THE DEAD ZONE
The ultimate guyjerker
A "guyjerker" is what I call the kind of movie that's essentially a tearjerker aimed at men instead of the traditional tearjerker audience (that is, Mom). Stephen King has in recent years come to represent this kind of thing in a big way, certainly in terms of cinema - The Shawshank Redemption was the best guyjerker SINCE The Dead Zone, and if the film of The Green Mile turns out to be half as good as the book, then y'all better being a big box o' hankies to the theater this fall.
I originally saw this movie on a "free pay-TV weekend" when I was about thirteen, with my brother and my cousin Rob. My brother was much like me at the time, pretty new to adult-oriented thrillers, but Rob was fairly hardened to these things. Anyway, all three of us damn near screamed when a certain presumed-dead character started to twitch, and yes, all three of us had tears in our eyes by the end.
Christopher Walken, in what is probably his most famous (and most parodied) performance, plays Johnny Smith, a New England schoolteacher who has everything it takes to make a humble man happy - a woman who loves him, a secure and fulfilling job, and a well-respected place in the community. That all comes to a shitty, sudden stop when he has a close encounter with a milk truck at about fifty miles an hour, sending him into a five-year coma.
When he wakes up, things just aren't the same. He needs extensive physical therapy just to walk, and even when he manages that, he needs a cane. Needless to say, he hasn't got that job anymore. And as for the woman, well, she wasn't going to wait around forever; she's a happily married mother now. Lonely, depressed, and stripped of just about everything that symbolizes manhood, Johnny finds a rather unusual side effect of that five-year coma - an extensive, elusive psychic ability that lets him see into people's pasts, presents, and eventually their futures too.
The world isn't sure what to do with him; some people beg for his help, some think he's a nut. And some aren't counting on what he's capable of when he sees the truth about where the people around him are heading.
The Dead Zone is of course based on Stephen King's book of the same title - a very good book, but not one that particularly stands out among his work. It's also David Cronenberg's only take at a King film; I'd always pictured him as the perfect guy to helm Christine, but what do I know? Anyway, I've said before that artists who are generally considered "out there" put out their best work when they just cut the weird shit and slap down a straightforward work. (meanwhile, plain-Jane artists do their best work when they experiment and try to broaden their scope) This is definitely Cronenberg's least weird movie (unless you count the little-seen race-car flick Fast Company, which was pretty weak anyway); it's also his best.
As many of you know, I normally don't go in for this "psychic link" bullshit - it's been done to death and never particularly well. But this is a very different kind of movie from those; I mean, see enough of them and you'll see how. Even though Johnny is used at one point in the movie to help track down a serial killer, his ability isn't there just for that purpose, like it is in all these movies. This is an expansive gift, or curse, and we're shown how this affects Johnny's private life, employment prospects, and public image.
Walken is absolutely riveting, as is Brooke Adams as the woman who understandably couldn't hack sitting by a coma patient for five years. (extra points for not showing her new husband as some sort of "the other man" villain-figure, which is something a lot of lesser movies would have stooped to) Martin "You cowardly bastard!" Sheen hams it up outrageously, oozing way more than his usual charismatic sleaze (somehow) as a guy running for Senator with a hidden, maniacal agenda. And Herbert Lom is great, appropriately fatherly and sagelike as Johnny's doctor.
Cronenberg captures a similar mood to the proceedings as Sam Raimi would in last year's best movie, A Simple Plan. It's a bleak and snow-laden feel of small-town isolation, where everybody knows everybody else and that just makes the isolation worse; his films usually look pretty bleak, but they usually look pretty bland, too. Such is not the case here; I don't know who's responsible, but this looks considerably more slick, sharp and flashy than your standard Cronenberg film. (if there is such thing as a "standard" Cronenberg film)
This was his first film after Videodrome, which won him a Gemini (Canadian film industry award) for direction, and marked the beginning of a thirteen-year period of basing all of his films on other people's works. (And even Existenz, I hear, was based on an early short film of his, called Crimes Of The Future) It's also the first film in a five-or-so-year period which gave us his most "human" films, if you will. The ones that focus the most on human relationships, dysfunctional as they may be (well, there's The Brood too, but that predated Videodrome). Cronenberg has often been called a "cold" and "unemotional" filmmaker; while I can see the point with his early and recent works, I can scarcely imagine how someone could come away from a movie like this, The Fly, or Dead Ringers unmoved.
Michael Kamen's score is haunting and sparse, fitting the scenes quite well. I've never seen it available on CD, which is a shame.
The Dead Zone is not specifically a tragedy - our hero has no real tragic flaw, and there's no sense of Johnny being somebody who fell from a state of metaphorical grace. He's just a guy who got shit all over by fate and did what he could with what he was given. Nor is it disgusting, in the sense that someone said that "to see a good man destroyed and treated cruelly by circumstance and others is merely disgusting, not tragic" (I'm paraphrasing, of course - if I had the exact quote I'd tell you who said the damn thing). By the time Johnny's final decision comes to its logical conclusion, we can see that he's ultimately lived a good life and been a good man, and he faces his fate with fire in his eyes and nothing but love and respect for the people close to him.
To be a "guyjerker", it isn't enough to just have men in the leading roles. (otherwise, Armageddon would qualify, and c'mon, that didn't bring a tear to your eye) (did it?) (weirdo.) This is a movie that specifically plays with the places that men push themselves into, and find themselves pushed into from without. It's about the importance of manhood to men; this movie wouldn't work nearly as well with a woman in the lead, because women don't value womanhood in quite the same way. Johnny loses almost everything that makes him a man (his job, his physical and financial independence, his woman...everything but his sexual function, really). This movie takes us on a tour of how he reclaims that manhood, and the pains and triumphs that must come to pass before he gets there.
Many viewers find The Dead Zone sad, or depressing; while every time I watch it, I come away with a tear in my eye, I find it to be anything but depressing. The story of Johnny Smith is one of a man who does everything he can with what he has, without regard for reward or even recognition. Even if you grant that what brought him to the last scene in the (courthouse) was just plain wrong, you've got to admire the courage and self-sacrifice of this guy who, by then, is really starting to get his life back together and no longer has nothing to lose. The only times this movie depresses me is when it makes me realize some of the gifts in my life which I've made the mistake of pissing away.
I came thiiiiiis close to including The Dead Zone on my The Best Ever list on my webpage, but for some reason, decided against it. Writing this review has given me second thoughts.