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The Divide: Unrated
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Anchor Bay Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Ethan Stevenson (20th August 2012). |
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The Film
 “The lucky ones died in the blast.” Are humans just inherently awful, evil, creatures? Is chaos, destruction and death the only thing we, as a species, have to offer? When left to our own devices—free of the façade, and striped of the features of what we consider civilized culture—will man return to its murderous, barbaric roots? If a nuclear blast leveled a great metropolis to but smoldering ruin, would the group of survivors, previously nice neighbors in a high-rise apartment complex, lucky—or should that be unlucky—enough to find the safe harbor of a fallout shelter, eventually tear themselves apart? Would they divide into separate factions, fighting to the bitter end in the ultimate “us vs. them” death match, once all pretenses of neighborly niceties wilted and died in the darkness? Xavier Gens’ “The Divide” asks these provocative questions, and even provides its own answers to a few of them to a satisfactory degree. Unfortunately, it takes a really long time to get the few answers given, and eventually Gens gives up on exploring those ideas for scene after scene of gruesome, brutal, savage and repulsive gore, violence, rape and all other sorts of dreary, dark and otherwise depraved imagery and actions. The result in a film that is uncomfortable to watch, to such a severe degree that not even the essence of entertainment remains by the end. The question then is, if it’s not entertaining, is it still good? That’s tough to say, as even when the film loses narrative focus, it remains technically well made. The core concept and ideas on which “The Divide” is based are sound—certainly worthy of discussion, perhaps especially so in the raw filmic form. The acting, too, is commendable. Each actor handedly embodies their character, and several dive down into the dark hole of depravity with scary ease. Gens’ direction, at least on a technical level, is without flaw. He works wonders, within the limitations of his budget and set; crafting an unrestrained sense of cinema, and creatively confining so many characters, in such a tight space (telling his story in, essentially, 4 rooms) like a seasoned pro. The problem is, after a while, “The Divide” becomes a bit much. The continual degradation of certain characters, and the overall grungy, grimy and generally gross aesthetic takes over, and little else is left in the wake, except uncomfortable-ness. The film opens with a bang—or, I guess that’d be a blast. A series of them actually, as the city of New York is a set ablaze and mushroom clouds rise from the crumbled ruins. It’s a powerful scene, ripe with powerful imagery (although, one thought: if our main character looked directly at the blasts, would she not be blind?) Residents of a tower-block quickly descend the building’s staircase to a fallout shelter far below in the basement. Once inside, the door is sealed; literally sealed with duct tape and other precautionary measures to protect from fallout. There is a very good possibility that the small group of people—less than a dozen souls—are the only survivors in more than 100 miles. Maybe more. What caused the blast? No one knows, although there are hints that it might have been an inside job and that the attack on New York, and who knows how many other major US cities, was part of a larger coup. But director Gens, and screenwriters Karl Mueller and Eron Sheean, aren’t interested in any of that. Instead, they’re interested in the people now confined to a small bomb shelter. There’s Eva (Lauren German) and her meek and mild-mannered boyfriend Sam (Iván González), brothers Adrien (Ashton Holmes) and Josh (Milo Ventimiglia), Josh’s friend Bobby (Michael Ekland), a single mother named Marylin (Rosanna Arquette) and her daughter Wendi (Abbey Thickson) and two loners, Devlin (Courtney B. Vance) and Mickey, the building super and survivalist who set up the bomb shelter they now all reside in, played by the badass Michael Biehn. As they sit and do little more than survive off a seemingly endless supply of baked beans and the other non-perishables that Mickey keeps under lock and key in his personal space, which is off limits to everyone else, the group has nothing to do but either bond with each other or grow weary, suspicious and eventual conspire against their other residents. Almost everyone in the group takes option B. As the days tick on, Eva and Sam’s relationship deteriorates, while she grows closer to Adrien and Sam gross angry and suspicious and jealous. Devlin believes that Mickey is hiding a great deal more than just baked beans behind his closed door. And Josh and Bobby—already slightly cracked, controlling, borderline psychopaths before the bomb—slowly lose what loose grip they had on sanity. If Gens kept up with this narrative, and wrapped it in a nice and tidy 90 or so minute package, the film would’ve been better—simply a cold chiller concerned with the breakdown of society, an examination at humanity at its worst, on a small scale. But that’s not the way it is, and instead, the 122-minute “The Divide”—extended by some 10 minutes, from an original 112-minutes, for this new unrated cut not shown in theaters—throws in a sci-fi subplot with men in futuristic white suits and large rifles with blue laser sights, and eventually allows the film to lose focus, devolving into too much, well… torture porn. It’s around the 35 minute mark that the men in white suits come a-knockin’, capture the little girl, Wendi, and a firefight ensues, leaving some of the men dead, and the survivors armed with one of those rifles and outfit with a white suit too. Josh, still slightly sane, ventures out to save the girl, but what he finds finally out there, and what Bobby’s asked to do too, pushes both of them over the edge, and changes the dynamic inside the shelter forever. Ultimately, the space-suit subplot that comes out of nowhere at the logical end of the first act, although serving as a catalyst for some of the events to come, feels unneeded because so much of that actual plot is left unexplored and unanswered. The film slips back into psychosocial thriller territory, where it started out, and continues on the track to the end, after this diversion. I mean, yeah, the bio-suit, the gun and the events that ripple out from the kidnapping, all domino off each other and do prove to be important in some way, but not totally. And I’m not sure the tonally misplaced venture beyond the locked door—brief as it may be—was really needed to get the characters where they eventually end up. Especially because there’s still an hour and a half, after, what I frankly feel was a pointless diversion, for the characters to loose their shit, go nuts and otherwise kill or conspire against each other. The suit subplot smacks of lazy screenwriting; it’s there so that the writers can eventually venture back, at the end of the film, and use certain pieces to quickly write themselves out of the depraved and depressed mess they get themselves into. And then there’s the gore and other graphic depictions of rape and torture. I feel it would be a disservice to not mention how… vile… “The Divide” can be at times. I’m all for a little gore and graphic violence, if it has some point—whether that point is Paul Verhoeven-y satire or something more thematically serious. But here, Gens goes too far. It’s just too much. It’s truly pointless after a while and feels like all the director really wanted to do was make the viewer as uncomfortable as possible, with as many sick and twisted things as he could possibly think up, with no consequence to the narrative focus. There was literally a point—right around the time a woman is literally raped to death—that I just about turned it off, because, there seemed to be nothing going on other than a filmmaker looking to shock and disgust his audience. Gens—who most will recognize, if the name sounds familiar at all, as the man behind “Hitman” (2007), starring current TV-cowboy Timothy Olyphant—has a history of going too far. The version of “Hitman” that made it to theaters was apparently vastly different than the cut Gens delivered to 20th Century Fox, and the studio reshot large portions of the film without his involvement to tone down the brutal violence (whether that was a wise decision or not, considering how truly terrible the released version of that film is, is neither here nor there). As repulsive as “The Divide” is in the second half, there are times that I found myself really impressed with what Gens does with the material, and in particular how he does it. The breakdown of the small society inside the shelter in the first half is quite well done, and the paranoia the characters feel is palpable, thanks in large part to the truly effective production design and cinematography, both of which convey a sense of uneasy claustrophobia. There’s also something to be said that the film doesn’t look one bit under funded, despite the meager $3,000,000 budget. Shot in sequence—a rarity for motion pictures, due to logistics—the film also feels authentic in it’s descent into depravity. The actors, especially Ventimiglia, Ekland and Arquette, fully had me believing I was watching people who’d lost their freakin’ minds. Someone had just happened to have captured it on camera, too. Though, I suppose the fact they appear completely hairless for the rest of the film after they shave off everything, including, most creepily, their eyebrows, helps sell the insanity. The film is rife with references to and filled with symbolism that evokes images of 9/11. It’s hinted that Biehn’s character was a firefighter who responded to ground zero on that fateful day, and that maybe he lost his family, either in the attacks or because of the emotional distress caused by them, explaining why he went all wacko survivalist, adding considerable weight to his storyline. But it’s so subtle, I’m not sure how much is subliminally planted by the filmmakers and how much I just made up myself. That day in September of 2001 is more explicitly given the nod in the final moments of the film, as a character walks among the ashes of a destroyed NYC, crumbed towers and falling ash and all. But all the subtext and more overt shots pertaining to 9/11 are, ultimately, meaningless, because Gens does nothing with the images and ideas, as effective as they are, beyond the obvious. In a way, I could say the same for “The Divide” as a whole. It’s home to grand themes, grander ideas, and built on a script with great ideas. It’s a shame that nothing is really done with any of that, beyond the basic. Sure, elements of the film are well done, but much of the praiseworthy set pieces are overshadowed by too much graphic depravity. This is certainly a case where less could’ve been more.
Video
Director Xavier Gens and cinematographer Laurent Barès chose to shoot “The Divide” digitally, in high definition, with the Panavision Genesis camera. It’s curious that they made this choice—one I assume mostly made for practical, and mainly fiscal, reasons—if only because such digital cameras notoriously have issues with low light, and “The Divide” is certainly a dark picture, thematically and in a visual sense. One of the reasons I think it’s odd that they chose the Genesis is that the film shucks the clean sheen of digital, with a thin layer of artificial grain added to the picture. It doesn’t really look like film, exactly, but neither does it look like the crisp stuff of HD camera footage. The film has been drained of most color via a 2K DI; the palette of browns, sickly yellows, grungy grays, pale whites and deep dark blacks fit the depressing story material. Detail is strong, with facial textures quite startling in the many close ups of German and others. The final shots of the film are almost impossibly sharp and detailed. Is this a perfect presentation? No. The drab nature of the production design and photography leave the film with a relatively dim, low-contrast look and blacks, although mostly satisfying, show minor signs of crush, select shots appear soft and indistinct, and a few scenes have some rather severe source noise (moments where the Genesis’ sensor crumbled in the limited light). Still, the 2.40:1 widescreen 1080p 24/fps AVC MPEG-4 high def encode seems to handle the limitations of the source material, and the intentional dinginess, quite well. Anchor Bay’s transfer shows no signs of artificial sharpening, no additional noise issues or unwanted artifacts brought on by poor compression, harmful and unintended noise reduction, or evidence of banding, blocking, moiré or other encoding anomalies. “The Divide” certainly isn’t conventionally attractive, but the Blu-ray seems to accurately reflect the source material and the stylized intentions of the filmmakers, and for that I think it’s a fine transfer.
Audio
No such qualifiers are needed when discussing the truly impressive English Dolby TrueHD 7.1 mix. From the moment the film blasts open with a bang, and the high-rise apartment building crumbles on top of our survivors, each sifting bit of rubble perfectly and subtly intelligible in each channel of the expanded multi-channel offering, it’s clear this is a terrific rack. Every word of dialog is perfectly clear, even if Michael Biehn continues to sound like he’s been eating gravel for breakfast, lunch and dinner ever since the late 90's. The score, composed by guitarist and music producer Jean-Pierre Taieb, is easily one of the best things about the soundtrack and the film; it has a John Murphy-like quality. There are lulls where not much happens, sonically or otherwise, in the film. But sometimes quietness is just as effective as bombast. From the beginning moments of the opening explosion, to the end credits, featuring the song “Crucifying Myself” by Anna He, Anchor Bay’s lossless soundtrack is a winner. French Dolby Digital 5.1 surround and Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 mono tracks are also included with English for the hearing impaired and Spanish subtitles.
Extras
Despite the presence of two full discs, “The Divide: Unrated” is short on supplements. Hidden in the audio set up menu—an authoring quirk typical of Starz/Anchor Bay releases— is an audio commentary with the director and cast. The film’s original theatrical trailer is also available via an option on the main menu; three additional bonus trailers for other films from the distributor’s catalog play before the menu. The disc is authored with optional bookmarks and the resume playback function. DISC ONE: BLU-RAY Director Xavier Gens is joined by actors Michael Biehn, Michael Ekland and Milo Ventimiglia for a straightforward, but engaging audio commentary in which the participants discuss how the film was made. Gens tends to be more technical, while the actors are more anecdotal. The opening sequence, the score, the script and even cut material are among the topics touched upon. It’s the last thing that has me curious—if material was cut, why are there no deleted scenes on this disc? Was it all reinserted into the unrated cut? It’s not clear in the commentary. The film’s original theatrical trailer (2.40:1 1080p, 1 minute 51 seconds) is included. The disc also features three pre-menu bonus trailers: - “Texas Killing Fields” on Blu-ray and DVD (2.40:1 widescreen 1080p, 2 minutes 16 seconds). - “Son of No One” on Blu-ray and DVD (2.35:1 widescreen 1080p, 2 minutes 29 seconds). - “Battle Royale” on Blu-ray (1.78:1 widescreen 1080p, 1 minute 45 seconds). DISC TWO: DVD A full retail DVD-9 is also included in the package. The disc contains the film in standard definition—2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen with 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound—and the same audio commentary, the theatrical trailer and set of bonus trailers found on the Blu-ray.
Packaging
“The Divide: Unrated” comes to Blu-ray from Starz/Anchor Bay Home Entertainment. The film is packaged in an eco-elite keepcase as a 2-disc Blu-ray + DVD “Combo Pack”, containing both a Region-A locked single-layer BD-25 and a Region 1-locked DVD-9. The cover art is quite cryptic about the inclusion of the theatrical cut—for the record; it isn’t included on either disc.
Overall
This is certainly a case where less could’ve been more. There are parts of “The Divide” that I really like, and I think are incredibly effective. The whole idea on which the film is based, and the question it asks—would humans, more importantly the neighbors and loved ones you call friends and family, revert to selfish barbarians concerned only with their own survival without the pretense of society—are certainly very intriguing. Unfortunately, it feels like director Xavier Gens is more concerned with excessive gore, and making his audience completely uncomfortable, than he is in finishing the story he started telling. If it weren’t as explicit, the film would certainly be more palatable. The Blu-ray has fittingly dark and dreary visuals but a faithful transfer and an excellent lossless Dolby 7.1 soundtrack. Despite strong tech specs, watching “The Divide” is a pretty draining, uneven and maybe even unsatisfying experience. Worth a look, but proceed with caution.
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