Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/957795
DGA QUARTERLY 61 yet everybody served him. How is he ruling? It's the rule of the inval- id." Assessing it now, she likes how Johnson's fi rst shots of Overdog aren't fully establishing ones. "He's propped up, suspended, but you can't quite make out how it's constructed." Niki doesn't stay put in Wol 's vehicle, getting captured. Overdog sets her into the maze in a sequence made especially suspenseful be- cause we know the possible fates (spikes, acid pit, fi re). "But because she's a swamp rat," says Rees, calling back her belief in scrappiness as superpower, "she's uniquely fi t to beat the obstacle course." And she does, heroically, seen from a variety of camera angles. Rees observes, "It's like it's the point of view of the works, of the hive, the machinery." But Overdog reneges on his promise to release Niki, with a gleeful "I lied!" (Rees, her memory at full strength now, blurts out the line before Ironside does.) She's then tied to what looks like the mouth of an oscillating electric coil tunnel, so Overdog can drain her life force. "This is what I remember, her strung up, and him taking her power." Overdog explains needing her "vitality," and director Johnson adds a trippy refl ective e ect in which Rees sees metaphor. "See how she's superimposed over his heart?" Wolff arrives to save her and vanquish Overdog with what amounts to sticking the villain's finger (claw) in the Zone equiva- lent of a socket. Though the tight staging and many close-ups in this extended climax tend toward the chaotic—there are few orienting master shots in this underground metropolis—Rees speaks up for the technique. "I like that '70s/'80s messy kind of style, where stu feels like mistakes, and maybe they are, but where the discontinu- ous geographies are cool. You don't understand what's behind you, or what's in front of you—you only understand the immediate thing. It's a decontextualization, I guess." Escape is complete; miniatures explode. But the coda's fi rst shot is telling: Niki moping alone to the sounds of Wolff, Washington and the women making merry. The movie closes with her getting her wish—to be his space-traveling partner—signifying to Rees that Johnson knew who his real stars were. "It's totally her movie. And the planet's movie, with those landscapes and sets. What was the guy's name? The paternalistic pirate with the heart of gold? I don't even remember." When refreshed that it was Wol , she says, "He didn't earn that name. So yeah, for a director who executed, [Johnson] invested in her, and he put his investment in the right place. For a teenager to be at the heart of it, she'd have been an aspirational fi gure for me." Asked if Rees can draw a parallel between a childhood sci-fi fave like Spacehunter and the earthbound, intimate and drawn-from-re- al-life movies she's made, she doesn't hesitate. "There's a dim view of humanity, you know?" she says. "That people are basically bad. And if I tend toward that philosophy, [this movie's] idea fi ts within that. It feels as if in this fi lm, everyone is acting for themselves," she adds, "forming alliances based on what serves them." In Bessie, Rees paints blues singer Bessie Smith's turbulent life as a series of relationships that yield short-term emotional or profes- sional gains, but rarely provide lasting solace. Elaborating further on this theme, she says, "There's a certain comfort in companionship, but it's not to be totally trusted. It's maybe a sca olding for some- thing else. I think I share that worldview." ® (TOP & OPPOSITE BOTTOM) MILL CREEK ENTERTAINMENT; (OPPOSITE TOP) EVERETT T H E Z O N E : Foreshadowings of Mad Max: Beyond the Thunderdome (1985) surface in the lair of Overdog (Michael Ironside), as well as a pirate train with sails, opposite top, and the onslaught of underwater amazon women (lower left).