Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Files

RESURRECT DEAD: THE MYSTERY OF THE TOYNBEE FILES        B-                   

USA  (86 mi)  2010  d:  Jon Foy                      Official site

The first thing that comes to mind about the makers of this documentary is that they have all too much time on their hands, as for over ten years they have been fascinated with following the mystery of whoever has been laying street tiles around Philadelphia and other urban centers with cryptic messages, called the Toynbee tiles, as they reference British historian Arnold Toynbee’s idea, a possible interpretation of the ending of Kubrick’s 2001:  A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968), suggesting humans are scientifically evolving to the point where they can molecularly recreate themselves after death, creating their own afterlife, replacing the idea of God and heaven, expressed in the Kubrick film during the final segment entitled Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite.  The investigation begins in an era when there was no Internet, around 1987, where one was simply confounded by the presence of street tiles showing up all over the city of Philadelphia, wondering where they came from and who was responsible.  Eventually one of the investigators was so excited he skipped school so he could explore the origins of this mystery at the public library on the brand new Internet, but it appears his investigative computer skills were sorely lacking, as the entire concept was still brand new.  There were search engines, but Google hadn’t been invented yet.  This first time director, who scored the music to his own film, discovered a group of three zealous individuals, also from Philadelphia, who seemed to be concerned about nothing else in life except the mystery behind this strange and mysterious occurrence.  Together they started working on the film around 2005 (a year after the public unveiling of Google) and have been following their leads for the better part of half a decade, releasing this film at Sundance in 2011, where Jon Foy won the Best Director Award for a Documentary Film.

The principle investigators:  Justin Duerr, initially seen as a possible suspect behind the mystery because his knowledge and fanaticism are so extensive, an art school dropout with a manic obsession about anything relating to this subject:  Colin Smith, who appears to be the lead Internet guy, as he runs the Toynbee Tiles Internet message board known as Resurrect Dead Message Board - Home, and a guy who has sifted through mountains of Internet messages and possible clues:  Steve Weinik, a photographer that documents the tilings, curiously familiar with this issue since grade school.  What immediately strikes one about these guys is that they are good natured souls without any qualifications whatsoever in becoming sleuths, as they are purely amateurs, just ordinary guys who spend a lot of time on the Internet.  This identification with the average viewer is one of the startling aspects of the film, as they represent exactly how people spend their time nowadays, usually parked in front of a computer checking out all sorts of information, becoming amateur sleuths where our collective computer searches have led Google to become one of the most successful businesses in the last decade.  What these guys uncover, and how they uncover it, form the basis for the film, where it’s not all dry facts, but an assemblage of humorous as well as outlandishly impossible leads, all of which eventually aid in narrowing down the possible suspects.  My favorite was a guy named “Railroad Joe” that used to work for the railroad, who spent countless lonely hours passing through nearly all of the affected cities in the dark of night, as his route was like a roadmap to the street tiles.  The pace and sudden interest in the film spikes with the possibility that this is our guy, as everything fits, but boink—the guy’s been dead for years, so unless he came back from the dead to lay a few more titles, this is not our guy.  This incident beautifully exposes the weakness of ordinary guys working without training, following leads and creating suspect profiles, building up all this false hope that suddenly fizzles and evaporates like the air was let out of a balloon.   

This seems to be the kind of film conspiracy theorists would love, as the mastermind behind this operation, who claims to be only one man, leaves a series of clues that speak to his overly paranoid state of mind, where he thinks people are following him and trying to kill him, where in a moment of personal rage he rants “Kill all the journalists.”  Perhaps he was referring to the lawyers in Shakespeare’s nasty little history play Henry VI, which deals with a series of bloody horrors between two rival royal families known as the Wars of the Roses.  But like the Unabomber, the tiler leaves behind one tile that serves as his manifesto, a lengthy diatribe outlining his enemies which he describes as the Cult of the Hellion.  This is all too surreal except that the tone of the film is joyously upbeat and humorous, as these guys find endless fascination in pursuing and unearthing every clue, where much of this resembles the gleeful innocence of Mark Borchardt in Chris Smith’s AMERICAN MOVIE (1999), where people can become obsessed and spend the rest of their lives following their own strange curiosities, which they idealize as dream projects.  It’s amazing what lengths these guys go to in tracking down even the most unlikely possibilities, yet they’re all-in, reconfiguring how this all plays out in their minds, where they’re continually reevaluating the evidence, showing a surprising degree of sensitivity to the possible subjects, as they don’t wish to taint these individuals with the brushstrokes of their own mistakes and misperceptions, so they keep a careful distance, making sure of their facts before they intervene.  But these guys are not 60 Minutes, and while their knowledge is fascinating and peculiarly mystifying, their success rate is abysmal, leaving the viewers wondering about becoming obsessed with personal pursuits and dreams, where after awhile, once you start chasing after the illusory windmills of Don Quixote, it’s impossible to stop.   

  

Note:  due to the sudden elevated interest in Toynbee tiles from the release of this film, there has been an outbreak in copycat tilers, where the original has now been replaced by a series of cloned tilers that are continuing to carry out the work of the original mastermind, which ironically meets the scientific definition of regeneration, where apparently his work will continue well after he’s dead and gone, not on planet Jupiter however, but right in his own home town.   

Super 8

SUPER 8                     B

USA  (112 mi)  2011  ‘Scope  d:  J.J. Abrams

Much like this director paid tribute to the Star Trek TV era, especially good at catching the various personality traits of the major players, this film pays tribute to the era of Spielberg, including several of his notable movies.  Again, Abrams does some things extremely well, like catch the E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (1982) innocent mood of the kids who continually hang out together with no adult supervision, eventually tracing the presence of an alien presence in the community while also establishing a great build up of suspense for the horrible presence of an unseen monster in JAWS (1975), not to mention the U.S. military creating a diversionary catastrophe from CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977) which sends the local community into mass hysteria while covering up their real mission, which remains top secret.  While there is also a shared love for big box-office special effects, like Abrams last film, there is an over-reliance on loud explosions, as if this is the only way to cause adrenaline rushes, yet this kind of destructive mayhem exists throughout the film, led by Noah Emmerich, perennial bad guy who heads the secret Air Force unit, a guy who will stop at nothing in supposedly tracking down public enemy number one, their top secret monster they've been keeping under wraps that is suddenly missing and unleashed on the public, refusing to share basic information, even as it destroys communities and ravages the countryside.  Unlike Spielberg, this has a darker menace throughout, as there are constant images of death, demolition, and destruction, where these kids are running through the streets alone trying to avoid getting killed, which is a far cry from being caught by their parents for doing something they’re not allowed.  Like BAMBI (1942), the first Disney film to kill off a helpless fawn’s mother, the audience quickly discovers that Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney with a slight Ralph Macchio resemblance), the lead child’s mother has also been killed, leaving him alone with his distant and self-absorbed father, Kyle Chandler as the Sheriff’s Deputy, a man caught up in the town’s hysteria with no answers to quell the maddening voices. 

Set in 1979, the film starts out innocently enough with a group of middle school kids led by Riley Griffiths as Charles, who are trying to make a special effects Super 8 zombie movie to enter into a local film contest, though they feel compelled to strain for greater effects, since 15 and 16-year olds will also be competing.  Sneaking out at night, they meet at the railroad tracks, including the presence of Elle Fanning as Alice, the cute girl that the boys think would never talk with them, surprising them all with her own rebellious streak.  Much like Drew Barrymore in E.T., Fanning is a joy to watch, showing maturity beyond her years, not to mention a charming talent in front of a camera, where despite playing a ghoulish zombie, her beguiling presence unsettles the boys who have been best friends for years.  As if to accentuate this imbalance, they witness a horrible train accident, where a train carrying Air Force top secret materials gets derailed in spectacular fashion, where they each defy death and somehow survive while unknowingly capturing the event on film, making their escape before anyone is detected, vowing to keep it a secret, as they believe something horrible will track down their families.  First animals go missing, then appliances strangely disappear, entire car engines are pulled out of cars before people start mysteriously disappearing as well, including the sheriff, where only weird noises can be heard in the dark before a violent attack of some kind snatches its prey.  This leaves Joe’s father in charge of these strange inexplicable random events, but the military finds his incessant questioning curiously disturbing, as if this was somehow preventing them from carrying out their mission.  Unfortunately the warped world of the adults is an unpleasant contrast to the more stellar ideas and enthusiasm shown by the playfulness of the kids, who inherently trust one another, as opposed to the world of adults where suspicion and the unending use of violence reigns. 

Despite the plentiful use of special effects sequences, the best thing in the film is the smaller-world interaction of the kids, whose unique personalities add humor and intrigue to the story, where they’re a close-knit group that draws the audience in with their appeal, led by Joe, who can’t stop thinking about Alice, the real heroine of the story.  It’s impossible, by the way, not to think of Mark Borchardt from Chris Smith’s AMERICAN MOVIE (1999), striving for years to finish his low-budget zombie flick Coven, played entirely by friends and family, which is pretty much what these kids are up to as well.  But when the world around them goes crazy, with people going missing, a military presence taking over the city, and several events witnessed which defy gravity or known science, these kids, perhaps without realizing it at first, feel they are on a mission to save the world, turning this into a Mission Impossible (Abrams directed the 3rd) kind of episode where they are driven to overcome seemingly impossible obstacles, but done with a charming enjoyment and intelligent humor.  What doesn’t work, balanced against this obvious fun, is the unpleasant deviousness of the American military, even resorting to secret arrests and images of torture, all of which defy the efforts of this spirited group, where the American military imposes a larger threat of violence than the actual monster.  Granted, this film reflects the mindset of the culture in the late 70’s, where Watergate, lies about secret bombing campaigns in Cambodia, lies about Generals boosting the number of enemy combatants killed in action in order to justify more troops, and the tortuous end of the Vietnam era did contribute to a general distrust of governmental authority, which included the military.  Still the heavy handed tone of militarism gone wrong, or in the wrong hands, sends this barreling down the wrong track, undermining their own monster special effects with a montage of non-stop military explosions of death and destruction, a whirlwind of exaggerated psychotic mayhem that was never part of the original story, that only detracts from the initial innocent hilarity of making that confounding zombie movie with a cast of overeager kids, and also kills the suspense leading up to the appearance of the monster, who has unfortunately been upstaged by the way over the top, uncalculated madness of humankind.