Snowden

(warning: contains spoilers for Snowden)

I'm baffled by the Edward Snowden story, if I'm honest.  Here we have a guy who leaked classified information from the government, thus exposing that there's illegal mass surveillance going on without our permission.  The government, with the most tenuous of reasons, can then access our phones, webcams, emails, etc - both historically and in real time - to see what we're up to.  Snowden is now one of the most wanted men in the world.  And...we all seem ok about this?  Maybe a bit disgruntled, but I don't see anyone decrying technology and going to live off the grid.  Here I am blogging about a film about it.

And how do we feel about Snowden anyways?  He's exposed a major governmental and international surveillance scheme (well, that's good right?).  And now he's sought refuge in Russia, and Putin has granted him asylum (wait, aren't Russia the bad guys?).  Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and Barack Obama have spoken out against Snowden's actions (those guys don't really agree on anything, do they?).

That said, the government have acknowledged that they want to avoid another major terrorist event like 9/11 and so it's important to be able to quickly access any information on any person for any related reason, no matter how tenuous that reason...

If the enemy of my enemy is my friend, then what does any of this mean?

Ponder...

 Let's just look at the film...

Joseph Gordon Levitt plays the lead role in this Oliver Stone film, based on The Snowden Files and Time of the Octopus.  The film provides some biographical background into Snowden, and how injury meant he left the army, came to work for the NSA, and discovered the illegal mass surveillance operations being performed without the knowledge of the public, post 9-11.  This interweaves with "present day" Snowden feeding this information secretly to journalists Glenn Greenwald (Tom Wilkinson) and Laura Poitras (Melissa Leo) so the information can be made public.

The cast is impressive, and it feels like these actors (including Nicholas Cage, Rhys Ifans, Shailene Woodley, and Zachary Quinto) are all making a tacit acknowledgement that they stand with Snowden in protest of the governments overarching surveillance programme.  That it is an Oliver Stone film feels like it should be a more bombastic affair, screaming about injustice and controversy, but this film feels like it's come and gone as quietly as the story of Snowden itself.  Why is this not grabbing more attention?

In some ways, it's a bit like I, Daniel Blake, inasmuch as it's a film with a message to convey, rather than a story to tell.  And bits of that story become clunky in trying to get the message across.  An early conversation between Snowden and his girlfriend Lindsey Mills seems like a series of straw man arguments about privacy in order to make a point.  The film quietly nudges us to remember all the ways in which we are surveyed in our day to day lives - from webcams and texts, to the websites we access, to CCTV and GPS.  For me, there was a more interesting story in what was happening to Snowden personally as he tried to come to terms with all he was discovering - his relationships suffer, his physical health suffers, his mental health suffers, and he becomes increasingly paranoid that he is being watched (although, arguably, is it paranoia if someone really is watching you?)  A chilling moment comes near the end of the film, when Snowden admits to his NSA mentor Corbin O'Brian (Rhys Ifans) that he is worried that his girlfriend is cheating on him - O'Brian tells him not to worry about it - he's already checked Lindsey's social media, texts and emails.  He can guarantee she's not.

I feel I should be leaving this film incensed.  But I'm not.  This is an important story, and it hasn't been well told.  In fact, I'm advised that Citizenfour is the one to watch to get a better factual understanding of this story as a whole.  So let's look that one out instead.

But I did leave the film feeling paranoid.  I can be traced to the cinema, from the CCTV that was there when I walked in.  I can be traced to the film from the details accessed on my cinema card.  Even the food I ate can be traced by the details on my receipt and bank card.  And as soon as the credits started, all the cinema screens in the cinema went off unexpectedly...

Legitimate wear for the 21st century?

True story.

Allied

(warning: contains spoilers for Allied)

I pondered many things when I watched Allied.  I doubt any of them were the thing that I was supposed to be pondering.  I now ponder whether that is a comment on the film itself...

Allied is a spy romance/thriller directed by Robert Zemekis (Back to the Future, Castaway, Forrest Gump) and starring Brad Pitt (Se7en, Fight Club) and Marion Cotillard (Inception, The Dark Knight Rises).  During World War 2, Max Vatan (Pitt) gets a secret spy assignment to infiltrate a party and kill some bad guys.  His "wife" for the purposes of this operation is Marianne Beausejour (Cotillard).  Her main role is to make their "relationship" looks convincing.  Later in the film, Vatan is told that there is intelligence that suggests that Beausejour is a double agent, passing secrets to the enemy.  He now has to work out if she is, and (if she is) kill her.  Can you really have a healthy relationship when you know that you and your partner are professional liars?

Ooh.  Well, that's very exciting.

Well, it's not really.  It's perfectly fine, but it lacks a bit of...something.  I'm not sure what it is.  All the ingredients add up very well, but the end product isn't quite right for some reason.  It's very odd, because the component parts seem spot on.  Let's break this down a little...

The plot is great - read that second paragraph again and tell me it's not intriguing.  You can't, can you?  And there's something very pleasing to me that the plot can be described so succinctly.  It tends to be the sign of a good film if you can describe it in about 100 words.  Bam - everyone knows where they stand and off we go...

The stakes are clearly set out.  The viewer knows what's going on, and why it matters.  I am particularly fond of this.  My main criticism of bigger blockbusters (particularly action packed ones) is that main characters go to a place and do a thing for tenuous reasons like "because the script made me do it".  With Allied, I knew what everyone was doing and why at all times.  That's pleasing.

There's some sneaky social issues there without it being "An Issue".  Vatan is aware that some of his compatriots are lesbians.  It's barely mentioned.  This pleases me.  Why?  Because it's normalised.  It's just not an issue.  This is a greatly encouraging sign for alternative sexualities in films.  Not that named characters are labelled as "the gay ones", but that there are named characters who happens to be gay.  Short of a guarded "ssh - be careful you don't get found out" (because this was still a court-martial-able offence in 1942), it's not a major plot line.

The set pieces - there are one or two stand out pieces which really elevate this film.  Namely, the assassination mission (which is slickly executed - ha, pun - which feels like it's been directly lifted from a Tarantino movie) and the party in the Blitz (where an airplane crashes into a house).  Both pieces are visually impressive and well choreographed.

The tension.  Zemekis does a great job of taking a small everyday noises (particularly ticking clocks), fading out all the ambient noise and bringing that one noise (ticking) to the fore.  It's very effective.  And the central questions - is she a spy?  And if she is, will he kill her? - are ones that kept me guessing until the end of the film.  I was interested in the answers to those questions, so the film must have had something going for it.

Which leads me to my ponderings.

1.  Is "chemistry" between actors an actual thing? 

Not that chemistry

I have read interviews with actors who swear that it is, and other interviews where actors say that acting is just pretending so you can pretend to get on with someone.  I ask this question because a lot of reviews have claimed there is no chemistry between Cotillard and Pitt, and others have taken this a step further and claimed it as proof that Cotillard was the reason that Pitt's marriage to Angelina Jolie ended.  I couldn't tell either ways.  I found Cotillard very compelling.  There was a certain clunkiness to the relationship, but given that it was an artifice (and this is what the film was about), isn't that to be expected?

2.  Is Brad Pitt a good actor?  I can't decide.  Every so often, he has a stand out part in a stand out film (Se7en, Fight Club) but outside of that, he seems like Brad Pitt playing Brad Pitt.  Also, for those of you playing the "will Brad Pitt eat food in this film" drinking game, make sure you line your stomachs before viewing.

3.  My test: if, partway through this film, the film stopped working (for whatever reason) and I was given a ticket to come and see this film again for free, would I use the ticket? 
The answer is yes.  I wanted to see how this story played out.  But it just lacked a certain something - a bit of zip, a bit of flourish.  A certain something unhelpfully untangible. 

Rogue One

CONTAINS ENORMOUS SPOILERS

Here’s a picture of Alan Tudyk and his character in Rogue One.

He used to be Wash in Firefly.

His Rogue One droid K2SO is cool, more grown up than C3PO and R2D2. K2SO is a liberated droid with a mind of his own.

In this movie the leading lady’s love interest      

Cassian Andor

takes a long time to notice her. I was beginning to think this might be a decision in the interest of PC, like the very noticeable racial diversity casting. After a bit I imagined her wondering if she smelled or something. Eventually, after she gives him a lovey dovey look, he starts acting like a love interest.

All this may be explained by the rewrites…

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jun/01/rogue-one-a-star-wars-story-reshoots-disney

…perhaps originally there was no romance.

Peter Cushing is brought back to life as Grand Moff Tarkin. He's still very good.

Not everyone was happy with the resurrection.

My feeling is that as an actor he would have liked the chance to be seen again and would only have cared whether his reviews were good. The trouble is we can’t be sure. I understand Robin Williams made provision to prevent anyone doing this to him. I hope a fat fee was paid to Cushing’s descendants and that they had a say in how he was used.

The story provides a plausible explanation for the heroes’ success against the Death Star in Star Wars. It’s a retcon but in a good way.

133 minutes is at least ten minutes too many and the lengthy, if inventive, action scenes as usual lost me after a while. But that’s probably just me being bored by action scenes, however good, if they go on for more than five minutes.

Although it is established that she can fight well and defend herself, Jyn’s main role is as an inspirational leader; I didn’t find Felicity Jones’s performance very convincing. She is supposed to have sufficient charisma to make everyone in the room listen to her. I don’t think I would have listened to her. Strong women need to be strong.

Basically, I can’t imagine her selling me insurance much less leading me into battle.

There was also an older woman X wing pilot in a tiny role who sounded terribly lame. Did she even know what part she was playing? Pity, as older women were not, apart from this tiny and poorly acted role, included in the otherwise diverse mix.

There were some less than elegant lines in the script, which the actors succeeded in polishing up to sound OK. ‘I have heard word of rumours…’ ‘ We will find out how to find it.’

Most of the script was competent but lacking in sparkle. When blind Chirrut Imwe has a bag put over his head he says ‘You’re kidding! I’m blind!’ Now I can’t help thinking that would have been funnier if he’d just said ‘Really?’ or ‘You’re kidding’. However the argument in favour of this flatfootedness might be that some of the audience is 5.

A number of planets were introduced very briefly. God knows I couldn’t remember their names and most of them hardly seemed necessary. If these were fan nods, and I realise there have to be fan nods in this movie, they shouldn’t be distracting for comparatively casual viewers like myself. Also very confusing for the 5 year olds.

We watched this in 2D and I don’t think it suffered too much as a creation from the lack of a third dimension. I find 2D versions of 3D movies muddy and discoloured and blurry though. Couldn’t a separate 2D version be made that looks brighter and colourful? I’ve been thinking of watching an old technicolor movie or two to see what I’ve been missing. Rogue One did avoid the camera pans that look so awful and blurred when watching a 3D in 2D.

Come to think of it the decline in colour and clarity seemed to start just before 3D came along, so some of this effect may be due to the switch to digital from film. But I digress.

I liked the characters of Bodhi Rook and Chirrut Imwe.

Bodhi Rook

Riz Khan as Bodhi stood out for me and seemed to really believe in his part in a way that, say, Felicity Jones did not. I also appreciate seeing someone of his name and ethnicity being cast as a hero.

Chirrut Imwe and Baze Malbus

Chirrut Imwe is on the left. On the Right is Baze Malbus, Chirrut's best friend and comrade. Some folk think they are a same sex couple. I can't say it occurred to me but I'll be looking for any signs if I rewatch.

I haven’t mentioned a villain. Well, the one we have here is a minion of Darth Vader’s, Orson Krennic. He strides about a lot in a white cloak and uniform giving himself airs but really is just a minion with ideas above his station.

Jyn and her antagonist Orson Krennic

I haven’t mentioned Darth Vader. He is in this movie just enough. Not too much, not too little. He has a nice entrance scene where we see the only light saber in the movie.

Now the biggest spoiler. Though I feel sorry for anyone trying to avoid it.

There’s a reason this story has been touted as ‘standalone’. Every major character who appears, excepting Darth Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin obviously, ends up dead. If this is a history we don’t know who told the tale…though some of the small ships escaped the final battle.

This ending is not unsatisfying. Everyone has died for a great cause which has succeeded. The lovers get to embrace and die together. I did not feel invested enough in these characters to feel very sad for them and would be happy not to see them again. That pilot though – could he have survived somehow? Maybe he has a clone somewhere. In the last scene a familiar character appears with a CGI'd in face that, contrary to that of Moff Tarkin, looks very 'off'. We see this only for a second or two but it still needed to be done better. The face shape and the way the features sit on the face look wrong to me. Sorry I can't explain more technically. You will understand when you see this brief scene.

Rogue One is generally a good film and I’d give it 8.5 out of 10 for achieving what it set out to do. More energised acting and direction could have added pizazz to its characters’ interactions and a wittier script would have been a great enhancement. 

The Lobster

*CONTAINS SPOILERS*

So yesterday I watched The Lobster (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos). It came up on my Netflix recommendations and the tagline seemed strange and I like strange films so I pressed play.

The world that The Lobster is set in is one where everyone has to have a partner. If they don't have a partner, you are sent to a hotel where you have 45 days to find one. If you don't find one at the end of the aforementioned days, you are turned into an animal of your choosing. The main character in this film, David (Colin Farrell), when asked which animal he wants to turn into, says he wants to be turned into a lobster because "lobsters live for over one hundred years, are blue blooded like aristocrats, and stay fertile all their lives. [He] also likes the sea very much".

The plot line is reasonably predictable, but the way it happens isn't. There are similarities between our actual society and the one presented in The Lobster, sure, which makes it incredibly clever, but the initial "wait, what?" at the beginning of the film takes hold for the rest of it. The film is narrated throughout by a character the audience only knows as Short Sighted Woman (Rachel Weisz), David's love interest for the last half of the film.

During David's stay at the hotel, he fails to fall in love with someone. He does meet someone and pretends to have something in common with them, but he leaves her and runs away from the hotel when she kicks his dog (who happens to be his brother) to death in their bathroom. David joins the Loner gang - a collective of people who have all escaped the hotel and live in the forest - and falls in love with Short Sighted Woman there. But, contrastingly to the hotel and rest of the world, you're not allowed to fall in love if you're a Loner. David and the Short Sighted Woman create their own coded language because they can't talk to each other. Short Sighted Woman says in the narration, "we’ve developed a code so that we can communicate with each other, even in front of the others, without them knowing what we are saying. When we turn our heads to the left, it means, “I love you more than anything in the world.” And when we turn our heads to the right, it means, “Watch out, we’re in danger.” We had to be very careful in the beginning not to mix up “I love you more than anything in the world” with “Watch out, we’re in danger.”"

The film portrays the polar opposites of a society obsessed with partnering up. Love in this film isn't the fairy tale definition, wrapped up in destiny in fate, but simply a chemical state, and the joining of two people that have something in common. In this world you're allowed to have a relationship but you're not allowed to be in love.

It's utterly bizarre and there are some moments where I was fighting laughter; one in particular was a slowed down chase between an attendee at the hotel called The Lisping Man (John C Reilly) and a Loner. Another funny moment is one where the owner of the hotel (Olivia Coleman) is giving a short speech to a couple that have just paired up. "The course of your relationship will be monitored by our staff and by me personally." She says. "If you encounter any problems, any tensions, any arguing, that you cannot resolve yourselves, you will be assigned children. That usually helps, a lot." It's hard not to laugh every time she speaks since what she's saying is usually mental. Her and her husband are, as well as being in charge of the hotel, the hotel entertainment. They sing songs together and this provides a few laughs.

Character wise, the audience knows very little about the back stories of the pretty much all of them. All we know about David is that he has an ex-wife who left him for a man with contact lenses. We find out a little about the Limping Man (Ben Wishaw), as he says in AA meeting style in front of everyone at the hotel, "Hello everyone. My mother was left on her own when my father fell in love with a woman who was better at math than she was. She had a post graduate degree I think, where as my mother was only a graduate. I was nineteen at the time. My mother entered the hotel, but didn't make it and was turned into a wolf." Also the characters aren't played with much emotion. I found out that Lanthimos would tell the actors involved to just say their line rather than deliver it, which, if you're a well trained actor, must be pretty difficult to do. Farrell and Weisz hit the mark, though. I have seen both of them in other films that are beautifully acted so I know that they're not just type-casted bad actors, but that in fact they have done incredibly good jobs with their respective characters.

Aside from the strangeness of the film, it is beautifully shot. I found out thanks to google that the film was shot nearly entirely without make-up and without artificial lighting. It's also filmed in a beautiful place, too (County Kerry, Ireland (republic)). Stills from it make it look like a hipster indie film, akin to Submarine (dir. Richard Ayoade), and Juno (dir. Jason Reitman).

Needless to stay this film is probably going to be one that sticks with me for a while. Mainly just because I can never look at animals the same way ever again (and I even know about #piggate). I'd like to have tea with Yorgos Lanthimos and I'll probably buy other films of his. He calls The Lobster 'a rom-com like no other', and I think I agree.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

(Warning: contains spoilers for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them)

Not to state the obvious, but the Harry Potter franchise is massive.  To the point that people who have never read the books, and never seen the films (and I'm sure there must be one or two.  Possibly waking up from comas or something) will have heard the first 8 notes of Hedwig's Theme and thought "Oh, that's Harry Potter" without necessarily knowing how they know.  May have heard and understood some of the following words: Hogwarts.  Muggles.  Quidditch.  They're all in common parlance now, in the same way I know "heeeeeere's Johnny" is from The Shining despite the fact I've never seen it.

Pauses for a moment at the inevitable outrage of that last sentence

I'll get round to it.

I have read the Harry Potter books.  I have watched the Harry Potter films.  I have been to Harry Potter studios.  So it was with great delight that I skipped off to see Fantastic Beasts.  And, if I'm perfectly honest, the biggest surprise was that I wasn't that bothered by it. 

Skinny book from which this enormous film was made

That is not to say that it's not enjoyable, and that there aren't good bits.  I'm not even sure why I wasn't taken with it.  The only concern that I can articulate is that it doesn't feel like a film in its own right.  Now, I get that this will become part of a series.  And I understand that there is a world to build, and characters to introduce and themes to explain before we get to the apex of this spin-off.  But it feels like there's a little too much of "oh-we'll-explain-this-in-the-next-film".  I want to understand what I'm looking at in this film.  Now.  And then the next films should build on those foundations.

Take the first Star Wars film (and this works for A New Hope, The Phantom Menace, or The Force Awakens).  They stand alone and their stories work (tenuous with Phantom Menace, but stick with me).  If none of the rest of the Episodes were made, those initial three would be fine.  The sequels build upon what's there and push the story on.  The same is true for the first Harry Potter films.  But for some reason, Fantastic Beasts seem to have gone for the "tune in next time, folks" approach, which works for television, but doesn't work for film.

On to the positives.  This film looks fantastic, and may well be enhanced by 3D (not something I say lightly) as critters skitter across the screen and sparks literally fly.  The Prohibition-Era feel works well to provide a sense of paranoia and subterfuge, where no one is quite sure whose side anybody is on.

For people new to Potter, it provides an "in".  You can see this film having never looked at Potter and have a perfectly good time.  But for the fans, there are tantalising glimpses into recognisable names and characters.  We see young Dumbledore, and there are musings about the Lestrange families - hints at the back stories to the older generations that feature in Harry's life at the end of the century.  In some ways, this is very comparable to Star Wars - we know what the future holds for some of these characters, but we don't yet know how they get there.

The Fantastic Beasts are, indeed, fantastic but my highest praise goes to Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander.  There's all sorts of influences present in his portrayal - the most obvious (to me) being Matt Smith's incarnation of the Doctor; all flailing limbs, and social awkwardness, hand rubbing and hunchedness, but can switch on incredible empathy and understanding in any given moment.  There's also hints of David Attenborough in there too, as he explains the creatures in his care and how best to treat them and understand their behaviour.  Flecks of Doctor Dolittle are peppered about too.
 

These two definitely do not influence each other.  Nope.

The budding relationship between Queenie (Alison Sudol) and Kowalski (Dan Fogler) has warmth and sweetness (perhaps fitting for a character who wants to run his own bakery), and Tina (Katherine Waterston) is a strong, independent female lead, who is getting on with her own storyline which just happens to intersect with Scamander's.  And with all that going on, I'm sorry I didn't love it more. 

But sometimes the magic just isn't there.

I, Daniel Blake

(Warning: contains spoilers for I, Daniel Blake)

2016 isn't cheery.  There's celeb deaths aplenty, Brexit confusion, worldwide discord, and a Wotsit with weird hair is soon to be in charge of America.  To add to the gloom, Ken Loach decided to make a film about the benefits system in 2016.  Thanks Ken (then).


I, Daniel Blake is the story of the eponymous Daniel Blake (Dave Johns) who, after working as a joiner for all of his adult life has a heart attack when he's 59, and is advised not to work for a time by his GP, surgeon and physiotherapist.  Unfortunately, this leaves him at the mercy of the benefits system which deems him fit to work because he can still walk 50m unaided, raise his arms, and isn't incontinent (therefore not eligible for Employment and Support Allowance).  Bemused, but undeterred, he applies for Job Seekers Allowance, but the odds are stacked against him given that he has one set of skills from the one type of job he can do (but isn't allowed to do), all assistance is online (and he's computer illiterate), and even if he gets past all that and is offered a job he won't be able to take it because he's not medically fit enough.

Expect to see this spray painted on JobCentre walls near you soon...

 Along the way, he meets Katie (Hayley Squires) who is a single mother who has been moved to Newcastle from a homeless hostel in London because of a lack of affordable housing in the capital.  Away from familiar surroundings and her own support network, she struggles with two small children, the financial implications of relocation, and lack of suitable employment.

The film is a series of small defeats that strip the characters of a little more dignity, a little more humanity, and reduces them to ciphers that don't quite fit into the prescribed Governmental boxes.  For example, Daniel spends his days on foot taking his CV to various worksites.  However, he cannot prove to the JobCentre that he did this, so is put forward for sanction.  Katie gets caught shoplifting sanitary pads because the local foodbank cannot supply them as essential items (a small but pointed protest about the so called "Pink Tax" - https://www.listenmoneymatters.com/the-pink-tax/).

The Foodbank Scene.  Too sad to caption.

If I were to be critical about this film, it would be to say that the "victims" of the benefits system are too saintly.  They do absolutely everything they're "supposed" to.  There's not a trace of drug or alcohol use in this film.  But that "saintliness" is deliberate: it leaves us in no doubt that it is not the people who are the issue - it is the system that is broken, and it's facilitated by the people who do not question the ineffectiveness of it all.  For example - the "healthcare professionals" who perform Daniel's Fitness to Work tests (who have no medical training or qualifications, and cannot record that he has a heart condition because there is no box on the assessment form for that), the Jobcentre staff who have no time to listen to people's stories or rationale and get frustrated that their clients don't/can't follow their demands to the letter and penalise them as such.  The manager who reprimands the one "helpful" JobCentre person for offering to help Daniel navigate the assessment forms.  At a mandatory CV training course, the teacher notes that Costas in Nottingham received 1700 applications for 8 jobs (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21521125). 
"What does this tell us?" 
"...that there's not enough jobs to go round?" asks Daniel
"No," the teacher chirps, instantly pegging Daniel as a 'disruptive influence'. "It means your CV really has to instantly stand out to a potential employer."

Probably not acceptable under DWP standards

It's not entirely grim.  There are uplifting notes throughout - arguably, this is also a film about how small communities of people help each other out when things get tough (Blake's neighbours, the Foodbank).  How the same internet age that stymies Daniel is also the one that allows his neighbours to thrive as they Skype about selling knock-off branded trainers.


One thing is clear - the welfare system has been so finely honed to deter people who may be considering a life of idleness that it has forgotten the reason why it was set up in the first place: to protect the health and well-being of its citizens, especially those in financial or social need.  Yes, there are people who manipulate the system.  Of course there are.  But in trying to deal with them, there are people who actually need those benefits, (need that food, need that cash) who wind up suffering instead.


I leave you with these thoughts.
1.  It is a sad affair when society needs to be reminded of the human element of austerity via film.  But here we are in 2016, needing that reminder.
2.  There is a reticence for this film to be seen.  Why is Doctor Strange screened across all cinemas at all times of the day, but I have struggled to see this film once in the entire county?
3.  Here is a much more articulate, real life example of why this film is important:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/22/i-am-daniel-blake-millions-like-me-jack-monroe-ken-loach
4.  If you were under any doubt that this film was accurate, look to the small, sober note on the credits: "thanks to dozens of JobCentre staff who told us of their experiences and chose to remain anonymous" [paraphrased]
5.  You are Daniel Blake.  I am Daniel Blake.

Arrival

(Warning: contains spoilers for Arrival.  And The Sixth Sense)

Every so often, a film/book/television programme/advert is released and, coincidentally, its themes and messages chime with whatever is going on in the world.  John Lewis, in an attempt to make a nice advert about some trampolining animals, accidentally created a message analogous to the Trump/Clinton presidential campaign.  Sometimes film makers (or people creating their own different kinds of art) are a little more prescient and what they portray comes to pass in some way (example: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/oct/23/back-to-the-future-writer-bad-guy-biff-was-based-on-donald-trump).

Arrival is a film I saw less than a week after the unfolding horror of Donald Trump becoming President-Elect of the United States.  And although its themes and messages are entirely coincidental, they resonate particularly because of global events.

Basic plot:  Spaceships appear over 12 cities across the world.  They just hang there.  But once every 18 hours, a small hatch opens and access is granted to whatever is inside.  Amy Adams (through means that are more plausible in the film) is an expert linguist and is recruited by the military to come and help them make sense of what’s going on.  They recruit Jeremy Renner too, for good measure, because he’s a theoretical physicist.  The film becomes an interesting debate on how we communicate in the absence of a common language.   

It takes a long time for Amy Adams to work out that this is the sign for "dancer".

Secondarily, it is important to remember that there are 12 of these spaceships.  One in North Korea, one in China, one in England (in Devon, for some reason) etc.  Everyone dealing with this unfolding situation in very different ways.  What do we do?  Try to talk to whoever’s in the spaceship?  Blow the spaceship up?  Try to blow everyone else’s spaceships up?   So there’s also interesting (and timely) discussions about the importance of continuing to talk to the people facing the same situation as us and not just reacting to whatever we initially see and think.  Fear makes us irrational, panicky and reactive.  Amy Adams, at one point, translates the word "weapon".  Panic instantly ensues, despite her protestations that they could mean "tool", or the word could be a question.  Stay calm, everyone.  We fear change.  We fear the unknown.  We fear new things.  Should we?  Or should we wait until there's something to actually panic about?

Yeah, fair enough.  Panic...

The third (and no less significant) theme is that of language.  The film argues that the language we use shapes our thinking.  China (I think) try to communicate with their spaceship in terms of Mah-jong – their language is subsequently about winning and losing, victory and defeat.  A variation of Maslow’s Law of the Instrument is noted – “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”.  What is our current language saying about us?  What does your vocabulary say about you?

So, lots of things to think about.

This is a film that has stayed with me, and I find myself pondering it and it's ramifications.  Here are some other thoughts:

1.  Brains are amazing.  Obviously.  The first time I watched The Sixth Sense, I did not get "The Twist".  Despite all the clues being there that Bruce Willis's character was dead.  Deceased.  Pining for the fjords.  The first time I realised this was during the scene where his wife (Olivia Williams) is asleep in front of their wedding video, and she turns over, and Bruce's wedding ring drops off the sofa and rolls towards him and he realises he's not wearing a wedding ring.  At that point, my brain instantly pieced together all the bits of information and the thought "HE'S A GHOST" popped, unbidden, into my head.  "Where did that thought come from?" wondered a different part of my head.  (Which in itself is strange - how can the brain trick itself?  That's bizarre!).  Somewhere in the empty cavern of my mind, little cogs had been whirring away, trying to make sense of what I was looking at.  And gave me the logical conclusion before I had consciously processed it.  Of course I know that the brain in constantly doing that, but it was one of the very few times I was very aware of it.  That I wasn't in control of some of my thinking.  And that's odd.

This in itself shouldn't mean that much.  And yet...

I mention this, because there's a similar experience in this film.  Where what you're looking at suddenly resolves itself and you realise that you're looking at something else, like a kind of brain optical illusion.  This is not quite the film you think it is.

2.  Thank goodness for the mind meld.  Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner were making great progress with the aliens, trying to understand the strange inky blotches they created and communicate in response.  But you wouldn't need to be conveying anything of great urgency:

Aliens: THERE'S A MASSIVE ASTEROID HURTLING TOWARDS EARTH AND YOU'RE ALL GOING TO DIE

Amy Adams:  Hold on, this will take a week to translate...

Aliens:  ARGH!  Come here and let me mind meld your face...it'll be easier.  Screw this "learning other languages" malarkey...

There's a lot to think about in this film, and it's worth seeing and worth paying attention to.  It draws on Interstellar, but takes half the time and is twice as interesting.  There's hints of Aliens, Contact, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and surprisingly, Up.  It's an interesting foray into sci-fi for director Denis Villeneuve, whose next project is the new Blade Runner sequel.  I hope that by the time it comes out, we have not watched attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.  Or anywhere else for that matter.