Rating: B- or maybe C+
Dir: Saul Metzstein.
Star: Jason Biggs, Natascha McElhone, Jeremy Northam, Michael Ironside.
It’s billed as a comedy. Set in Greenland although filmed in Iceland (not that anyone would ever confuse the two… surely not…) with a pretty similar tone to Northern Exposure (the successful comedy/drama TV series that ran from 1990-1995).
Set in 1979, four years after the end of the Vietnam War, a Douglas DC-3 almost literally drops off Rudy Spruance (Biggs) in Hawaii, and thence into a plague of midges and a sea of bitey bitey bite! Only. Well. It’s not Hawaii but Qangattarsa, a remote base in Greenland.
- “If you want to scratch, don’t!”
- “There’s been a fuck up!!”
- “You’re on top of the world… more polar bears than people..”
- “This week’s motion picture screening will be The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”
This is a lazy film, in no rush to go or get anywhere, and it’s oddly compellingly strange, with echoes of MASH running through as Spruance is taken to be a PIO (Personal Information Officer) called Martin Pederson, reporting to Colonel Woolwrap (Northam) who has aims of starting a newspaper for the base, to help morale. Along the way Spruance/Pederson attracts some interest from Sgt Irene Teal (McElhone).
The dislocation that Rudy/Martin feels is amplified by the twenty-four hours of daylight disturbing all around him, along with the growing feeling that this is an outpost without a post to fill. Instead it seems that this is the place where misfits ‘get sent’, the US Army Remedial Division, complete with a stasis that eats away from within, and for tonight’s film we have The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. As the audience lip syncs each and every line.
A
fter a few ‘fragile’ attempts to escape, Rudy starts to go with the flow, as much as things flow in the Remedial Division, and the newly delivered newspaper-press starts rolling out ‘The Harpoon’, to some mixed reviews. Still, it can at least report that next week’s film will be The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
“It’s not the dying. We all do that.”
So. Look. This is a quirky cutely odd film, with lots of resonances to other presentations – including The Big Lebowski. Until. Then. Oh! Rudy stumbles across The Wing, which is off-limits to the extent that it ‘doesn’t exist’, and it seems that much is not as it seemed. At this point the wry quirky comedy becomes not a comedy and we meet patient X (Ironside) and his fellow inmates, W, Y and Z, along the way learning of ‘compound sun’. Not that anyone ‘knows’ as this is the US Army, and they guard things. Including facts.
As the longest day becomes the shortest day much and nothing changes, although the next week’s film becomes The Thing – yes that film. The one set in an arctic snow-globe with a shape shifting alien eating the inhabitants. So. Progress. Kinda.
I will leave you to discover what comes next, but to tempt will say that overall I liked this film, it held my attention whilst I never quite knew where it was going. It’s not a comedy although it is intentionally amusing and a bit weird. There is some very good, if sporadic, use of music, along with some nice brutal lack-of scenery to see, and it’s well shot with enough decent performances along the way to keep you engaged.
Overall, I can’t quite decide which side of the fence to come down on, should it be a C+ or a B-, so, give it a spin and let me know your thoughts.