YUKITO's ROOMNo. 1
The Dead Zone
1983 Directed by David Cronenberg
Original Novel Written by Stephen King
What is the ultimate dandyism?
It is "wasted death."
Without being considered by anyone, understood by anyone, he dies in a ditch like a wild dog.
No one gathers his bones, praises his glory, or hands down his name from generation to generation.
But, his untold heart hides "the reason."
The reason let him die uselessly.
He neither left things to take their own course, nor was forced to do so.
There is "the reason" that only he knows.
Death with a reason is not usually called "wasted death."
When a man sacrifices his life and protecting something, it is called heroism.
But how about the case that no one except himself knows what he protected by sacrificing his life?
People will call him insane and his deed a "wasted death."
When he acts with giving up his honor after death in an ultimate decision, even the word "heroism" is still lukewarm to describe his deed.
I dare to call it dandyism.
The Dead Zone is a modest and reserved movie for the David Cronenberg.
Cronenberg, who became famous for <em>Scanners</em> and the The Fly, is widely known for psychic subjects and grotesque SFX.
But he didn't use grotesque SFX at all in this movie. The film doesn't have intense scenes like a man's head explodes into pieces or a carnified television throws up its internal organs, so if you expect seeing such stuff, you might be disappointed.
However, this is a good movie.
A teacher (Christopher Walken), the leading character of the film, causes a traffic accident at the beginning, and falls into a coma.
Several years afterward, he regains consciousness miraculously, but his fiance has already married.
Besides, he has developed a supernatural power with which he can view the past or the future by touching persons and things.
Every time he uses the supernatural power, he gets exhausted increasingly. And as if synchronizing with it, lush green surroundings change into the freezing snow-covered landscape, too.
Christopher Walken gave an excellent performance as the man of loneliness who obtains the unwished supernatural power and gets rapidly isolated from the ordinary real world.
