Escape (Escape from New York) USA 1981 Director: John Carpenter Writer: John Carpenter, Nick Castle, Camera: Dean Cundey, Jim Lucas, music by John Carpenter, Editor: Todd C. Ramsay
Starring: Kurt Russell (Snake Plissken), Lee Van Cleef (Police Commissioner Bob Hauk), Ernest Borgnine (Cabbie), Isaac Hayes (The Duke of New York), Donald Pleasence (The President of the United States), Harry Dean Stanton (Brain), Adrienne Barbeau (Maggie)
Synopsis: 1997: Towards a major summit at which a possible nuclear war is to prevent the Air Force One is hijacked by terrorists and crashed over Manhattan. The New York City now serves as a high security prison after the United States could be a crime not unlike Lord, those who land in Manhattan is a prisoner, never back out on the streets of the metropolis ruled by law of the jungle. To the President and save the world with him, the former elite soldier and current prisoner Snake Plissken is lured by the pardon and sent to Manhattan. The catch: Plissken has only 22 hours before exploding a bomb he injected ...
The Outsider: THE RATTLESNAKE times we try to contextualize in its time of origin or to declare it in this context. The second half of the 1970s developed by their political and social histories, a new climate of disillusionment and despair. After a failed peace movement, a failure for the Americans, Vietnam War, which you - especially Socialists - is representative seen a failure of the "capitalist system", Watergate, energy crisis, SALT II agreements while NATO Double-Track Decision for the retrofitting of nuclear weapons, a growing radicalization of terrorist elements against the Democracy, skyrocketing crime statistics, the Pope's assassination, the invasion of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, as well as various other events which led to a decade previously expressed wishes and hopes ad absurdum, felt the company in many respects to a disillusioned endpoint. Direct response to these courses was to be developed since the mid-1970s punk, zero-block, and no future movement of youth and young adults. Many progressive directors have discussed this at this time in films such as LQ Jones YOUNG AND HIS DOG, George Miller Mad Max and its sequel, George A. Romero Zombie, David Cronenberg's RABID - the roaring DEATH or even Hollywood directors such as Phillip Kaufman's remake of the Body Snatchers. What is 20 and even 10 years ago could not be, was now celebrated directly in the mass medium of film: the end of the world. (Noteworthy here is that Jones, in his THE BOY AND HIS DOG the exploding atomic bombs not at the performance in 1976, but with the re-release in 1982 incorporating). A fascinating thing about these dystopias is above all that, unlike in previous doomsday scenarios, these present as close to the current events, most lying in the presence of the production of the film or just a few years in the future. The event was fetched for the recipient similar tight as society at that time had felt and feel. Such a compression of the surrounding reality and the viewer of such a celebration just a little further thought in popular cinema, it was rare. According Carpenters are concentrated points: totalitarianism USA, maximum security, President kidnapping, impending nuclear war, a man goes in. Conceptually, therefore, a typical Carpenter.
RADIO HUNDD: Correct: Escape is an absolutely remarkable thematic and directorial density. The succinctly outlined by issuing text insertion dystopia, which is the background for Escape would be an only enough material for several films and fascinated with her trenchant shortage, which raises the unthinkable in a few words to the sober fact. Against this background Carpenter moved far stretched but then almost in counterpoint to a story that does not push in width, but inward, to the core: a shrunken Manhattan to the interior, 22 hours, a man, a job. And the impending nuclear war, we know nothing about the causes of floats, as a latent, vague threat of the event. This trick makes the end of the film a movie here and now. loses with every minute that Plissken, pressure is growing, which seems to manifest itself in every picture. A pressure transmits to a loss on the viewer, because the usual minimalist score composed by Carpenter himself, the seconds can elapse audible and each image contains an entire world. THE RATTLESNAKE told in principle an infinite number of stories: the visible to the audience is only one of them.
A: Yes is fascinated by Escape like no second film Carpenters. Since you also like to forgive, that the production here is not always so close and intense appears as in his reference films ASSAULT - ATTACK AT NIGHT OR HALLOWEEN - THE NIGHT OF THE GRAY. The film is laid out like a tableau. It is noteworthy that each scene for you alone works, strengthened by a respective, just for this scene composed and only in this scene played piece of music on the synthesizer, and still creates an integral impression when viewed. It is striking that Carpenter has many a time his troubles with the substantive connections - but the exchange between Cabbie and Romero is very far-fetched - but Escape is replaced, not least because of the musical composition, something very symphonic. A film that is felt and assessed only in second place after his narrative approach. The different moods or scenes-establish from the beginning to the initial situation. After brief introduction, the camera moves over the prison wall and we look up the now pitch-black New York City skyline. A composite assembled from plastic bottles to float serves two refugees Überruderung of the Hudson River. After backtracking a warning shot from a helicopter onto the raft and the prompt, without enough time for Back Row remains the same fired a second shot, and the fugitives explode along with her homemade boat together. The intransigence of the prison regime and an American administration, the so-tolerated, action in their own country, even encourages, is only one thought further step to Guantanamo Bay.
FH: I can only connect your proposal and would like to polarize thing: If you wanted to accuse Escape from evil, you could say, he promised more than he ultimately redeeming. What Carpenter us about life behind the prison walls as the expected, compared to what one imagines as a spectator after the input text where harmless. It can, however, almost the entire work Carpenter observed throughout: His films always a bit of a break if he has done building. In Escape from the impact but not negative (as in other later films Carpenters), on the contrary: viewers imagination runs as a constant Latency in addition to the film here and evaluates what is visible on the first. One could say that refers to the Carpenter extradiegetischen room in his production with the same one. Striking at what I have called "slump" in Escape is that it is accompanied by two breaks on the narrative level: the brief disappearance of Snakes, who is recovering from an injury away from the action, and the coming of the day. We have to do so with a pronounced night film, the more important seem the few minutes that the audience Carpenter begrudge the brightness. The sky over Liberty Iceland, where is the control center from which the actions of Snakes Hauk is monitored by a ice-blue, entirely clear, but acting dead sky covers. This sky really is all that you get to see of the U.S. outside the prison walls, and it's enough just to illustrate the state of the country. There is a kind of eternal winter, the cloudlessness can not hide the approaching Apocalypse, but already her messenger. The inside of the prison, which is to be actually the "other" America is in fact identical with that already. This is one of the findings, the Snake in the end be persuaded to bring about nuclear war: there is nothing to prevent, because the proverbial "day after" in the form of the Manhattan Prisons already a permanent presence.
A: fascinating in terms of those of you so beautifully described artistic aesthetics and vision is the fact that we managed Carpenter, a world similar to creating an action comic, without that the production of characters and locations would seem less organic. Besides the part of joke, but basically still more marked by gloom backdrop, we are dealing with figures, all speaking names, just like a comic book have. There is the President of the United States of America, the only just, "The President", the eternally chirpy Cabdriver "Cabbie," the inventor "brain" that remain from Falk face Lee Van Cleef plays Police Commissioner Bob Hauk, which conspicuously "Hawk" means, etc. However, they are people of flesh and blood, after which the solidified final in the iconicity "Snake" Plissken at end appeals. He demanded in the course of the film again and again the use of his nickname, one he says at the end of the film, which is equivalent to the end of the world to Hauk ". My Name Is Plissken Snake Plissken, the anti-hero of the late Westerns , the untouchable strutting through the eschatological setting of a ruined Manhattan and himself in the fight scenes have barely move. When the amount of exciting gladiator fight in the Grand Central Station, where it can finally come to a systemic analysis, since each system has proven its fighters - the U.S. government Plissken, the prisoners of New York a 2.10 m wide Goliath - has not long Plissken on and rams - the clear superiority of his opponent - thus the brand-stocked first-leg in the soft tissues and finally in the back of the head. to take the dramatic 'break' Plissken for some time from the action and to play the movie for brief moments during the day, becomes a reference to the fact that in Escape from the world only a little bright moments knows and the day will need a temporary displacement of the night actually. The same we shall see in THE TERMINATOR.
A: Here is also a recurring theme at Carpenter and, like the non-hero to anti-hero we understand it today though. Although the definition of "hero" or "heroism" may be culturally different, they all have in common is that the hero at the right moment the right thing is doing and that it is characterized by skills, predestined him to others. This must, as in the case of Snake Plissken, optically not have to be seen, but a much more elemental side effect that can be found in all epics, whether it is the muscle-bound Samson or the diminutive David, is the resistance against authority. Whether the command of a sergeant in the battle, seen as senseless, to the defiance of the gods, that is the absolute only highest conceivable instance, the "hero" has a problem that, at least in the long term or until a certain point achieved is to subordinate himself. Significantly is the dry Response of the Captains in Carpenter's ASSAULT - ATTACK AT NIGHT, when the main character Ethan Bishop flirted so at the first night like trying to play the hero: "There are no heroes anymore. Only men who commands. "A time in which there are no more heroes or can not give, because everything, as in the totalitarian system of the rattlesnake," was brought on line, "is a dark time. Significantly Plissken is not locked up because of the refusal of the military command, but because he has tried to penetrate to a depot for nuclear weapons. A clear reference to the destruction that is inherent in the figure, and the end of the Film. Plissken has been against the system and, like all dissenters, he is also transported into the gigantic prison New York. The impotence of the system to think differently and acting is evident not only in that small lapses lead to life in exile, but also that the consequently large number are left to be offenders themselves. A structure and order they will no longer be constrained, a rehabilitation is impossible. Let them see for themselves how to cope. It guarantees them survival by case of periodic food in Central Park and backing up the outer walls by heavy military equipment. But did it, just as the people now is to own time, generates its own structure inside the prison walls. A colored man, in America, the eternally oppressed ethnic minority, is now the "Duke", who controls everything. Those who do not transition to the Dukes heard is either someone who belongs to a large mass of people who somehow have to see how they survive (like our middle class) or is the absolute last pack. The lower layer is in this world actually gone into hiding. The Crazies, feral cannibals living in the sewers, and sending one to everybody, even mighty destruction, fear.
FH: This anarchic, archaic element is one of the defining characteristics of the end film and combines it with the post-punk attitude of the New Wave of the eighties, which, as you have already said, not least by himself to the Third World War expanding threat of the Cold War were marked. This turns out in the back of the head of the apocalyptic end times film as anti-authoritarian pillar of action cinema of the eighties: Snake Plissken a John Rambo is diametrically opposed, despite many similarities. Where one seeks the home that is ready to receive him as a son, the other has long been accepted that there is nothing to find more. Plissken lives only in the moment. The apparent fear of death by injection, which he will miss the beginning gives way, within seconds of the willingness everything and everyone, including himself, to send to hell. And unite as the will to survive and longing for death in Plissken, rebellion and fatalism are the end times film right next to each other: In Escape from prison there is this state within a state in which there is the law of the jungle. Outside - but we can only guess - probably there is a similar sadness, at least, the state acts not as a sympathetic and humane in appearance. In contrast, however, established a literal subculture within the prison walls, just think of the vaudeville performances, events, the prisoners in an abandoned cinema. And as bleak and depraved the street canyons and their ruins are, they also act more alive than the symmetrical high-security wings of Liberty Iceland. As in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome is shown, it is more likely to believe that the archaic and bustle of Manhattan once gives rise to a new society, as the rigid and aseptic apparatus that surrounds it and simultaneously includes and excludes. That there will not do, of course, marks the dystopian elements of the film. The belief in a peaceful revolution of the 68s, which also belongs to Carpenter, at least ideologically, inspired, in Escape from a bitter resignation has given way: the weary hero, the world is shit, because a nuclear war, the situation can not much worse: More likely he has the opportunity to make a fresh start. Perhaps thanks to an idea that Snake's trip to Manhattan and encounters with people like Cabbie or brain has. His selfless heroism at the end is in any case is to seal the end of the world. But he does so well with humor.
A: A fascinating idea, and really the absolute epitome of the philosophical statement that is intrinsic to the genre of action movies. The (anti) hero is celebrating his selfless act in which it will send the world into hell. Through a reorganized structure will make this worry. Kurt Russell is leaving the scene right out of the image detail as possible to symbolize the saying, 'After me the deluge. And this will come. So amusing, so too loud laugh suggestive is the end of the rattlesnake, when the talking in a serious voice president of the United States will be connected via video conference on the Hartford-summit to the Russian and Chinese delegates via tape cartridge with the observations of scientists through the terrible audition effects of a nuclear war, so bitter outweighs the knowledge that the sudden from the cassette player urgent swing jazz, Cabbie has heard so much, the delegates will be little irritating laugh. At the petrified face of the President can see what has struck the hour. On the other hand, there is also the question of what a world, the fate of only a few makes dependent on a conserved tape, scientific explanations, even still has a right to exist?
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