Militarism, Misanthropy and the Body Politic: - Brunel University

will involve cranes and dollies as the men engage in repartee. We head for “the big
tamale.”
At the end of the previous corridor, the motion comes to a dead stop at a
EnterText 6.2
corrugated aluminium door—to what, an underground parking lot? Once the door opens,
we descend a ramp, a heavenly choir starts to sing, and we see a space as wondrous as the
lost city of Atlantis. The space seems enormous, with three tiers of catwalks and flying
buttresses, yet the reverse shot unveils even more grandeur—we see strange, ambiguous
lettering: R27 and 227, and a blue-black ship that nestles in the centre, with steam
pouring out from its sides. The steam has no purpose, it just looks good. The camera
cranes down below, under and across the ship, to reach the President and his entourage.
As Okun tries to follow the President while Whitmore clambers onto the ship, the camera
dollies and cranes—it’s an elaborate pas de deux. The President’s complaint that millions
are dead feels pro forma. We’re off to the “freak show.”
Once we reach the space, it seems as if we are the freaks crouching at the back of
the lair. The room looks like a bank vault from The Fountainhead (King Vidor, 1949), or
a teenage boy’s fantasy of a secret lab. The flooring is layered like the sunken living
rooms of the fifties gone art deco. To the left stands a black wall, and to our right are
window panes jutting out 15 degrees from their base that abut onto other laboratories; it
is impossible to judge whether the space is hexagonal, square, triangular or circular.
Okun goes up to the improbably lit, inky, luminous black wall. He flicks his wrist, the
wall rises, and we see the freak show undressed. Three vats contain one alien apiece, and
the requisite monster-alien, strange creature music begins, “click, click, click, click,
click.” 60 (Insects open and shut their tiny little beaks.) Now, here’s the truly fancy camera
Carol Vernallis: Independence Day 97