Review of City of Ember (2008) by Chads. — 11 Oct 2008

"Cities need a powersource/More than the elements provide/Since we built the generator/Power's been supplied." How apropos than an underground band should contribute lyrics(back in 1988) that explicates the allegorical religiosity of this underground city's belief system.

Jeff Davis of the Los Angeles-based band The Balancing Act(former labelmates with R.E.M. when both bands were signed to the defunct I.R.S. imprint), wrote a song called "Generator"(from their swansong album "Curtains"), which expresses the predominant opinion of the townsfolk that the generator is a mechanical deity made by man.

Every year, Mayor Cole(Bill Murray) holds a ceremony so the masses can pay tribute to the Ember City founders, in the form of ritualized singing that's unmistakably gospel, sans the Judeo-Christian content.

To us, their celebration looks like something out of a pagan cult, but since this society is disconnected from the civilized world that preceeded the catastrophic event which sent the whole of humanity underground, this collective exaltation of a machine, a god machine(or what is commonly called, deus ex machina), is the closest approximation to organized religion they have.

"City of Ember", unfortunately, soft-pedals its most intriguing story element. Lina Mayfleet(Saoirse Ronan) won't be participating this year in the festivities, not since she found the metal box, an artifact, akin to Pandora's box(or maybe The Holy Grail), which would agitate the veracity singers, if only they knew what the "goonies" were up to.

"City of Ember" neglects to dramatize this ideological conflict in favor of an action-filled final act that depressingly regurgitates Spielbergian tropes from the mid-to-late eighties. Too bad.

In an earlier scene, before Lina even discovers the metal box, she poses a real threat to the hegemonic values of the ruling class in her artwork, when the pint-sized heretic envisions the physical world as we know it, by guessing the sky, and guessing it's blue.

How does she know this? If "City of Ember" made much ado about its deux ex machina, it could've intrigued like Tarsem's mind-blowing video for R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion".