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The Dead Zone
David Cronenberg’s films deal primarily with perspective, not with narrative. Certainly complex storylines exist in his films that shuffle the proceedings and characters along, and this is more than we can say for other genre masters like David Lynch, who uses the barest of plots to stabilize his own hallucinogenic prophecies, or Lucio Fulci, who doesn’t even bother with the confines of a storyline to convey his nightmarish visions. Cronenberg’s films are deeply plotted, with twists and turns and moral dilemmas that keep his characters in constant inner conflict. But these plots are merely efficient resources to help his bizarre moods and haunted characters move forward. For example: In The Dead Zone, Christopher Walken plays an English teacher-turned-psychic (the result of a near-fatal car accident) who is hired to tutor a young boy (Simon Craig), and we are supposed to understand that the two are going to develop a very deep bond. Yet scenes that would be crucial in another other film—the interaction between teacher and pupil—are shuffled along in only one scene. In another moment, we see the two walking in a park, and we assume that we are going to have a scene of discourse that reveals their blossoming friendship. But Cronenberg instead cuts to the boy’s father (Anthony Zerbe), who smiles warmly to himself as the two chat off-screen. Why focus on a character superfluous to the scene, instead of maintaining the presumably more important dialogues between Walken and the child? The Dead Zone is essentially becomes a series of such gaps. For all its twists, every moment plays as a series of underplayed plot developments. Walken discovers that he is a psychic, but Cronenberg leaps into others’ reactions instead of his own. Before he fully develops Walken’s powers, media and opportunists are already trying to exploit it, and we can only speculate on how they got wind of his powers so quickly. A doctor (Herbert Lom) reveals that Walken’s body will grow weaker as his psychic ability grows stronger, but this is never discussed again, and Walken seems no better or worse in his mobility as the film progresses. In the film’s middle section, Walken is called upon by a local sheriff (Tom Skerritt) to track down a serial killer, and once the killer’s identity is revealed, his motivations and personality are never explored. In the film’s most moving scene, Walken confronts his old fiancé, now married (Walken has recently awoken from a five-year coma), and she allows him one night of tenderness to say goodbye to what might have been. But we never get this love scene—it is cut, and it is only referenced later through their quick glances to one another in the presence of her husband. The list of underwritten developments goes on, and it includes developments that are decisive to the way the film eventually plays out. Midway through the picture, yet another subplot develops regarding a corrupt politician (effectively overacted by Martin Sheen), but he speaks in clichés and stereotypes that render him implausible, except as a standard, two-faced villain, and Cronenberg never bothers to make his personality more complex. This politician sets the stages for the final act of the film, in which Walken considers his petrifying visions and makes a startling decision. But right when we think a plotline is finally about to develop, the final sequence, in which the fruits of Walken’s choice are revealed, fades out quickly after the punch-line, before the movie gives us time to process all of its repercussions. This minimalist approach puts a lot of faith in the viewer’s ability to assume. Other films would have lingered on any of these moments for a number of valid, storytelling essentials: to flesh out the characters, to suspend disbelief, to generate plausible suspense, etc. Cronenberg lets us draw our own conclusions, and it seems like he is shooting a smaller, minimalist movie within another director’s grander, more epic horror film. He notably shoots this smaller movie with such powerful visual skill that we know that its tone is deliberate, because he would have otherwise instinctually known better. So we have a question that demands discussion: Why does he make this bizarre storytelling choice when he is working with a film that has a new and distinguished plot development around every corner? The answer is that Cronenberg would rather us fill in the gaps of a plot that is not hard to follow. He trusts us to follow along without unnecessary elaboration. His canvas is the detail surrounding the plot—the psychic images that Walken sees as his curse, and the complications that twitch on Walken’s face as he faces the repercussions of his gift. That’s the director’s strategy: All of his films basically reveal their macabre storylines in their titles—The Fly, Scanners, The Dead Zone, A History of Violence—and Cronenberg would rather not dominate a film with a storyline that we can assume when there are deeper psychological issues to consider in the characters trapped in the proceedings. In the case of the student/tutor relationship, brief images reveal that Walken and the boy will become friends, and we can guess that they are talking about what any two friends might talk about. But why hear these conversations when they are presumed? More important to Cronenberg are the choices that the characters will make later as a result of this friendship, and the complexity that arises when Walken has another twisted vision of future events. Cronenberg skips the details and cuts straight to the heart of the matter. So what is the heart of the matter, and what do all of these underdeveloped turns lead to? The stripped-down layers eventually point inclusively to Cronenberg’s absorption with the darkest corners of the human soul, in which an isolated man broods in the dark as he tries to put the pieces of his scarred self together in a way that justifies his existence beyond the general public’s desire to use his gift. Walken and Cronenberg (along with Stephen King, who wrote the book on which the film is based, and Jeffrey Boam, who wrote the screenplay) create a fascinating character out of a teacher-psychic who is more than enough to maintain the film’s interest, even as the world he exists in seems underutilized. Cronenberg’s tactic is to undermine everything to get down to his ultimate point, Walken’s weathered soul, and he simultaneously enhances the proceedings by allowing us to fill in the story’s gaps through the filter of Walken’s sad perspective. And we frankly rise to the challenge. Walken’s character is at once fascinating and tragic, and he keeps us engaged and always interpreting the film’s events so that they respond to his despair. It is ultimately him who fills in the missing gaps as he tries to make sense of his unfair life, and we watch him do so, often without him ever speaking more than a sentence at a time. His monosyllabic responses do all the work; his quiet, determined whisper to a desperate sheriff, in which he agrees to help in a criminal investigation, resonates far more than a plot development that we already know he will confront, whether or not Cronenberg actually shows it. The actor’s status as a cult-figure (thanks primarily to wacky films like this) often makes us forget just how good he is at conveying fragility in the demented. When he smiles in The Dead Zone—when he sincerely smiles—we instantly want him to be okay, and when he contorts in misery as another violent vision hits him, he works in a frenzy of sincerity that few actors could conceivably pull off without descending into camp. Walken is ultimately the only element that matters here, and his sad-eyed character at once makes us believe that he can see the future. Cronenberg has made a career out of setting up stupendous scenarios and then stripping them down so that we respond not their plots, but rather to the characters inhabiting them. The Fly was about a scientist slowly transforming into a gigantic bug, but it underplayed that storyline to focus on the reactions of the scientist’s true love to his terrifying metamorphosis. Videodrome dealt with a reality-altering television station, and it limits its power to its owner’s sadomasochistic obsessions. A History of Violence is a violent mob epic confined to a Capra-esque family’s living room. The Dead Zone turns a supernatural/political thriller with over a dozen crucial characters into a meditation on one man’s attempt to find significance in a power he does not want. All are horror films, and they collectively serve as insightful critiques of a genre that generally focuses on plot-driven thrills over the human soul. How many horror films, after all, have characters reduced to explaining exactly what is happening, who the villain is, and why he is stalking them (see any of the Nightmare on Elm Street films)? Some viewers are turned off by Cronenberg’s insistence that we should draw our own conclusions about plotlines without having them spelled out. For me, his approach is a much-appreciated compliment. Cast: Paramount Pictures presents a Dino De Laurentiis production. Directed by David Cronenberg. Written by Jeffrey Boam, from the novel by Stephen King. Rated R, for language, violence/gore, and nudity. Running time: 103 minutes. Original United States theatrical release date: October 21, 1983. Questions? Comments? E-mail me: danel_the_tinman@hotmail.com |
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