Review of The Abyss (1989) by Enno J — 29 May 2009

This movie is just really good, entertaining and just tremendously enjoyable. Wait. And then there are the last 15 minutes. Why??! - What?! ...Really?

However, watching this, I think it is fascinating to keep in mind under which circumstances this movie was made. James Cameron is an absolute perfectionist ...and all people involved had to pay the price of getting involved. The actors had to hold their breath repeatedly for more than one minute (imagine, performing a long emotional scene in a helmet filled with water). Every scene took two to three times longer than anticipated, so while the crew and the director was setting up the next shot in a huge water tank the actors were waiting around, in their hang out areas, sometimes for days. Ed Harris took a vacation during shooting, although he was scheduled for some scenes in that week. He was simply assuming production would run late. The alternating extreme stress and then again waiting around for weeks must have been really demanding for everyone involved. They were getting so frustrated, that at one point some actors demolished the waiting room, smashing in walls, throwing the furniture out of the window. When the camera ran out of film in the middle of a very difficult and involved scene, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio got so upset that she stormed off the set. Ed Harris got so tense in the production of the last sequence, that he started crying. (He had to act in a suit filled with water... under water).

Sometimes the crew was working on underwater scenes for so long, that when they wrapped for the day, they had to hang out half way up in the middle of the water tank (suspended on ropes) for as long as two hours, to decompress. Way to finish a 14 hour day.

Keeping all this in mind, remembering the perfection in filmmaking, the details in water effects, light effects, fake underwater shots mixed with really complicated real size model watertank shots, the creative solutions they found to accomplish the underwater/scifi sequences (pre-super-sophisticated-CGI, this was done in '88/'89), the details and the hands-on trickery and the assertiveness and strength of Cameron's vision make this movie a "must-re-watch". The movie really has a lot of great scenes (The crane crashing down and pulling them into the deep and the aftermath that follows, the little sub getting filled up with water, Ed Harris' plunge into the depth...) that make it exciting and special. It being a PG-13 mainstream blockbuster. I think considering the fact that this was made in 1989 it still holds up very well.

But get ready to, yet again, roll your eyes in the end...