Babblings of The Host and Hanna

The Host (2013)

My wife and I were on our way home from seeing The Host (2013), and I mentioned Hanna (2011) because we were getting HBO & Cinemax this week free on DirecTv. I happened to think and said to her that I thought the star of The Host looked awfully similar to the blond child highly-trained assassin in Hanna. And whatta ya know, it is the same actress, Saoirse Ronan. Beautiful girl, Saoirse, and she has a cinematic, highly photogenic beauty that, when magnified, is even more captivating on the theatrical screen. Funnily enough, we got home, I sat down and sure enough, Hanna is on Cinemax.

The Host was exactly as I suspected it would be while Hanna wasn’t. Not sure why both films are being mentioned here, besides Ronan’s connection, but just the same, Hanna was so European, and so atypical of those “trained assassins with an objective”, as if directed by Tom Tykwer. I always felt Hanna had designs not to be boxed into such limited space as “just another variation of Jason Bourne”, looking to have its own identity outside the confines so we see her involved with a Bohemian family, traveling about, bonding with the highly glamorous daughter, finding a fascination with the deeply philosophical, and personable mother (who graduated from Cambridge and doesn’t wear make-up because she wants to be open completely without interference from plastic surgery), and open and opinionated woman.  There’s a definite energy in the fighting and violence, the way the camera captures human motion and onscreen combat. What I found interesting about Hanna was how it doesn’t ever seem to locate itself to a location by name. It could be Morocco or Berlin, maybe even Arizona, but the film isn’t so concerned about putting a title to any specific place. I like this. Cate Blanchett and her “droogs” (they are very much like a gang right out of A Clockwork Orange, especially the blonde, often-whistling Tom Hollander, who has a very Alex DeLarge moment with a steel pipe, his white garb smeared with blood) eliminate anyone who has close contact with Hanna; I think it is even obvious that the family (with Jason Flemyng and Olivia Williams) are also victims just for spending time with Hanna. I guess they are considered collateral damage. Even more impressive is the rundown amusement park, owned by a peculiar eccentric named Mr. Grimm (with a wolf’s face tunnel that is an awesome image brought to screen; put to particularly good use when Blanchett appears from the darkness out of its mouth) that closes the film. I enjoyed the fight where Soairse gets the best of her “father”, played by Bana, but the ending sequence doesn’t quite match the first hour or so that preceded it. Bana takes care of Blanchett’s posse, but isn’t able to finish the job of Cate because she’s behind him with a gun. It wouldn’t be right, though, for Bana to end her; that’s Soairse’s job.

As much as I would love to specifically discuss Hanna, this was about a blog entry designated for The Host. The Host is targeting the Twilight demographic in every obvious way. Aliens in the form of a brightly lit species that come to Earth in oval metallic “eggs” are surgically “implanted” into a slit in behind the necks of human beings. Humans are in essence host organisms for these aliens to “bond”. Humans don’t completely fold their tent and allow the species to have total control…or at least not the stronger humans who are too stubborn to just “go into the other room”. Saoirse is Melanie, a member of the human resistance, who fight to keep from our race being totally overcome by aliens. When “the wanderer”, an alien later named by the very welcome presence of William Hurt (who is an absolute pro that brings so much to the film in quality name value) as Uncle Jebediah, Wanda (short for Wanderer, get it?). The wanderer might be a female species, and within the host body of the resistant will of Melanie, she will help her host body find Melanie’s brother, Jamie (Chandler Canterbury), and lover, Jared (Max Irons). Diane Krueger is a “seeker”, part of a group who set out to find the humans yet turned into hosts. She is motivated to stop the resistance, and later it is determined because she herself has a host willing to fight her through the mind’s will to survive despite the alien’s control. While Melanie continues to torment Wanda (her voice is used to tell us what she is saying to Wanda in the mind), and the two form an eventual friendship within the same human host body. Melanie is forever devoted to Jared, but Wanda falls in love with Ian (Jake Abel), one of the human survivors holed up with Jeb’s human resistance group in the cavernous regions located in the desert (I read that New Mexico, along with Louisiana, was an extensive location filmed). My favorite part of the film was New Mexico wide screen, so eye-popping and awe-inspiring. And the filmmakers know how beautiful and full of awe this location is because we get plenty of large scale compositions of it. Jeb even has a certain place in one of the caverns that, through mirrors built at its top, is set up to harvest wheat. The whole green movement loud and clear even here. Well, the film is built around—yep, couldn’t you guess?—a love triangle (of sorts, of course, perhaps this should be labeled a quadrangle) develops where Wanda desires Ian, whereas Melanie longs for Jared. So you have these dual minds within one host body, one desiring Ian, the other desiring Jared. I couldn’t have cared less for any of that, but that is what aims for the demographic, so The Host will probably score with those with such heart for romance and love’s conquer of all bullshit. Like Beautiful Creatures before it just released recently, The Host is designed in the hopes of conquering that hotbed of profit that is adult women and teen girls. I have no problem with this as they deserve their types of entertainment just like the horror fan that I am and my kindred do. My wife turned 39 and wanted to see The Host. I love her and so that is where we went. I got the grandiose vistas of New Mexico, she got the love story. It all ends nice and tidy with a ribbon/bow. I came home and watched Hanna again. All is well with the world. By the way, did anyone else think that Blanchett’s CIA agent had a look similar to Clarice Starling of Silence of the Lambs? That said, I thought she was hot, besides the fact that she was an unemotional, "tie up the loose ends" killer agent.