Happy-fun-time movie reviews!: Lost, Translating, Adapting

So I've been watching movies. Since this is such a radical change in my life, I've decided to share my thoughts on two recent viewings: Adaptation. and Lost in Translation. This post is not a seven-point list full of pictures and videos, so feel free to leave now. I've already gotten a precious pageview that I can add to the other dozen for the month.

Besides their rhyming, there are obvious connections in the production of the films. Charlie Kaufman wrote the former and Spike Jonze directed. Sofia Coppola wrote and directed the latter, and the photographer-husband character is based on Spike when the two were married. Nicholas Cage, protagonist of Adaptation., is first cousins with Sofia. I'm going to be referring to all the characters in these films by the names of the actors who played them. This is way more natural than character names.

The thematic connections of Adaptation. and Lost in Translation exceed the production coincidences, basically: love cures isolation and inspires. At the beginning of each film we find two characters who feel depressed. They are inadequate despite living in already established or privileged situations: Nick Cage, Meryl Streep; Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson.

The characters feel like strangers in a strange land, and not just the two in Japan. Nick Cage and Meryl Streep wander around Los Angeles, New York, and the bayou, wading through malaise. All characters are searching for a deeper, personal meaning in their lives in some way or another. They feel disconnected in what are supposed to be loving relationships. Nick Cage is the only one not married, but he's dating someone and lives with his twin brother.

No character has found a sufficient coping mechanism. Cage and Streep can't write themselves out of the rut. Murray and Johansson don't find vocational fulfillment either. Unlike naval exercises in the East China Sea, Japan is no help here.

But when the credits roll, all is well. Value in some type of one-on-one connection has inspired hope in life, and this hope is not limited to the value of that connection alone. Murray and Johansson—spoiler alert?—don't get together in the end. They nevertheless come away with a sense of renewed purpose. In both films, the fulfillment of internal emptiness is demonstrated through the classic, masculine movie trope of riding off into the sunset. This is the 21st century, so it's cars on freeways. Adaptation. employs this trope more faithfully, and that's fitting for a movie whose third act is supposed to ironically demonstrate good Hollywood structure. As the renowned screenplay workshop guru had told Cage: "You can have flaws, problems, but wow them in the end, and you've got a hit."

Everyone has found hope through love. Even though these are tougher films to interpret, this can be read into the titles of each film. It's by 'adapting', or "figuring out how to thrive in the world," that Cage and Streep march into the bright future. Having been briefly, rapturously 'lost' in 'translating' their love to each other across a generation in a foreign country, Murray and Johannson also enjoy respective happily-ever-afters.

I'm not hatin'. If the above paragraphs read disparagingly it's only a product of my voice which, you might not have noticed, tends toward sarcasm and irony. I empathize with all four characters and love both movies, or I wouldn't be writing this. It's just that the takeaways from each film haven't been lasting inspiration for me, and I want to explain why. Thus, as I continue to pick apart these films I'll write in the first person—also because keeping case and tense consistent while discussing two characters from two films has been as difficult as finding a nutritious non-Pret meal for less than £5.

I've been struck with inspiration several times, but this enthusiasm has not lasted. It's not that the inspiration itself did not give good direction but that I did not reinforce it with other people. Before, say, a little prince told me to 'tame' people and see with my heart, I felt distant from people. After reading those inspiring words, I eventually drifted back to a peripheral mood anyway. I was banking on the value I had stored in my mind to energize my actions. 'Principle' injunctions et. al. have not been the problem in and of themselves, but my trying to follow them in and of myself proved ineffective.

"Selflessness! Love other people! Don't be afraid to ask for help! People around you love you!" Right. Those words don't help me. There are two other films I sympathized with that show and don't tell, if briefly, application of personal inspiration.

The King's Speech and Silver Linings Playbook were my favorite movies of 2011 and 2012-3. Besides the connection I felt to each protagonist, their happily-ever-afters show more than themselves or even them with their girls. Lionel sees 'Bertie' standing with his whole family and waving to a crowd representing the adoring British nation. Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence make out on a La-Z-Boy recliner, excessively, in a house full of their friends and family socializing together in peak form. I'm not going to fault Charlie-slash-Spike or Sofia for ending their films with solo rides into the sunset. No other ending would make sense for those films. In fact, both imply a widening joy from personal revelation. But it helps to see things.

King's Speech and Silver Linings show a central relationship holding together an orbit of other revitalized people, and they imply said orbiters strengthening the center. King's Speech seems to indicate that the entire British Empire will benefit from George VI's victory over adversity. All this from a turnaround within oneself? Wow. I've never been so lucky as to experience that!

A personal revelation with a wider application does not a higher application make, nor does it necessarily produce love flowing throughout. I know I'll be far better off focusing more on making and letting that happen. I'm also gonna keep on watching movies, mining them for flecks of gold. Then I can acquire your precious, precious pageviews and take over the world.

No one harms, so no surprises

Bored, I found the sheet music to Radiohead's “No Surprises” to memorize the two-measure hook on my learner’s keyboard. It’s my favorite Radiohead song, and I sing what I know of it daily. Typically, I don’t listen to the original recording, with which Stewart Lee ends the second series of his Comedy Vehicle. No, I have consigned Radiohead (and the Beatles) to Bob Dylan status: I fully recognize their incredible musicality but only enjoy listening to covers of their songs. Thus, I listen to either the Radiodread version or Regina Spektor's cover. The latter is the second track of the mix CD in my car, right after “Jerusalem.”

While this song may be vaguely suicidal, I would prefer to liken it to Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb.” To blend lyrics from the two songs: “You look so tired, unhappy / Bring down the government / They don't, they don't speak for us / I'll take a quiet life / A handshake of carbon monoxide / And no alarms and no surprises / I... have become comfortably numb.”

All very upbeat, encouraging stuff! Ennui is not new to me as I’m sure it isn’t to any of you, but Roger Waters remembers a different MO in the last verse of his song: “When I was a child / I caught a fleeting glimpse / Out of the corner of my eye,” right before he stamps it out at song’s end. I’m interested in that fleeting glimpse.

I just finished The Last Unicorn and identified with King Haggard. Even as he was undone he simply laughed “as though he had expected it” because “very little ever surprised [him].” I keep my room at least as dark as Haggard kept his castle, my costs as low and my company as sparse; but, as I’m not interested in unicorn genocide, I don’t take our similarities lightly.

Haggard thought he knew everything there was to know, even though he didn’t. I don’t have delusions of omniscience, but I’m sure Haggard and I aren’t alone in finding everyday life boring. If I do essentially the same thing each day; and, as Mark Twain observed, current events really do rhyme with history, what can I reasonably expect to surprise me?

Roger Scruton’s Very Short Introduction to Beauty comes to the rescue once again. He deftly distinguishes between the energy of disinterest and the emptiness of no interest. He argues that pleasure in beauty is disinterested:

When I read a poem, my pleasure depends upon no interest other than my interest in this, the very object that is before my mind. Of course, other interest feed into my interest in the poem: my interest in military strategy draws me to the Iliad, my interest gardens to Paradise Lost. But the pleasure in a poem’s beauty is the result of an interest in it, for the very thing that it is.

But his next claim is, appropriately, more interesting:

The pleasure in beauty is curious: it aims to understand its object, and to value what it finds.

The italics are his, but I bolded value.

I've already written about finding beauty in everyday life, but I was more concerned with rationally assessing and recording quality aesthetics. I didn’t think to be curious for value! Now, I’m neither an Existentialist nor a Taoist, but I subscribe more to the latter philosophy regarding value. I think that while we have great imaginative powers to invent valuable things, we more often discover value that has already been created. The italicizing and bolding is over now, I swear.

Just read them

In short, I have been comfortably numb and have enjoyed no alarms and no surprises for some time. And I, probably mistakenly, believe I understand most things around me. But I know I haven’t cared to value what I find.

Living during an information glut, you grow to assume very little will hold value. If you stop there you will be bored at best and apathetic at worst. But not expecting much to hold value means finding value will be surprising, will be more than “just a little pin prick... to keep you going through the show.” You will not intone empty appraisals as the speaker in “No Surprises” does, but you will be able to genuinely and affectionately speak his words, “Such a pretty house, and such a pretty garden.” Understanding something is a fine step, but valuing what you find is, in Richard E. Kim’s words, “a small beginning.”