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The Divide (2011)
A dark and twisted view at the end of days, as a nuclear attack destroys America.
Xavier Gens director of Frontier(s), new movie The Divide finds a group of people trapped in a basement after the world above them is destroyed in some sort of assumed nuclear attack. When the explosions and buildings above have fallen down, the group find themselves unofficially competing for who is going to be top dog, in this new underground world.
The Divide blew my, and my screening companions socks off, this bloody, brutal tale of what happens to people imprisoned without real knowledge of what is going on outside, cut like a knife.
It’s been a long time since we have seen a movie quite like The Divide, a movie that in fairness plays out 100 times better than anything I could say about it in a review. But it’s fair to say it runs through every possible scenario you could think of: What happens when the food runs out? who do we eat? what’s going on above? sex, love, brutality, who leads? how do we get out? am I contaminated? who’s going to be the problem? etc.
In a typically French style (though the movie is very much American), there are lots of questions that are not answered, lots of obvious things that are not quite so obvious, and a lot of friction between the characters, especially when one already romantically tied to one person pre-end-of-world, then becomes drawn to another.
There is a real feel of degradation, of decline of this micro-society; especially when the original leader is violently deposed and the movies chief aggressors decide it is time for a new regime (something very of the moment given events in Egypt, Libya, and Syria). The grimy decline of these characters, and the new rule of sexual ambivalence is one of the most disturbing aspects of the movie, which up to that point had already been a fairly unpleasant experience.
Rosanna Arquette makes a much welcome return to the big screen, as does in some ways Michael Biehn. Joined by rising talents Milo Ventimiglia (Heroes) and Lauren German (Hostel 2). I have to say all the cast perform very nicely indeed; this is the sort of movie that separates actors from pretenders, as they have to literally be stripped back to their lowest possible levels as the movie continues.
If you like movies that are as much a battle of minds, and one to some degree on a very one on one basis, then The Divide is a film for you. This is a movie that will shock, and disturb, and comes with a foreboding feeling that whatever really happens in the movie, it is not going to help any that manage to survive.
