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THE
KEEP
6/10
USA
1983 : Michael Mann : 92-6mins
“The
music begins. Three technological monoliths emitting urps and hissings
and pings and swooshings in the dark, little rows of lights flickering
futuristically as the three men at the keyboards, who never say a word,
send out sonar blips through the congealing air. Yeah, let’s swim all
the way out, through the Jell-O into the limestone. I close my eyes and
settle back into the ooze of my seat, feeling the power of the cough syrup
building inside me as the marijuana fumes sift through the cracks in the
air, trying to conjure up some inner-eyelid secret movie.”
Lester Bangs, ‘I saw God and/or Tangerine Dream’ – Village
Voice, 18 April 1977
Thanks
to Michael Mann, cinemagoers of the early 80s didn’t have to close their
eyes to emulate Bangs’ experiences, as Tangerine Dream provided soundtracks
for both his first two features. But while pounding, swirling synths were
an obvious match for Thief’s brand of stylish urban noir, they
were a bold choice for The Keep, a baroque slice of wartime supernatural
gothic set in 1941 Romania. The score is 1983 through and through, but
it hasn’t dated – in fact, it’s the one aspect of the movie that really
stands up two decades later. Otherwise, this is Mann’s one and only misfire
so far.
Misfire
or no, it’s still recognisably his work, and as such as always
worth watching. But if it wasn’t for the Tangerine Dream input, the film
would probably work a lot better as a silent movie – the most charitable
way of describing Mann’s dialogue would be to say it doesn’t add to one’s
understanding or enjoyment of the movie. A choice example: mysterious
stranger Scott Glenn arrives at an inn high in the Carpathian alps. He
enjoys a passionate (if dramatically superfluous) liaison with a fellow
guest. Afterwards…
She
: Where do you come from?
He
: I’m a traveller.
She
: From where?
He
: Everywhere. Go to sleep… and dream.
Glenn
turns out to be a mysterious being, possibly of alien origin. His lifelong
quest: to prevent a demonic force breaking free of the vast mountainside
keep which has been its prison for hundreds of years. Guarded by generations
of fearful villagers, the keep’s security is endangered by two packs of
marauding Nazis – Jurgen Prochnow’s ‘good’ soldiers of the Wehrmacht,
then Gabriel Byrne’s ‘bad’ stormtroopers of the SS. A Jewish historian
(Ian McKellen) is brought from a concentration camp to decipher the secrets
of the keep – his daughter (Alberta Watson) comes with him - it’s she
who has the encounter with Glenn at the inn. Meanwhile, the demonic force
is gaining power and form, planning to use McKellen’s hatred of the Nazis
to gain his escape …
Based
F Paul Wilson’s, The Keep is an unusual, original horror picture,
and the first half hour suggests it might even be some kind of masterpiece
– the opening sequence follows the Wehrmacht’s trucks through the dense,
foggy mountain landscape, pounding synth music rising in an awesome crescendo.
Mann delivers a virtuoso moment soon after, as a pair of over-eager soldiers,
convinced there’s silver hidden within the keep’s walls, pull out a stone
block, and one of them peers down into a vast interior. The camera then
pulls back, revealing an enormous black expanse inside the mountain, all
the way back to some kind of metallic altar: then a white fireball zooms
out from the altar, retracing the camera’s progress through the void,
right back to the soldier…
Sadly,
it’s mostly downhill from here. Mann doesn’t know how to handle the development
of the movie now that the evil force is on the loose – dodgy special effects
don’t help. Like McKellen’s old-man make-up, the ‘monster,’ in all its
various stages, is notably unconvincing – nowhere near as impressive as
anything in John Carpenter’s roughly contemporary The Thing. The
poundingly atmospheric use of synth music, the red-eyed demon, and various
glowing metal crosses all nod back to The Fog, but while Mann seems
to have learned a lot about horror style from Carpenter, he’s taken
less notice of horror plotting. There’s no way, for instance, that
Carpenter would have allowed this material to descend to the kind of bombastic
portentousness which takes over at the end of The Keep, as Glenn
and the creature square off in a laser-heavy final combat.
Spielberg
dealt with the whole Nazis-meddling-in-mystical-shit-get-their-desserts
more efficiently in the last ten minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark
than this movie manages in its full hour and a half. But then again, isn’t
that a suspiciously short running time? The post-production of the film
was apparently very messy, and it was rapidly buried after flopping on
US release. It would make sense if there were another half-hour
of footage lying around somehere – it would explain the jerky pacing of
the middle sections, and perhaps tie up the mysteries left dangling at
the end. As it is, The Keep remains the least successful, least
known of all Mann’s features – but the soundtrack continues to sell.
3rd
February, 2001
by Neil Young
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