FILM REVIEW: It’s the end of the world as we know it

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Roland Emmerich is in love with the end of the world, and, boy, does he make a spectacle of it. Without a doubt 2012 is the biggest movie to open in Taiwan this year, and not since the first Lord of the Rings opening in 2001 has the pre-release industry screening attracted such hordes, filling the Ambassador Theater in Ximending to bursting. It seems that Armageddon, the end of days, judgment day ... whatever you choose to call it, has enormous appeal, and on the big screen Emmerich makes it a diverting, if not exactly riveting, experience.

Emmerich is something of a virtuoso in the depiction of the end of the world as we know it, with a track record that includes Independence Day (1996), Godzilla (1998), and The Day After Tomorrow (2004). He is the master of the big set piece of elaborate CGI, improbable plot development and hectoring sentimentality. In 2012 he achieves new levels of spectacle and bombast.

The date 2012 is taken from the Mayan calendar, where it is regarded as the end of a solar cycle. In the film, this is marked by intense solar flares leading to huge shifts in the geology of the Earth. As continents sink, oceans rise and tectonic plates float about like canoes on a sea of magma, human civilization faces annihilation. The governments of the world prepare to save what they can, from exotic animals to art treasures, and individuals selected for their genes or their wealth. A fleet of modern arks will emulate the biblical Noah, preserving human civilization from the deluge.

This is an excuse for some highly elaborate sequences in which a small band, Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), an unsuccessful novelist, his ex-wife Kate (Amanda Peet), their two children and Kate’s new partner Gordon (Thomas McCarthy) discover their humanity as they make a desperate escape from California, as it sinks into the sea, and find their way to China and a place on the ark. The improbability of this human story is staggering, but Cusack, a consummate professional, throws himself into the role with great energy. This story of the little people is balanced against an even less believable plotline that features Thandie Newton as the first daughter and Danny Glover, who as the US president has some of the worst lines of dialogue in a film with a literary ineptitude that makes the Transformers’ Optimus Prime almost Shakespearean in his eloquence.

The essential goodness of the first family is put into contrast with the heartless political fixer Carl Anheuser (Oliver Platt), for whom laudable sentiments need to be put aside when the fate of the species is at risk. It is an indication of how abrasive the treatment of human love and conscience is in Emmerich’s hands that it is difficult not to have some sympathy for this otherwise thoroughly unpleasant character. At least Anheuser isn’t going to sprout the usual cliches about the dangers of losing our humanity, and he embodies, in however shallow a manner, the complexities attendant on the question of whom to save from global annihilation.

The film is not without its moments, with some mildly amusing jokes scattered about to liven things up, and a lively performance by Woody Harrelson as a conspiracy-obsessed indie radio operator, who, not very surprisingly, is the only one who has the whole Noah’s Ark escape plan sussed out. It is somewhat hard to get away from Sony’s rather aggressive product placement, with the US Navy and the White House clearly using only that company’s products.