Don Siegel’s
Invasion of the Body Snatchers provides
one of cinema’s great, ever-renewing metaphors, seeming as topically resonant
in Trump’s America as it did in Eisenhower’s, although for different, almost
inverted reasons. Memories of how Trump’s initial joke candidacy rapidly became
a monolithic red state takeover line up nicely against the ease of the alien
takeover here, a brief spate of panic rapidly replaced by mass compliance, with just a few dwindling holdouts (seen
nowadays, the “pods from space” origin of the threat seems like the least
important aspect of the myth). You might reflect how Trump’s humourlessness and
lack of reflection, his lack of pleasure in art or conviviality, appear to be
foretold in the emotionless nature of the pod people: there’s no suggestion
that they plan to remake Earth in the image of their home planet, or to craft
new institutions or structures - they seemingly intend just to keep going as they are, except in
joylessly hollowed-out fashion (a key sign of trouble is the drop-off in
business at the local restaurant). It need hardly be underlined that the
afflicted town is about as aspirationally white-bread as they come, with not a
hint of problematic diversity. Anyway, whether or not you choose to apply it
that way, it’s a great, propulsive eighty minutes (you might certainly wish it
were longer), rapidly picking up speed and panic, with Kevin McCarthy’s doctor
a memorably fraught protagonist; Siegel nails both the intimate chills, such as
the first discovery of an evolving pod person, and the broader spectacle of
the climactic pursuit. If the doctor’s pre-invasion pursuit of an old flame who's arrived back in
town seems to border on cheerful sexual harassment, well, maybe then that’s one
respect at least in which the body snatchers render things a little less
Trumpian than they already were.
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