Brilliant Save For a Few Flaws

Rating: 9/10 (28 June 2005)

I'll start with a disclaimer: unlike certain American film 'crickets', I won't claim my interpretations of the film, nor of the intended meanings behind certain plot tactics within the film, are exactly what Spielberg and his crew were aiming for. I am just presenting my own interpretations.
War of the Worlds is a truly frightening and exciting experience. Steven Spielberg and crew should be commended for delivering not only an exceptionally entertaining sci-fi horror vision, but for avoiding so many clichés in a genre plagued by the tacky requirements set by Independence Day. The film is not a direct adaptation of H.G.Wells' novel, however due to being set in the current day, this is excusable. Thankfully, while set in America as with almost every blockbuster disaster film, it doesn't use this to demonstrate the almighty power of the United States, or to promote its supposed status as guardian of peace, democracy and freedom. Nor is this a film with a series of money-shots of world landmarks being blown up, or destroyed. That was once exciting in a purely mindless way (Independence Day), but now smacks of little more than a populist marketing tactic (The Day After Tomorrow) and thankfully War of the Worlds' rises above.
The film's plot and mis-en-scene are remarkably aberrant with the standards in the genre and for that, Spielberg deserves commendation. By eschewing wide-screen, setting the film in dark and grubby, non-descript locations, and avoiding an excess of simplistic proscenium-arch long-shots of 'spectacular effects' action unfolding before a static camera, the film achieves a frighteningly realistic portrayal of terror. Much of the action occurs off screen, and we are left with only the looks on the characters faces, and some intense sound effects and lighting effects to give us a feel for what the characters are experiencing. This is not to say the film is free of spectacular shots of its alien invaders and the destruction they cause, because when it does show this, it is another of the film's strengths. The special effects are quite simply flawless, save for the cheesy microcosm-to-macrocosm shots that bookend the film.
Ideologically, this is not a typical American film at all. Too many US reviews, such as Todd McCarthy in Variety and Jan Stuart for Newsday (there are really too many more to name) want to claim this film for their own political project of demarcating the line between the post 9/11 'West' and the supposedly unified terrorist forces that seek to destroy it, but these people are ignorant fools. Kenneth Turan for the Los Angeles Times argues that every incarnation of this story has been met with a rapturous response because of their timeliness, each arriving at a moment when the 'Western World' is particularly fearful or paranoid due to specific international relations at the time. Turan and his ilk seem to assume the Bush administration has everyone duped into laying awake at night fearing terrorism, and that War of the Worlds apparently taps into this fear. One critic, demonstrating the popular sentiment of US reviewers, actually lies and claims the film uses the word "aliens" and "terrorists" almost interchangeably. I don't remember War of the Worlds even using the word "aliens", and when it uses the word "terrorists", it is not as a synonym for "aliens". When Dakota Fanning's character screams out "is it terrorists?" to her Dad and he says "no it is not terrorists!" this is the film's only diegetic verge towards political exposition. In this crucial moment, the film explicitly acknowledges and then dismisses the 'terrorism' subtext US reviewers mistakenly long to detect. Thus War of the Worlds abjectly resists an interpretation along the lines of the 50s Cold War paranoia invasion films which were ideological allegories against the political boogeyman of the day (once communism, now terrorism). Besides, any interpretation of this film as terrorist allegory seems to rely on a mistaken understanding of what terrorism is: War of the Worlds portrays a genocidal invasion not a terrorist attack. If some of the imagery is reminiscent of people's vivid memories of 9/11, this might just speak more of the strength of memory and the sameness of violence, than of Spielberg's attempt to wield a simple political allegory.
The film does not make this a political war of good versus evil, situating the 'American Way' directly in opposition to those who are seeking to destroy America. It does not imply, as so many other politically troubling disaster films, that the 'goodness' of the world is symbolised in the bastions of the supposed 'West'. When Spielberg and Janusz Kaminski's camera lingers on the surreal image of a church building being torn open, baring its teeth like the mouth of a monster, on the cusp of the impending terror, it is not visually symbolising a dialectic between the 'good' and 'Christian' values that are represented by American soil and the Church, and the 'bad' and 'unchristian' values represented by the aliens. What this shot represents so breathlessly, is a complete paradigm shift; the cultural intelligibility of our world, in whatever cultural niche we may exist in (the Christian church interchangeable for any other culture), being flipped on its head by something truly alien and incomprehensible. The actions of the invaders that follow can not be understood according to the logic of human war, because the culture, history, language and society of these mysterious invaders is truly alien.
War of the Worlds presents a swift, naturalistic, frightening account of a sudden and unexpected disruption of life followed by an even more unexpected return to normal life, free of the worst genre clichés. Save for its tasteless and hackneyed bookend shots, the imperialistic invocation of theism in the final voice-over, and two disastrous instances of product placement (iPod and Tivo), the film is a fresh, original and exciting entry into a genre that sets itself apart through its mis-en-scene and plot.