Film reviews

In Languedoc, 1342, an exhausted and grim-faced band of knights and assorted comrades – the Warriors of Light – are escorting a witch to face her trial. The Light must protect humanity from being tortured and killed by those who are evil, and this witch, like all of her kind and like sorcerers and ghouls and such creatures, takes only delight in torturing the innocent. But the way of the Light is blocked by a sudden force – the Warriors of Darkness, fresh, powerful and hideous.

The mood of this film is set immediately, a wonderfully baroque and gothic look that adds an almost unexpected elegance to the sense of claustrophobic grimness that pervades the world of Night Watch. The battle on the bridge is treated symphonically, with stunning visuals including a very powerful view from above. The increasing grimness on the face of the Light Force’s leader, Geser, is like a rock in a storm-tossed sea of bloody fighting, and the battle is stopped – stopped, because were it to continue, he can see that all would perish. The forces are too evenly matched.

And so there came about an Armistice, that neither good nor evil will be made without agreement. There would be a Day Watch to watch over the Forces of Light, and a Night Watch to watch over the Forces of Darkness. Yet in a thousand years, so a prophecy goes, a Great Other would join the Darkness, and at that time, the world would be plunged into Darkness…

Something led to this epic battle, something that is brought out in the film during a secondary plotline. A young beautiful woman brings destruction and death wherever she goes, and the Night Watch realise instantly that she is cursed. The story in the old books speaks of a similar virgin in the 1300s, who was cursed in the same way, and whose passing by somehow brought forth the Darkness in that terrible battle.

The film is a rich feast of intricate plotlines. The main character, Anton, is first seen in Moscow, 1992, visiting a witch who promises that her spells can impel his wife (who left him 2 days before) to return to him. The wife, says the witch, is pregnant – with a child that is not his. She can expel the foetus if Anton promises to take the guilt upon himself. The clapping of her hands will complete the spell, but she is arrested by the Night Watch before she can complete the act.

From this one event come forth streams of complex aspects to a very powerful story. Anton is found to be an Other (that is, one who is not merely human, but who has superhuman powers, who can see in the Gloom where no human can, and who can choose between Light and Darkness) and becomes a recruit for the Light (who travel from mission to mission in a substantial truck with the logo Emergency Service – City Light Company). Twelve years later, he takes on fieldwork, and like all Warriors of Light who go hunting for the Darkness, he drinks blood before a mission so that he can feel what they feel, be sensitive to their whereabouts. “He’s a Light One; they drink blood under one circumstance only. When they hunt our like”, says one of the Dark.

A young boy being used as Live Bait to lure licensed vampires working illegally is snatched from the fangs of a young vampiress just as she is about to have her first feeding; Anton is viciously wounded in a fight with the vampire who initiated the girl; the beautiful but cursed Svetlana continues to bring destruction wherever she goes, and is ignorant of the terrifying funnel her curse has opened up; a plane is in deadly danger; a smooth-talking Warrior of the Light is dragged away from watching the ballet with his soon-to-be-wife for one last job; and the vampiress, impelled by her ever-growing hunger and her desperation to be human again, finds the boy who escaped her, using him as bait to get the man who killed her boyfriend.

Yet complex as all of this seems, it works seamlessly and beautifully. Spoiler Anton discovers that the boy is his son – his son, not the son of the lover who seduced his wife from him. And in the attempt twelve years ago to have the foetus killed before it was born lies the seed of a monstrous plot. The events that come together at the end of the film were planned with deadly precision by the ominous figure who heads the Forces of Darkness – Zawulon. Spoiler The boy Egor looks with terrifying innocence at the face of his father. “You tried to kill me,” he says… and he is, of course, the Great Other. As the film draws to its screaming conclusion, Anton realises what he has done. It was all a set-up from the start, designed by Zawulon to draw the boy to the Darkness. Now the world lies on the brink of an all-consuming darkness indeed.

The film is replete with powerful and evocative images – the flies slowing down in the Gloom, the Russian doll scuttling about like a spider, the apartment building pointing upwards like an ominous finger into a dark sky filled with black crows, the vampires who are seen only IN the mirror, the transformation of Olga from owl to woman, the quite fantastical battle scenes… A deep moral ambiguity is presented; where is the goodness of the Light when it licences the Darkness to do its evil, and then goes hunting? Where is the goodness of the Light in using humans as Live Bait? “He loved me. And you gave me to him like food”, accuses the young vampiress. Yet the Light speaks of the Darkness in terms not easily forgotten, for the Darkness feeds on that which is dark in order to torture and kill. A sombre message is highlighted: “Easier to kill the Light in oneself than to scatter the Darkness.”

This film is based upon a series of novels by Sergei Lukyanenko, and has already been followed by the second film in the series, Day Watch. The third and final film will be Dusk Watch, and the series promises to be outstanding.

Certainly, Night Watch is an unforgettable journey into a very powerful and original world, strongly character-driven and wonderfully acted. Cinematography is outstanding, and the directing could not be bettered. Very highly recommended.