It will make you uncomfortable but, at the same time, it will make you think. Just because it has pictures doesn't make it one of the best contributions to literature that I've read in a while. Now I just need to buy my own copy.

Happy Wednesday.