Russian film | Night Watch

what a great film.

last night chibi-r and i went to see it in the city at a freshly opened cinema complex located strangely at the top of a shopping mall, rather than at the bottom of it which is traditionally where you find them here. it’s a bit strange walking out of the cinemas in the middle of the night and seeing the mall from above, pretty much empty except for cinema patrons.

Night Watch didn’t have much new to offer in the way of narrative, but my impressions of it are similar to Volcano High out of South Korea. they’re such a young industry in regards to the global market, and though i know Russians have been making great films for quite some time, this is one of the earliest attempts to capture a more mainstream market, while still holding some of its national values, the first and foremost being the Russian language – the film was entirely left in Russian, but more on that later.
the similarities to Volcano High are that being a younger industry, they have so much enthusiasm and exhuberance for what they think is cool, and the things they’ve taken inspiration from. much of the photography is clearly inspired by the Matrix films, with quite a few other presentation elements coming from other films and shows too.
this isn’t a bad thing at all.
it’s very difficult to assert your own sense of individual style, especially in film-making, but the end products of both Volcano High and Night Watch are highly polished, and present brilliantly. while their excitement may bring about one or two little cliches or over-dramatic scenes, by the same token, their innocence in a way, lends them creative license to present things that perhaps more seasoned film-makers would not, simply because the way they think about film would have significantly changed.

for a lower budget film, it looks fantastic.
some of the CG looks a bit shiney and pasted, but for the money it serves, and where the CG is implemented well, it looks great.

the most impressive thing by far in this film is the attitude with which the subtitles were approached. it was like the film was fansubbed! haunting evil whispers fade onto the screen in read, then swirl out into a smokey red vapour to disappear. other subs appear on the left or right side of the screen, and not always at the bottom either – they’ll be placed in an appropriately close position to the speaker’s image on screen. when subtitles do appear in the centre, many times they’ll wipe away as if they were placed behind a person onscreen, so when their body passes ‘over’ the subtitle, it disappears where their body touches the text. other scenes featured the subs shaking, blinking, fading in and out, and flashing all over the screen during aggrivated moments. the implementation was like nothing i’ve ever seen before in a subtitled film.
all other subtitlers take note – this is how it’s done.

Night Watch doesn’t have much new to offer on the surface, but what it does offer is an enthusiasm in film-making that is rare in such an established global market. this film is just so much fun, cliches included, and there are plenty of times where it pokes fun at itself and doesn’t take itself too seriously, regardless of the subject matter.

it’s the first in a trilogy, and i’m excited to see the next two installments.