Greenland: a meditation on survival
This post contains spoilers for Greenland (2020), Godzilla (2014), Deep Impact (1998), Dunkirk (2017), Chernobyl (2019), War of the Worlds (2005), Independence Day (1996), Armageddon (1998), and World War Z (2013).
Watching Greenland is a visceral experience, a deliberate balancing act of terror, desperation, and willing the protagonists to their final destination. It is less about rocks slamming into earth, and all the better for it. It is more a meditation on that will to survive, the need to complete the task than setting up gratuitous special effect shots. Indeed, while there is plenty of CGI, what there is flows around the narrative without loosing sight of the characters or plot. It is not a stretch to say that is more a survival story in the same vein as War of the Worlds and Dunkirk than it is disaster porn. Which makes it much more compelling and human.
And it is this that makes Greenland, in my opinion, a continuation of the 2010s disaster movie thread of placing the human experience at the centre, rather than the special effects. The 2014 version of Godzilla worked because you did not get to see the titular monster until the last act of the film, though his impact was felt throughout. It was the human characters who grounded Godzilla, made him feel like a force of nature untameable by human technology that allowed the final act to have gravitas. The same goes for Dunkirk, which treated the Germans as a looming threat off screen, only bringing them in once the final catharsis was over for the British troops and audience.
Turn back the clos to the last 90’s, and both Deep Impact and Independence Day use a similar approach by grounding the looming threat in the human, though in their case both disasters were essentially freighted in the opening five minutes to be explored as the narrative progressed. The two most significant differences between them and other disaster films from this period and the current 2010s versions are 1) a need to show the disaster front and centre and 2) showing humanity grappling with and overcoming the disaster, most literally in Independence Day, Deep Impact and Armageddon with nuclear weapons.
It is almost as if survival has become the essential plot point, rather than a triumph over the titan of destruction. Chernobyl does this extremely well, showing that it is the State who is the real disaster, not just the failed reactor. How does one battle against the very nature of one’s country? Greenland asks a similar question as the characters move through a shifting society that breaks down around them, forcing actions that days before would have been anathema. War of the Worlds tackles this head on in its first two acts, critically asking the audience to empathise with the everyman on his journey to keep his family together. Indeed, one of Greenland’s strengths is that it takes the everyman and transmutes it into an every family, with the mother’s narrative arc fleshed out in her own exploration of the disintegrating society.
This grounding of the every person, traditionally white, male, middle class, educated, and middle aged dates back to H G Well’s original War of the Worlds novel, and while Greenland certainly does not break with this particular trope for most of its narrative arc, it does at least attempt to provide wider cultural context than simply a white saviour narrative. Hollywood disasters are predominantly anchored in this intersection of male heroism, and while Independence Day and Godzilla both have significant persons of colour, the everyman is still white. Structurally this opens up a whole host of questions about where survival narratives could go next, though Greenland does hint that producers are at least willing to include an every woman alongside her white husband. Yes, Chernobyl and Deep Impact both had women in central roles, but the critique of survival as a masculine white pursuit is one that still needs addressing in American cinema and television.
Another narrative aspect that has crept into 2010s disaster movies compared to those of earlier periods is the road movie. Greenland has as much in common with Easy Rider and Thelma and Louise as it does with Independence Day. The Americana on display with Greenland’s aesthetic is there to be taken down piece-by-piece, deconstructed and recontextualised by falling rocks. Dunkirk, while static for one narrative strand, meditates on the notion of travel, and uses the urge to escape as the catharsis upon its resolution ends. World War Z also deconstructs this notion of Americana, the loss of culture as much a destruction as the lives lost to the plague. While Independence Day famously rallied audiences around the flag, Chernobyl and Dunkirk pointedly demolish this, and Greenland takes this a step further and highlights that in the end the everyman survives for us all, not just Uncle Sam.
One final element that sets Greenland apart from the other films mentioned is the conspicuous absence of a military background for the central character or a starring role for the US military. Yes, there are key scenes in act one which centre on an airbase, but the plot is always centred on the family’s interactions with the military, rather than the camera centring on any military character. This makes these scenes tense and relatable, adding drama and uncertainty, though there is a degree of forced drama that takes the rest of the film to resolve.
And this is where Greenland’s success lies. In eschewing overt nationalism and patriotic boundaries, it turns calamity into a human experience. War of the Worlds everyman was juxtaposed with his son and the military, Chernobyl’s army of every men at once humanised and yet due to their number the audience almost becomes numb to anything other than the Geiger counter’s clicks. Greenland, intersecting falling debris, ratcheting desperation, and harrowing loss, orientates itself into the ordinary within the extraordinary. Our eyes are through those of privilege, yet that privilege is never enough just to order up a private jet or wave away the trauma with a check book.
Greenland feels like a continuation of the 2010s trend, maturing it to include a strong female narrative arc, though conspicuously killing off the one significant black character. The every man is more grounded, buffeted by circumstances without military contacts or inside information. It infuses Dunkirk’s sense of terror, the periphery characters adding texture and tension without dragging the narrative down. Greenland’s epic disaster happens in glimpses, its monster never slain, simply survived. Catharsis comes in the family unit, not explosions and charging off to slay the dragon. And it is all the better for it.
