Author: Christian Sauvé

  • The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins

    The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Scholastic, 2008, 384 pages, C$19.99 hc, ISBN 978-0-439-02348-1

    So, what are the kids up to these days?  From the best-seller lists and the mass marketing push accompanying the release of The Hunger Games movie, it’s obvious that they’ve moved on from Twilight and Harry Potter onto Katniss, bow-wielding heroine of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy.  Tell no one, but I enjoy reading Young Adult books to find out where the zeitgeist’s at: They’re usually good books, don’t take too much time to read and they give conversational material in case I unaccountably find myself hosting a middle-school party.

    So it is that The Hunger Games (first volume of a trilogy by the same name) introduces the world of Panem, a post-apocalyptic North America that has the luxury of dispensing with every familiar social institution in order to set up a tyrannical regime in which the twelve districts of the empire are kept in their place through a cunning piece of social engineering: Annual survival games in which the districts each send two teenage participants.  The last of the 24 contestants left standing wins a title, and the district gets extra food rations. 

    As a premise, it’s far-fetched enough to make SF readers reach for their “one big deviation from reality is allowed” suspension-of-disbelief card.  There’s practically no precedent in American culture for this kind of deadly contest (no, reality TV doesn’t count), and you’d think that sacrificing 23 teenagers per year would stoke populist anger rather than put it in its place, but hey –one big deviation from reality is allowed.  This is a YA novel and its whole point is to pit teenagers against each other in a fight to the finish, no matter how thin the rationale leading to this point can be.

    Our heroine to guide us through the inevitable rebellion (but not yet, not in this first volume) is Katniss, a bright sixteen-year-old girl from poor District 12, the coal-mining Appalachian backwater of Panem.  As the novel begins, Katniss is struggling to put food on the table for the ineffective mom and younger sister.  Fortunately, she’s handy with a bow and isn’t afraid to venture beyond the fences of District 12 to hunt down wild game.  Otherwise, she’s got an ongoing not-quite-romance with neighborhood boy Gale and seems headed for a quiet life of eternal desperation.  But then… the games come calling and her sister is picked as a District 12 representative.  Fortunately, she can volunteer to take her place, and that’s how she ends up on a train to Capitol, stuck alongside a boy with a crush on her (Peeta) and a boozy mentor who hates them both.

    Things get more interesting during the lead-up to the Games, as Katniss and Peeta are groomed like reality TV contestants, a romantic storyline manufactured out of thin air to make them seem more compelling to the audience.  We get to see them undergo wardrobe design, physical training, TV interviews… and a few political games alongside hints of Capitol’s terrifying power.  Little of the background details sustain any kind of scrutiny: there’s enough advanced technology around to fix the problems that the Districts seem to be having, suggesting either a deliberately cruel society, or more plausibly incompetent world-building.

    Fortunately, there’s more to The Hunger Games than cardboard-thin landscapes: Katniss’s first-person narration is a no-nonsense blend of clipped sentences, tangled emotions, descriptive statements and overall skepticism when confronted to the wonders of Capitol.  She’s not buying into the mystique, but there’s little choice than to comply in order to get to the games.  She doesn’t have any illusions regarding her chances for survival, especially when confronted to the contestants from the richer districts that actually have training programs for Game contestants.  It doesn’t really help that Peeta reveals his crush on Katniss, and that their mentor seems particularly ineffective.

    Soon enough, though, the action moves into the gigantic arena of the Games, where fairness is just a concept to be discarded by the game-masters, and where some contestants band together to hunt down their isolated counterparts.  The book isn’t particularly sentimental about the violence perpetrated by the contestants (there’s even a mention of a particularly psychotic past contestant), all the best to raise the stakes against Katniss.  Much of the action takes place in a wilderness fortunately similar to District 12’s forested hills, and Katniss soon finds herself in the last half, then the last quarter of the surviving contestants.  There’s no doubt that she’ll survive, but it’s all in the way she defeats her opponents… some of them outside the arena.

    The Hunger Games survives its unconvincing premise thanks to a blend of effective prose, lively plotting and an admirable heroine.  Katniss is both endearing and credible: her abilities are impressive, but she has the self-doubts, indecision and cynicism of a teenage girl.  She’s not a victim, not a prize to be claimed by someone else and actively resents the “star-crossed couple” narrative imposed by the game organizers on Peeta and herself.  Even by the end of the novel, it’s not too clear whether her emotions about Peeta have settled in a definitive form.  It’s not surprising if the book has found a large audience in its target market, especially with young women.

    Given this, the success of The Hunger Games with its teen audience has a comforting lining to the edge of its violent premise.  It’s an engaging read, and while it’s hardly surprising, it does wrap up nicely and it sets up its two sequels effectively.  Better yet, it gives some compelling reason to read those two sequels… and given that a lot of box sets of the series are being sold in the wake of the film version’s success, that’s a really good thing.

  • The Number 23 (2007)

    The Number 23 (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2012) Despite ample evidence to the contrary, Jim Carrey is still primarily perceived as a comedian, and part of the appeal of psychological thriller The Number 23 is seeing him headline a fairly grim tale of obsession and death.  As an ordinary guy suddenly fascinated by a book explaining the numerological intricacies of the number 23, Carrey does well –especially when the film take a meta-fictional bent and start presenting both the character’s reality and the heightened fiction that he reads.  The Number 23 is never more enjoyable than when it’s weird without explanations, going from reality to fiction to increasing paranoia.  When comes the moment for the movie to lay down its cards and tie everything together, you can hear the creaks of the tortured storytelling (in which characters do bizarre things for no better reason than to look suspicious later on), the disappointment of threads being tied up and the lousiest plot cheats come up again.  Still, the film feels underrated: Ably directed by Joel Schumacher, it has a potent visual kick, a strong directing style and some stylish cinematography.  Carrey is believable in the lead role (though not distinctive enough to be worth the rumored 23 million dollars he was paid for it), while Virginia Madsen and Danny Huston provide able supporting work.  The plotting certainly isn’t airtight (the boy’s age doesn’t match the chronology), but the film makes a compelling case for itself as a visual piece of work.  Schumacher may have burned out spectacularly after Batman & Robin, but he has since been turning in some interesting niche movies, from Tigerland to Trespass and now The Number 23.

  • The Hunger Games (2012)

    The Hunger Games (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, May 2012)  Massively hyped as The Next Big Thing in teen pop-culture, The Hunger Games generally lives up to its billing as a decent piece of filmmaking.  It’s hardly perfect, but it keeps getting better as it goes on: Viewers will have to make it past the drab cinematography of the first section of the film and a premise that doesn’t sustain a moment’s scrutiny to start enjoying the film.  Jennifer Lawrence is remarkable in the lead role (the first few minutes suggest the same self-sufficient Appalachian character she played in Winter’s Bone) but director Gary Ross’s work is a bit shaky at first.  The Hunger Games only gets going on the way to Capitol, and then in the wilderness where the teenage protagonists start killing each other off.  The script has its moments (as well as its anti-moments, such as blatant game manipulation that would send Games audiences in a righteous rage) but don’t expect much more than competence in this middle-of-the-road adaptation.  Lead character Katniss comes across as more admirable than most film heroines, tapping into that same hunger for positive female role models that helped the book become such a success.  Compared to the book, however, The Hunger Games comes across as a bit less disturbing (no mentions of the enslaved Avox, no hints as to the Wolf Mutts’ origins, fewer injuries to the participants, mere slight ambiguity as to Katniss’ true feelings for Peeta) and seems to err in trying to replace Katniss’ clipped narration with exposition-heavy scenes featuring third parties.  Still, the result isn’t too bad once you can make it past the dreary first section and the dubious premise.  Woody Harrelson turns in another winning performance as an over-the-hill champion, and the film finds a certain rhythm once the game gets underway.  The film lags a bit toward the end (and makes sure that Katniss doesn’t really kill anyone in cold blood) but who really care?  Preordained to be a mass pop-culture phenomenon from day one, The Hunger Games has the good luck of being actually watchable even by people who don’t buy into the central premise.

  • Straw Dogs (2011)

    Straw Dogs (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2012) Some movies are unpleasant not matter how well they are executed, and this remake of Sam Pekinpah’s rural thriller certainly ranks high on the unease-meter.  From the beginning, as two young urbanites uneasily settle down in rural Mississippi alongside the unrefined locals, it’s obvious that things won’t get any better.  The good-old-boys network is bad to the bone; the young intellectual has no idea on how to get along; and there’s enough resentment between the wife and her ex-boyfriend to spark a cycle of increasing viciousness.  It gets uglier and uglier until there’s no other way out than extreme violence.  It’s meant to be unsettling –the suggestion may be that some violence can’t be met by anything but violence is enough to hang over what could have been a routine home-invasion thriller.  But Straw Dogs’s messages may be mixed in the way it dwells at lengths over the abuse and the response: at some point (most notably during a lengthy rape sequence), it’s not too clear whether it condemns or revels into what’s happening on-screen.  The male protagonist’s character arc is about shedding more and more moral inhibition until he’s able to meet his aggressors effectively.  But critic-turned director Rod Lurie’s treatment of the violence, especially during the last bloody fifteen minutes, is much closer to a schlock B-movie than to a notional exploration of issues.  It helps, a bit, that the film features some glorious Southern-USA cinematography (who wouldn’t want to own that house?) and that good actors are there to lend some more gravitas to a straightforward film.  It doesn’t, however, make the film any easier to watch, or leave viewers with fulfilled expectations.  Straw Dogs may look good, but it feels ugly… and yet not in a memorable way.

  • Elle s’appelait Sarah [Sarah’s Key] (2010)

    Elle s’appelait Sarah [Sarah’s Key] (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On-demand Video, April 2012) I’ve had my fill of World-War-2 holocaust dramas, and my expectations about any new one tend to run low: The same themes, the same over-examined period of history, often the same maudlin excesses.  What else is new?  And yet, Elle s’appelait Sarah manages to do a few unusual things.  It tackles the French collaboration in the deportation of its Jewish citizen, it splits its drama between 1942 and its consequences as seen from 2009; and it remains resolutely unsentimental about the impact of the war.  It’s certainly not a cheery film, and the way in which at least one character dies is fit to give nightmares.  But the film itself is well-executed, capably played and directed with some finesse.  The split-era story is meshed more cleverly than you’d except at first, and the theme of self-deception is handled effectively.  It’s a bit long, mind you, and the lack of happy endings is bound to grate.  Still, the result manages to distinguish itself after years of Oscar-baiting films all revolving about this or that aspect of WW2 and/or the Holocaust.  That’s quite a bit more than anyone would expect.

  • Warrior (2011)

    Warrior (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2012) Being neither a fan of combat movies nor family drama, the most remarkable thing about Warrior is how well it managed to keep my attention.  After a shaky first fifteen minutes, the stakes become clearer: These are two brothers from a broken family picking up Mixed Martial Arts and eventually facing off in the ring.  The story isn’t much more complicated than this (and the repetitive third act contains very few surprises), but the film itself is well-made, with strong performances to lure viewers in.  Nick Nolte earned an Oscar nomination for his role and Joel Edgerton turns out a strong performance as a family man forced to return to the ring in desperate circumstances.  Still, it may be Tom Hardy who gets the thankless role of the younger brother cast adrift in his own isolation.  It all amounts to a fairly predictable, but well-executed story, one that doesn’t suffer as much as you’d think from an improbable sequence of contrivances.  There isn’t much to say about the grainy cinematography (except that some shots of Atlantic City look pretty nice), but the direction is a straight-ahead affair.  Heavily slathered in the usual Americana sauce (family, military, sports), Warrior takes itself a bit seriously, but in doing so manages to avoid many of the traps that a less-earnest approach to the same subject would have encountered.  It’s manipulative, of course, but baldly so.  It’s arguably best seen as a double-bill with The Fighter.

  • From Prada to Nada (2011)

    From Prada to Nada (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2012) Nearly everything about From Prada to Nada‘s marketing (title, poster, premise) can lead anyone to expect a sub-par brainless comedy not far away from superficial dreck such as The Hottie and the Nottie.  The surprise is in finding out that this is a textured look at Los Angeles’ Latino community based on Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.  It starts on a rough note, as two sisters are expelled from their house after the death of their insolvent father.  Forced to an exile in East L.A., they find that… oh, let’s face it: surprising plotting really isn’t one of From Prada to Nada‘s strong points. This romantic comedy is almost entirely predictable even if you haven’t read Austen, and much of the charm of the film lies in how well it hits the expected plot points.  Camilla Belle is adorable as the sensible sister, and while it take a while for Alexa Vega’s Lindsey Lohan-lookalike to develop some audience sympathy, events eventually manage to win her over to the audience’s side.   Otherwise, the real strength of the film is in its upbeat look at the South Californian Mexican-American sub-culture (The fact that the Latina protagonists don’t initially speak Spanish is one of the film’s running gags.)  The dialogue isn’t anything special, the jokes are lazy, the character are stock figures and the direction is rarely inspired, but the film is nonetheless quite a bit warmer than expected.  Austen fans will like the flavour given to this adaptation, while those looking for a middle-of-the-road romantic comedy won’t be too disappointed.

  • Four Rooms (1995)

    Four Rooms (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2012) Sketch comedy seldom works in movies, and Four Rooms isn’t much of an exception to the rule.  Four stories loosely set on a busy New Year’s Eve at a Los Angeles hotel; it’s a mash-up of four writer/directors with different sensibilities and a long list of actors playing small parts. Only Tim Roth provides a bit of continuity as the bellhop who ends up becoming the unwitting protagonist of the film, but his tendency to play the role at full intensity as a perpetually-manic oddball can be as grating as it is peculiar.  The four segments aren’t created equal: From the sex-romp of the opening segment’s coven of witches, we go to a twisted game of role-playing between a married couple, turbulent kids playing while their parents are away, and a small group of rich men having too much fun with a lighter and a butcher’s knife.  Robert Rodiguez and Quentin Tarantino, collaborating together years before Grindhouse, each bring their recognizable style to their segments.  Interestingly, the film seems to have been shot in TV-style 1:1.33 aspect ratio, perhaps as homage to some of the source material.  The humor is definitely quirky, and while some of it feels forced, other gags seem funnier.  Tarantino fans will also appreciate a little bit of his motor-mouth dialogue in the last segment.  Otherwise, Four Rooms exists as an increasingly-historical curiosity, the kind of intriguing idea that falters in production.  Not a disaster, but of primary interests to fans of the directors.

  • Flatliners (1990)

    Flatliners (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2012) For years, I wondered if missing out on Flatliners had led to an embarrassing omission in my movie-going culture.  Hadn’t this film earned some interest as a science-fiction film?  Didn’t it star a bunch of actors who went on to bigger things?  Wasn’t this one of Joel Shumacher’s best-known movies from his earlier, better period?  The answer to these questions is yes… but the film itself seems a bit of a letdown after viewing.  Oh, some things still work well, and may even work better than expected.  Of the five main actors, Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon and Oliver Platt have all gone on to big careers –with poor William Baldwin being left behind.  Schumacher’s direction is backed-up with Jan de Bont’s impressive cinematography: the visuals of the film may not make much sense, but they evoke a modern-gothic atmosphere that remains distinctive even today.  The high-concept of the film remains potent, with genius-level medical students voluntarily defying death to investigate the mysteries of the afterlife.  Unfortunately, all of these elements don’t quite add up satisfyingly.  The jump from the high concept to the characters’ personification of those concepts is weak, and the contrivances become almost too big to ignore.  The idea of atonement being closely linked to death is powerful, but the way this variously follows the character is more difficult to accept.  (As Platt’s character knowingly remarks, those without deep-seated traumas will end up with some fairly silly phantoms.)  There is quite a bit of repetitive one-upmanship in the way the plotting unfolds, and Flatliners sadly goes too quickly from provocative idea to ordinary morality.  Still, it’s easy to argue that the film is worth a look: Roberts, Sutherland and Bacon look really good in early roles, and the visual style of the film is still an achievement twenty years later.  There are some good ideas in the mix (witness the visual motif of “construction” -reconstruction, deconstruction- underlying nearly each scene), the portrait of intelligent characters interacting is charming and some of the suspense still works surprisingly well when it doesn’t descend in silliness.  There are a few films that qualify as “minor classics” of their era in time.  While Flatliners certainly won’t climb year’s-best lists retroactively, it’s a film that remains more remarkable than many of its contemporaries.  I don’t regret seeing it… and I may even have liked to see it a bit earlier.

  • That’s What I Am (2011)

    That’s What I Am (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On-demand video, April 2012) As far as mid-sixties coming-of-age films go, That’s What I Am has almost all of the usual elements: Life lessons, befriended outcasts, wise teacher and eighth-grade first love.  It plays without surprises (although some of the expected plot beats aren’t dwelled upon –I was sure that something was going to happen to the car, for instance) but it does so with warmth and wit.  The narration is better than usual, the characters are nicely defined, there are quite a few moments of decent humanity (something that’s perhaps a bit too rare nowadays) and the film does have a certain narrative energy in finding out what’s going to happen next.  Ed Harris shines as the protagonist’s influential teacher, but the child actors all turn in some good work as the students.  I’m still trying to figure out why the film was produced by Word Wrestling Entertainment, but never mind that logo: That’s What I Am is the kind of small-expectations movie that fills up a nice quiet evening.  It’s perhaps not special enough to warrant an effort to seek, but it’s absolutely fine at what it attempts to be.

  • Hall Pass (2011)

    Hall Pass (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On-demand Video, April 2012) I’m never too sure whether I should be annoyed or relieved when mainstream Hollywood comedies end up neutering their daring premises with innocuous plot developments.  Audiences don’t like to be unnerved when they’re supposed to be laughing, and I suppose that I’m no exception.  Nonetheless, there’s something maddening in seeing a film about married couples agreeing to mutual indiscretion racing to a conclusion when nothing really happened.  (Actually, it may be best to ignore the fact that the one woman who did something, albeit briefly, ends up punished by a car crash that ends up not much more than a plot point for her husband’s emotional growth.  But such is the way of Hollywood, and this includes the emotionally-retarded male protagonists who are supposed to earn our sympathy. The gender politics here aren’t particularly even-handed here, which is keeping in mind the target audience of the film.)  Still, Hall Pass has a number of laughs in reserve, especially when the protagonists can’t even begin to imagine how to take advantage of the freedom they’ve bargained for themselves.  Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis (who, in-between this film, Horrible Bosses and A Good Old Fashioned Orgy, is carving himself a bit of a niche as a sex-obsessed protagonist) are both as charming as they can be in characters who are barely emotionally adults, although it’s Richard Jenkins who gets the biggest laughs in short appearances as an even older and less mature professional bachelor. The problem is that by ultimately playing it safe, Hall Pass doesn’t do anything that warrants any lasting attention.  Despite a few out-of-place graphic gags, it’s a disposable comedy destined to the bargain bin.

  • A Good Old Fashioned Orgy (2011)

    A Good Old Fashioned Orgy (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2012)  Don’t be fooled by the pornish title; this R-rated ensemble comedy is about as good-natured as sex-themed mainstream comedies can, er, come.  Never mind the “pervasive sexual content” promised by the film’s R rating, the mostly-amusing nudity, porn film snippets or the standard-issue profanity: This is a movie about thirty-something post-teenagers trying to hold on to high school friendships in the face of increasing “adult” commitments by putting together an orgy before a summer getaway destination is taken away from them. To its credit, the film does confront the uneasiness of such a situation, and the way such an event is likely to alter friendships along the way.  (It’s a comedy, though, so don’t worry over-much.)  The laughs are closer to chuckles, but they’re numerous enough to make the film worthy a look for those in the mood for an amiable but not-too-explicit sex comedy.  Jason Sudeikis is likable as the lead, but it’s really an ensemble effort that makes the film work as a comedy.  Don’t expect wall-to-wall indecency, and the film eventually works itself to a good-natured conclusion.

  • The Smurfs (2011)

    The Smurfs (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2012) As someone who grew up on Les Schtroumpfs in their original French, both on TV and in comics, I suppose that I can’t be surprised if I’m not entirely enthusiastic about Hollywood’s The Smurfs live-action adaptation.  There’s something… wrong… about the way the Smurfs are rendered on-screen, the clean glossiness of the comics incarnation made a bit too real by 3D textures.  Thus unfairly prejudiced against the film, it’s no stretch to find the script rote, dull and juvenile even by kids’ movies standards.  While the occasional self-aware line is good enough to earn a smile, it’s not enough to excuse the tired slapstick, the badly-animated CGI cat or the Scottish Smurf making a constant stream of testicle jokes.  By the time the film features Smurfs rocking “Walk this Way” on Guitar Hero, I’m left shaking my head and muttering “Smurfs are not supposed to even try to be cool.”  Neil Patrick Harris and Jayma Mays are cute as the New York couple hosting the little blue characters, and some of the thematic ties to the prospect of imminent parenthood strike an unexpected chord.  It’s not quite enough to offset the continuing annoyance at the antics on-screen, or the uncanny valley uneasiness of the Smurfs themselves… but it’s just enough to avoid throwing this film in the bin of irremediable failures.  At the very least, The Smurfs will keep the kids entertained, and some of the throwaway lines will entertain the adults.  Despite everything, it could have been worse.

  • The Warrior’s Way (2010)

    The Warrior’s Way (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On-demand Video, April 2012) Where have all of the stylish martial-arts movies gone?  Watching the hit-and-miss The Warrior’s Way, the first thought coming to mind is that I used to see a whole lot more of those films ten years ago than today.  Am I simply not looking in the wrong places? Are these movies still being made?  From its first highly stylized shots, The Warrior’s Way creates its own sense of reality and dares viewers to keep up.  Beautifully-colored skies, sweeping camera action shots, stoic heroes and a blend of Asian sensibilities in a Western setting (with a bit of circus as color) will either frustrate viewers or make them swoon.  The script seldom deals in subtleties: Our hero is without reproach, his love for the heroine is pure, and all of the antagonists are beyond caricatures of evil.  (Which becomes a problem when the violence is carried just a bit too far for the rest of the film’s intentions.)  I quite liked some sequences, such as a very long-shot sword-fighting sequence, or the crazy attack sequence featuring a half-built Ferris wheel, but the film itself could have been tightened up and concluded more optimistically: The Warrior’s Way is just good enough to remind us of the way martial art movies can be good, while not good enough to completely satisfy those expectations.  Fans of the sub-genre will no doubt appreciate it more than those coming in cold to those conventions.  It is very pretty to look at, though.

  • The Andromeda Strain, Michael Crichton

    The Andromeda Strain, Michael Crichton

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ballantine, 1993 reprint of 1969 original, 270 pages, C$7.99 mmpb, ISBN 978-0-099-42765-0

    I hadn’t read The Andromeda Strain in more than a decade and a half when a chance viewing of the classic 1971 film adaptation rekindled my interest in Michael Crichton’s breakout novel.  At an admirably concise 270 pages, the novel wasn’t going to crimp my limited reading time, and my accumulated shelves of already-read books aren’t just for showing off, right?

    You probably remember the premise, either from the novel’s best-selling reputation, the 1971 film or the 2008 miniseries: a satellite falls back on Earth, bringing back something that kills nearly everyone in a small Arizona town.  Four scientists are asked to investigate: Locked in a secret underground laboratory, they race against time to solve the mystery of the so-called Andromeda Strain before the inevitable “containment measures” escalate.  Briskly told at the cutting-edge of late-sixties technology, Crichton’s first best-seller is an unusual page-turner, enthralling readers through reams of well-written exposition, while codifying the conventions of the techno-thriller genre.

    Perhaps the biggest surprise of re-reading a 1969 techno-thriller is how gracefully it has aged.  There is no going around the fact that the book was written a long time ago: Any narrative that spends a few paragraph explaining how “time-sharing computers” work seems almost irremediably quaint in the age of ubiquitous smart-phones.  (If you want to feel old, consider that 1969 is now 43 years distant as of this writing.)  But despite the novel’s carefully-circumscribed focus on contemporary techno-scientific matters (if there are references to Vietnam or hippies in the book, a speed-read hasn’t revealed them), it’s animated by a decidedly contemporary intention to try to explain the world to the reader.  As a techno-thriller, it revels in the telling (sometimes made-up) detail that bridges the gap between fiction and reality.  For readers with finely-attuned genre-protocol antennas, it’s this willingness to engage the cutting-edge of the Known that, ironically, enough, makes the novel feel fresh.  If you accept that the general perception of reality lags behind the time, you can also argue that most people never bother to adjust their perception of reality beyond the model they learned as teenagers (which was often based on pop-culture, and so a few years behind the times).  Techno-thrillers and science-fiction are two genre that sometimes attempt to describe the scary implications of progress, and this attitude show no sign of growing old.  Compare The Andromeda Strain to something like Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle (which applied the same didactic perspective to history) and it’s not hard to imagine that if a 2012 writer wanted to write a circa-1969 techno-thriller, he’d end up with something very similar to The Andromeda Strain.  Older books that age gracefully become period pieces.  In this light, having the author explain time-sharing computers takes on a new and not unpleasant flavour.

    The other substantial asset of the novel is Crichton’s uncanny ability to Make Stuff Up.  From 2012, it’s easier to tell fact from fiction: Kalocin (a drug that kills “every known virus, bacterium, fungus, and parasite”, with hideous consequences) doesn’t exist, obviously.  But you’d swear otherwise from The Andromeda Strain’s narrative, as seamlessly as the device is inserted in-between convincing technical details, documentary framing devices (“this is a reconstruction based on interviews…”) and frequent blurring between reality and fiction.  Crichton had a great ear for plausible-sounding nonsense, something that the careful explanation of the “Scoop” program (which is almost meaningless in the movie adaptation) makes amply clear.  Elsewhere in the narrative, the Odd Man Hypothesis (which “proves” that you want a single unmarried man to have a finger on the trigger of a nuclear device, although even the characters acknowledge that it’s an elaborate rationalization for a more sinister purpose) is bunk, but you could almost swear that it was the subject of a Malcolm Gladwell essay not too long ago.  This aptitude for believable lies may be worth recalling in studying Crichton’s entire bibliography, and most notably his romans provocateurs phase in-between Rising Sun and Next.

    All of these elements accumulate into a nice tight thriller in which, ironically enough, the characters don’t actually do all that much.  They poke and prod at the mystery, but ultimately can’t do much to fix the problem.  The protagonist’s big act of heroism consists in avoiding death, which may be laudable, but tends to obscure the War-of-the-Worldsian irony of the novel’s plot.  It’s either lazy plotting or a brilliant counter-weight to the novel’s detailed paean to the power of human ingenuity.  Latter techno-thrillers wouldn’t be as willing to acknowledge humanity’s lack of agency over doomsday threats.

    There’s little need to add that all of these factors, and a few more I don’t have the patience to list, make up for a 1969 book that is well worth a re-read even today.  It still exerts an undeniable fascination, and its place in history as a seminal thriller is practically assured.  You can find echoes of its impact today, but the original is still resonant.