That sinking feeling
MINI ANTHIKAD-CHHIBBER
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Poseidon, opening worldwide today, is a remake of `The Poseidon Adventure', the film that set the template for disaster movies.
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FIRE AND ICE The staple of disaster films include man's heroic stand against implacable nature
Disaster movies satisfy a deep atavistic craving. Aristotle wrote many millennia ago about the importance of catharsis - the purging of pity and fear to emerge cleansed. There is a vicarious pleasure in watching others being pummelled by the forces of nature. Safe in the theatre, you watch enthralled as people fight implacable nature or aliens or whatever is the flavour of the disaster season.
The other thrill about disaster films is they are so cheerfully cheesy. They faithfully follow the rules and if you have watched enough of the genre, you can predict what will happen next. The absolute essentials in a disaster movie include bloated budget, an all-star cast, multiple plot lines, expendable extras and of course a disaster.
The film typically starts with a montage introducing the different characters. Everyone is having hysterical fun. Cut to "those in the know" with pursed lips muttering about a disaster coming. None in the cast is willing to listen and do the required safety stuff. Then disaster strikes and all the extras are killed. The stars go through terrible times and finally come out trumps.
While movies from forever are disaster movies of a kind, it was with Airport in 1970 that the disaster film came to its own. In 1972, came The Poseidon Adventure, which rapidly attained cult status for its delightfully camp tone with lines like "My god, I've never seen anything like it." Vincent Canby of The New York Times called The Poseidon Adventure "the ark movie," and it was the film that set the template for the disaster film forever and ever, amen.
In rapid succession followed movies like The Towering Inferno and Earthquake. The genre died out only to enjoy a revision in the Nineties thanks to the SFX revolution and also for all who feared the end of the world in the millennium.
That was the time of special effects driven extravaganzas like Independence Day, Armageddon, Deep Impact, Dante's Peak and Volcano and the mother of all ark films Titanic. The new millennium has seen The Day After Tomorrow in 2004 and now 34 years after The Poseidon Adventure, Wolfgang Petersen revisits the ocean liner capsized by rogue wave theme with Poseidon.
Petersen, quite the nautical disaster veteran with waterlogged masterpieces like the submarine adventure Das Boot and the three-way storm in The Perfect Storm, under his belt, is the right person to take the helm for the remake.
The original, based on a Paul Gallico novel of the same name tells the story of an ocean liner on its last trip before being junked, being struck by a rogue wave during a New Year party. The liner turns upside down and the survivors must make their way to the bottom of the ship, which is now the top to be rescued.
Petersen takes the core of the story of the capsized ocean liner and builds on it. Thanks to technology, Petersen's vision of a 150-wall of water pitted against an ocean liner 20 stories high, 1,100 feet long and carrying 4,000 passengers and crew is realised. Stanford University stepped in with computational fluid dynamics, a new technology that simulates how water reacts with objects.
While Petersen compares the film to a parable for life where the choices one makes reveals the kind of person one is, Richard Dreyfuss, who plays a suicidal gay passenger puts his finger on the never ending fascination for disaster films when he says: "It's `Ten Little Indians'... and then there were nine, then eight and so on. We all want to know who makes it and who doesn't and why; it's human nature and it's a great movie tradition."
So let us doff our cap to some mind-altering special effects and clap and whistle at the money shots like the implosion of the grand ballroom. Ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seat belts and get ready for the ride of your life!
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