Can we all agree just on principle that there's never really been a film like this? I can't really think of one. This is a ballsy movie. Just plain audacious in the best meaning of the word. And in a lot of ways I think it kind of represents the future of sorts for filmmaking in general. Don't just bend a rule or two in narrative form and structure. Break them all. There are no truly distinct rules anyway, are there? There are only the conventions of generic Hollywood filmmaking and then there are those who exist outside the mainstream, directors who do their own thing. But this movie, and I mean this literally, has everything. It doesn't just cross genres and styles, it traverses the many many rivers of film in general. What a mad, enthralling adventure. What a poignant, tragic romantic drama. What an exciting, suspenseful mystery. What a terrifying journey down the rabbit hole of the future. What a primal realization of our spirituality. And what a madcap old school British romp.
But what does it all mean? Honestly, I don't know. And I don't care. And I don't care that I don't know or care. Because, you know what? It doesn't matter. I could spend the rest of my day connecting all the dots and picking up on every single solitary theme and subject matter that is addressed in this movie. None of it matters at all. AT ALL. And I never say that about a film. And I usually hate that in films. The movie is about...what? The human experience? Maybe, the range of emotions and characters and stories is so far reaching and yet so consistently the same it could simply be all about the connections that exist amongst humans. Maybe it's all about the irrelevancy of race and gender and sexuality, how they're nothing more than the restrictive shells we place around ourselves to cut us off from each other so we can better deal with our issues (or not.) The movie is an explosion of ideas and feelings, it never lets up, I never got comfortable, I was on the edge of each story, waiting, waiting, to see what happens next. And THAT'S what I think the whole movie is about. Not the sum of its parts specifically, or the ideas and ideals it proposes to us as a species- it all comes down to the experience in and of itself. Seeing this movie is like experiencing life. They're are all essentially the same people right? Displaced in time and location? Restricted by their flaws and by society and by the limitations of the body? They are born and die over and over and over again. They are life incarnate. And so is the movie. The joys, the horrors, the loves, the thrills, the sadnesses, and the comforts of existence. Think about the bookends of the movie. Hanks narrates from the future at the start and at the end of the story. Is it all in his mind? Is he remembering all of the pieces put together? Is he God stitching together reality and declaring, "This is Life."? Who knows? Who gives a shit?
I don't know much about Tom Tykwer's work. He did Run Lola Run. That's about the limit of my knowledge of him. It was a solid, insane 90 minutes. Nothing more, nothing less. He's a solid and unique visual stylist. Nothing more, nothing less. He's adequate in my mind. I'd like to see more of him in the future. Part of the issue, naturally, is that the editing of the film lends itself a certain difficulty from the audience perspective of picking apart what was directed by which director. The Wachowskis are obscenely awesome in their visualization of some pretty extraordinary new worlds and in the manner in which they convey the past settings. They've certainly grown since The Matrix trilogy and all of its grand ideas and middling quality executions.
The genres, styles, and settings of the different stories are kind of outrageously distinct from a narrative perspective. They're all very separate in how they're conveyed and I never was confused as to what was happening in each story specifically. THAT'S hard to pull off. But more so than this, and more important by far is the fact that each story, strangely enough, feels as if it feeds into the next narrative chunk. It flows freely and yet is bound by the singular unity of the overall arc of everything and everyone.
The performances are incredible. We'll get into the whole racial thing a bit later. But on the basis of just acting, everyone nails everything perfectly. They're all separate beings, but they're all kind of the same too. There's no other way to describe it. Different, but the same.
The music, again vital to the film, is beautiful. A classic, basic, moving film score is a rarity in this age of over-produced electronic-vibed soundtracks. It lends itself wonderfully to one of the key recurring motifs of the entire movie.
Gender and race are bent in this film. Men play men as well as women; women play women as well as men. Blacks and whites play Asians. Asians play whites and latinos. Blacks play whites. There are no limits placed on the actors and the confines of their bodies. That's one of the key points of the movies. A wide variety of quality actors were chosen on the basis of their marketability and their legitimate acting talents. There are several foreign actors in the film who are not mainstream ones in the Hollywood sense and still get billing on the poster. That kind of surprises me. Black face was used in the past under specific racist circumstances for white producers to get out of having to pay extra money for black actors to play black roles. The same applies for yellow face. More so than the financial aspect was also the literal execution of the act- black and yellow face was used to denigrate Asians and Blacks. That concept does not exist in this film. One of the main points of this movie is the fact that it purposefully blurs the lines between race and gender and sexuality and humanity and human identity in order to emphasize the very basic, core idea of how we are all essentially the same people living similar lives and experiencing different trials and tribulations throughout our restrictive existences. Enter Karma. Once those lives have ended, our spirits, for lack of a better word, (our essences, souls, identities, whatever) continue beyond the constraints of death and begin again in a new form. That form can be anything. And so something can understandably shift in our literal appearance. We become a different race, a new gender, we make a different kind of choice, we're a different kind of person. This is NOT to say that I don't understand how other people can still be offended by the physical act being depicted on screen. A couple of cases are a little jarring and distracting. Whatever. The alteration of race in the modern sense is an incredibly sensitive matter, understandably so. Race, and gender for that matter, have significant cultural implications and we use such aspects of our identities as being representative of our past selves and ancestors. They have great meaning to us. I'm simply saying within the context of this movie, it is necessary to examine what is actually intended by the act.
Basically, see this movie. Hate it if you will, but see it. Something, an image, a character, an idea, WILL linger in your mind. It may all be fatuous, pretentious crap lacking in significant meaning, but really so are a lot of films. Let the movie exist for its own sake. And anyway, it's not what the movie is about, it's how it's about it. And that's what's so wonderful here. The stories themselves seem routine and a bit trite. But strung together in a complex, interwoven web of insanity, and done in a new and different manner- each story and each story together takes on a whole new level of, if not meaning, then simply pure experience of life, the universe, and everything.
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