The wonder of nostalgia

I said yesterday that today I was going to review Captain America, but I had such an awesome time on Monday night that I had to jump the queue and focus on “Super 8” first.

Thanks to the lovely people at Sky Movies, I was treated to a special screening of Super 8 at the Paramount London Head Office in their private screening room. The cinema itself was underneath London and had maybe 40 seats in total. All in all it was a pretty special experience.

And the setting only added to my enjoyment of one of the films I’ve enjoyed most this year. Directed by JJ Abrams, Super 8 is a loving homage to the Spielberg films of his (and my) youth.

Set against the backdrop of 1980, Joe is a recently bereaved teenager who, with a group of friends, sets out to make a zombie movie. His best friend, the movie’s director Charles, manages to convince local girl Alice to be a part of the movie, much to Joe’s delight, and the motley crew head out to shoot some late night scenes, when the evening takes a different turn…

Feeling like a hybrid of ET, The Goonies and Jaws (with a bit of Close Encounters thrown into the mix), the film feels like you are watching a Spielberg film from the eighties but with 2011 special effects. And that made me love it. I’m not sure if a 12-year-old would feel the same way about the film that I did, but for me, that sense of wondrous nostalgia for the films of my childhood had such an emotional resonance with me that I was completely involved to the plot and the characters. Abrams clearly loves these movies too, and the film he’s constructed highlights that affection. You get the sense that he’s making the film he wanted to see when he was in the eighties, although now he’s got the production values to do it expertly.

And the production values are magnificent. The train crash sequence alone stands out as being the best train crash committed to film in years (it may be too early to use the word ever but I’ll be interested to see how it stands up in a few years), focusing on the peril of the central protagonists as they (somewhat unbelievably) escape unscathed as the chaos unfolds around them. And then there’s the magnificent night time scenes of the small town being overrun by the military, which look excellent and give you the real sense of “other” invading a loving community.

The themes of maternal abandonment and paternal distance run throughout, as does the sense of a young man trying to come to terms with his grief and move on. There are some clichéd points, such as the star-crossed lovers, but again, these conventions are so established it’s hard NOT to buy into them, especially when they’re done so convincingly.

The fact that the cast are all relatively unknown helps you to focus on the story being told rather than being wowed by “stars”, and I can envisage a lot of the cast (especially the kids) having long careers ahead of them. Joel Courtney is great in the lead role of Joe and is the lynchpin of the film, and Elle Fanning (Dakota’s little sister) gives an astonishingly nuanced performance as Alice…it seems the Fannings have all been dosed with a Captain America style serum that gives them all outstanding acting abilities. Kyle Chandler (from Early Edition, remember that?) completes the main cast as Joe’s Dad, giving a layered performance as a man haunted by grief who can’t connect with his son, allowing you to flick between hatred of the character and pity for him.

Overall, I cannot recommend this enough, definitely the first “five star” blockbuster of the year, and I’m sure come December it’ll be high up on my favourite films of the year as well. Abrams deftly suspends disbelief, making any cliché or unbelievable moments work within the context of the film, and again this lends it to feel like the Spielberg films I love from my youth. Some people criticised him for copying Speilberg’s style, but I thought I felt like more of a loving homage, especially by the time you get to the end.

Once again, I’ll state that I think I’m EXACTLY the target audience for this, so would love to know what younger viewers felt. I only hope it fills them with the same sense of wonder that Spielberg’s films used to fill me with when I was a kid.

Definitely one I’ll be picking up on DVD for a second watch. Mint.