Watchmen

So much has been written about this - both the book and the film already, even though it's only been out a week - that I almost hesitate to go into print with my own view. Is there anything new I can say? Does that even matter?

I read the book over Christmas, at Blythe's suggestion, and wasn't overly impressed. Even though I devoured comic books as a teen, the graphic novel has never interested me. The story was good, and the art work uniformly excellent but nothing more than I'd come to expect from that kind of work. I didn't see much to rave over.

I'd read so many reviews of the film, with such widely varying reactions, that the only conclusion worth coming to was that I should approach the film with no expectations at all. Good or bad. And it was in that frame of mind that I took my seat along with both daughters in the middle of the first row of "premier seating" for today's first showing of Watchmen at the Manchester IMAX.

It's no exaggeration to say that, from the very first frame, I was blown away. I have never seen a film with such incredible... texture. I don't know how else to describe it. The cinematography was an order of magnitude better than anything I have ever seen. The images leapt out of the screen, fabulous close-ups with a wealth of detail, wonderful composition and imagery (the raindrops on the polished coffin lid is an image that keeps coming back to me, but there were dozens of others - gnarled faces with each hoary whisker almost deliberately positioned; rain-drenched streets; faultless costumes) and stunning iconography.

If you've seen 300 or Sin City or any of the other graphic novels that have been brought to the screen before this, you'll be familiar with the usual kind of "comic" images that a director plays with. What made Watchmen so incredible, so compelling, was that these images were uniformly made of real people. No silhouettes, no extreme contrast, no apparent visual trickery of any kind. It was the comic, made flesh. Made real. Incredible. And the sound stage? Awesome. A great sound track, crisp foley work, none of the muddy dialogue that plagues so many modern movies. Sharp from beginning to end, and - unlike some reviewers - for me none of the music grated.

So much for the technical aspects. What of the story? As I've said, I'm not a dyed-in-the-wool fanboy of the novel, and I think this helped. Much of what irritated me about the book had been pared away. This was the central story of Watchmen. That is complex and detailed enough, without any of the frippery. Nor did I come to the theatre expecting a run-of-the-mill, all-action "superhero" flick. Many commenters have said Watchmen is "boring" or "slow." Come on - they have 30 years of backstory to get through, as well as a whole bag of complex interpersonal emotions to pack in to what never felt like two-and-a-half hours. All I can say is, it held my interest from start to finish. I never felt any itchiness at the pace (like I *definitely* did halfway through The Dark Knight, where I actually fell asleep at one point it was soooo sloooow). There was always something to hold my interest, be it action, dialogue, imagery, music, whatever.

The set pieces - fight scenes; Mars; Ozymandias' palace; the bombs - were note-perfect, and several of the scenes gave an understated but poignant reminder that this was an alternate reality, and set in 1985. So the irony of having a huge hole blown in the middle of New York, while in the background you can still see the Twin Towers, was very powerful. Being a graphic novel, some of the violence is *very* graphic. I know both my daughters had to turn away at some point, but that comes back to what I said about it being a comic made real. Snyder didn't flinch from representing faithfully what was on the page, even though when it's being enacted by real people the impact is increased a thousandfold. It makes for a totally visceral cinema experience and puts Watchmen very firmly in my top ten movies of all time.

Just don't ask me what has to drop out to make room for it.