This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

I’m not completely sure what to think about The Stand. It was epic (6 hours is the longest time I’ve watched one single film – LotR trilogy doesn’t count), it was interesting and I wonder how I always manage to find films that somehow deal with religious stuff (don’t get me wrong, I love films like that even though I’m not the slightest religious) – it’s amazing, really. I didn’t know anything about this film beforehand, I haven’t read the book nor will I ever, Stephen King’s work doesn’t really interest me. Why did I buy this film then? It was on a whim, really, I can’t resist apocalypses apparently. ;)

Concentrating on the film itself, it was… good. Okay, actually. Nothing too spectacular, people were dying left and right and those who survived were divided into two camps. Well, I assume that’s how it’d go if something like that would happen for real. I didn’ care much for the patriotism the film portrayed and the way the two different camps were portrayed so contrary to each other, bad vs. good, darkness vs. light, satan vs. god. And so on.

I found Randall Flagg extremely hilarious though. His humour was awesome when he wasn’t doing his devilish stuff. Not scary at all, definitely not a leader-type, I wonder why all those people followed him… Not sure if that feeling came from the film or if Mr. King had created a rather weak character to begin with. (And really, I don’t even care)

The ending was rather, well, unoriginal. The good inherit the world, a new world in this case, and the will of god was delivered. How very nifty.

That caption in the beginning of this review is from T.S. Elliot, the whole film starts with this poem and now that I think about it, it bears a double-sided allusion to the film. “This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.” In the beginning, when the virus gets out, most of the mankind die of something that seems like a regular flu – humankind doesn’t go down with a bang but a silent whimper. At the end of the film, however, a new life is born, the first baby of the new world, and her whimper means a new life to the survivors, the righteous ones, and the end for Randall Flagg and his followers (they actually died a bit sooner but lets not get caught in minor details). Oh the pathos!