LAND OF THE DEAD

I. The Festivities

What a blast. I walked into Cafe Euro two weeks ago to meet a friend before a concert. It was filled with happy hour professionals, which is pretty much its clientele all the time, or at least until it changes ownership and theme in six months. Last night I walked into Cafe Euro and directly to my right stood George Romero, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino and Greg Nicotero. Tom Savini showed up right after I did. Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright came in later. Seemingly half of the cast of Day of the Dead was there, and several of the actors from Land of the Dead arrived and mingled with the guests and the people made up like zombies. The bartender who got us a drink appeared to have some sort of skin condition. I was relieved to realize that it was just faint, veiny zombie makeup.

Near the end of the pre-party I made my way over to Romero. He's unmistakable in his choice of eyewear and omnipresent vest, but much taller than I would have guessed. He's being talked at by a guy in his mid-twenties whose body language just reeks of determination and extreme self-unawareness. Standing in the on-deck circle, I see and hear the guy just drilling some monologue about his arcane film knowledge into Romero's personal space. The guy never moves his head, doesn't blink, doesn't stop for air. And then it comes: the business card, the sales pitch, the opportunity to advance his career on Romero's big night. Romero's as polite as possible, takes the guy's card but tells the guy not to expect anything out of it. The guy's undaunted and has backup plans to thwart Romero's polite demurrer. Really, has anyone ever made it big by pestering somebody at a movie premiere? I've always been too introverted for my own good and not sufficiently socially outgoing, but I think I'd still rather be a wallflower than that guy. That's all just to say that by the time Romero was able to break the guy's hypnotic trance, I was happy just to get a handshake and a chance to mumble some thanks. Later, I had a chance to shake Tarantino's hand and exchange a greeting with him inside the theater.

After the film the party continued at another locale. A great time, in all. Still, it has to be the most unique crowd I've been part of in my twelve years in Pittsburgh. Sporting event crowds are pretty homogenous, as are most movie theater crowds. Last night's premiere featured the stars and folks still in the business, of course, but there were also a sizable number of people (they were asked to stand) who had worked on or appeared in former Romero films. It was like a big family reunion. Add to that the standard Patrons of the Arts who show up to all of the big events, decked out in fancy clothes (and maybe, heh heh, in store for their first Romero experience) They're sitting side-by-side with the other contingency, the true believing fans, who range from the "average" movie fan to the more goth-heavy model. And thus you end up with the stepsister of the producer sitting next to me and my companion, both of us sitting one row behind a guy who couldn't be more pierced or tattoed. What a great crowd, and I have to think Romero loved being able to get a crowd that varied together. All they've got in common is admiration for him and his work.

Before the film, a couple of people in the industry stood up and talked about how their passion for film was born through the region's cultural assets-- through WPXI's Chiller Theater and, for the younger professionals, through Romero himself. The night became not only a love letter to Romero, but also a paean to regional filmmaking generally. It's so fitting that Robert Rodriguez flew himself here, since he's managed to modify the Romero model better than anybody else. Sure, Romero's had a much tougher time prying loose studio money than a guy with a distribution deal like Rodriguez, and Romero's usual adherence to shooting on location in Pittsburgh is an interesting contrast to Rodriguez's seeming goal of eliminating locations, but there's a symmetry there that's quite fitting. Both men's careers stand, at least partly, for the proposition that good movies (defined either by artistic or commercial success) can be made outside of the Hollywood protective shell. Of course, Land of the Dead also shows that Romero can make a fantastic film inside the system, too.

II. The film

Yeah, so this is great. Like-- really, really good.

Romero picks up right where he should have picked up after taking twenty years off. The opening credits use bits of sound and image to bring the uninitiated up to speed concerning how things have fallen apart. Then we're back in Romero's world, which is always nightmarish but never static. Things have changed. Societies-- plural-- have reformed along clear lines, some predictable and some unpredictable. The zombie plague is a way of life now, and the survivors have adjusted to it in the same way that societies adjust to irritations like hurricane season or longlasting civil wars. They build a wall.

I'm not going to go into thematic or plot spoilers here for people who haven't seen it (those follow), but Romero had a great concept in mind to continue his series, and the added studio support makes the film clearer and bigger in a positive way while retaining the distinctive voice, humor and vision of his earlier zombie films. If aligning himself with Universal's banner (most touchingly and fittingly, under the retro logo that ran before all of those classic Karloff and Lugosi films) was something of a gamble, he won it. In the process, Romero's dark and comic point of view suddenly has grafted onto it somewhat accomplished actors, much larger sets and locations and a breadth of physical scope that is initially incongruous with the earlier films. As a result, the film is not as intrinsically claustrophobic or confined as the first three, but it works very well because now we're exploring not just the fate of a few, but many. Sure, you put two men in a small room and there's a good chance they'll eventually start some kind of fight, but it happens in a big room, too. And that just means there's more room for the fighting.

The film does so well the things that genre films seem to be getting so wrong these days. The characters are sufficiently complex to be interesting without becoming larger than the film itself. The one-liners are actually funny. The sidekick character is endearing and not at all annoying. A romantic subplot isn't unnecessarily shoehorned in. Really, subtexts and signifiers aside, it's a well-done action picture. Add in the contexts and concerns that are part of any Romero zombie movie and it's something else entirely. Something pretty great.

Curiously, despite the regrets expressed by the filmmakers and the press over the film not shooting in Pittsburgh, Land of the Dead is grounded in the city to a degree far exceeding the prior films. Town names, neighborhood names and street names are incorporated heavily into the script. More significantly, the city's bridges, natural boundaries and distinct topography figure prominently and meaningfully into the plot. Romero's even got a hilarious and recurring in-joke for those of us who have never ceased to wonder why western Pennsylvanians are so innately and fervently mesmerized by fireworks displays (seriously, when the Pirates hold a fireworks night, not only will the stadium be unusually sold out regardless of the quality of the opponent, but people driving by will pull off the highways and ramps, safety be damned, just to watch). The consolation prize to losing the economic and pride infusions of shooting the film in Pittsburgh is that the resulting film is about the city in a significant way that, say, Striking Distance or Desperate Measures isn't.

Of course, it's about everywhere else, too.

But while the film will send home happy the people who want blood and guts (there's a bit with a head-challenged clergyman zombie that will bring down the house) and the small but rabid fanbase, the film retains the larger subtexts of the earlier films and dials them to 2005.

(Spoilers follow)

Things fall apart, but then we put them back together again. The survivors hunker down and build their wall (keeping the undead out and them in). Of course, the next thing they do is create a class society with the chosen few living in their high-rise Paradise. Did the survivors urge a guy like Dennis Hopper's Kaufman to become the new city's Czar, bank and CEO, or did he just usurp the power? It doesn't matter. We always look for leaders, and we always get corrupt or corruptible ones. John Leguizamo's Cholo learns that not even doing Kaufman's dirty work is enough to get him approved for membership by the Homeowners' Association. And so the new society looks a lot like the old one.

Of course, in keeping with the gradually evolving model started by Bub in Day, the undead are learning as things go along, and they create their own form of society. Romero's always been so skilled at taking an image and infusing it with both absurdity and significance, and thus we get a zombie band in a gazebo. It's a great moment. It's easy to see where this is headed, though, as any society, even a loosely organized zombie one, has a voice to air grievances and a body to wield a jackhammer.

The zombie horde, as always, ends up intruding on an ongoing fight between the supposedly better people. Here, Romero dips into the stuff of regional civil wars and the War on Terror to play with our sensibilities. Kaufman labels Cholo a terrorist shortly after shooting down his dreams of homeownership and refusing to pay him what he's owed. In response, Cholo steals Dead Reckoning, which can best be described as Hummer's next concept car and which the new not-dead society relies on to pillage the old country (now-overrun) for food, medicine and liquor. Cholo won't return the vehicle until he gets what he's owed. He threatens to destroy the high-rise unless he's made whole. So which is he-- a terrorist or a freedom fighter? A bit of both, I guess. Unmistakably, we get the sense that these societies-- human and zombie-- are just self-defeating crutches wherein we exchange solitude and self-determinism for the illusory promise of safety and a bigger mob to chase out the undesirables. It's enough to make a guy want to head for the prairie. Or Canada.

And so we get the first zombie western (props to Dre for making this parallel). Is it better to live alone or with others? Is it safer-- even under these conditions-- to live alone or with others? These have always been complex questions with assumed answers based on largely-unassailed premises. Find me another film released between Memorial Day and Labor Day that even acknowledges the questions.

Local coverage: Here, here, here, here, and here.