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A high school student discovers a magic notebook that has the power to kill anyone whose name is written in it.
When it comes to whitewashing, I've started to notice the emergence of a subtle variation on what is a fundamentally disagreeable practice. It's one thing for a film to involve white performers and creators because of Western society's ingrained acceptance of whiteness as a sort of default setting that can't help but disregard the complexity of the human experience, but it does become notable when its deployment actively changes non-Western source material for better or worse. This year's Ghost in the Shell was another Western adaptation of an acclaimed Japanese property; while that film's whitewashing ultimately compromised its source's complex transhumanist themes for the sake of generic blockbuster antics, Death Note actually offers a distinctive enough variation on its source that it almost justifies its existence. The basic premise of a maladjusted high-schooler (Nat Wolff) using deadly magic in order to anonymously execute evil-doers (or maybe just whoever he deems unworthy of life) certainly seems like it'd translate all too well to American soil even when the source's distinctively Japanese elements (such as the "death god" played with appreciable motion-capture gusto by Willem Dafoe) effectively have to be hand-waved. Having the story's Sherlock Holmes-like antagonist (Lakeith Stanfield, another highlight) be a black man who wears a hoodie certainly compounds the film's pointed commentary on the intertwining of death and justice, as does the inclusion of a cheerleader love interest (Margaret Qualley) whose seemingly improbable collusion with Wolff makes a surprising amount of sense in context.
Of course, even that justification for Death Note's Westernisation only goes so far in making the film as a whole work, though at least it's a mixed bag instead of a travesty. Wingard brings back the pseudo-retro aesthetic of his 2014 thriller The Guest, playing up harsh neons and pulsating synths to an appreciable (if occasionally misguided) degree. It's not especially horrifying - attempts at scares or graphic displays of violence tend to feel comical more than anything else - but I don't get the sense that it's really trying too hard to be scary in the first place. The plot definitely feels overstuffed as it tries to distill a dense series into a mere 100 minutes, though it still does a surprisingly decent job of making its increasingly convoluted plot easy enough to follow (even when there are the occasional disruptions of suspended disbelief such as Wolff and Qualley having a loud argument about the Death Note in the middle of a busy high-school hallway). Even Wolff's grating turn as a stereotypically angsty white boy - ostensibly a betrayal of his composed Japanese counterpart - still manages to serve the story even as it reduces the potential for nuanced characterisation. Death Note is a curious film, alright - I went in expecting a tone-deaf disaster but the end result proves much more tolerable than I could have imagined. I'm not about to argue for it being some kind of unappreciated masterpiece here, but I have to be honest and say that it definitely exceeded my expectations (however low they may have been).
DEATH NOTE
Adam Wingard, 2017
Adam Wingard, 2017
A high school student discovers a magic notebook that has the power to kill anyone whose name is written in it.
When it comes to whitewashing, I've started to notice the emergence of a subtle variation on what is a fundamentally disagreeable practice. It's one thing for a film to involve white performers and creators because of Western society's ingrained acceptance of whiteness as a sort of default setting that can't help but disregard the complexity of the human experience, but it does become notable when its deployment actively changes non-Western source material for better or worse. This year's Ghost in the Shell was another Western adaptation of an acclaimed Japanese property; while that film's whitewashing ultimately compromised its source's complex transhumanist themes for the sake of generic blockbuster antics, Death Note actually offers a distinctive enough variation on its source that it almost justifies its existence. The basic premise of a maladjusted high-schooler (Nat Wolff) using deadly magic in order to anonymously execute evil-doers (or maybe just whoever he deems unworthy of life) certainly seems like it'd translate all too well to American soil even when the source's distinctively Japanese elements (such as the "death god" played with appreciable motion-capture gusto by Willem Dafoe) effectively have to be hand-waved. Having the story's Sherlock Holmes-like antagonist (Lakeith Stanfield, another highlight) be a black man who wears a hoodie certainly compounds the film's pointed commentary on the intertwining of death and justice, as does the inclusion of a cheerleader love interest (Margaret Qualley) whose seemingly improbable collusion with Wolff makes a surprising amount of sense in context.
Of course, even that justification for Death Note's Westernisation only goes so far in making the film as a whole work, though at least it's a mixed bag instead of a travesty. Wingard brings back the pseudo-retro aesthetic of his 2014 thriller The Guest, playing up harsh neons and pulsating synths to an appreciable (if occasionally misguided) degree. It's not especially horrifying - attempts at scares or graphic displays of violence tend to feel comical more than anything else - but I don't get the sense that it's really trying too hard to be scary in the first place. The plot definitely feels overstuffed as it tries to distill a dense series into a mere 100 minutes, though it still does a surprisingly decent job of making its increasingly convoluted plot easy enough to follow (even when there are the occasional disruptions of suspended disbelief such as Wolff and Qualley having a loud argument about the Death Note in the middle of a busy high-school hallway). Even Wolff's grating turn as a stereotypically angsty white boy - ostensibly a betrayal of his composed Japanese counterpart - still manages to serve the story even as it reduces the potential for nuanced characterisation. Death Note is a curious film, alright - I went in expecting a tone-deaf disaster but the end result proves much more tolerable than I could have imagined. I'm not about to argue for it being some kind of unappreciated masterpiece here, but I have to be honest and say that it definitely exceeded my expectations (however low they may have been).