Armageddon/Last Night essay (complete)
POSTED BY: reginaroadie
UPDATED: Saturday, April 1, 2006 22:35
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Hey all
In January, I posted the essay that I wrote last semester for my Cronenberg class in which I analyzed THE SHINING and THE DEAD ZONE. And later on, I had a log entry about the beginning of the research for my essay for my Canadian cinema class in which I compare and contrast ARMAGEDDON and LAST NIGHT.
Well, I've finally done it. I am pretty much finished the whole thing. I gotta show it to my prof so that she can proofread it, see if I have proper comma use and stuff like that. But it's practically done.
So for your enjoyment, here's my essay on ARMAGEDDON and LAST NIGHT. Hope you enjoy.
The question as to what makes a Canadian film distinctly Canadian has always been an issue for Canadian filmmakers, particularly in regards to our American counterparts. Despite the progress we have made in getting our films seen by our own people, we still have to compete with the Americans in getting our films noticed. This competition with the U.S., as well as our limited resources, has created what Linda Hutcheon has described as a distinctly Canadian type of post-modernism. In her introduction to her book “The Canadian Post-Modern”, she states the following. “For Fogel the Canadian lack of formal experimentation and ideological engagement that he associates with meta fiction (pp.15, 18) is the result of the fact that Canadian writers are unencumbered by the ‘ideological baggage’ of American novelists.” (2) This trait is probably one of the most prevalent characteristics of Canadian cinema, specifically in the last thirty years. In his essay, “Bordwell Considered – Cognitivism, Colonialism and Canadian Cinematic Culture”, Jose Arroyo comments on how this post-modern tendency comes almost as an instinct in Canadian cinema. “Like postmodernism, Canada is fragmented, pluralistic, heterogeneous, and diverse. Some of the effects of living in Canada are also similar to those of postmodernism, namely, as the perennial national questioning of ‘where is here?’ and ‘who are we?’ indicate – loss of meaning and de-centered subjectivity.” (78)
The issue of our filmic identity comes up occasionally when both Canada and the U.S. release movies within a short time that share plot similarities with each other. This rare occurrence of border crossing has allowed film analysts the opportunity to examine the cultural differences and identity between Canada and the U.S. through their films. The latest case of this happening was in 1998, when two films, one from each country, were released in the same year that dealt with the ever popular topic of the end of the world.
From the U.S., two films were actually released within two months of each other. The one that will be focused on here is Armageddon (U.S.A. 1998). This film is Hollywood excess at its biggest. Produced by superstar producer Jerry Bruckheimer, directed by bad boy commercial filmmaker Michael Bay, and populated by an all star, high testosterone cast lead by Bruce Willis, this film is the textbook definition of a $100 + million dollar blockbuster that Jeanine Basinger hilariously misinterpreted in her obviously biased essay on the film as “a work of art by a cutting-edge artist who is a master of movement, light, color and shape – and also of chaos, razzle-dazzle, and explosion.” (1) From Canada, we have Don McKellar’s directorial debut film, Last Night (Canada, 1998). The entire budget of this film probably would have been the catering bill for Armageddon. While the former film is excess taken to new levels, the latter is probably the calmest film in the “disaster” genre. Populated by its own cast of famous Canadians, it follows various people in Toronto during the last six hours of existence and is introspective, dead-pan and has a prevalent sense of cool irony, which has lead Peter Howell of the Toronto Star to describe the film as “the Canadian movie to end all Canadian movies.”
On first glance, one would think that these two films, aside from being about the end of the world, have absolutely nothing in common. But upon closer analysis, o
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