BEFORE: We're expecting a bit of snow today, which hardly matters if it's a day I'm not working, because I can't exactly stay home from work because of the snow if I was already scheduled to stay home. Maybe it's double stay home day? I'll be expected to go out and shovel if there's any kind of accumulation, or else risk being ostracized by my neighbors, who already think I'm weird because I just do the minimum amount of shoveling possible, clear a quick path on the sidewalk and ice the steps, which takes about 30 minutes. Somehow I'm a freak because I don't spend hours outside like they do, obsessively scraping every flake of snow from their entire property into the street, which is hazardous to traffic in the long run. Think about it, the snowplow just came by to clear the streets, as a matter of public safety, and then my neighbors rush to fill it up again with the snow from THEIR driveways. Everyone who does this should be fined, if not arrested, in my opinion. One day some car's going to spin out of control and injure someone, because it slid on snow or ice that someone shoveled into the street, and there will be a lawsuit at that point. More importantly, my method of shoveling will be proven to be far superior and I'll gain the respect I deserve.
Toni Collette carries over again from "Connie and Carla", this makes four in a row (quatt-row) - she may not win the month because of all the Bergman repeaters, but this is still a good showing for her.
THE PLOT: Full of misgivings, a young woman travels with her new boyfriend to his parents' secluded farm. Upon arriving, she comes to question everything she thought she knew about him, and herself.
AFTER: This one's about getting snowed in (OK, partially...) during a bad storm, so maybe it's a good choice for today, especially if you're in a part of the country that got slammed. So far on my block it hasn't amounted to much, which is fine by me. We're down to about one big storm per season (knock on wood) thanks to climate change, but we should probably start working on that little problem anyway.
A quick glance at the credits before getting into this movie is potentially very helpful, because it was directed by Charlie Kaufman, the director of "Anomalisa" and "Synecdoche, New York", also the screenwriter of "Adaptation", "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and "Being John Malkovich". So it's a safe bet that I'm going to be dealing with one of those high-minded think pieces, where reality itself is going to be called into question. Sure enough, before long in this situation you kind of get the feeling that something's not right. At first it's just a couple characters acting in odd ways, like not going directly into the parents' house when they first arrive, or the parents upstairs saying "We'll be right down!" and then taking seemingly forever to actually come downstairs. These are the first clues, then things start to get blatantly obvious in being out of whack.
Little inconsistencies, if you notice them, are like the first cracks in the dam that's preventing the weirdness from flooding the town - somebody tells a story during dinner that seems to contradict an earlier story, or a character gets called by a name that's different from what they were called before. Jake's girlfriend sees a picture of young Jake on the wall of the living room, but believes (or convinces herself) that it's somehow a picture of herself as a young girl. A couple little WTF? moments are one thing, but a few more and we start questioning reality itself, or wondering exactly what's going on here.
I've sort of trained for this, even a few weeks back during the film "Locke", which featured a man on a long car drive for London, my mind couldn't help but run through the checklist - maybe this is a dream, maybe the man is dead and his afterlife purgatory situation is to be on an eternal drive to London and never get there, maybe the aliens attacked and he's in the Matrix, and none of this is really happening. Nope, it was just a movie about a long car ride and some cell phone conversations, but if it had been something more, I was ready for it.
So tonight I was on my toes and ready for something, and I went through much of the same checklist - especially because the first segment of the film is a very long car ride through Oklahoma to get to Jake's parents' farm. Maybe this is someone's dream, maybe these people. are dead and their afterlife purgatory is to be constantly driving to Jake's parents' house and they never get there, maybe the aliens attacked they're in the Matrix or an alien zoo and none of this is real. (OK, so it's never an alien zoo, but I'm kind of always hopeful that one day it will be.)
Finally, they do arrive at Jake's parents house, where time doesn't seem to work in the traditional sense - besides that long 10-minute trip from "upstairs" to come down and greet their guests, and a dinner with very awkward, embarrassing conversations mixed with some of those narrative inconsistencies over how Jake and Lucy met, and how long they've been dating, and for that matter, what Lucy does for a living (is she a painter, or a poet, what?) the parents seem to develop a peculiar fondness for getting older or younger as the very odd evening continues. One minute Jake's father has white hair and dementia, the next he's got brown hair again and seems very spry. Jake's mother is bedridden for a while and unable to feed herself, and a bit later she's bouncing around and wearing fashions from the 1970's.
(Look, I'm not really going to get into this here, but if you really want to know what's behind this all, there's an IndieWire interview with Charlie Kaufman that details the theories behind it and basically spoils it all, there's nothing preventing you from going to read that if you want. Also, this is based on a 2016 novel by Iain Reid, and the plot of that novel is also readily available on Wikipedia.)
Without giving things away, there is a lot going on here, despite initial appearances. Part of the puzzle is figuring out who or what is most important, and it may not be your first guess. Lots of lingering questions, like who the heck wants to stop for ice cream during the winter? Some people, I guess. Life on a farm can be particularly cruel, but we kind of knew that going in, but what are we going to do, all stop eating meat? Also, the best thing about dementia or Alzheimer's is that eventually you reach a point where you'll be unaware of the fact that you're losing your faculties - so we've got that to look forward to. And on some level, you are all of the characters in your dream scenario, to some extent. If that is what's really going on here, and I'm not saying it is.
Many of us are now in some kind of situation where every day is much like the next, and it's getting a little difficult to remember details from our lives in the before-times. I'm becoming more open to the possibility that I was somehow beamed to an alien zoo at some point, and they managed to recreate my home and office scenarios via some form of holodeck - assuming this is what happened, how would I even know that this has occurred? I'm just saying. I'm honored to represent the human race in the Pan-Galactic alien zoo. Maybe in their Matrix-like they'll allow me to receive the Nobel Prize as I perform selections from "Oklahoma" (a plot point carrying over from "Connie and Carla", oddly enough), or some equivalent of that. Or do I not get to make requests? The alien zookeepers should be able to read my brain engrams and determine scenarios that will make me happy. Unless I'm really in purgatory and that's not part of the process. Perhaps I'm just going insane instead, that's perhaps a bit more reasonable.
Still, this is where we find ourselves, the trendiest movies these days are a bit like puzzles that the viewers have to figure out. This film is probably going to catch on with the nerdy intellectual film festival set while alienating the casual Netflix viewer.
Several actors here have been in various seasons of "Fargo", and I've watched all of those. Jesse Plemons was in Season 2, David Thewlis was in Season 3, and Jessie Buckley was in the most recent season. Coincidence, I guess, only there's really no such thing, is there? That's the only other thing I've seen Buckley in, I think she's fairly new to the acting scene. I confused her with another actress at first, and now for the life of me, I can't remember who that was. I can't really search on "who does THAT actress remind me of?" And in the film-within-the-film, there's an actress who had a role in "Jessica Jones", another series I binged-watched last year.
Also starring Jesse Plemons (last seen in "Other People"), Jessie Buckley, David Thewlis (last seen in "Justice League"), Guy Boyd, Hadley Robinson (last seen in "Little Women"), Abby Quinn (ditto), Gus Birney, Colby Minifie (last seen in "Don't Think Twice"), Anthony Grasso, Teddy Coluca (last seen in "Top Five"), Jason Ralph (last seen in "A Most Violent Year"), Ryan Steele, Unity Phelan (last seen in "John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum"), Frederick E. Wodin, and the voice of Oliver Platt (last seen in "Frank and Cindy").
RATING: 4 out of 10 janitor uniforms
No comments:
Post a Comment