BEFORE: I've seen some fairly depressing movies in the past few days, and it looks like the trend continues tonight...
THE PLOT: An accident brings together a critically ill mathematician, a grieving mother and a born-again ex-con.
AFTER: I do enjoy movies (duh...) and I enjoy challenging movies, ones that tell stories in different and innovative ways - "Memento", "Donnie Darko", "The Butterfly Effect" and "The Time Traveler's Wife" are a few of my favorites that play around with the time-stream. But this is a jigsaw puzzle of a film, where all the scenes are like the pieces that have been scrambled together, and you can only see one piece at a time, while trying to remember the shapes of the other pieces.
Alternating between scenes that are pre-tragedy and post-tragedy is confusing, to say the least. We see the three main characters at high points and low points in their lives (mostly low...) and the viewer has to re-construct a chain of events in his or her head that makes some kind of sense. I'm still not sure if there were three timelines, each moving forward, or if everything was just random.
Slowly, ever so slowly, we learn the relationships between the three main characters - who did what and when, and what the effects of each action were. How often have you heard a siren, or seen the aftermath of a highway crash, and wondered what sort of effects are going to be rippling through the lives of people that you don't know? At least, you hope not to anyone you know... This movie is a look at those ripples of tragedy.
But jumping around randomly through these people's lives could possibly be the sign of a weak screenplay, or it could just be a gimmick, which might even be worse. It raises the question - what sort of movie would this have been, had it played out in linear fashion, cause and effect in that order? Perhaps it was edited that way, and found to be too depressing? Or was it deemed not confusing enough?
Knowing that the tragedy is coming/has come - but we just haven't seen it yet - is like waiting for the other shoe to drop...on to someone's head, killing them in the process. What's interesting here is that we're used to seeing the ways that tragedy divides people or tears them apart - is it possible for a tragedy to bring people together?
There's a whole symbolism involved with organ donation - and it seems that our language, though an adaptive one, still carries echoes of our outdated scientific beliefs. We still say that the sun rises and sets, for example, even though science has proven that the earth is turning and only makes the sun appear to move. Our language also still suggests that we believe that the heart is the center of human emotion, even though science tells us that it is just a muscle that pumps blood. The statement "My heart is broken." can have two very different meanings. It would probably be more accurate to situate emotions in the human brain, yet no one ever says, "I love you with all my brain."
There's a religious argument here, too - one worth noting - since one of the characters is a "born-again" - if there is a God, why does he allow tragedy to happen to his believers? If prayer doesn't stop tragedy, then what is its purpose? Can something that seems like a gift from God later be seen as a curse? And if prayer does divert a tragedy, like a hurricane, let's say - doesn't it just end up somewhere else? Did those people now affected not pray hard enough, or is their God less efficient?
There is some balance here - people are united in their miseries, they do meet, they do have feelings for each other, get reunited, get clean, but mostly it feels like they're all circling the drain. I'm sorry, but I have to believe that life is more than just a series of disappointing events that lead up to one's death. Tragedies happen to us all, and occasionally we all feel like we can't go on. It is possible to keep going after tragedy, but with difficulty, of course. But if you only focus on your tragedies, especially the final one, you'll miss out on the happy accidents that might occur along the way.
Starring Sean Penn, Naomi Watts (last seen in "The Assassination of Richard Nixon"), Benicio Del Toro (last seen in "Snatch"), Danny Huston (last seen in "X-Men Origins: Wolverine"), Charlotte Gainsbourg (last seen in "I'm Not There"), Melissa Leo, Dennis O'Hare (last seen in "Half Nelson"), and Clea Duvall.
RATING: 6 out of 10 oxygen tanks (not necessarily for being entertaining, but points tonight are awarded for being at least thought-provoking)
No comments:
Post a Comment