How entertaining? ★★★☆☆
Thought provoking? ★★☆☆☆ 5 June 2012
This article is a review of DEATH WATCH. |
“Not everything has to mean something,” Gerald Mortenhoe (Max von Sydow) to Katherine Mortenhoe (Romy Schneider)
I love intelligent sci-fi. Director Bertrand Tavernier’s 1980 look at privacy, self-determination and morality gets a new digital restoration. Far ahead of its time, pre-figuring THE TRUMAN SHOW and CHILDREN OF MEN, Harvey Keitel’s Roddy inveigles his way into a dying woman’s life – Katherine. He has implants in his eyes that provide a live feed to a major television channel, NTV, where it is edited and shown later in the day to a captivated audience. It seems that much of the population are removed from death of the young, it is a novelty. There is very little explanation to this future world, which is very recognisably the late 1970s, except for odd bits of technology, like a novel written by a computer. Tech is not on the agenda; the strengths and weaknesses of personality are instead being put under the microscope. Think Kazuo Ishiguro’s NEVER LET ME GO (the excellent novel, not the subpar movie).
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While an excellent cast explores human dignity (Schneider, Keitel, von Sydow and Harry Dean Stanton), and the cinematographer eschews cliché dystopian parable presentation, there is still a coldness to proceedings, which slightly hampers empathy. Charisma conveying though is not the problem; Keitel is still in his early hungry energy phase (compared to his latter world-weary menace).
Like all landmark science fiction, is still relevant.
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