I remembered hearing something about this movie years back, probably about five or six years ago. I thought it was supposed to be a recent movie. Instead, it turns out that this was from 1998. Older than I expected.
It’s good. There’s a dose of low-level humor to many of the proceedings, but there’s something almost nostalgic to the story. That doesn’t make much sense, but I guess that comes about from the very un-extraordinary things that people do.
An employee of a gas company methodically calls all of the customers, thanking them, and telling them that they will work to keep the gas running until the very end. One guy wants to put on a concert. One guy methodically plans on working through a variety of sexual conquests. Some people are out partying in the streets. People overturn cars for the fun of it.
What makes this movie effective is same thing that makes Romero’s Living Dead movies effective - placing yourself in the same situation and thinking about it. What came out of this was a strange mix of both banality and the special qualities of life. With the number of people who want to be doing something special at the moment that they go, I realized that the things that make our deaths important is a sense of symbolism that is left for survivors to focus on. If everyone goes at once, all of these ideas seem silly.
In talking about it with Cathy, I think I’d probably treat it like any other night. I’d want to stay in, eat, probably watch a movie. Would it be a particular movie? Nope, just whatever I felt like. Of course, I’d probably want to talk to a variety of people before going, but that’s about it.
The performances are good. It’s nice to see Callum Rennie, who played one of the Cylons on Battlestar Galactica, in a good part. What surprises me is actually how much I enjoyed Sandra Oh’s part.
Good stuff, and probably one of the most enjoyable depictions of the apocalypse I’ve seen.
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