It is possible to discuss "the day after tomorrow" in a historical context, and with its help examine how the events of September 11 changed America's perception of itself and the dangers it faces
Uri Klein, Haaretz
Straight from the weather channel
"The Day After Tomorrow", Ronald Emeric's new film, is the first major disaster film produced in the United States after the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. This fact adds to the film an interest that has nothing to do with its actual value. The reaction of its viewers to the sight of American urban symbols being destroyed before their eyes is different from their reaction to this sight in films such as "The Third Day" or "Godzilla", which were also directed by America. And obviously he and the filmmakers were aware of that.
In other words, it is possible to discuss "The Day After Tomorrow" in a historical context, and with its help examine how the events of September 11 changed America's perception of itself and the dangers it faces, and how they changed the rules of the genre to which the film belongs. The problem is that "The Day After Tomorrow" is such a negligible film in so many ways, that such a discussion and review seems too pretentious and not really relevant to the final result.
The main problem of "The Day After Tomorrow" is the director. Since "Universal Soldier" (1992)
And "Stargate" (1994) shows Americ as the most untalented of all the directors currently producing summer hits for the American film industry. Emeric does not know how to tell a story, does not know how to design characters, and above all does not know how to organize his films around a satisfactory dramatic and emotional focal point. Thus they rush forward without intention and with complete lack of grace, and are driven solely by the productive power that is at their base. In "The Day After Tomorrow" it is amazing to see again and again the sloppiness, almost amateurish, in which America directs some of the most flamboyant or dramatic scenes: they are too short, too long or just wasted, and are never effective.
All these failures do not prevent America from producing hits ("The Third Day" from 1996 was one of the biggest hits of the 90s, and even its failures - such as "Godzilla" from 1998 - are such only relative to the early expectations of them). This, of course, says something very bleak about the state of the American film industry and its audiences. The almost unique ironic moment in "The Day After Tomorrow" occurs near the beginning of the film: a hurricane attacks Los Angeles and destroys the famous "Hollywood" sign hanging on one of its hills, letter by letter. It's an amusing and even slightly creepy effect, which could have indicated that America has self-awareness regarding his status in Hollywood today, if America himself, with characteristic rudeness, immediately destroyed it with the announcement of one of the characters: "Did you see?! A hurricane destroyed the 'Hollywood' sign in Los Angeles!” – as if the viewers didn't realize it themselves.
Warm up with Nietzsche
The plot of the film deals with the warming of the earth, which changes the weather in the entire world, so that the world is threatened by a new ice age. The first part of the film mainly consists of scenes that describe the effect of this process on places in the world (Hurricane in California, hailstones the size of watermelons in Japan, snow in India and more). Because of the carelessness with which these scenes are staged, they look like a collection of articles from the Weather Channel. Emerick is already trying in this part to focus on the private drama that will drive the plot, but he does not have the ability or the materials to do so adequately.
The drama consists of the classic American triangle - father, mother and son. The father, Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid), is a weather scientist and at a conference in India at the beginning of the film he warns that if we don't do something to correct the situation, the new ice age may begin in 100 or 1,000 years (but it breaks out the very next day after his speech; and when someone Asking him why his prediction was so far off, he replies in the brilliant scientific and screenwriting way: "I was wrong"). Mother Lucy (Cilla Ward) is a devoted doctor who lives apart from her husband, and son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a talented high school student. At the beginning of the film, Sam travels to New York with a delegation from his school to participate in a prestigious knowledge quiz, but to make it clear that Sam is not a geek but an all-American teenager with real masculine blood flowing in his veins, it is immediately explained that the only reason for his participation in the quiz is his secret love for one of the participants, Laura (Emmy Rossam ).
Jack, Lucy and Sam are not characters but ideological representatives, whose only role is to represent the process of reunification of the American family broken up in the face of the Holocaust that afflicts America and the entire world. The task of reunification falls on the father and the son (the entire last part of the film is devoted to the description of the father's symbolic journey to his son, who is abandoned in New York with his friends, and for a moment does not doubt the fact that his father will come; "He promised", he declares more than once with American family fanaticism, which comes through in the film to new highs). The mother follows the unification process from afar as a passive witness, only occasionally allowing her graceful tearful eyes to express a certain degree of involvement in the process that should herald to our world, despite the ice age, a new future.
In the most outrageous scene in the film, Sam and his friends find refuge in the public library in Manhattan, debating whether to burn the books to keep warm and survive, and if so - which books to burn first. In the most outrageous moment in this scene, a debate arises as to whether Friedrich Nietzsche's books deserve to be burned. This is an ugly provocation on the part of Emerick, a director of German origin - ugly mainly because the preoccupation with this issue is separate from all the other issues discussed in the film.
The president is dead, so is the rest of the world
Slightly interesting aspects of the film concern his relationship with the representatives of the American government. The vice president is presented as lacking charisma and even as the "bad guy" of the film, who in the first part does not believe Jack's warnings. This aspect may represent the contemporary attitude of the United States to its Vice President, Richard Cheney, who was perceived as a pale personality. Even the American president, more glamorous than his deputy, is not described as a more effective figure. His death, along with a group of his assistants, is mentioned as a side note.
Another aspect of the film deals with the relationship between the United States and Mexico and the countries of the Third World, which in the film give refuge to residents evacuated from the United States. It seems that the reversal, in which the countries of the third world save America, is perceived by America as incredibly ironic, and perhaps even carries a message of global unity. But the feeling is that he has no idea how reactionary this aspect of his film is, and his lack of awareness is more startling than anything depicted in the film itself.
The unique dimension of "The Day After Tomorrow" concerns the fact that it is a disaster film depicting a situation from which there is no real way out. In America's film, it is not about putting out fires or rebuilding a city damaged by an earthquake (as was the case in the disaster films of the 70s), nor about aliens that can be defeated or monsters that can be destroyed; This is about a holocaust that leaves the world different than it was. Therefore, the redemption described in the film is not public - Jack fails to prevent the Holocaust - but only private. This statement has a degree of interest in the context of America today, but it does not manage to redeem "the day after tomorrow" from being a rather negligible product. Even when he arouses interest or sometimes succeeds in impressing with his effects, these moments remain isolated in the creative wilderness that characterizes him.
"The day after tomorrow". Director: Roland Americ; Screenplay: Roland Emerick, Jeffrey Nachmanoff; Photography: Ollie Steiger; Music: Harald Kloser; Actors: Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Silas Ward, Ian Holm, J.O. Sanders, Emmy Rossum, Perry King
Lawsuit against the director of "The Day After Tomorrow" for copyright theft
15/6/04
Hamburg
A lecturer from Harvard University in the United States has filed a lawsuit against the German-born director Ronald Emerick, on the charge of stealing copyrights of key parts of his film "The Day After Tomorrow". Emeric will be prosecuted in Germany, and the court of the city of Cologne has scheduled a hearing on the matter for tomorrow.
The German newspaper "Der Spiegel" reported yesterday that the lecturer, Ubaldo DiBendato, claims that key elements of the plot of Emerick's film are "significantly similar" to the plot of his book, "Polar Day 9". DiBendetto published the book in 1993 under the pen name Kyle Donner. He is now seeking monetary damages from both America and the film's distribution company, 20th Century Fox.
According to DiBendetto, the film, like the book he wrote, describes how the government authorities in the United States ignore the warnings of scientists, according to which global warming could cause another ice age. Also, both works open with a scene that takes place at a research station in the Pole and both are signed by images of the ruins of a large city in the United States covered in ice. DiBendetto claims that Emerick asked him for a copy of his book in 1998, but no agreement was signed between them allowing Emerick to use it as the basis for a screenplay.
