48: On Not Clicking

This week I went to the Music Box Theatre with a friend to catch a screening of John Carpenter's The Thing. She'd never seen it before, and we'd been talking about watching it together for a while; it's the Carpenter I'm most familiar with, and probably also the one I think about the most. The first time I'd seen it had also been on the big screen at the Music Box at their 70mm Film Festival, but the print at that screening had a deep red tint to it. I was hoping for a better presentation this time–I've seen restored versions of The Thing at home, and the movie features some staggering blues and whites that were missing from my first big-screen viewing. I was also hoping to finally fully come around on a film that I don't love, but that I respect a little more each time I see it.

On paper, I should love John Carpenter's movies. I've seen most of his best-known ones, and a couple of the more obscure ones, and nearly every one has left me disappointed in some way. This baffles me: I'm intrigued by the premises of every single one of the movies he's made. On a technical level, they're stunning. The practical effects in The Thing alone are impressive, and I respect Carptener's willingness to lean into the grotesque, and to show every gruesome detail under bright light. His movies all have a specific look and feel to them. One of the audience members next to me at The Thing kept counting split-diopter shots under his breath as they appeared. I like movies about process, and about men confronting the confines of their masculinity, and every Carpenter I've seen touches on both. He also knows how to end a movie. The Thing's ending is iconic, for good reason, but I think about the emotion filling Karen Allen's face at the end of Starman, and about the ambiguity of the hand reaching for the mirror at the end of Prince of Darkness, all the time.

But still, Carpenter just doesn't click for me. His singular vision and drive just slides right off. I suspect it's a me thing, and not a problem with Carpenter or his direction; I'm simply not on his wavelength. I don't usually connect with his characters. They feel like abstractions to me, and so does the humor that peppers his films. I get that the six-minute-long fight scene between Roddy Piper and Keith David in the alley in They Live is supposed to be funny. Two men in their prime scuffling in the trash over a pair of sunglasses for an extended amount of time is hilarious. But Carpenter is cynical, and angry, and he's straightforward about both of those things, and I think that I might prefer a scalpel to a blunt instrument.

All things considered, it was good to see The Thing on the big screen again. The crowd was a little weird: for the first 20 minutes, the entire room laughed at every other line delivery, even though The Thing is not a comedy. The audience's attitude first had me irritated by performative laughter, then wondering if I was reading Carpenter wrong; the way I see it, the movie's a tragedy about how men are incapable of communicating when they're afraid. Maybe I was just in a mood that night. All I know is that Carpenter slipped through my fingers again, but someday I'll catch up with him.

What I talked about:

For Seeing & Believing podcast, Kevin and I let our nerd flags fly a little in our review of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Kevin took the opportunity to introduce me to the 1998 The Mask of Zorro as well, which I loved.

What I'm reading:

Aka the Is Sarah Procrastinating on Infinite Jest? section: this week I am making progress! I am stuck in a car dealership this weekend thanks to the process of entropy (cars should not be allowed to age), and as a result, as of this email's publication, I am sitting in a waiting room with a gigantic book like I'm back in college or something.

What I'm listening to:

The spring equinox was a few weeks ago, but this week is the first week that's felt like the season has properly started. It was warm enough last weekend that I took some time to tear out an overgrown bush in our backyard; I'm checking the soil temperature every few days in the hopes that I'll be able to begin planting soon. I also finally pulled together a quarterly spring playlist.