I’ve seen a lot of movies lately, and I’ve had many thoughts about them (as one does). And man, I’ve been wanting to write again, so let’s just see what comes out of my mouth-hole when I start pushing buttons on this here keyboard.
I went to a movie by myself today. I’ve never done that before. It was an interesting experience… it shed light on why seeing movies with other people is a key part of the experience for me. I feel I can’t get the most out of a movie without talking about it afterwards, trying to make my thoughts about it concrete by putting them into words while they’re still fresh. Without someone to bounce ideas off of, the whole thing will take much longer to percolate and bring fruitful thoughts to the surface, if indeed any such thoughts ever emerge. Actually, that’s pretty much how my brain works in all things, but whatever.
At the same time, the experience didn’t feel that off from normal to me. I made sure to arrive at the theater right as it started so I didn’t have to sit awkwardly in the theater by myself, but apart from that, the only thing I missed about having a viewing partner was not being able to make snide remarks about each preview as they were happening. Even after exiting the movie and now some time later, I feel just as I often do after most movies: like I didn’t get the chance to do that discussion thing as much as I wanted to. I think this means I’m supposed to try and talk about movies more with the people I see them with.
Maybe that percolating phase needs to happen before talking about something I’ve seen, as I’ve noticed that my best conversations about the movies I’ve seen this past month have come days later when talking to people I didn’t see the film with. We’ve each had a chance to come at the thing without influencing each other, and we’ve had a chance for our resulting opinions to solidify and congeal a little. Indeed, I felt like after I saw The Spectacular Now with 3 others and talked about it at a bar for an hour, we didn’t really do much except repeat what had happened in the movie. “Oh man, that part with the thing was really good. And all those long takes!” But three days later talking to someone else that had seen it and hated it, I learned so much more from their simple question of “What did you like about it?” and my resulting response than I did at the time of watching. Though that may be because different opinions about things lead to more dynamic ideas about them.
Whatever. The point is that I like talking about movies and should just do that more. Also I apparently being the guy seeing the movie by himself. OH! One nice bonus of being that guy is that I got to leave the theater exactly when I wanted to during the credits instead of trying to figure out whether or not my party was ready to leave and waiting on me or wanted to sit back and let the final frames wash over them through the duration of the credits. Nice.
The movie I saw was Short Term 12 ,which I highly recommend. It’s named for the central location of the film, a state run center for kids going through the foster home system who haven’t been placed yet, and who generally stay for around a year. The protagonist is this girl Grace, a 20-something who works at Short Term 12 as sort of the highest up person who still interacts directly with the kids. The whole thing was just… incredible. Great performances all around, and a hell of a script.
There was one particular scene that made me really appreciate the structure, around the 60 minute mark when everything is falling apart for Grace, another character gets a moment of hope. It took this series of events that was utterly harrowing to watch and gave the viewer an out. “Yeah,” the movie says, “all this shit sucks. It sucks a lot. Life can absolutely suck in ways that you can’t even imagine. But sometimes you get something you can hang on to, whether you make that yourself or have it given to you, and this is the kind of movie that believes those bits are worth living for.” It may have been interesting or more “powerful” or something to let the viewer just get crushed under the weight of it all in the same way that Grace is. I know people who would criticize the scene I’m referring to exactly because it tints the climax of the movie with that glimmer of hope. But that hope is part of the movie’s point, and I love that a little something found under a couch cushion in a plotline entirely removed from our hero can keep that hope alive in me as a viewer. Story structure! Woo!
And that scene with the baseball bat… just… amazing. And the beginning / ending… Here I go listing things about the movie I liked without adding anything new to them. Maybe I should let this one sit a little longer.
I’ve been thinking recently about moments in movies when characters tell stories. There’s this thing that happens for me in real life where someone will start telling a story, and if it’s a good one, I’ll stop seeing. It’s not that my brain stops receiving visual input from my eyes, it’s just that it discards that information as unimportant and turns its energy towards building up its own image of the story being told: a man on a bus with tacos rumbling in his stomach. Taking that step off the bus and feeling shit run down your legs (you gotta see Short Term 12, people). I start to picture these things instead of what’s in front of me.
So in a movie when a character tells a story, you can do two things: you can either try and build that story-world image for your audience (see the genius of Seven Psychopaths) or you can just show the people talk (Chasing Amy). There’s obviously reasons you’d use either one - having control over your audience’s image is a powerful thing, but so is letting their imagination run wild - but I’ve been thinking about what filmmakers choose to put on the screen when they choose not to show the events of the tale. Mostly you sit with your characters all listening to this story, but who do you show and when? Or do you show something else? You can use the story to reflect thematically on the content of the scene, or you can contrast it to the setting - a vulgar tale at a cocktail party. Or maybe you want a story being told while a couple plays footsy under the seat. But if you’re just going to sit with the story, choosing who’s reaction to show when and when to just stick on the storyteller is an interesting thing.
Short Term 12, for example, does this cool thing with this. The movie opens on this guy who works at Short Term 12 telling a piece of the place’s old mythology to a new coworker. They’re not doing anything particularly special with the cuts, but right at the climax of the story, some kid breaks out of a door behind them and runs screaming across the lawn. The experienced employees in the group listening to this story drop everything and run after the kid, tackle him, let him kick and scream and then cool down. Then, when everything seems fine, the storyteller picks right up where he left off. The story is used to show how mundane this crazy event is in this place. It contrasts to the events at hand which tells us a lot, and meanwhile the content of the story is both entertaining and full of necessary exposition while also being justified in the telling so that we don’t feel like we’re being force-fed information. Great use of a character telling a story without cutting away to the content of that story.
Something about characters telling stories within the contents of another story is both very appealing to me (I love stories and will always take on more!) and tough to pull off. You can’t just spend 2-3 minutes on some character telling a story that doesn’t relate to the main plot at hand without having a damn good reason, so I admire it when it’s done well.
That feels like enough rambling for now. To close out, here’s a bunch of movies I’ve seen recently.
The Spectacular Now - this thing is the best thing I’ve seen recently. Coming of age story with a pretty lackluster plot carried on the shoulders of stunning acting. Go see it.
Short Term 12 - as discussed, I recommend this look into a world I’ve otherwise no experience with.
Elysium - this movie made me actively angry at how bad it was. It took this amazing sci-fi premise and completely squandered it on flat characters and people exploding into muck.
World’s End - right up there with Sean of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. Very savvy, very funny.
The Way Way Back - Serious Steve Carell and silly Sam Rockwell both make me happy. A few too many “my high school summer coming of age movie” tropes to be above and beyond just “another very good movie”, though I did find an interpretation of the movie that made me accept and embrace those tropes…
In A World - funny actors being funny people. Full of comedic performances instead of zingers - just the way I like my comedy. I’m not quite sure what that Rob Corddry / Michaela Watkins plotline was doing in this movie, but it wasn’t bad, just out of place.
Good stuff, people. Cinema is not dead. It’s only getting better.
(UPSTREAM COLOR)
Sam out.
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