{"id":1299,"date":"2012-02-06T17:09:45","date_gmt":"2012-02-06T23:09:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/?p=1299"},"modified":"2012-02-06T17:09:45","modified_gmt":"2012-02-06T23:09:45","slug":"the-divide-is-another-post-apocalyptic-nightmare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/?p=1299","title":{"rendered":"The Divide’ is Another Post-Apocalyptic Nightmare"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u201cNot exactly the Garden of Eden.\u201d Surveying the basement where he\u2019s now sealed off with seven other survivors of a nuclear blast, Mickey (Michael Biehn) is less than impressed. You\u2019re apt to sympathize: the New Yorkers assembled around him look frightened, the space is tight, and the outside\u2014beyond the door they\u2019ve just slammed shut following a series of horrific explosions\u2014is utterly unknown.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an effectively grim start to Xavier Gens\u2019 increasingly grim psychological thriller, The Divide. Until the attack, Mickey was an apartment building super, and the individuals now looking to him for guidance were tenants. He acts as if he\u2019s prepared to take on the role: \u201cYou wanna survive, you listen to me,\u201d he growls, echoing Biehn\u2019s most famous heroic part, as Reese in The Terminator. At that very moment, the lights begin to flash and thunderlike rumbles sound outside, as if to underline that he speaks truth.<\/p>\n

But Mickey is not Reese: he\u2019s not noble or gallant. He\u2019s afraid, cynical, and mean. When the child Wendi (Abbey Thickson) begins to whimper that she wants to \u201cgo home,\u201d Mickey leans close to tell her she has to stay here, \u201cBecause you\u2019re face will melt off and your hair will fall out.\u201d As her mother, Marilyn (Rosanna Arquette), gathers her up and challenges Mickey\u2019s callousness (\u201cShe\u2019s a little girl!\u201d), you notice that they\u2019re wearing smudged pink pajamas and robes, suddenly transformed into signs of a most terrible, awful, and never-ending nightmare.<\/p>\n

You also notice other tenants, now, just a few minutes into the film, looking doubtful about their supposed leader. The camera turns more than once to the significantly named Eva (Lauren German), soon revealed as the film\u2019s designated moral center. As she quietly evaluates the men around her, they are arranged as they often are in such movie scenarios: each becomes differently invested in maintaining his position among the group, each has a different sort of masculinity to parlay. Before the attacks, Eva\u2019s affianced, apparently, to the French-born Sam (Iv\u00e1n Gonz\u00e1lez), whom the other men deride incessantly for his lack of potency, his inclination to negotiate, his fearfulness\u2014in a word, his Frenchness.<\/p>\n

This particular tension is indicative of The Divide\u2018s political and cultural framework, that is, post-9\/11 America, filtered through New York. As the group argues about what to do, they\u2019re at once indebted to Mickey, who\u2019s got a stash of canned goods as well as specific ideas about what they should be doing (\u201cNumber one rule: no one opens that door until the radiation clears\u201d) and who should be in charge. They also soon learn how he\u2019s come to an immediate conclusion as to who\u2019s to blame: \u201cOf course they\u2019re Arabs,\u201d he pronounces, \u201cWe should have wiped them off the fucking map when we had the chance, now it\u2019s probably too fucking late.\u201d Probably.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not too late for other sorts of crusades or judgments. When the group invades Mickey\u2019s sleeping quarters, they find more reasons to fear and despise him (the building\u2019s security guard, Delvin [Courtney B. Vance] finds a ball that was in his apartment, a toy turned abruptly crucially meaningful in the group\u2019s constantly shifting hierarchy). They also discover Mickey\u2019s special investment in 9\/11, visible in his chosen d\u00e9cor: an Uncle Sam poster, newspaper headlines, and a US flag. (You also see that Eva sees that he also keeps photos of a wife and young child, the latter with a birthday cake, indicating he\u2019s suffered a loss, though the particulars remain unknown.) As the group becomes increasingly desperate\u2014for food, connections, and a pathetic sense of power in this Lord of the Flies-ian environment\u2014they turn on the bully Mickey, obviously haunted and wandering the basement late at night, the camera distant and low, his ribs sharply shadowed.<\/p>\n

As much as the ensemble\u2019s general sentiment turns against Mickey, he\u2019s actually not the point of only or primary \u201cdivide.\u201d Still, the energy they put into hating him is unnerving: on finding he keeps a combination safe in his room, the men decide to torture him to get access (unremittingly bitter, Mickey warns, \u201cYou\u2019re all gonna die I\u2019ll never give you the combination\u201d). While Sam urges they \u201cget civilized,\u201d Josh (Milo Ventimiglia) and Bobby (Michael Eklund) abuse Mickey mercilessly, their own self-images shifting as they find themselves capable of some very ugly and very calculated brutality.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a surprise that they turn this newfound capacity against the women. At first, Marilyn gives in: following yet another trauma, she descends into a kind of self-destructive spiral, involving sexual and other abuses initiated by Bobby and then joined in by Josh. Eva resists, finding some meager protection in the form of Josh\u2019s more sympathetic brother Adrien (Ashton Holmes), but the tag-team of Josh and Bobby grows more united and more ruthless. As their bodies shrink into cadaverous extrapolations of their former selves, they shave their heads and peer into a mirror together. They nod, acknowledging and maybe a little awed by their shared extremity: \u201cThe same,\u201d says one. \u201cThe same,\u201d says the other.<\/p>\n

When Eva challenges his violence, Josh doesn\u2019t quite explain, \u201cI did what had to be done.\u201d This seeming statement is The Divide\u2018s foremost question. What has to be done? To what end? As each individual runs into terrible answers, the film does lapse into clich\u00e9s\u2014slow motion to show agony, gender confusions to indicate moral collapses, blood splatter dried on weary faces to remind you of prices paid, and a repetitive, strangely sentimental piano soundtrack. For all its generic business, this nightmare knows its sources.<\/p>\n

from popmatters.com