Dies Irae: The Year 2006 in Movies
Roy Anker, Professor of English
Perspectives
March 2007

The new note in films, both last year and this, seems to be dystopic. In a marked shift of mood, filmmakers from the United States and abroad are following the premise that things broadly taken are grim and are going south, fast. Even Rocky, that emblem of triumph against all odds, in his latest incarnation ( Rocky Balboa ) finds his life shambling, his money gone, his wife dead, his son far distant, and his ox of a body failing. The only question for him now is how much pain of soul and body he can endure. The prospects are not so good, just a sort of crucifixion; indeed, there is more than a little similarity between the Rocky of 2006 and the Jesus of 2003 offered up by Mel Gibson in The Passion of the Christ . The perennial buoyant, self-sufficient jingoism of the American spirit seems to be flagging; the little engine that could is running down.

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