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The Cyclops submarine from Subnautica ♥
<i>Good morning Frances, all system online!</i> ♪♫
At the very end I was looking at the screen in half-disbelief - seriously?
My reaction had been caused primarily by how in-your-face the ending was, after a rather subtle story.
I guess that if they had added SOMETHING after the climax, it would have make the ending feel less silly.
Sure I know that human beings like you and me and our kids had been gassed and burned, and it was a horrific act. But if we're talking about a movie (not history itself), I would rather not feel like someone sounds a massive church bell in my ear at the end of an Edvard Grieg concert, while yelling AIN'T YE IMPRESSED NOW BY THE SADNESS AND THE IRONY!!
She was incredibly awkward and distracting indeed. Had very low chemistry with both men. Kept being praised as courageous by various people, the One who changes everything, but spent most of her time with a "why are you hurting me!" expression, plus two or three sudden bouts of anger or resourcefulness. So yes, either odd acting, or odd direction.
Narratively, her role was also dubious. Her "Messianic" moment in the end was severely undermined by
1. the fact that Stewart had ALWAYS been the one who demagnetized the elevator,
2. nothing particularly interesting happened afterwards - the universe didn't implode, the machine didn't explode, it didn't even seem that there was any change in its functionality. So were they now free of determinism? Did the machine become incapable of predicting the future? WHAT was the consequence of Lily doing something different?
3. no explanation about how she could contradict the prediction, and why anyone else couldn't.
4. the fact that the movie ends with her being alive in a simulation, so not much sacrifice on her behalf.
So as much as I loved the premise and mood, they really could have written and directed the main character much better.
I can see where you'd be coming from.
For me it was a different experience: it was like a big bag full of toys and chocolates and fortune cookies and stories on pages held together by a loosely tied ribbon and toy instruments and Lego pieces and postcards, and I couldn't have enough of digging into the bag to discover the next thing, and sometimes I'd pull out a handful of different things and I marvelled at sone of them. Strings of meaning came together and fell apart and came together again. A monkey brass band played in the background and everything felt like modelling clay in the hands of a 5 year old on a Sunday afternoon.
It was endlessly fascinating.
But I see how it could feel overwhelming.
I am sure I need to dig in again, it was impossible to take everyting in in one go.
And I've never seen such direction before. I did see good cinematography, good scripts, good dialogue, good soundtrack, good actors and good directors doing good stuff in the middle of all this. But never such direction. I need to watch that interview with Tati to understand a little how it was even possible to coordinate ALL THAT.
It's true that Akira has more (psychologically) colourful characters, but that is because the two movies do very different things.
Akira works a lot with human psychology, the consequences of bullying and ambition, fear and vulnerability.
GITS deconstructs, or reconstructs, what it means to be alive - not to be someone in particular. It even argues at some point that being "someone in particular" seems essential to life, but it's also limiting - and something to go beyond. It contains at least one character who IS colourful and has a vivid inner life - only for it to turn out to be a false memory, implanted by hacking.
GITS (this movie) is a lot more focused on one single character - Motoko Kusanagi, who is a cross between a film noir protagonist, a Buddhist nun and Robocop - none of whom are particularly known for having a colourful existence. She comes across indeed as very monotone - mostly because she spends her free time digging deep within the meaning of things, which is seldom an exuberant, kaleidoscopic state of mind.
As to it being hard to follow - ...I also found Akira hard to follow the first time I saw it. GITS does contain a lot of information in a very short time. I have just seen it for the 4th time, and I felt the need to pause it now and then to digest what I had found out (which was not possible to do unfortunately). But I made it to this 4th viewing because the 1st viewing was memorable to me, I still remember where I was and how I felt when it happened. So, it all goes back to - I just liked it. And other people - don't. But they should just know that it's a really good movie, just one that was not to their liking. And that's ok.
I was actually quite fascinated by how NON sexual her naked body was. She treats it like a tool, like an artificial thing, so she doesn't seem to need to cover it up anymore than you need to cover up your computer or your phone (unless it's for protection). And then you have that intro credits scene where you see not only her naked skin, but her muscles, and bones, and brain - her body is totally presented like a device.
Bato seems to have a different opinion, but that's another story.
Now, why only the female major (and the Puppet Master) was naked, and no male characters, on a meta-story level, I guess it's either because a female body is more interesting for the male movie makers and audience, or because female nakedness is more acceptable than male nakedness.
Or because your only choices were female or male main character, and you went with the former.
So maybe the thing is not entirely innocent, but because of what I wrote in the first paragraph, it was not a problem for me. I did not feel that the "lingering shots" were annoying fanservice - especially since the whole movie is prone to lingering shots of many things. I'm not sure it would have made a difference had we SEEN for instance the Section 6 operatives who stole the Puppet Master (I assume they also wore the type of skin-tight camouflage worn by the Major).
You have a main character who consists of 3 pounds of human flesh and maybe 350 pounds of machinery, and who questions her own humanity because of this. It's cool to show her naked (skin-tight suit or not), because it both humanizes AND de-humanizes her, which is pretty much what you want to do.
That's - awfully kind, thanks!
Many years later - and thanks so much for the link, YES that's the movie I would have wanted to see! A moving platform in a library?! Soooo much Name of the Rose...
(incidentally, reading the Wikipedia info in your link also made me realise that David Fincher had made all them cool videoclips before going into movies - and I actually remember all of them, I just hadn't connected the dots).
Now I need to hunt down Vincent Ward.
I suspect "dull" was the target.
Fassbender's character was not boiling under the cool surface, burning deep inside or anything else remotely spectacular. He was just a clerk through and through, a tiny insignificant agent of death, a barely registering cog in the grand scheme of things.
It was the least glorifying hired assassin movie I have ever seen, and I think its purpose was exactly this - to deconstruct this often romanticized profession.
Now, I can't say I LOVED the movie - intended or not intended, dull is still dull. But it was different from many other hired-assassin movies I have seen, and I think I'll refer to it when I bump into this theme again.
While it's true that he should have had a better plan to protect his lover, I don't think he went after everybody for revenge, but to "make sure it never happens again". He was just covering his tracks, and those guys had to go, because they knew his name and address.
Also, he didn't leave the Big Boss Client alive out of mercy or sloppiness, but because his death would have caused too much commotion - and he had left too many traces on his way to the Big Boss. His plan had always been to scare him sh!tless, not to kill him.
I believe everything he did after the botched job and subsequent attack on his home was just his calculated strategy to minimize the future risk for him and his lover.
Dude is not boiling under the cool surface. He's just a clerk through and through, a tiny insignificant agent of death, a barely registering cog in the grand scheme of things.
It's the least glorifying hired assassin movie I have ever seen.
And I'm not sure I loved it either, it was too - like you say - hard to root for the guy, due to little context and his very monotone personality. But it WAS special, and it's still something I might think of whenever I bump into an assassin movie again.
All that said, if I had been his friend, I WOULD have hit him on the head with something and dragged him off the ship. Let him cry over the horrific endlessness of the world, but at least be alive.
...Yeah yeah yeah it's magical realism and metaphysical reasons are as good as normal reasons. But I'd still have liked to see how he would have reacted waking up in his friend's room. With a big bruise on his head.
(I'm only half-serious - I understand why the movie had to finish that way. And I loved it. But fuck ship fixations too!)
That's interesting and similar to my mid-movie revelation that Johnny is actually a terrible person, and that this is actually a movie about a mad crazy controlling man masquerading as a normal person. That we were supposed to first believe Johnny to be the likeable but unlucky thief, the noir poor schmuck who ends up unwillingly in the middle of a story that's way larger than him. And that Gilda was nothing but a standard femme fatale.
Well, no. Turns out Johnny is very much an actor in his story, but a sick and manipulative one. And Gilda is in fact the poor - erm, Schmuckette, who just tried to have a normal life, safe behind a husband who could ensure her social and emotional - and, to a lesser extent (according to Ballin himself) financial wellbeing. Except she keeps bumping into mad individuals, more specifically madly jealous ones, making her blessing (infinite desirability) also her curse.
I saw the "Put the blame on Mame" song as the core of the story - pretty woman being blamed for all sins perpetrated by the males smitten by her. And her systematic rebellion against the social burkha people were trying to wrap around her.
Of course, the ending is a bit of a mess, and I confess I have simply not paid attention to the Nazi subplot. But I still believe that this movie is much more coherent than most critics say it is.
Inner demons. Cool. Thanks!!
...Also, I hope you're ok in Hong Kong. The political climate has changed quite a bit since 8 years ago when you wrote this message... And, although this is surely not the largest problem over there, I really hope the Cantonese movie industry will be able to keep its liveliness and lucidity...
Yeah they may be very well the Buddhist notion of thought, unwholsome thinking you should never identify with... Loved the idea that, if lipstick girl had done the deed, she would have appeared as her pink wig thought.
After rewatching the movie, I think the ghost-wife is the side of Bun who wants to do what is sensible and more socially acceptable. She's his intuition that he will die, and later that the frightened kid will kill him, that he shouldn't get mixed-up in police business again, that he shouldn't drive a motorcycle after a 7 years break and without licence and so on. She might be the very logic he's determined to ignore in favor of emotions.
But he can't ignore it completely, he's still aware that there is a more decent path he could follow, a more conformist and less devastating one. He's still tempted to "stop being himself", hence he becomes out of synch with himself and develops his own demon.
Like someone else says on this thread, he is one of the several carnival-like people and things you see in the movie. Distorted carnival (assuming most of them aren't already distorted...) was the main theme and mood in the movie. Odd people living in an odd part of the world, where up is often down, and white is often purple with yellow polka dots.
I found him unsettling and highly uncomfortable - quite the opposite of what the wife needed at the moment. I also found him awfully manic and weird, weird in a unique way, which is what they were probably going for. The whole movie is unbelievably manic, there's barely time to catch your breath, so you can't blame the poor Night Man for ruining the show.
Plus, like someone else says here, it does make sense for Uncle Joe to have a dimwitted night man at the hotel.
Right before being shot by Max, Vincent yells "I do this for a living". Then he discovers he is mortally wounded. There was no more "living" left for him, so no more reason to "do this". I think it was as simple as that.
Vincent was a nihilist - but also a very practical man, one who did not get emotionally involved in either killing, or letting live.
Now, I'd have to rewatch the movie in order to remember how Vincent felt about himself, or how the movie interprets his mental stance, or simply why he kept doing something for a living at all.
I remember him being something like an implacable link in the chain of destiny, a geometrical creature that simply connects the dots (in his case, bullets with heads), nothing more nothing less, but I saw the movie many years ago...
Nope.
Yup, same here. The second time I watched the movie, I winced when he first appeared on the screen, even though I had almost forgotten the plot of the film.
You do have a point here. However, I don't think that those critics had been bashing every artist. I'm pretty sure that, while they did destroy some of them, with needlessly cruel words, they also helped other actors get their careers and earn their bread and public respect. Their criteria may have been dubious, but ultimately Lionheart IS frustrated that he was not on the good side of the critics, unlike other actors, such as the dude who got the award...
The whole thing is a complicated messy business. Art does need criticism to survive, and the artists who make it are those not easily crushed by bad feedback. On the other hand they are also supposed to be sensitive creatures in order to produce good art.
My impression was that Lionheart was sensitive where he should have been gritty, and rough where finesse was requires (and now I'm waiting for Vincent Price to organize my elaborate murder, probably hinting to Sloth)(wait I'm not a famous critic; whew that was close).