Post by ronnierocketago on Jan 18, 2009 20:22:51 GMT
THE ABYSS (1989) - ***1/2
(NOTE: This is a review of the Special Edition)
"When you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back at you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
I don't know if this story is accurate or not, but it should be true. During the production of THE ROCK, director Michael Bay repeatedly asked star Ed Harris questions regarding James Cameron's THE ABYSS. Apparently Bay was a self-fancied Cameron fanboy (what a surprise) and kept bugging Harris with how Cameron shot this sequence, pulled off that special effect, and on. This kept going on until Harris politely told Bay to shut the fuck up.
And can you really blame Harris. THE ABYSS was indeed a great technical undertaking and triumph in the days before CGI, which was extensively covered in the press. For a movie set primarily under water, ABYSS was shot in a half-finished nuclear reactor facility which included a 7 million gallon underwater set, the largest in the world. Cast members had to become certified divers before filming began, forced to undergo decompression daily, and wear scuba masks were specially designed to display the actors' faces, with microphones attached so that they could act in the water.
It also surprisingly didn't kill anybody, though it seems Cameron almost tried his best to pull a John Landis* because very few scenes involved stunt people. When Harris in suit drags unprotected co-star Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (Tony Montana's sister), she's really holding her breath. Earlier the rig floods and you see actors "drowning" behind closed hatches...they weren't acting. Plus that scene when Harris literally beats Mastrantonio back to life, that's Harris and fists doing it repeatedly to her exposed chest (and apparently in an ridiculously excessive number of takes.) Since one of my great fears is drowning, (which is why I live in Tennessee) I can fully appreciate why both Mastrantonio and Harris reportedly suffered physical and nervous breakdowns, enough to make Harris cry.
That's right, Cameron made tough guy/great actor Ed Harris cry.
Those two refused to do publicity for ABYSS, and vowed never to work with Cameron near water again, a sentiment shared years later by Kate Winslet after TITANIC. I love Cameron, I really do, but usually his talent excused him for maybe taking unnecessary risks with other people's lives. Take how to get a cameo, his own brother had to hold his breath under 15 feet of water, with a crab in his mouth. Hey Jimmy, couldn't a wax dummy simply have sufficed?
Anyway, the $70 million movie flopped in theatres, and mostly remembered for a very memorable and advanced CGI moment with the "water worm" that won the movie a Best Visual Effects Oscar and would lay the groundwork for the even-more ambitious T-1000 in TERMINATOR 2. But THE ABYSS resurfaced (pun!) years later in a Special Edition with 30 minutes restored, along with the original epic ending. Now Cameron has released similar and superior extended versions for ALIENS and TERMINATOR 2, but his unofficial Director's Cut for THE ABYSS is the only one which completely supplants the theatrical edit into irrelevancy.
What is revealed with the Special Edition is what Cameron had wanted to do all along: Make his own THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL mixed with 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY for the Reagan Decade, a univeral well-meaning parable where aliens teach humans to quit acting like children with our WMDs and grow the fuck up. Except instead of Klaatu descending from the stars to Washington D.C., he's ascending from the unexplored depths (or abyss) of the ocean floor to a lone deep sea oil rig, commissioned by the U.S. Navy to figure out what sank one of their submarines. Do you even need a clue?
I will go even far as to say that THE ABYSS in spirit is a better remake per say of the 1951 classic EARTH than that recent dumbass "revision" with Keanu Reeves. It preaches without ever preaching, hell in fact after the sub sinking and investigation instigates an international crisis between America and Soviet Union, that storyline subsides for when this roughneck crew lose all contact with the surface. They have bigger fish to fry with trying to stay alive, fend off Michael Biehn the Navy SEAL who's gone nuts, and those mysterious dancing lights out in the darkness...
I think my biggest problem with the original ABYSS version was how Biehn's character freaks out with the alien shit and claim they're the Russians or whatever. I hated that because: (1) It's stupid, and (2) It's a lazy boring cliche. Now with the Cold War subplot back, I kinda can't blame Biehn now. I mean come on, his squad and his leaders back on the surface don't comprehend even seriously the idea of aliens, much less them living down in the Ocean. Why would they? If from current evidence you don't accept the legitimate possibility of aliens visiting or on Earth (which I don't), it makes sense for them to assume it's a new Soviet super-weapon, and thus why these SEALs must steal a warhead from the sub and detonate it.
I think the Special Edition's sole weakness which keeps it from swimming to greatness is the sheer excessive coverage of the Harris and Mastrantonio relationship. Now I understand that it's the lynchpin of ABYSS, for if that subplot or physical chemistry had failed, then so would this 3 hour movie, but I honestly thought the theatrical edit made that point enough. That said, a nice addition is a shot when Harris throws his wedding ring down the toilet, and closes the bathroom stall. We wait a minute, then he rushes to save it by sticking his arm down the porta-potty shitter, and thus turning it blue. I always wondered why his arm was blue in the original cut, and I had assumed he had liked disemboweled a Smurf or something in a deleted scene.
Color me disapointed.
Still, a pity that those two actors left ABYSS with such (deserved) bad blood for they display some of their best acting work, and arguably the most heartening storyline that Cameron ever shot. I mean take that scene in the wrecked sub where Harris has the only functional helmet, so Mastrantonio effectively has to drown so that he can drag her back to the rig. Then Harris' suicide mission descending into the abyss to disarm the warhead, and typing that last response to her. Though they all don't compare to that whole emotional roller coaster sequence when he loses her, but he's too stubborn to quit:
Now that's good shit. That my friends is why Bay is Bay, and not Cameron.
I think a testament to the thespian success is the finale, when on the brink of nuclear World War 3, the terrestrials decided to save their world by armed intervention, and exterminate mankind by one giant-ass global tsunami. Harris saves those aliens, yet now he's about to watch his species wiped out, and like Noah did with God before the Great Flood (fitting since ABYSS is practically a slick biblical allegory), Harris having to bargain with them to not pull the plug. I especially liked that he barks at them for daring to judge humanity, and yet in return forced to bitterly admit that with history of the Crusades, Nazis, Vietnam, Hiroshima, Khmer Rouge, etc., that maybe they do have a good reason not trust people to not do the right thing. I guess if ABYSS was produced today, Cameron would have also included Rwanda, Sudan, Bosnia, Iraq, Kosovo, the Taliban, etc.
Will we ever grow up?
So this aquatic apocalypse is set, but the tide stops before crashing. Why don't the creatures go through with it? Only because they intercepted those touching messages between Harris and his wife-ex-wife-wife-again.
Now I gotta admit, all that does sound pretty corny. I mean a simply love story saves the world? Give me a fucking break. Yet somehow those two with Cameron somehow makes it all actually legitimately work on a serious level without being silly, which is in great contrast to a similar conclusion in the recent EARTH remake which absolutely failed and felt hollowed. Not so with THE ABYSS. I know Cameron is more known for being an action filmmaker (his TITANIC Oscars aside), but at times he can be as sentimental as Spielberg, if mixed with a love for guns like John Milius.
THE ABYSS is an underrated romance, disguised as a very solid sci-fi/action thriller, and damn I forgot to explain how it's obviously influenced by Kubrick's 2001. Remember when sci-fi movies not only sent us to fantastical and imaginative worlds or environments which would inspire awe from us, and also introduced creatively-designed cool future gadgets? I mean STAR TREK, every "futuristic" invention has already come true in one way or another, and save maybe for I guess CHILDREN OF MEN or MINORITY REPORT, Hollywood hasn't exactly given us new exciting ideas about what to expect down the road.
THE ABYSS gives us liquid-oxygen.