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i am developing a fascination with this certain movie/fiction plot that i've seen appear in a few films of late. it's weird. not particularly a filmic theme, or should i say: not my usual theme that i love in films (ie. the recycling/self-referential postmodern theme). this one is more philosophical/existentialist one. ANYWAY.
three films: dead man, man on fire, the bourne identity. what do these three have in common? at some point relatively early in the film, the protagonist dies. the rest of the film is about what happens to them after that.
In dead man, william blake is killed off early in the film - when he's in bed with the girl and is wounded by the bullets that go through her body and out the other side. ostensibly he's only injured, but thematically from then on he's essentially dead. i suppose you could say the rest of the film is like his journey through/to the underworld (think of how it ends, with him floating off in the boat, not even 'dead' yet - though we know he is/will be). but the important thing here, what the entire film is about, essentially, is what william blake becomes once he's dead. or *who* he becomes, morally. because yeah, existentialism. william blake is *not* a bad guy, he's a pretty ordinary 'good' guy. but after he's shot at the beginning, he goes on to carry out all sorts of morally unsound deeds - chiefly, murder. he kills without regret or second thought, really, and the narrative still continues to keep him as the 'good guy'. it's more examining his actions than judging him on them. and that's the whole point. once blake is 'dead', he's not accountable for any 'moral crimes' he commits. just like the protagonist in albert camus's existentialist textbook, the outsider, once blake has been killed there are no morals. without his life, there are no life-governing laws. and jarmusch isn't very subtle about it with the superimposed skulls on johnny depp's face and the indian called "nobody" (not to mention the title of the movie, for fuck's sake).
Man on fire. Creasy is killed when Pita is kidnapped - he's shot, injured badly. from then on, he's not accountable for his moral behaviour. ostensibly the film is about righteous revenge, but ultimately it's creasy being in a place where there is no moral judgement on his actions (ie. killing others). there's kind of some hint at the morals of it - after every day of killing, creasy immerses himself in the swimming pool like some pseudo-baptism, but you could just as easily read the blood-soaked water as another death metaphor (the creation/destruction birth/death thing with the womb water and all the blood). from the kidnap scene onward, creasy is dead. whereas previously he was filled with moral angst over his past career as an assassin (one who is meant to have no moral qualms about killing), and is on the path upward. from the kidnap scene onward, creasy is dead. he has no such concerns.
the bourne identity is interesting in terms of examining this kind of narrative. because jason bourne kind of does the opposite of the above. of course, the beginning of the film is bourne's death - where he's floating in the ocean. prior to that he was an assassin, one without moral judgement or accountability on killing. post to his 'death', he seems to regain the moral 'life' - like the whole baptism/rebirth thing being pulled out of the ocean, i guess. but then there's a point in the film where it seems to slip back into the above pattern again. when he and marie split paths. what happens? bourne kills, despite what he's said to marie the previous night about not wanting to find out any more after the horror of discovering he's an assassin. it's kind of telling, what he says about marie, telling them she's dead because she "slowed him down" - like bourne's own moral life slowed him down, so he got rid of it - died again, essentially. even one of the last exchanges between marie and bourne before they seperate - he says he's "going to end all of this" - as in, commit suicide. despite the outer plot of the film in its climax, where he's telling conklin that he 'doesn't want to do this anymore', he goes on to kill everyone in his path just to get out of the building.
anyway. it's interesting looking at this kind of thematic thing in comparison to the thorn in![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
monkeycrackmary's side, the girlfriend-in-refrigerator plot device, where the protagonist's significant other is killed by the enemy, and so the protagonist is therefore morally justified in wreaking revenge (which i think is the plot for the bourne supremacy, no?). because these movies aren't really about revenge for the injury of the protagonist - this isn't william blake hunting down and justifiably killing the person who 'killed' him in the first place. the moral judgement of their actions is all gone once they are symbolically 'killed'.
anyway, it's late, i'm tired, i've been watching too many movies and can't be very coherent. just thinking aloud.
anyone have any other films they think fit the same pattern that they can recommend me?
three films: dead man, man on fire, the bourne identity. what do these three have in common? at some point relatively early in the film, the protagonist dies. the rest of the film is about what happens to them after that.
In dead man, william blake is killed off early in the film - when he's in bed with the girl and is wounded by the bullets that go through her body and out the other side. ostensibly he's only injured, but thematically from then on he's essentially dead. i suppose you could say the rest of the film is like his journey through/to the underworld (think of how it ends, with him floating off in the boat, not even 'dead' yet - though we know he is/will be). but the important thing here, what the entire film is about, essentially, is what william blake becomes once he's dead. or *who* he becomes, morally. because yeah, existentialism. william blake is *not* a bad guy, he's a pretty ordinary 'good' guy. but after he's shot at the beginning, he goes on to carry out all sorts of morally unsound deeds - chiefly, murder. he kills without regret or second thought, really, and the narrative still continues to keep him as the 'good guy'. it's more examining his actions than judging him on them. and that's the whole point. once blake is 'dead', he's not accountable for any 'moral crimes' he commits. just like the protagonist in albert camus's existentialist textbook, the outsider, once blake has been killed there are no morals. without his life, there are no life-governing laws. and jarmusch isn't very subtle about it with the superimposed skulls on johnny depp's face and the indian called "nobody" (not to mention the title of the movie, for fuck's sake).
Man on fire. Creasy is killed when Pita is kidnapped - he's shot, injured badly. from then on, he's not accountable for his moral behaviour. ostensibly the film is about righteous revenge, but ultimately it's creasy being in a place where there is no moral judgement on his actions (ie. killing others). there's kind of some hint at the morals of it - after every day of killing, creasy immerses himself in the swimming pool like some pseudo-baptism, but you could just as easily read the blood-soaked water as another death metaphor (the creation/destruction birth/death thing with the womb water and all the blood). from the kidnap scene onward, creasy is dead. whereas previously he was filled with moral angst over his past career as an assassin (one who is meant to have no moral qualms about killing), and is on the path upward. from the kidnap scene onward, creasy is dead. he has no such concerns.
the bourne identity is interesting in terms of examining this kind of narrative. because jason bourne kind of does the opposite of the above. of course, the beginning of the film is bourne's death - where he's floating in the ocean. prior to that he was an assassin, one without moral judgement or accountability on killing. post to his 'death', he seems to regain the moral 'life' - like the whole baptism/rebirth thing being pulled out of the ocean, i guess. but then there's a point in the film where it seems to slip back into the above pattern again. when he and marie split paths. what happens? bourne kills, despite what he's said to marie the previous night about not wanting to find out any more after the horror of discovering he's an assassin. it's kind of telling, what he says about marie, telling them she's dead because she "slowed him down" - like bourne's own moral life slowed him down, so he got rid of it - died again, essentially. even one of the last exchanges between marie and bourne before they seperate - he says he's "going to end all of this" - as in, commit suicide. despite the outer plot of the film in its climax, where he's telling conklin that he 'doesn't want to do this anymore', he goes on to kill everyone in his path just to get out of the building.
anyway. it's interesting looking at this kind of thematic thing in comparison to the thorn in
monkeycrackmary's side, the girlfriend-in-refrigerator plot device, where the protagonist's significant other is killed by the enemy, and so the protagonist is therefore morally justified in wreaking revenge (which i think is the plot for the bourne supremacy, no?). because these movies aren't really about revenge for the injury of the protagonist - this isn't william blake hunting down and justifiably killing the person who 'killed' him in the first place. the moral judgement of their actions is all gone once they are symbolically 'killed'.anyway, it's late, i'm tired, i've been watching too many movies and can't be very coherent. just thinking aloud.
anyone have any other films they think fit the same pattern that they can recommend me?
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and i'm not sure lynch's films fit the bill for me either. yeah, lost highway and mulholland dr in particular are about that in-between space between life and death, but they are very much about guilt, paranoia and self-doubt, as opposed to being existential like dead man where blake's character barely undergoes any inner change as he transforms into someone who doesn't feel any moral accountability for murder. isn't the entire premise of mulholland dr is that it's watts's character's death fantasy of how things could have been? that she loses her mind with guilt because she put out a hit on her girlfriend because she cheated with her, and it ends with the fantasy breaking down and her losing her mind because she can't sustain it? lost highway too, though it does weird things with time and reality and whatnot... the bill pullman's character murdering his wife in a jealous rage because he can't control her, then escaping by 'becoming someone else', as watts' character does, but falling into the same trap again with essentially the same woman, who he discovers, yet again, that he cannot control and cannot escape.
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One thing I noted strongly about Kiss Me Deadly is that I could see how, with just a little distance from the formula and say, subtitles rather than the original dialogue, the film would seem much more oblique and mysterious and interesting than it is if you watch it as a native speaker. Not too surprising then, that the source of particular interest in that film originally seems to have been among French film critics and auteurs.
As for Lynch, I personally think that Lynch's films are all about the power of film as an expressive medium. Roger Ebert related that at a yearly gathering of film critics, they screen one film around a dozen times and deconstruct it as a collective exercise. The year it came out, they picked Mulholland Drive for that exercise, and they couldn't shake it down to find a consistent logical reading of it. Ebert absolutely loved that film, though.
And I can see why, if you care about the semiotics of film and what it can convey as a medium, Mulholland Drive would be thrilling. The first half is like an echoing hall of mirrors and the second half shows the mirrors' painted backs, and in the end both surfaces are demonstrated to be equally artificial. The world of Naomi-Watts-as-"Diane" (second half) is shown to be just as false as the Pollyanna-ish world of Naomi-Watts-as-"Betty".
There is no safe, certain narrative resting spot in Mulholland Drive, nothing you can point to and say "In the world of this movie, this really happened." The world of the movie is a place where nothing "really" happens. The world of Mulholland Drive is an expresssive realm that can only be experienced through film.
Lost Highway is similar in tone and methods, but it plays out in a way that makes more narrative sense and so the metaness of it gets lost more easily-- people try to make logical sense of out how and why Bill Pullman "turns into" Balthazar Getty, and miss the fact that in a movie, there's nothing to stop Pullman from turning into Getty-- there's no reason he shouldn't.
There's no reason to be limited to what's "realistic" in film, or to replace realism with a fantasy world that also has strictly codified rules. You can convey Pullman-turning-to-Getty in film, so why shouldn't it happen? It serves the story and the theme-- which you encapsulated in your comment better than just about any other summary I've seen.
If you're interested in Lynch and haven't read it yet, there's a killer David Foster Wallace essay on his work called "David Lynch keeps his head" written when Wallace visited the set of Lost Highway, and it's a great, insightful take on his work (though a lot of it would probably be old hat to you, Wallace still gives his opinions in an interesting way.)
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interesting point. socio-political references aside, i think kiss me deadly makes a fabulous magic realist story - like the box in barton fink that never opens, or marcellus wallace's suitcase - if you remove references of nuclear power, then what is 'the atomic box' after all? just a giant metaphor for greed... when you look at it that way it's quite oblique/stylised ;)
i love that idea that the purpose/drive behind lynch's films is merely to draw attention to the fact that film is artifice and what we're watching *is* in fact artifice! isn't that one of the main theories about eraserhead? that it doesn't actually mean anything and that lynch is just fucking with the audience's head with oblique, suggestive symbolism throughout? it still works well in that reading, though... like, henry is trapped in the world of artifice, with the scarred man on the moon/planet/ovum/whatever as the film maker randomly doing whatever he likes while henry gets more and more confused and anxious.
i'm not sure if i have read wallace's lynch paper - i know i've read a *lot*, but that one doesn't ring a bell. i shall look it up, though, i've got a presentation on lynch coming up!
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I don't think that's exactly Lynch's goal-- I think that's the awareness Lynch starts from. To me Lynch seems to be interested in using film to express and externalize what's in his head, while making only the barest concessions to narrativizing (omg neologism) the raw product of his imagination.
Lynch is obviously someone who deeply, deeply loves films and movies, and what he seems to love most are the possibilities that movies have for creating this entire other existence which is seamless, impermeable and beyond 'real life'. There's nothing realistic about his work. His films reflect the world of film.
Think about how Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind frames its surreal elements: it uses the device of putting us inside Joel's mind as his memories are being erased.
Likewise, Being John Malkovich obviously takes place in a slightly skewed universe, but the bulk of its strangeness can be explained by the mysterious portal into John Malkovich's head. The way by which the portal is adapted and exploited by the characters parallels the way that this surreal element is exploited by the narrative-- it's a 'plot hole' (*snicker*) that makes the surreal elements acceptable to the audience.
Each of those films asks you to suspend your disbelief about one large plot element in order for the quirks of the story to make sense. In that way they're almost no different from an overtly commercial film like The Matrix, which gives you one high-concept element to swallow in order to accept the 'unreality' of the rest of the film.
Lynch's work is like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind without the excuse of Lacuna to explain what's going on. IMO, Lynch proceeds from the assumption that if what he has to say is sufficiently interesting, involving, and artful, the audience doesn't need that kind of narrative device to suspend their disbelief and accept what's happening onscreen.
Film is such a powerful medium and has such a rich and commonly understood vocabulary that (if not all, at least a lot of) the audience will accept incredibly strange, bizarre events at face value simply because those events are depicted in film.
To me, a lot of Lynch's work seems to be about finding that boundary between what an audience can accept without explanation, and what will cause the audience to rebel-- and then pushing at that boundary with every cinematic trick in his power. He doesn't actually care whether he goes too far, because his goal is to get as much of his vision onto the screen as accurately and with as little compromise as possible, and for him, even a coherent narrative structure is often too much of a compromise.
Anyway, I can blather on this topic pretty much endlessly and I have a lot of specific examples from Lynch's work that I could go into, I just don't want to tax your patience too much (more). Though if you want to talk more about it and/or discuss the specific ideas you're presenting, I'm very willing. :-)
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lynch's films thematically/stylistically put in the 'plot hole', as you so aptly put it - obviously the hole in the broken planet/egg/thing in eraserhead, and the camera going inside the severed ear in blue velvet, and the blue box in mulholland... ah, david! *squishes him to bosom* so where esotm as lacuna and being jm explains that you're inside someone's head, lynch leaves it up to the stylistic/filmic elements to display that.
what do you think of twin peaks, then?
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Which isn't to say that Lynch would have gotten it right if he was totally in charge. Wild at Heart from the same era flatly sucks, in my opinion, as anything but an artifact of Lynch's self-amusement. Fire Walk with Me is likewise a mess, though at least it's attempting something interesting-- the Wallace essay I mentioned had really wonderful points about Fire Walk with Me.
But I think if you look at it in the context I suggested in my other comments, Twin Peaks might represent Lynch trying to marry his very personal, idiosyncratic vision with a more audience-friendly sensibility. Frost was a veteran of Hill Street Blues, a critically acclaimed and also veryvery popular and beloved cop drama.
I haven't read a lot about the logic behind their partnership, but I'd have to suspect that Lynch decided that he wanted to do something on a longer scale than a film, so it needed to be a TV show-- but rather than try to cram his ideas into the demands of the small screen himself, he teamed up with Frost to act as a filter to spin the rough straw of Lynch's ideas into palatable gold for TV audiences.
(If Lynch had come up with the idea for Twin Peaks now in 2005, I think he would have pitched it to HBO and we would have seen a different and even more idiosyncratic show.)
Ultimately Twin Peaks didn't work by just about any measure, and I'm not sure if it's because Lynch had too little control, and the people trying to make his vision more "TV" made a hash of it-- or if Lynch took too much control, and there wasn't enough translation of his ideas. Possibly it seesawed between the two extremes.
The network definitely helped kill the goose that laid the golden eggs by exploiting peoples' natural fascination with the central mystery, constantly promising: Next Week, Tune In to Find Out Who Killed Laura Palmer!
The death of Laura Palmer was originally positioned as the starting point to get the ball rolling, and the overarching mystery to drive the story forward. But looking back, there was tremendous pressure to focus on it due to the way the show caught on and that way it was promoted, and I think that was part of what made it fall apart as swiftly as it did in its second season.
There are scores of amazing moments throughout all of Twin Peaks that I would like to attribute to Lynch. He probably wasn't responsible for all of them. And he probably came up with some of the stinkers that I'd attribute to someone trying to unsuccessfully imitate him.
I guess it's hard for me to boil down my opinion of the series. There was an appealing shamelessness to some elements (looking back it's amazing how many jaw-droppingly gorgeous nubile young women were cast in prominent roles, even with the usual TV standards of attractiveness kept firmly in mind) and an appealing obliqueness to other elements (the Log Lady! Diane!)... something for everybody, until it splintered in so many directions with so many competing moods and ideas that there was almost nothing for anybody anymore.
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