Train of Consequences

 

Despite their surface differences, Circle and Train to Busan basically ask the same question: What happens when you put a set of strangers in a dangerous situation and ask them to choose between selfishness and thinking beyond themselves?

They even have similar endgames. Both of them come down to a lone male balancing his needs against that of a child and a pregnant woman.

In spite of those similarities, it feels as though they approach the question with very different attitudes.

Circle, to me, feels almost agnostic in its approach. It shows you what the characters choose, but never passes judgement. Nor, does it seem to have a conclusive answer. Is selfishness better than altruism? Maybe. It seems to say, perhaps there's even no way to be sure.

Train to Busan, on the other hand, takes a stand. Not only does it say that selflessness is better than selfishness, it says that selfish people are actually in the minority, and that most people, most of the time, will do their best to help one another. It also touches on the possibility of learning to care and that change is possible.

So are these movies arguing? Is one of them right and the other wrong? Is one work true and good and the other amoral? Conversely, is one of them honest and truthful and the other mawkishly sentimental?

To me. they don't necessarily contradict each other.Which brings me to the biggest difference between the moral problem set up in Circle and the one in Train to Busan.

And that difference comes down to context and consequences.

In Train to Busan, both the viewer and the characters have a lot more information and can see the problem from a wider lens. They have a much better sense of context.

Furthermore, their decisions are subject to natural consequences. The choices they make play out to their inevitable conclusion.

Circle, however, is an unknown and artificial situation. Because it is unknown, neither the viewers, nor the characters have any sense of context. And because it is artificial, the natural sequence of cause-and-effect is replaced the the rules of the game.

I make different decisions in a game of Call of Duty or Candyland or a laboratory psych experiment because I am constrained by context. I don't manage my finances like I do in Monopoly, and I don't drive a vehicle like I do in Grand Theft Auto because I understand natural consequences.

That said, there are situations in real life when both context and potential consequences are unclear or ambiguous. Or there are times we have to weigh the known against the unknown. We are neither as knowledgeable as the passengers on the Train to Busan or as ignorant as the strangers standing in Circle. In such cases, neither movie can tell us what to do.

We can only take the best parts from each, and do the best we can.

Warrior: The Final Chapter (FINALLY!)

 Fight scenes are hard to do well, and  the fight scenes in Warrior are awesome.

Four rounds of tournament fighting could easily get tedious, but the pace is perfect. Not only that, We always know what’s going on, which is my biggest problem with the fast-paced shaky cam fighting we see in the Bourne Identity. 

Moreover, we see the different personalities in the way the brothers fight. Tommy punches people’s lights out (Wait. Isn’t he supposed to be a WRESTLING champion? Never mind). Brendan uses timing, resilience, and his intelligence to take advantage of opportunities; all his victories come from submission holds, which a jiu jitsu lover like me. Tommy dominates people. Brendan does not dominate, he catches you off guard and turns the tables.

The fights themselves are great. Two of Brendan’s fights in particular--his debut match and the Koba battle--are so emotionally engaging you wonder how the movie is going to top them with the finals. 

The fight scenes in the second half propel the movie out of the hole it digs itself into in the first half. But it also leaves one wondering: why couldn’t the dramatic scenes have the same sense of direction, economy, and clarity as the fights?

Take Tommy and Brendan‘s scene on the beach. It’s Tommy and Brendan’s first and only conversation, and it should hit us hard. It doesn’t. The performances are fine, but it feels like the dialogue is meandering, and the scene itself is visually uninteresting. Many of the early scenes, including Pop’s apperance on Brendan’s porch, and even Tommy and Pops’ opening scene feel the same way. There‘s a lot there, everything is there, but it isn’t quite…put together. 

But let’s go away from that, and back to the reason I started this essay series in the first place.

Many, many words ago I talked about two-heroes in a competition only one man can win and the problems therein.

Like Cabin in the Woods or The Prestige,  Warrior has its protagonists working at cross-purposes, leaving me ambivalent about who I want to succeed. I was confused, but assumed the movie was playing it straight. We were supposed to be torn between rooting for Brendan and rooting for Tommy. 

Which was why it was a total surprise when I saw the semi-final brackets. Brendan would be facing the Russian Koba. Tommy would be facing…the same guy he beat up in the gym ten minutes into the movie.

That doesn’t make sense dramatically, unless….unless they’re going to have Koba take out Brendan--the weaker brother--in the semis and then meet Tommy in the finals. Tommy wins and redeems himself by giving the money to his estranged brother.

Which sort of works, but also borders on a cheat. We were never explicitly promised a Tommy-Brendan fight--Tommy and Brendan have only shared one scene so far and they don’t even talk about the fight--but it still feels like ducking

Except that as one of the filmmakers tells us in the director’s commentary: “Tommy has to lose to win, and Brendan has to win to win.”

Once that’s clear,  the movie starts to fall into place.

None of the other plots I complained about seem to matter all that much. None of the people in Brendan’s life seem to  matter. Even Frank’s voice fades away over the course of the fight

Brendan needs to win to win and Tommy needs to lose to win.

The crowd noise goes away. The announcers--who up until now have served as a pugilistic Greek chorus-- have only one line and that comes at the middle of the fight, when Brendan starts to fight back with relish. 

We move inside the cage instead of watching from through the fence. It is the most intimate fight in the film, but also the most initmate dramatic scene. Instead of watching dispassionately from a distance, the camera crowds into the cage with the two brothers. 

None of the other plots matter. It’s just the two of them, Brendan and Tommy alone in deep waters where no one else can follow.

Bang Tango

Hoorah! Someone remembered this underrated and oft-forgotten band for you.

Check it out.

The Dude In Me: I'm A Lebowski, You're A Lebowski

"Being able to express something is not the same as being able to put it into words."
--Dogen, The Meditative State That Bears the Seal of the Ocean (Hubert Nearman translation)

"What the fuck are you talking about?"
-multiple characters in The Big Lebowski


The Big Lebowski has me convinced: there's a little Dude inside of me.

That came out wrong. There's not literally a Dude inside of me.

What I mean is, I can relate to the Dude, the way he's pulled back and forth by whoever he talks to, not knowing who to believe, absorbing bits and pieces of their speech, speech which sounds meaningful but is at its core, bullshit.

Sometimes those voices come from others. In my case, they often come from the inside. There's entitled anger (my inner Walter Sobchak). There's icy intellectualism (Maude). There's selfish greed and exploitative lust (The Big Lebowski and Jackie Treehorn). There's the desperate urge to please, to have everything go smoothly (Brandt) and the rigid desire for order in the environment I believe belongs to me(the Malibu Sheriff). And of course, there's the narrator telling my life story as it happens, whether that story makes any sense or not (The Stranger). Am I wrong?

So there's no reason--and here is my point--to distinguish between the voices inside and the voices outside; both are capable of bullshit. As within, so without. Our task is to recognize that so many of the voices that sound so meaningful, important, and necessary, neither entirely make sense, nor have our best interests at heart.

At one point in The Big Lebowski, The Dude looks at himself in the reflection of the Big Lebowski's various commendations, awards. He sees himself in the Big Lebowski, and he sees the Big Lebowski in himself. It's interesting to compare this scene with the scene in Reservoir Dogs where Mr. White attempts to separate himself from one of his heist partners. He talks about not wanting to kill people while admitting he will do it if he has to, but claims he's different from Mr. Blonde, all while looking into a mirror.

"I ain't no madman," he tells his reflection.

But the truth is, we all have our madman qualities. The Dude is the hero of the Big Lebowski but by the end of the movie, he and Walter are participating in the very behavior, the very aggression that both of them claim will not stand. They are bracing first a teenage boy and then a disabled person using lines that the thugs that attacked Lebowski at the beginning of the movie used on him "Where's the money, Lebowski?" or "See what happens?"

Meanwhile, we discover the Big Lebowski is less un-dude than he appears. In our first meetings with him he extolls the virtues of employment and a life of achievement. But by the end, we learn from Maude that Lebowski  has no job or ability to achieve on his own; he depends on an allowance from his daughter's inherited wealth. He is one of the very bums he despises.

Work is important in Reservoir Dogs too. The gang is united only by work; they know nothing about one another otherwise, and they try and fail to keep it that way. They wear work uniforms--identical suits. They erase their real names and refer to each other by color: Mr. Brown; Mr. White; Mr. Blonde; Mr. Blue; Mr. Orange; Mr. Pink. They talk obsessively about jobs and work and what it means to be a professional, and the unworthiness of those who fail to hold that standard.

But their personalities come out. Their personalities tear them apart.

The characters in Reservoir Dogs try to make themselves identical and fail. The Big Lebowski tries to make himself different from the Dude, the other Jeffery Lebowski, and fail. Lebowski and the Reservoir Dogs came try to measure each other through differences or similarities in external appearances, in ways of speaking, of dress. In Picture of a Rice Cake, Dogen warns his monks not to "hold up some measure of difference or similarity as the gauge of someone's capacity to train."

Dogen might not be a brother shamus to the characters in these movies, but they are part of him too. They are separated by oceans, centuries of time, and the space between movie characters and historical figures, but they are also has real as he is.

We define ourselves with our names. We define ourselves with our work. We define ourselves with our clothes.

Maybe most of all, we define ourselves with our words. We make up sounds, give them meaning, and then dress ourselves in them. But whether we being dressed in clothes from others (Your name's  Lebowski, Lebowski. My art has been commended as highly vaginal) or putting them on ourselves (I'm not Jeffery Lebowski...I'm the Dude), it behooves us to remember that we are all naked.

We are all emperors.

More Than Meets the Eye Season 2: Review (No Spoilers)

There were moments I wanted to stop reading. I’ve never felt that way about at a Transformers comic before.

I’ve read boring Transformers stories, and bad ones too, but none of them made me feel the way I felt during selected issues from James Roberts’ second “season” of Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye (Volumes 6-10 of the trade paperbacks, encompassing Issues #28-55). It was a physical desire to close the book and not read any further. It was a feeling of being, not shocked exactly, but offended in some vague and unnameable way, of having my expectations gently but unmistakeably violated--this is not the book I paid good money to read.

I’m glad I stuck it out. I’m also glad James stuck it out. He weathered a lot of criticism on this arc. The online reaction to many of the later issues in the arc --particularly the mid-forties issues--seemed to be a mix of anger, confusion and disappointment.

I’m also glad I’d read some of the online reaction and even some of the spoilers. By knowing going in it might not be what I wanted, I was able to let go of the story I wanted to read and pay attention to the story Roberts was telling.

To me, that story is about the choices we make when we’re pulled between principles and people. What do we do when faced with a conflict between the values we hold most dear and the ones closest to us…and at what point does upholding our commitment to one cross the line into a betrayal of the other? It was a question that all the significant characters--both hero and villain--faced at some point.

Roberts’ approach to characterization felt odd in this arc. Sometimes it felt like his cast was too large, and other times it felt like it wasn’t large enough--like he was ignoring the rest of the Lost Light’s crew in favor of a handful of characters who often didn’t appear to be doing anything of significance, plot-wise.

But despite Roberts reputation for meticulous set-ups and pay-offs, I don’t think Roberts’ focus was the plot. I don’t think character was his focus either. Roberts writes great character moments and many of them happen in this arc. Still, characterization--at least in the ‘following a protagonist or group of protagonists as they journey from A to B to C’ sense of the term--takes a back seat.

Theme holds together this arc of More Than Meets the Eye. If you’re reading for plot or character, then it’s a disjointed and frustrating experience. But if you’re looking at the story thematically, it all…well, it doesn’t come together, not exactly…but each piece plays off the others. We get a multifaceted look at the interaction between character choice and consequences, each ornament tied to the others by the thematic string of loyalty and betrayal. Multiple characters face this issue in large ways and small. Again and again, we watch different characters with different personalities in different context grapple with the same fundamental question: Megatron. Rodimus. Trailcutter. Whirl. Getaway. Nautica. Tarn. Nightbeat. Overlord. Censere. Ravage. The Scavengers. Deathsaurus.

It was uncomfortable reading. Often characters  I liked made decisions I didn’t. Or they made a decision I agreed with, but the consequences of that decision weren’t what I hoped. Other times it was Roberts’ writing that challenged me. Intentionally or not, his offbeat structural, plotting, or narrative choices that intentionally or not, left me in the same position as the characters: this franchise isn’t doing what I think it should be doing. Do I stick with it or not?

It was hard reading--and I’m looking forward to reading it again.

Tom Cruise Vs. The Aliens

Edge of Tomorrow and War of the Worlds both feature Tom Cruise blowing up aliens with grenades in a climactic moment, but other than that, they are pretty different movies.

War of the Worlds is a lot like Cloverfield. Its portagonist is not so much a hero as a bystander. The invader is not the story, merely a complication to what he is trying to achieve. They are screaming civilians. Their lives don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. They have things they are trying to accomplish in the movie, but they are not central to the invasion story. Whether the invaders come from the stars or below the seas, in War of the Worlds and Cloverfied the movie’s main characters are peripheral to the action.

In Edge of Tomorrow, a movie best described as Groundhog Day meets Starship Troopers via Saving Private Ryan, Tom Cruise is the action. Owing to an act of fate, his life--and death--is the only one that matters.

War of the Worlds, like Cloverfield, uses the imagery of 9/11. Edge of Tomorrow uses the language of video games. Dying and respawning at the same point over and over and memorizing sequences of enemies and fighting one’s way to the One Giant Boss that needs to be killed to end the game. The farmhouse scene is also about trying to do something that the game won’t let you do.

Edge of Tomorrow is also interesting in the way it uses the bullshit-spouting Sergeant Farrell, whose clichéd lines about being born again and making one’s own fate work as empty, jingoistic rhetoric, while simultaneously working on a higher level, as he essentially and unknowingly serves as the movie’s thematic Greek chorus. It’s also kind of cool that the bravery-loving Farrell is played by Bill Paxton, the actor best known for his iconic portrayal of the cowardly Private “Game Over, Man” Hudson in Aliens.

It’s also a story of a boddhisattva--learning to try and save the world, not because saving the world makes one awesome and heroic, but because saving the world means saving the people in it, and bodhisattvas care about beings like Faith No More cares about the Army Navy Air Force and Marines (*).

That’s the nifty thing about Edge of Tomorrow--it goes a step beyond what we normally see.in these kinds of redemption stories. There are plenty of movies about a selfish person who cares only about himself meeting the right woman (or lovable misfit kids’ hockey team) and learning to love her too…but Edge of Tomorrow is one of the few movies I’ve seen that rightly sees this as only an intermediate step. Caring about friends, lovers, family as in War of the Worlds or Cloverfield is great, but there is still an element of selfishness to it. “You complete me” (Okay, Tom Cruise doesn’t say that in THIS movie) is to an extent, still making it about what someone else can do for me. Its drawing a line between people who are important to me and people who are not.

Edge of Tomorrow takes the bold step--as Emily Blunt’s character points out--of saying that isn’t enough. That it is possible to do more. That every life is worth caring about.

War of the Worlds is about Tom Cruise caring about his family--something that stays true through the beginning, middle, and end of the movie. Edge of Tomorrow takes Tom Cruise from caring only about saving himself to learning how he can save everyone.

(*) Faith No More also cares deeply about Transformers cause they’re more than meets the eye, which makes them tops in my book.

Magic Mike XXL, It Follows, and The Americans (Season 3)

Q: What do a horror movie, the third season of a TV show about married spies, and a fun but plotless romp about male stri--pardon me, entertainers have in common?

A: Um…I watched them all recently?

The nice thing about seeing unconnected things close together is you can make connections with your own mind. It’s in that spirit that I think you can actually learn more about your own attitudes on a topic by looking at what others have to say about them.

Take sex for example.

Magic Mike XXL has been widely praised for its sex positive stance. It’s probably the most feminist movie starring a carload of shirtless dudes ever. It puts its emphasis on humour, on connection, on making the other person feel good. Characters repeatedly emphasize that people deserve to be happy in their relationships, that sexual and emotional satisfaction isn’t too much to ask for. It even makes sexuality about more than just the act of sex; there is oddly little actual sex in the movie and what there is happens off screen.

As a former burlesque performer, I also liked the attitude towards performance--using the striptease as a form of self-expression instead of just regurgitating back popular fantasies. I liked the relationship performers had with the audience. That we are showing ourselves, but we are showing ourselves to these people specifically, that they are as important a part of the show as we are.

The Amercians also treats sex as a performance. Both Phillip and Elizabeth, the married spies at the heart of series, are regularly called upon to seduce other people for information or blackmail purposes. One season 3 episode shows a flashback to Philip learning to be with different people including an elderly woman and an overweight unattractive man.

“The told me to make it real for myself,” Phillip tells his wife to explain how he is able to do it.

Sex is not an end in itself. Sex is not about wanting. Sex is about getting something.

If sex in The Americans is a power play, at least it is still fundamentally about relationships. The sex in It Follows is a lonely business. The Follower will pursue its victim until he or she passes on the curse through having sex with someone else. In other words, sex is not about the other person at all. Sex is about the choice to either accept the curse’s consequences or to save oneself by passing it on to another victim.

It Follows turns sex into a selfish act. Instead of being about connection, sex becomes about survival. Different characters approach the problem in different ways and settle their consciences via different methods, but it ultimately is a lonely decision with minimal involvement from the other person.

Until then end.

The character Paul is willing to take it on. He‘s seen the Follower and understands the consequences. He is still willing to go through with it. And Jay is willing to let him make that choice.

It’s not just about sex though. Once the Follower kills the last person suffering from the curse, it starts working its way backwards up the line. So the most basic strategy for the second-last person in line is to put as much distance between yourself and the person you have sex with as humanly possible.

Jay and Paul don’t do that. The movie ends with them walking hand in hand. Behind them, we see an indistinct silhouette following them--but it doesn’t matter. Instead of fleeing in different directions, they’ve made the choice to face whatever comes together.

Phillip and Elizabeth in The Americans also make the decision to face life together. Sometimes they choose it, sometimes it feels forced. But it is never a black and white choice, and equally often they make the choice to put emotional distance between each other as well.

“Do you have to make it real with me?” Elizabeth asks her husband after he tells her his method for making his partners feel loved.

“Sometimes,” he admits.

I’ve often heard The Americans described as grim, miserable, and tragic in the way it portrays interpersonal relationships, but I don‘t subscribe to that reading. If anything, the depiction of relationships feels normal. Heightened, but normal.

Maybe that says more about my relationships than anything. But I don’t think so.

We never truly know what life is like for the ones around us, even the ones we love. Even the ones we’re closest to. No matter how close we are, there is that unfathomable seperation. There is the struggle between the forced closeness and closeness we choose, distance we take and distance taken from us. We try to understand each other. Sometimes we are so far apart, we can’t even find a way to try. Our loved ones surprise us, betray us, or hurt us. Sometimes we are able to make the choice to go on loving them and sometimes we can’t.

Sometimes we do both at once.

We are alone AND together.

I think it’s a stretch to describe The Americans as unrelentingly alienating. The characters are often trying to connect. Not always perfectly and not always at the same time, but they are trying.

And once and a while they succeed. One of my favorites--from season 3--is when Phillip and Elizabeth find themselves smoking a joint out the window of their bedrooom, giggling to one another about the ridiculousness of their predicament. It’s a tiny moment in the grand scheme of the show, but its smallness makes it no less real. Maybe it makes it even more precious.

The characters in Magic Mike XXL have no problems talking and connecting. In fact, it’s so easy, there’s no real lasting conflict in Magic Mike XXL. It’s a strangely easygoing, affirming movie. The fact that such a conflict-free movie can also be so watchable is a testament to all involved. When it comes to the ability of men and women to reach each other, it acknowledges that it doesn’t always happen, but it is optimistic about people’s ability to do so.

Here’s my question.

Which one of these shows represents the way things are?

I think they all do.

So what’s the difference between moments when we are lonely and self-involved, when we are positive and wonderful, and something that seems to be a mix of both.

Part of the difference is time. The characters in The Americans are harried, dividing time between multiple-missions, parenting, and being as spouse. The protagonist of It Follows is fleeing the Follower’s relentless creeping approach. The boys in Magic Mike XXL have nothing but time, endless hours and stretches of open road in which they have time to give themselves, each other, and the people they meet all the time they need.

The other difference is the answer to the question: ‘Are we thinking aobut ourself or are we thinking about others?’ It Follows is all about the person with the curse. Magic Mike XXL’s performers make it all about the women, committing themselves to her pleasure. The Americans swim in a shifting seas that combine compassion and self-interest in various ways at various times.

Spies. Strippers with hearts of gold. Shape-changing monsters invisible to anyone that doesn’t have the curse.

But also truth.

Which truth do you sleep with?