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The Day After Tomorrow

By Paul Byrnes
May 29, 2004

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Cold shoulders ... a scene from The Day After Tomorrow.

The Day After Tomorrow
Directed by Roland Emmerich
Rated M15+
Cinemas everywhere

The big effects, for once, don't overshadow the story - and what a chilling one it is, writes Paul Byrnes.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful,
But the fire is so delightful,
And since we've no place to go,
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

That pretty much summarises the story of The Day After Tomorrow, Roland Emmerich's latest disaster movie, although disaster doesn't seem a strong enough word. New York gets hit by a tidal wave, Scotland is snap frozen, Tokyo suffers hailstones the size of rockmelons, and Los Angeles is ripped apart by tornadoes. You wouldn't want to know what happens to Canada.

No less damage is done to science, but all in a worthy cause. The film is a pointed eco-disaster movie, warning us all, and especially the US Government, of the consequences of ignoring global climate change.

It's Hollywood does Kyoto, and one of the first scenes lays out the blame, when the US Vice-President asks Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid), a US paleoclimatologist, about who will pay the cost of the Kyoto accord (which the US and Australian governments have both refused to sign). "Our economy is every bit as fragile as the environment," says VP Becker (Kenneth Welsh). "Perhaps you should keep that in mind when you're making sensational claims."

Hall has just returned from the Larsen B iceshelf in Antarctica with alarming data. At a UN conference on climate, he posits a cooling trend in the Atlantic gulf stream that could have major consequences.

The movie has already given us a more dramatic illustration of the problem, when a huge chunk of the Larsen shelf breaks off beneath Jack's feet and floats away (this actually happened recently).

He's been drilling for ice cores with his teammates, the veteran Frank (Jay O. Sanders) and new boy Jason (Dash Mihok). As the ice opens beneath their feet, exposing a chasm 200 metres deep, Jason shows his quick grasp of the situation: "What's happening?"

Stupidity is a prerequisite of the disaster movie. They're always about human fallibility, at least for the first half. The ship hits the iceberg because the captain wants to beat the Atlantic crossing record, or the boat overturns because the owners skimped on safety. Greed, pride, hubris, sloth - the seven deadly sins enjoy such prominence in disaster movies because this is an Old Testament kind of genre. Humans commit an offence, because we are stupid or venal; nature retaliates, with flood, fire, ice, wind or all four.

God may never be mentioned, but He doesn't have to be. You know as you're watching that something is being punished.

That presupposes some form of higher law, even if it's called Nature. In the second half of a disaster movie, the humans rally by getting smarter, braver, better, adapting to the new environment. Nature 1, humans 1.

Independence Day, the film that launched Emmerich into the Hollywood stratosphere, follows these rules. The Day After Tomorrow follows the rules, too, but in an intriguing way. Where Independence Day was a disaster movie cloaked in the American flag, TDAT is about the decline and fall of American pride.

When the cold weather settles on the northern hemisphere, Americans flee south, to Mexico. One of the film's most striking images, and there are many, is the sight of Americans wading across the Rio Grande, trying to enter Mexico illegally.

The plot includes a separated family, a dash across country, an evacuation of the White House and regular pauses while more people and much property are destroyed in spectacular ways.

When the tidal wave hits New York, Jack Hall's son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) is marooned with two friends in the public library, where they have to burn books to stay alive.

In Houston, Jack puts on his Arctic gear and sets off to find his son. Jack's teammates won't let him go alone. Jack's wife Dr Lucy Hall (Sela Ward) frets at the Houston hospital where she's looking after kids with cancer.

In Scotland, Ian Holm heads a team in a weather lab collating data and shivering as the world turns icy.

The movie is great fun, in a chilly sort of way. For once in a big effects movie, the effects don't swamp the drama. They're huge and sometimes puzzling (the wave that engulfs the Statue of Liberty seems to come from Staten Island, rather than the open sea) but also sobering. Emmerich wants us to take this seriously, to think "this could happen".



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