The Drift
The Keep (1983)
directed by Michael Mann
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
watched instantly on Netflix
On paper, The Keep looks like Michael Mann's masterpiece. In 1941, a Nazi regiment is sent to guard a mountain pass in the Carpathian Alps; they are warned by Romanian villagers of the evil in the keep where the soldiers set up camp, but these are Nazis, and they kill three villagers in a firing squad to demonstrate what Germans think of local folklore. When I was ten, Gabriel Byrne played a pirate in Shipwrecked, and ever since, I've had a soft spot for the guy. Scott Glenn is a poor man's Lance Henriksen, but Lance is one of my favorite actors, and who wouldn't cast Ian McKellen as a crippled professor tempted by the promise of restored youth if she could?
The Keep begins with those three names, rolling thunder, and a dark night. The soundtrack - by Near Dark's Tangerine Dream - builds slowly, as tanks roll in on an incredible rural village set hemmed in by high cliffs. Fear seeps out from beneath door frames like fog. It's just like The Fog, in fact, making cinematographer Alex Thomson the poor man's Dean Cundey. Thomson is the hero, really, forced to navigate an increasingly erratic, confused plot that makes hash of the lovely simplicity of that initial narrative. Eventually, one Nazi officer berates another about madness and power, the moral point emerges that two wrongs don't make a right, and the only female in the film is reduced to a sexual interlude for holy warrior Glenn, who wants to feel human for the length of one nude scene.
But good lord, if you could have heard the superlatives I muttered to myself throughout that first half: its sense of scale, its atmosphere, that tracking shot back from the mouth of a cave to its deepest depths. Glenn's boat ride from the coast of Greece into the Black Sea is the stuff I see in dreams, and Thomson gives it mystery and color. With a great DP and the right premise, you can carry me pretty far down the river, but not, as it turns out, all the way.
Still, watch those first 45 minutes before Netflix takes them back. If Richard Donner is famous for 50% Superman, Mann can be king for The Keep.
directed by Michael Mann
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
watched instantly on Netflix
On paper, The Keep looks like Michael Mann's masterpiece. In 1941, a Nazi regiment is sent to guard a mountain pass in the Carpathian Alps; they are warned by Romanian villagers of the evil in the keep where the soldiers set up camp, but these are Nazis, and they kill three villagers in a firing squad to demonstrate what Germans think of local folklore. When I was ten, Gabriel Byrne played a pirate in Shipwrecked, and ever since, I've had a soft spot for the guy. Scott Glenn is a poor man's Lance Henriksen, but Lance is one of my favorite actors, and who wouldn't cast Ian McKellen as a crippled professor tempted by the promise of restored youth if she could?
The Keep begins with those three names, rolling thunder, and a dark night. The soundtrack - by Near Dark's Tangerine Dream - builds slowly, as tanks roll in on an incredible rural village set hemmed in by high cliffs. Fear seeps out from beneath door frames like fog. It's just like The Fog, in fact, making cinematographer Alex Thomson the poor man's Dean Cundey. Thomson is the hero, really, forced to navigate an increasingly erratic, confused plot that makes hash of the lovely simplicity of that initial narrative. Eventually, one Nazi officer berates another about madness and power, the moral point emerges that two wrongs don't make a right, and the only female in the film is reduced to a sexual interlude for holy warrior Glenn, who wants to feel human for the length of one nude scene.
But good lord, if you could have heard the superlatives I muttered to myself throughout that first half: its sense of scale, its atmosphere, that tracking shot back from the mouth of a cave to its deepest depths. Glenn's boat ride from the coast of Greece into the Black Sea is the stuff I see in dreams, and Thomson gives it mystery and color. With a great DP and the right premise, you can carry me pretty far down the river, but not, as it turns out, all the way.
Still, watch those first 45 minutes before Netflix takes them back. If Richard Donner is famous for 50% Superman, Mann can be king for The Keep.
posted by NPK at 6:08 AM
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