Time of the Wolf
Except for the ending, or lack thereof (there are good elliptical endings and there are bad ones), Time of the Wolf was one of the best science fiction films I’ve seen this year. It’s more than the anti-War of the Worlds; it’s an anti-28 Days Later. The work it reminded me most of is Maureen’s “The Lincoln Train.”
No science fiction elements, no zombies or aliens. A family, in the midst of a apocalypse, retreat to their summer home in the country. They find it occupied. The patriarch of the protagonist family is killed within the first 5 minutes of the movie, and the mother, daughter and son have their supplies stolen. They are allowed to leave by the starving family now occupying their summer home. They have a little food and a bicycle. There are dead horses (and killed horses). They join refugees. The refugees huddling in an abandoned train station do the best to get the trains to stop, which don’t stop. Water merchants control power; they ride on non-killed horses. False, competing, and gnostic reawakenings of hope ripple through the rapidly swelling refugee population. The pace of the movie is like a horse dragging a heavy cart. Inside the cart is everything we think we know. Things start falling off the cart, though, until the end, when the cart is light enough again to turn into a train.
Hmm. I think endings are key in postapocalyptic movies.
Indeed. I guess my view of the movie becomes much more generous if you take the second-to-last scene as the last one, and the very last one as a kind of epilogue. With all that said, I’d still recommend seeing the movie.