Full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing. So is Watchmen: a historic landmark in narcissist film-making

Rating: Null/10 (1 March 2009)

Watchmen opening sequence is something truly memorable: a series of dioramas animated by actors in flesh and bone which, to the sound of The Times They Are A-Changin', by Bob Dylan, narrates the ascension and decline of a group of individuals that, in the 40's, for fun and also due to conviction, invented personas and costumes to team up to fight crime - and then, in the passing of years and transformations that occurred in the United States, began to be identified as a fascist pseudo police, and finally, ended becoming illegal by the government of Richard Nixon (which, in this parallel universe, never resigned and has been elected to presidency for the fifth time). The images are both at the same time beautiful and melancholic, which, underlined by Dylan's song, evoke one of the most vertiginous aspects of American life: the euphoria of the peak and the humiliation of the fall into disgrace. These, however, are the few emotions that Watchmen is capable of provoking in its almost 3 hours lenght. And, every time some sense begins to emerge, the coincidence repeats itself: some iconic and meaning loaded music is monitoring the scene. Which, in other words, means to say that Watchmen doesn't have much inside of it. Directed by Zack Snyder, of 300, he is the cinematographic equivalent of a narcissist: a creature so involved with itself and so full of its own beauty that it doesn't occur to it that it isn't enough only to exist, but that it is also necessary to try to reach the people that are convened to appreciate it.
Released in the 80's by Dave Gibons and Alan Moore (which, as in V for Vendetta, demanded by a matter of principle for his name to not appear at the movie credits), the Watchmen graphic novel is considered the gold standard of the genre, the comics that all other comics aspire to be. As always in Moore's work, it carries a political subtext that is at the same time naive and fierce in its disposal to report the infinite variants of the intoxication that power provides. But Watchmen has something more: a delicate and even compassionate understanding of the uneasiness of the soul that having or losing this power leads to. His characters illustrate it in several ways - from the sexual impotence of the Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson), and the obsession for vengeance of Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) to the increasing distance of the superpowerfull Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) puts between himself and humanity and to the venality of the Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), whose assassination starts the plot.
Zack Snyder follows really close both the situations described by Moore and the sadness of the protagonists. What he can't do is express it: in his own effort in translating the images that could only happen in cinema and in no other visual means. Snyder surrounds the emotion center of the story with so much noise and fury that he overshadows it completely. So, strong actors like Patrick Wilson and Billy Crudup become small and out of scale in this gigantic tableau; and, when violence breaks out, it doesn't transmit the ferocity - it looks like it is only there for free and it is almost pornographic, as some sort of knock on the head that serves to draw the audience out of the induced apathy by the excess of plot and lack of what to communicate with it. Therefore, Watchmen seems like destined to become a landmark: a landmark in both its gorgeous visual concept and language, and as of the sterility in which a certain strand of American cinema is going through. As Dr. Manhattan, this is a movie immensely powerful and impressive - and can barely remember what is like to be a human being.