I’ve been a fan of Jeanne DuPrau’s Ember book series for several years now, having found them to be a great blend of post-apocalyptic dreariness and steampunk tomfoolery, and all in a young adult book. Tom Hanks’ Playtone production company must have thought so too, since they optioned The City of Ember and gave it to Gil Kenan (Monster House) to direct. I was able to see City of Ember at Fantastic Fest, and it’s sadly not the Ember adaptation I’d been hoping for.
The basic plot of Ember is set up in the opening moments of the film, which show how the City of Ember was created in an effort to keep the human race going after the surface of the Earth has been ravaged by … something, maybe a virus, war, an infestation of zombies, or who knows what. Ember is sealed with a time capsule that is given to the mayor, and it is set to open in 200 years. Over generations the box is handed from mayor to mayor, but it accidentally becomes lost and forgotten about.
Lina, played by Saoirse Ronan, receives her job on Assignment Day, along with the rest of her class. You choose a position by drawing a slip of paper out of a musty bag (it makes the Sorting Hat in Harry Potter look like your best friend in comparison), and this is the job you’ll have for the rest of your life. Lina draws up the dreaded Pipeworks job, which will keep her deep in the bowels of Ember. However, her classmate Doon (Harry Treadaway), who longs to do something useful and wants to try to get close to the Generator to see if he can fix it, has picked Messenger, and he eagerly wants to trade with Lina, which she is more than happy to do. In their respective jobs, Doon soon finds out that the city is barely running as it is, and that no one really has an idea what to do about the future. The generator, which powers the entire city of keeps the lights on, has been prone to blackouts that keep getting longer and longer, citizens have begun venturing out into the dark and encountering strange beasts, and Lina is passing strange messages from the Mayor (Bill Murray) to a storeroom worker named Looper (Mackenzie Crook, better known as Gareth from the British The Office).
That’s where our protagonist Poppy comes in. It’s readily apparent that Ember is doomed, but luckily Lina finds her younger sister Poppy eating shreds of paper out of a mysterious box…the very same box that was passed down from generation to generation, and had become lost. Lina pieces the scraps back together and finds instructions for leaving Ember. However, Lina has been causing problems for the mayor, who has also learned that she has the mysterious box. Cue the chase scene, with Doon, Lina, and Poppy barely making it out of Ember alive. As they ascend to the surface, they spy Ember barely visible far down below through a crack in the Earth, and drop a rock down with instructions tied to it. Thankfully, it doesn’t bash someone’s brains in.
The real disappointment of the film is that you never get a real feeling of what life is like in Ember, which is more fully explored in the books. For instance, the Library of Ember isn’t even mentioned in the film, and it plays a large part in the novel. The little details from the book that flesh out the world don’t exist, like the delight Poppy feels when she finds a new color of crayon that she’s never seen before. This was a temporary world that was meant to be lived in for only 200 years, and it’s nearly 50 years past that date when the events of the movie/book occur.
There are moments created for the film that try and capture this: an answering machine is run by Lina on a combination sewing machine/treadmill to lull Poppy to sleep, the Pipeworks is a mess of patches and half-rigged bypass valves. Tim Robbins plays Doon’s father, and he is constantly tinkering with machinery, and Martin Landau plays a narcoleptic pipeworker alongside Doon.
Throughout the climax, I was constantly reminded of The Goonies, when they were being chased by the Fratellis through the waterslide sequence. That felt real and terrifying as a kid, but the CGI water effects in Ember feel fake and transparent. There’s no real terror on the faces of the actors, despite the fact that a virtual tidal wave is hurtling them at breakneck speed past razor sharp rocks and stalagtites. There’s no imminent sense of danger for these kids, and that goes for the entire film, not just the ending.
The world of Ember is certainly realistic, and they’ve done a good job combining some of the digital effects with the massive set they created in Belfast. It’s just a pity that we don’t spend much time at all with the Generator, which is practically a living, breathing entity in the novel. It’s the lifeblood of the city, huge and mysterious, yet no one knows much about it, although no one is willing to admit that. The film would have benefited from having an antagonist aside from the comical antics of Murray as the mayor. His part, and Looper’s, seem like they were cast for comic effect, and as a result Lina is left without a real nemesis––or, at least, one that seems threatening.
At the Q&A for Ember at Fantastic Fest, Bill Murray was asked why he decided to work on the project, and he said he’d heard the words “Young Spielberg” thrown around when people were referring to director Gil Kenan. Let’s hope that Ember is his Duel or his Sugarland Express, and that his Jaws is still forthcoming. Young audience members will probably enjoy Ember for the visuals, but adults will find it lacking. For the true experience, give the first book (in what is now a series of four) a whirl.
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