Death Note | Little White Lies

Death Note

29 Aug 2017 / Released: 25 Aug 2017

Woman with brown hair and pensive expression, framed by green lighting and a dark background.
Woman with brown hair and pensive expression, framed by green lighting and a dark background.
3

Anticipation.

Looks like a bad idea but Adam Wingard has delivered before.

2

Enjoyment.

It doesn’t make sense.

1

In Retrospect.

A project that feels both overdetermined and underdeveloped.

Adam Wingard strips a clas­sic man­ga sto­ry of its cul­tur­al rel­e­vance in this regret­table adaptation.

The trail­ers for Adam Wingard’s live-action, US-set Death Note adap­ta­tion fur­ther fuelled pub­lic out­cry against Hol­ly­wood white­wash­ing. Just a few months pri­or, the cast­ing of Scar­lett Johans­son as Major in Rupert Sanders’ live-action Ghost in the Shell remake sparked sim­i­lar con­tro­ver­sy. Both projects have their roots in Japan­ese ani­mé, and as such it proved dif­fi­cult for audi­ences not to feel a lit­tle skep­ti­cal of these West­ern­ised versions.

But while apol­o­gists for Ghost in the Shell can point to the fact that Masamune Shirow’s source mate­r­i­al is set in a fic­tion­al, not specif­i­cal­ly Japan­ese world, the same can­not be said of Death Note. The orig­i­nal man­ga series is explic­it­ly Japan-set, fea­tures Japan­ese pro­tag­o­nists and draws heav­i­ly on local super­sti­tion and hor­ror tra­di­tions. Wingard’s film is set in Seat­tle and fea­tures cau­casian leads, but this is sim­ply one rea­son why Death Note is the most con­vinc­ing argu­ment against white­wash­ing in recent memory.

Ear­ly scenes in the film sug­gest sig­nif­i­cant efforts were made to turn this cul­tur­al­ly-spe­cif­ic text into some­thing with a more Amer­i­can’ sen­si­bil­i­ty in tone and style. In some ways this is a laud­able enter­prise. If film­mak­ers must adapt for­eign mate­r­i­al, they should either be com­plete­ly faith­ful to it – in this case by pos­si­bly mak­ing a film set in Japan with Japan­ese actors speak­ing Eng­lish – or make some­thing that is sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent and fresh enough to bring new and dif­fer­ent res­o­nances to the project, a case in point being Gore Verbinski’s Ring from 2002.

In the orig­i­nal Death Note’ man­ga, a mag­ic note­book is dis­cov­ered which kills any­one whose name is writ­ten onto its pages. It is dif­fi­cult to imag­ine any self-respect­ing hor­ror movie direc­tor or pro­duc­er not see­ing the rich and gory poten­tial of this Final Des­ti­na­tion-esque premise. Wingard’s film even adds anoth­er rule to the note­book, fur­ther facil­i­tat­ing an aes­thet­ic of elab­o­rate and graph­ic acci­dents. Here, the writer must also indi­cate how the per­son is going to die.

When moody teen mis­fit Light Turn­er (Nat Wolff) dis­cov­ers the book and has its method­ol­o­gy swift­ly explained to him by accom­pa­ny­ing mon­ster Ryuk (voiced with rel­ish by Willem Dafoe), he adds the word decap­i­ta­tion’ next to the name of a high school bul­ly. Sure enough, with­in moments a delight­ful­ly edit­ed slow-mo sequence depicts the elab­o­rate chain of events that leads to the death of the boy in a grue­some, extreme­ly unfor­tu­nate acci­dent’.

Dark silhouette of a grand piano, with a person seated at it, playing in a dimly lit, moody environment.

These estab­lish­ing scenes are effec­tive, with a vio­lent ener­gy and humour. It is only when we start fol­low­ing the detec­tive work of the mys­te­ri­ous L (a skit­tish Lakei­th Stan­field) in a par­al­lel sto­ry­line that things begin to fall apart.

The exis­tence of a dead­ly book and a creepy mon­ster to guard makes sense in a Japan­ese con­text. Ryuk is in fact a Shiniga­mi, a god that leads humans to their death and an endur­ing fig­ure of Japan­ese cul­ture and reli­gion. Trans­port­ed to Seat­tle and divorced of his cul­tur­al rel­e­vance, Ryuk is reduced to a weird look­ing mon­ster that isn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly scary. Nei­ther Light nor the film itself can bring them­selves to feel any­thing much more than awk­ward­ness and even mild embar­rass­ment towards this super­nat­ur­al being, and what start­ed as atmos­pher­ic quick­ly descends into tedious camp.

The real prob­lem is that Wingard’s film nev­er tru­ly attempts to recon­tex­tu­alise this Japan­ese mon­ster, and so its com­mit­ment to slav­ish­ly fol­low­ing the beats of the orig­i­nal sto­ry proves rather lead­en and undy­nam­ic, despite all the visu­al flour­ish­es and noisy musi­cal cues. Light decides to use this note­book for good,’ killing hun­dreds of ser­i­al killers, ter­ror­ists and mur­der­ers world­wide and thus jus­ti­fy­ing his blood­lust. A more thought­ful film might have linked this idea to America’s recent inter­ven­tions in for­eign coun­tries. Instead, the emer­gence of the con­cept seems ran­dom and inor­gan­ic, its con­se­quences under­de­vel­oped con­sid­er­ing the new cul­tur­al context.

The same sur­face-lev­el treat­ment goes for Light’s arro­gance in his new­found role as a god-like fig­ure, and in his rela­tion­ship with Mia (Mar­garet Qual­ley), a cheer­leader fas­ci­nat­ed by the note­book. Both are explored to a degree, but nev­er sat­is­fy­ing­ly. The film sim­ply lurch­es from scene to scene, nev­er find­ing a con­sis­tent tone or fleshed out themes. The detec­tive plot, mean­while, stut­ters in part because Stanfield’s wild per­for­mance seems to belong in an entire­ly dif­fer­ent movie.

Though Death Note is great to look at, the film’s awk­ward rela­tion­ship to the source mate­r­i­al cou­pled with its crude attempts to cram vast swathes of plot into a sub-two hour run­time ulti­mate­ly under­mines the good work that went into its creation.

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