Land of the Dead

Tony Williams

Land of the Dead is George A. Romero's return to the genre he is most identified with. Released twenty years after Day of the Dead, the film contains both his development of a Zombie Saga begun by the short treatment Anubis, as well as the restoration of many radical, anti-establishment elements characterising his original 1982 screenplay for Day of the Dead. At a time when Western society and Hollywood cinema suffer from oppressive assaults of globalisation and postmodernism supposedly rendering any oppositional movements anachronistic, Land of the Dead represents a welcome return of a repressed cinema. Romero opens his film with the original Universal logo suggesting a back-to-basics movement. But Land of the Dead is a 2005 production. It reveals a director in full control of style and meaning, explicitly delivering an allegorical message for audiences assaulted by the demeaning horror films of the last two decades. Style and content complement each other with CGI techniques subtly merged within the narrative rather than being a usual overtly spectacular tour de force as in most Hollywood movies.

An opening caption ‘Some Time Ago’ first appears. Credits unroll against black and white images. Then a blue filter follows the caption ‘Today’ as the grim neo-noir color cinematography of Miroslaw Baszak introduces the outside world of Uniontown, dominated by zombies, led by black gas attendant Big Daddy, who are developing their own type of self-education far beyond that practiced by Bub in Day of the Dead. After ironically displaying an EATS sign, the camera diagonally cranes right, revealing some zombies outside a church and others scattered around the cemetery. It then pauses at a gazebo showing zombies engaged in band practice. As one human recognises, they are ‘practicing to be alive’, moving further towards blurring boundaries between the living and the dead, no longer needing such manipulative human educators as Dr Logan in Day of the Dead.

Land of the Dead represents Romero's new lesson for the twenty-first century. It resurrects key elements of the ‘70s political horror genre for a new era, by revealing the relevance of a past tradition disavowed by trivial, postmodernist trivial horror films such as Scream (1996). Land of the Dead is also a parallel-universe depiction of America today. Fiddler's Green Tower now dominates the centre of Pittsburgh in the same way as the Twin Towers once presided over the Manhattan skyline. It is presided over by Dennis Hopper's CEO figure, Kaufman. His character merges several elements. Kaufman is the name of a wealthy Pittsburgh store owner. But he also the person who buys commodities as well as people, signified by the European origins of his surname: kaufen. He also represents a new version of the title character of Citizen Kane (1941) – a film by one of Romero's cherished predecessors – who buys people such as Cholo (John Leguziamo) to do his dirty work, as well as supply him with commodities still available in the outside world. Romero also uses a distinctively Wellesian deep focus shot showing the spacious interior of Kaufman's high-rise Xanadu apartment. With his red tie, U.S. flag badge and phrases reminiscent of the current occupant of the White House, Kaufman's other identify needs no further emphasis. Romero even allows Hopper an uncharacteristic Easy Rider-type line in one scene. This not only represents the director's ironic perspective towards a former emblem of the counter-culture, now an avid Republican supporter who overindulged in his youthful days like his revered President. It also identifies him as an older version of the deceitful, self-serving young character in There's Always Vanilla (1972), who has sold out many years before and now occupies the upper level of the corporate ladder.

The world of Fiddler's Green parallels the ideological and materially divided class structure of today's America. Romero again unveils that unspoken American taboo involving the existence of class barriers in American society, a barrier that dare not speak its name save in very few films such as Against All Odds (1983) – a mediocre remake of Out of the Past (1947) whose only merit lay in one line mentioning that excessive prices represented one way of keeping undesirables out of an affluent white Californian community. Rich white people live in an enclosed environment that Romero introduces by using a pre-zombie promotional video describing the benefits of ‘luxury living in the grand old style’. When non-Aryan Cholo enters this world, he passes birds confined in a cage. But this gilded gage will not protect its occupants once the zombies attack. He has already been told that ‘They wouldn't let us in there. We're the wrong kind.’ When Cholo requests admission to his master's realm rather than living in his outside kennel, Kaufman replies, ‘I'm sorry but there's a very long waiting list’, one restricted by a Board of Directors and Membership Committee similar to that New York brownstone apartment complex which recently rejected Material Girl Madonna for not embodying an appropriate image.

The members of the underclass exist outside, avidly devouring violent ‘bread and circus entertainments’ supplied by their masters to distract them from consciousness. While the rich enjoy gourmet food, the poor devour repugnant looking junk, or watch a Punch and Judy show framed by a non-functioning television set. Romero subtly suggests a link between earlier English entertainment celebrating spousal abuse, violence and state-sanctioned execution and those violent television descendants such as The Weakest Link, Big Brother and government-approved torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. A revolutionary alternative does exist. But the nature of the oppositional role of Mulligan (Bruce McFee) becomes questionable when we later learn that Slack (Asia Argento) has been forced into becoming an undercover hooker rather than being allowed to join the Army of the Green. This contrasts ironically with a later scene where zombie revolutionary leader Big Daddy exhibits grief whenever he sees one of his group decimated. He also teaches a female zombie how to fire a gun, and certainly does not regard her as a disposable commodity in the revolutionary – in contrast to Mulligan's attitude towards Slack whom Riley (Simon Baker) rescues from being torn apart by zombies in an entertainment resembling the bread and circus destruction of the robots in Spielberg's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001). 

Further outside Fiddler's Green exists a zombie community soon to fulfil its own version of Henrik Ibsen's play When We Dead Awaken. Led by Big Daddy, they gradually mobilise against Fiddler's Green, eventually rejecting the patriotic fireworks display, with its overtones of a media-manipulated ‘society of the spectacle’ used to distract them from conscious recognition of their own oppression as well as the nightly depredations of Kaufman's high-concept technological killing machine, ‘Dead Reckoning’, into their territory.

Big Daddy and Kaufman represent the two dominant antagonists, while human hero and heroine Riley and Slack are merely redundant ciphers. Significantly, the brief appearances of Jennifer Baxter as Number 9, driver of Dead Reckoning, reveal much more charisma and resilience. Her part could have had greater development. Cholo is also a key character. Used by Kaufman for eliminating human ‘garbage’ from Fiddler's Green, he turns against his master by using technology against him, in the same way as Osama Bin Laden and other former U.S. allies are now doing. As he states to an associate, ‘I'm going to do a jihad on his ass.’

The film moves towards its eventual battle between humans and zombies after the latter consciously mobilise against the tower symbol that has oppressed them for so long. Like George Bush, Kaufman refuses to answer Cholo's demands. ‘We don't negotiate with terrorists. There are no other options.’ He ruthlessly kills one of his CEO subordinates, and later dies struggling with his Frankenstein monster Cholo, who has now become a zombie. ‘I always wanted to know how the other half lives.’ Suitably, Kaufman perishes in a fiery inferno begun by Big Daddy, who splashes gas from the nozzle of a petrol pump into his car and concludes the process by rolling a lit canister towards it.

Land of the Dead ends with one group of human survivors driving to Canada while the underclass survivors in Fiddler's Green attempt to construct a new society, as do the victorious zombies who are ‘just looking for a place to go, same as us.’ One small group move northwards towards an environment which many look to as an alternative to North America, as in Bowling for Columbine (2002). Yet even this last sanctuary is fragile. As Land of the Dead moved towards post-production, the U.S. government announced that American citizens now needed passports to travel back and forth across the border. Although the rationale was to keep terrorists out, in reality it represented a move to prevent young Americans – facing a possible future draft – the same exit that the Vietnam generation enjoyed. However, Land of the Dead still remains the credible work of a director who strongly believes in radical opposition against a corrupt society. It is a very important and unique work to appear in American cinema at this point of time.