The A posteriori le cinema series is an opportunity to celebrate the 7e art by revisiting key titles that celebrate important anniversaries.
In June 1982, two remarkable films were released: AND (AND the alien), by Steven Spielberg, and The Thing (The dreadful thing), by John Carpenter. If the first was immediately an acclaimed success, the second was on the other hand a reviled flop rehabilitated a posteriori. Forty years after their release, it is interesting to compare them, since, in many respects, they are the perfect antithesis of each other.
The genesis ofAND dates back to 1960. Shaken by the divorce of his parents, the young Steven Spielberg consoles himself with an imaginary extraterrestrial friend. Twenty years and a film project later abandoned, the filmmaker entrusted Melissa Matheson with the mandate to write a screenplay based on this starting situation. Thus are born Elliott (Henry Thomas) and ET (designed by Carlo Rambaldi with the contribution of 16 voices, including that of actress Debra Winger).
The youngest of three children, Elliott lives with his divorced mother. One evening, he discovers an alien forgotten by his family. After their initial mutual terror, a wonderful friendship is formed between them. On the outskirts, agents prowl…
To Total Film, Spielberg confided in 2004: AND was a very personal little film. My motivation to do it was pure and not profit-driven — I didn’t think it would be a hit, because it was about kids, and no movie about kids under 18 would do. recipe at the time. »
The inner child
Recipe, however, there was: AND became the highest-grossing film of all time until 1993, when another Spielberg production, Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park) dethroned him. Note that, for the release ofAND in 2002, Spielberg erased the agents’ firearms and replaced them with walkie-talkies using digital effects. Faced with the outcry, the filmmaker returned to the original images for the subsequent Blu-ray and 4K versions.
Seemingly anecdotal, this sweetening nevertheless participates in a certain logic. Spielberg, by this touch of revisionism, did he not only reinforce the deep nature of his film? In an anniversary review, Roger Ebert summed up this nature in three key words: “This film gave pleasure to my heart. It is filled with innocence, hope and good humor. »
If we refer to the context of the premiere, in 1982, the American public was rightly very thirsty “for innocence, hope and good humor” after a decade of deliberately dark and politicized films of the New Hollywood post Bonnie and Clyde, Easy Rider and others Midnight Cowboy. After chanting “ Let’s Make America Great Again! Ronald Reagan was now president. Propelled by savage capitalism, the American dream found new life: exit defeatist or cynical cinema.
In an essay published by The Ringer in 2020, Adam Nayman, without taking anything away from the brilliance ofANDsaid: “Hollywood [cherchait] to snugly infantilize his audience by awakening the proverbial “inner child” — the unspoken mission of Star Wars and deliberate toAND […] It’s tempting to see Spielberg as the quintessential Reagan-era filmmaker, and not just because his name happens to feature on several of the biggest populist hits of the early 1980s. Raiders of the Lost Ark (The Raiders of the Lost Ark), AND and Back to the Future (Back to the future, produced by Spielberg) was a subtext of innocence and a worldview comfortably divided between good and evil. »
A fatalistic gaze
Now, this division is completely subverted in The Thing, among other examples of disparities (also with the Antarctic desert instead of a very populated and sunny Californian suburb). Based on the novel Who Goes There?by John W. Campbell Jr., already adapted in 1951 by Howard Hawks and Christian Nyby, The Thing is anything but synonymous with “innocence, hope and good humour”.
John Carpenter’s film features twelve lone men at a research station who discover that a polymorphic alien creature lurks among them. Unlike the nice ET, the “thing” proves to be ruthless in its insidious way of copying the organisms it absorbs (literally, courtesy of Rob Bottin and his innovative effects). She can therefore hide “in broad daylight”, taking on the appearance of a colleague, a friend…
In his book on The ThingAnne Billson wrote:
“By 1982, the political philosophies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were seeping into the masses, creating a general sentiment far removed from the ironic, subversive, anti-authoritarian tone of John Carpenter. Even in the 1980s, Carpenter’s films displayed a cynical sensibility more in tune with the innovative, iconoclastic 1970s, with their conspiracy theories and pessimistic endings, than with the decade’s Mammon-adoring workaholism. yuppie. In 1982, after the Falklands and before Grenada, there was — for those who had managed to jump on the new prosperity bandwagon — an atmosphere of upward optimism in the air. »
Far from being won over by the prevailing triumphalism, Carpenter, who in 1988 offered the cult Reagan satire They live (Los Angeles Invasion), poses in The Thing a fatalistic look at the human race in general, and at America in particular: two lone wolves, as the filmmaker himself admits to being, Childs (Keith David) and MacReady (Kurt Russell) get by end, but is it really them, or imitations? And even if it is them, an icy death is inevitable…
Anne Billson, this time in an essay written for The Guardianin 2009, also noted a fundamental difference between the 1951 and 1982 versions: “ The Thing from Another World (The thing from another world) features a group of people coming together in typical “Hawksian” fashion to defeat the common enemy. In Carpenter’s version, the men fall apart, torn apart by distrust. »
Two visions
It was mentioned from the outset, The Thing picked up the slack late. When honoring John Carpenter in 2019, it’s this film (rather than his first triumph, Halloween) that the Cannes Film Festival screened. When, in the process, Collider asked him where his fascination for “the annihilation of the human race came from”, Carpenter, a bit like Spielberg with ANDevoked a page of his childhood:
“I grew up in a time in America when the Bible was still read in school, which ended in second grade. I was very young and impressionable and we read the Revelations. Holy shit! You are kidding! ? The end of time ! […] I was blown away. I then learned a lot more about other cultures and their end times stuff — we all think about what’s next. It fascinated me […] I don’t believe in the supernatural. The supernatural exists in movies, not in real life. The horror in real life is Bashar al-Assad dropping chemical weapons on children. »
This is, no doubt, what most distinguishes Carpenter and Spielberg. AboutANDthe latter thus explained to the New York Times in 1982:
“I tend to side with what’s not real in my choice of subjects, rather than what’s happening on the street […] I always wanted to do something about kids because I’m still a kid. I’m still waiting to get out of my Peter Pan shoes and put on my gentleman’s shoes. I think it’s easier for me to have a conversation about Pac-Man or exobiology with an 11 year old than it is to sit down with an adult to discuss Nietzsche and the Falklands. Why ? Probably, I guess, because I’m socially irresponsible, and deep down, I don’t want to look the world in the eye. In fact, I don’t mind looking the world in the eye, as long as there’s a camera between us. »
There where AND attempts to shield existential angst, The Thing instead chooses to dive into it. Two visions, two masterpieces.