Watching old science fiction films can be interesting when their plot settings allow our present-day world to be compared with what the filmmakers imagined it to be many decades ago. Many such films, even the undisputed classics like 2001 and Blade Runner, got their predictions wrong. Others got predictions right, but that wasn’t enough to make them good films. One such example can be found in Death Watch, a 1980 Franco-West German film directed by Bertrand Tavernier.
The plot is based on The Unsleeping Eye, a novel by British writer David G. Compton. The plot, set in the first decades of the 21st century, takes place in a world where medical advances have made almost all diseases curable and the only ways for people to actually die are through violence, accidents, or old age. Instances of people affected by incurable deadly diseases are so rare that they spark enormous public interest, something television producer Vincent Ferriman (played by Harry Dean Stanton) shamelessly exploits through a popular reality television show called “Death Watch”. The latest star to be chosen is Katherine Mortenhoe (played by Romy Schneider), an editor at a publishing house specialising in trashy computer-written romance novels. She has been told that she is affected by a disease that will claim her life in two months and, after facing a media frenzy, reluctantly signs a contract with Ferriman’s network that is supposed to record and air her last days. She, however, ultimately wants to end her life on her own terms, and after snatching a cash advance from the network, escapes and begins hiding in rough city neighbourhoods and the countryside. On her journey, she meets a kind-hearted and charming drifter named Roddy (played by Harvey Keitel) who agrees to help her. She doesn’t know that Roddy actually works for the network and has a miniature camera surgically inserted in his eye, which allows him to record their interactions for the show.
The script by Tavernier and David Rayfield correctly predicted the sensationalist nature of today’s media, best described through Katherine’s words that “everything is of interest, but nothing matters”. These trends are best embodied in the concept of reality television, which feeds the sado-voyeuristic needs of the general audience, with concepts like privacy and human dignity being all but forgotten, except by people like the doomed heroine of this film. Death Watch also bothered to describe a world which has more or less abolished death, with those affected by the natural laws of biology being quietly taken away to nursing homes where they spend their remaining days and years drugged out of their minds. This vision of the future, which is in many ways strangely and disturbingly prophetic, was, unfortunately, realised by a director guided by the need to make a film as un-Hollywood as possible, or, in other words, made like a typical serious European art drama film.
On one hand, this allowed Tavernier to use a refreshingly low-tech approach to portraying the future, in many ways similar to Truffaut’s classic Fahrenheit 451. The world might have defeated disease, but it hasn’t changed that much, at least judging by the fact that there are still serious social problems, best shown in scenes shot in impoverished sections of Glasgow which look like they belong in films by politically charged British filmmakers with a grudge against Thatcher’s social policies. People still use fixed phones, computers use a text interface, there aren’t any tracking devices, and huge street billboards still represent the most effective form of advertisement. Yet, all these flaws could have been forgiven if the story was strong and the script remained focused.
This, unfortunately, isn’t the case. Tavernier seems more focused on extracting as much as possible from its diverse and highly respected cast. Some of them, especially Romy Schneider, one of the greatest stars of 1970s European cinema, do a great job, and her performance is especially moving in light of the real-life tragedies which corresponded with her character’s predicament. Harvey Keitel is also very intense in his performance, but, although his presence makes this film watchable, in the end he is wasted in a melodramatic finale where he plays second fiddle to Max von Sydow, a great actor whose character is introduced only to give a sort of philosophical depth to the film. In the end, it all descends into pretentiousness. Tavernier has directed the film relatively well, had a great cinematographer in Pierre William-Glenn, and the Scottish locations were put to good use. The extensive use of long shots made this film look different from Hollywood science fiction films, but it also created serious problems with pacing and made other flaws more visible, like the sometimes annoying soundtrack of Antoine Duhamel and confusing voice-over narration by Roddy’s wife (played by Thérèse Liotard and voiced by Julie Christie). Overlong and melodramatic, Death Watch represents a huge disappointment for fans of science fiction cinema.
RATING: 4/10 (++)
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