"To me, to kill is not the worst thing you can imagine. There is more."
Barney (Jeff Bridges)
I have never seen the original version of "The Vanishing" that premiered in 1988. I have only seen the remake that was released on this day five years later — and when I saw it, I had no idea it was a remake.
I have heard the remake was thoroughly inferior to the original — which doesn't surprise me since I have yet to see a remake of any movie that I thought was an improvement on the original.
(Speaking of the original, film critic Roger Ebert wrote that it was "one of the most intelligent thrillers I've seen.")
Nothing that I have read suggests that the '93 remake of "The Vanishing" was an exception to that rule — but since I had nothing to compare, I thought it was OK. Not the best thriller I have ever seen but certainly not the worst.
It isn't uncommon for movies to be remade, of course, but "The Vanishing" was an odd exception to the rule. Normally, a remake is done by a different director, but the same man — George Sluizer — directed both.
Weird, huh?
Apparently, the primary sticking point between the two is that the original, which was primarily shown in Europe, was uncompromising in its conclusion whereas the remake seems to have been watered down to suit American audiences' preference for happy endings.
I still haven't seen the original, although I would like to, but I have read comparisons of the movies, and I have concluded that, while I liked the acting in the version I saw, I almost certainly would prefer the original movie. That isn't surprising, either, given that the remake starred Jeff Bridges and Kiefer Sutherland, two actors whose work I admire. It co–starred Sandra Bullock and Nancy Travis. To be candid, I have long believed that Bullock is overrated, but I do like Travis' work.
Bridges played Barney, a chemistry teacher who was obsessed with the concept of free will. He was endlessly plotting to abduct and kill someone, and he conducted numerous trial runs, which always failed.
More than anything it was an intellectual pursuit, a kind of mind game. His character was driven by a memory from his childhood — when he had leaped from a balcony and injured himself. At the time, he knew that most people do not do certain things because that is how they have been conditioned, but he reasoned that there was nothing more than that to keep them from doing those things.
In other words, it was still a matter of free will, even if choosing to do something was sure to lead to an unpleasant outcome like injury or death.
The act of killing another human being, therefore, was also a matter of free will.
Then one day an opportunity just fell into his lap. Jeff (Sutherland) and Diane (Bullock), a young couple on vacation, stopped at an all–purpose roadside convenience store/gas station. Diane went in to get some cold drinks — and was never seen again.
The audience knew what had happened, of course, but Sutherland did not, and that began his personal quest to find out. It grew into an obsession that Bridges' character would one day use against him.
The audience knew that Bridges had seen the "missing" posters that Sutherland's character kept putting up around town and even expressed his admiration for Sutherland's persistence.
Jeff balked at that.
"You don't care if she is alive or dead anymore," Barney asserted.
"Yes, I do," Jeff insisted.
"No, you don't," Barney replied. "You're just scared that without the search you won't know who you are. Who is Jeff Harriman if he's not the guy looking for Diane? Can you really walk away from finally knowing the answer?"
After serious deliberation, Sutherland decided he had to know what had happened — which proved the truth of what Bridges' character had told him. "Your obsession is my weapon."
I'll leave it at that — except to note a few other things.
Travis' role was an interesting one — and a big part of the reason why I would like to see the original version of the movie. Travis played Sutherland's new girlfriend.
"In the earlier film, he takes a new girlfriend, who finally leaves him because she cannot compete with the memory of the vanished woman," Ebert wrote. "In this version, his new girlfriend sticks around because she'll be needed for the ending."
Ebert's position was that the first movie made sense because it remained true to its original premise however ugly it became. The compromised conclusion made a lot of changes necessary in the remake that veered from that premise, resulting in a movie that was, in Ebert's eyes, "laughable, stupid and crude."
"The first movie was existential in its merciless unfolding," Ebert wrote. "This one turns into a slasher movie with a cheap joke at the end."
Now I am willing to concede — without even having seen both movies — that the first version was probably superior to the remake. That isn't much of a stretch for me, really. If you read back over this blog, you will find many times when I have spoken disparagingly of remakes, and I am sure this remake is no exception — although to make such a judgment it really is necessary to see both movies, isn't it?
No, I do not doubt that the original was better — and I hope to see the original someday — but I really don't see how the role of the villain could be played better than it was by Jeff Bridges, who sent a series of chills down my spine simply because he was so clinical in his approach to taking another life. It was the same to him as an experiment in one of his chemistry classes.
Bridges was very effective, even managing to be sympathetic at first. For awhile I kind of liked the guy — even though I knew that, ultimately, he would be the bad guy, which he was.
A creepier villain has seldom been seen in the movies.
