Category Archives: Film

Heroes, Hypertext, and Paradox

Heroes introduces an interesting storytelling device: a freedom with space-time as an element of plot. Taken to extreme degree, this means that the story could move an infinite number of directions and maintain consistency given the way arcs are being developed: short within long. Within any narrative system or circle time plays a role as a link out into another circle. The skill might be to keep the bubbles growing within the larger bubble of the story world without relying too much on prevention plots or plots that attempt to cancel plots

The question is: what are the story arcs and would these pattern out as tangles within cyclical structures of hypertext, to use Mark Bernstein’s terminology. More importantly, does the persistence of the structures make for interest and the kind of questions that keep people interested.

Time in Heroes is hypertextual. In Heroes, it’s possible for a story to end within a given narrative arc. It’s also possible for that arc to be split into any number of complete stories causally independent from some other development, such as Hiro dying.

Case 1: Hiro prevents Syler from killing Claire.
Case 2: P. Petrelli arrives late, stalling Hiro from preventing Syler from killing Claire.
Case 3: P. Petrelli prevents Syler from killing Isaac, leaving Hiro in the hallway.

Case sequence doesn’t matter, nor does paradox, because the story could move to the rear or to the fore of any of the cases. The cases could also be split or forked, if Hiro could fork them.

TV Redux

At the moment, believe it or not, I’m watching Hawaii Five-0. I had forgotten about its stylized panorama. Drama of a different time.

Prior to play, my wife tried to turn the volume up by turning the black on/off circle on our Samsung television. She now lives in the world of the iPod. It was a great moment.

Film Criteria

S and I are trying to come up with movie categories that can be both fun and informative. Here’s what we have thus far:

1. Hated but watched anyway: ex: The Skeleton Key, Munich (S)
2. So bad it was good: ex: Equilibrium, Weatherman
3. Good but hated it anyway: Capote, Sin City
4. Just loved it: ex: Lost in Translation
5. Intriguing: ex: Munich (Me)

Of course, mine and S’s list will differ. She disliked Munich. I thought it intriguing.

Spatiality in Film

Steven Spielberg’s film, Munich, ends with Ephraim, a Mossad handler, and Avner, the assassin, walking away from one another, their destinations in opposition. Avner offers dinner, an offer of intimacy Ephraim cannot accept. This image of separation completes the film’s fundamental metaphor, home.

I thought that the film suffered from audience unappreciation, in that the film’s political and ethical themes blew out of the screen like grenade charges and became obvious from the start. The film isn’t nuanced about its expression of human conduct and choice. Nevertheless, if it had been stripped of about 45 minutes of obsession with paradox and the big stick of “telling you what this thing is about,” the film would have been a fantastic psychological journey for Avner, who goes from Israeli family man and expectant father to a man without center, alone in the world. Spielberg tells Israel’s story through Avner; it’s a story of descent, of birth to the modern.

More importantly, the film as set of spaces is where the interest lies. Avner must rennounce Israel at many levels before embarking on his journey, hence becoming country-less, home-less. At the end, he cannot go home, of course, because his home has disappeared. One cannot return to a prior space, as Blake teaches, because the geometry of home is always changing. The wilderness Avner enters enters Avner. Avner must live outside the circle of home in exile, which is why he must walk with Israel henseforth at his back. The state here is a physical circle, a reality with surface, an external and internal force any of us can walk into or out of, as we would a room, house, or other structure.

“Not being home,” a kind-of displacement, is Munich’s most powerful after affect. All agents in the movie suffer from the same placelessness. They live and die “outside.” Unlike Sir Gawain, they cannot change their homes upon return.

Back to the road again, then.

Characters

This weekend S and I caught the features DVD of HBO’s production of Deadwood, which we’ve been enjoying via Netflix. The conversation between creator and writer David Milch and Kieth Carradine was particularly fresh and insightful: two very smart guys talking about order, history, writing, character, and the creative process.

Milch and Carradine 1) are passionate in their work 2) know what they’re talking about 3) have a sense of humor 4) are sensitive to and seriously smart about a wide range of subjects: Victorian literature, psychology, history, politics, linguistics, religion, and image making. Deadwood’s excellence comes from Milch’s concentration and devotion to developing characters, which you can feel in the experience of the drama, hear in the crack dialogue, and react to as tensions unfold organically.

It was simply nice to see “smart,” textured, and uncontrived for a change. This is a marked difference between the podcasts of the writers of Battlestar Galactica, whose concentration has now become all about slavery to format and character and story incoherence.BG’s first year was tight, sometimes brilliant, and spellbinding. In the second season, the characters forgot who they were and are now experiencing things they should not be doing or thinking.

Character is core, whatever the format, film or hypertext.

Battlestar Galactica and Misinterpretation

I waited with anticipation for the second season of Battlestar Galactica. The arc was tense, the approach new, and the characters were, I thought, dead on. The second season doesn’t seem to remember any of this. It’s difficult to explain what the problem is because the characters had reasons that took time to establish, but this establishment can disappear when you see entire episodes devoted to misdirection.

Let’s say that a relationship pulls the story along, a pursuit narrative involving a connection between a man and a woman. An energy has developed between them that forms one chamber of the story’s heart. The writers strip them of this energy and put them in the wrong beds. “What’s he doing with her?” “Why is she with him?” “There’s no tension there.” “What does this have to do with where they are going along with everyone else?”

In addition to losing its characters, the writers have written the dramatic arc behind a cloud of mashy, predictable action. Battlestar should be a story about a journey home. The Cylons, lots of space (the sense of a hard exodus ahead has been forgotten), human missteps (disappeared), and an interesting myth (mislayed somewhere) are all in the way. Part of this story has to do with what the survivors are creating and destroying along the way. None of this is being told. Opportunities are being lost.

Poor sweat Billy is killed, but inconsequentially to any story. The confused genius spins a thousand miles away from himself, and he’s now being zippered into the costume of a cliche. Edward James Olmos has all but stepped aside as a force. It’s almost to the point where the story can’t be helped because so much time has been wasted standing in the same place, confused, wondering what to do next (see paragraph above).