susie gave me a copy of the onyx project at drinking liberally last week. the only string was that i promised i would write a review of it.
the onxy project is a DVD-ROM movie. it's designed to be an interactive movie, a cross between a film and a videogame. or maybe more like those old choose your own adventure novels. so what am i reviewing exactly? "the onyx project" as a cinematic work, or the concept of an interactive movie?
to be honest, i have a problem with the concept of an interactive movie. what i like about film is the experience of someone else's vision--giving myself over to someone else's view of the world for a little while to see where it takes me. i don't particularly want to stand in the film editor, director, or screenwriter's shoes. maybe i'm just too lazy. i don't mind doing the mental work figuring out what a film is trying to say. but i don't want to have to work on putting the film together. i like having that done for me.
so i was glad to discover that "the onyx project" doesn't work that well as an interactive movie. for one thing, the plot is fixed no matter what you choose. all you're doing is choosing the order that scenes are revealed to you. you can't effect the content of the storyline, you just have some control over what you see as you're trying to piece it together.
but even that limited choice is a bit problematic. you choose the scenes by clicking on a variety of still images. the still images somehow relate to the scene you choose. but in looking at the images themselves, it's not always that clear what you are choosing. a picture of a desert terrain or some afghan's face can mean almost anything. unless you've already seen the film, your choices would have to be almost random.
the DVD-ROM authors have solved this problem by providing a series of "threads." threads are a pre-determined menu of scenes shown in order to make a coherent point that is important to the plot. there are 26 threads in all (i think. it is possible that there are more that i never found) and they are numbered T-1 to T-26. when you finish viewing a thread, the film gives you a choice of 1-2 other threads to watch next. after playing with the controls a little, and watching a bunch of random scenes, i decided to stick with the threads and watched each one, T-1 to T-26 in order. that way i got to see everything in an order that was designed to make sense. it worked pretty well. i definitely got the point of the filmmaker, but that begs the question of why we need the interactive interface at all.
as for the content of the film, i thought it was interesting but not great. the entire movie is david strathairn delivering a monologue into the camera. which makes it seem less interesting than it is. strathairn plays colonel robert henderson, an american military commander who orders a covert military operation in afghanistan in october 2004 to capture ayman al-zawahiri. the mission goes awry and henderson's rambling tale meanders from the meaning of 9/11, to the history and culture of afghanistan, the breakup of his marriage, the role of the media in american society, the biographies of the soldiers in his doomed assault team, and presidential politics in the fall of 2004.
henderson's monologue was pretty interesting. it didn't really bother me that it was just a monologue. it reminded me a little of secret honor, a film that featured richard nixon ranting for and hour and a half about watergate. "the onxy project" also had a bit of a political bite. it ultimately turning into a morality tale about taking responsibility for your mistakes and disallusionment with the bush presidency.
col. henderson talks about reading and often quotes the writings of bloggers. it actually happens quite a lot. among those mentioned are jonah goldberg, juan cole, andrew sullivan, josh marshall, and glenn reynolds. (but no upyernoz. snubbed again!) you don't have to be a blog-reader to follow "the onyx project" but with all the references to real places, political figures, and commentary written in the fall of 2004, the film did a pretty good job at making colonel henderson's testimony seem more real.
the biggest problem with the film was the editing. then again, giving its interactive features, i guess you could call that my own fault. but it took a really long time to watch all the scenes. i know i could have skipped some, but i never knew what was skip-able until i saw the scene. i was always afraid of missing something critical, so i tried not to skip any. in retrospect i could name some scenes that could have been cut. but i didn't know to skip them until i had already seen them.
overall, i think it was worth watching. it wasn't the best film ever, but it kept my attention and built a plausible story about both politics and a military mission that goes south. i think just it would have worked better as just a regular movie and didn't bother trying to be interactive.
