I haven’t read any of Stephen King’s books, but the movie IT gives you what is probably a good idea of what it is like to experience a dense work of fiction written by King. The film itself feels like you’re sitting down to enjoy a book, ready to enjoy a full experience and then almost expertly, the storyteller layers the thematic elements into the story, compounding and compounding until you the reader are experiencing a full meal of intertext, theme and baseline emotion. Throw the conceit of visual language in there and who have a mixture that is so potent that it makes you sit back and wonder how IT ever made its way out of the crapfest that is the Stephen King adaptation club. IT, much like The Shining, seems to capture the allure of King. The slow burn and the rich meal of reading a dense work of art. IT, as anyone who is reading this, must know, is about a group of kids fighting a demon that takes the form of Pennywise: The Dancing Clown (Bill Skarsgard). Pennywise consumes both children and adults every 27 years in the kid’s town of Derry and is now going after the children in this group. The special thing about IT is that the material is so densely layered with subtext and theme that it can’t help but be elevated to a level of greatness that most horror films don’t dare to touch. This is the second great movie of the year that has been marketed as a straight genre piece but is actually about the way that abuse and trauma can affect characters and make them ultimately flawed and therefore interesting beings. The first was Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, and while that film had to hide behind the glorious facade of a colorful and richly formed summer blockbuster, IT doesn’t have to hide behind anything. IT, being an “R” rated horror film, can go all in on all of the horrifying and disturbing thematic material that it wants to and it often pushes the limits of what you can do with a cast of early teenagers. The thematic material of IT seems to be focussed on is the bastardization of childhood, with Pennywise being the prime example of this, literally taking a childish thing (a clown) and turning it into a monster that is prepared to consume children, but it is also about contrasting the quite literal manifestation of bastardization of childhood with more subtle (if not presented so) monsters that exist around the characters, namely, the adults. Derry is a town consumed by its adults, who live in both fear and disenfranchisement, taking out all of this on their children. The villain of the piece is Pennywise, but it is also the adults that let the children experience the trauma that Pennywise represents. The layering and intercutting of these two things make for what is easily one of the best structured horror films of all time, as the two hour and fifteen minute runtime allows the story, which is really only Chapter One, to play out in its entirety, rather than sacrificing any of the thematic density of the material to provide a shorter runtime. IT isn’t that scary (though it does get pretty disturbing at times), but it is emotionally draining and intense, like a big block of great prose leading you expertly through character interaction and horrifying revelations. None of this would work if it weren’t for the tone that is achieved here. If the miniseries also based on the material maybe didn’t have the budget to keep irony out of the film, this iteration easily does just that and with a lack of irony comes a wide breadth of emotion. Nothing about any of this is supposed to be funny and this is one instance where going all, “grim and gritty” is really perfect. Taking that aesthetic and contrasting it with the 80’s pastiche of something like Super 8 and what you get is a film that feels informed by reality, even as the evil, shape-shifting clown consumes his victims. Any jabs at being funny come mainly from the fifteen-year-old cast throwing around f-bombs as liberally as an early Scorsese protagonist and that even seems to slowly sicken as it becomes abundantly clear that the personalities of these children are shaped by the environment around them. All of that is so well done that you almost forget how great the cast and crew really is for the film. The ensemble of children reaches a new high watermark for child actors and while they are all playing stereotypes, they all do it well. Their writing really does help, with their dirty mouths becoming indicative of their trauma and even some of their agency defined by themselves. Often children in films aren’t defined by their own agency, especially in love, but IT has enough respect for the characters to have a love triangle play out in a confused way, where one kid should theoretically get the girl, but the girl with her own agency chooses another. It is this type of wonderful agency that makes these characters incredible. The adults are more stereotyped, acting more as forces of nature than actual characters, but they for the most part work as characters too. The real MVP must go to Bill Skarsgard as Pennywise though. Skarsgard is striking this really interesting high pitched, almost voice cracking affectation with Pennywise like he is always slyly condescending everyone and it is disturbing from the moment he appears on screen. The physicality of the role (though certainly complimented by CGI) is also captured wonderfully. As far as crew goes, cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung sticks out immediately. As the cinematographer of Oldboy and The Handmaiden, he proved himself as a leader in creating frames that are muted but striking, providing places in composition where color can pop from the screen in a way that adds to the film rather than taking away from it. The special thing about all of this is that when you take all of the hefty theme, great performances, and the striking technical work, the film starts to coopt its own flaws. By the end of everything, the work is so emotionally intense, gory and thematically satisfying that none of that really matters. IT feels perfect, IT feels terrifying, IT makes you feel. There hasn’t been such an emotionally personal piece of horror fiction on screen for a long time, with even the James Wan group not being able to touch the emotional intensity here. This movie is the making of a film that will live on forever and deserves all of the attention that it has received. I give IT a 9.5 out of 10.
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December 2017
CategoriesAuthorHello welcome to FilmAnalyst. My name is Stephen Tronicek, and I really like movies. This is a way to get my opinions out to people. Thank you for visiting. |