Low Budget

Last Man Talking

Watched Basic in two parts. Basic is a movie with John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson that tries to create a sense of confusion as an investigator struggles with facts. The movie is, well, okay. When I watched the first hour, I was very taken with it, and wanted to finish. When I finally caught the whole thing, however, it was obvious I had overestimated how good it would be.

That’s not the point. The point is that the movie is an example of storytelling to trick the audience. There has always been a difference between the story itself, and the way it is told. It might be told sympathetically to the narrator, up close so that the audience feels they are part of it, or dryly in a way that removes much of the emotional content while giving a grander or more finely detailed picture. Some movies alternate, such as Schindler’s List. In that, we got both the scope of the holocaust and the individual tragedy.

One way of telling a story is to withhold key parts from the audience, so that they experience a revelatory moment. “I like to be surprised.” This goes back to Oedipus “Luke, I am your father” at least. In our times, it has developed in the fertile field of mystery novels and films. The “whodunit” approach. This, naturally, like a synthetic genetic mutation in corn crops, leaked over into wild plants. So we get action movies with a “whodunit” sub-plot.

Basic isn’t a great example of this, but it’s an example of what happens when a filmmaker tries to add more and more if this element to a film that is already full. Like adding more and more salt, because audiences like salt, eventually you gross out everyone except the fast-food junkies.

One you are done watching Basic, and think to yourself, what was the story, anyway? You realize there isn’t one. Many potential versions are thrown at you, one seems relatively final, then a final one is added that resolves the basic flaw in the movie. The flaw being that John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson have to end up with some kind of buddy-relationship, for the movie to work. But the final story is far less plausible than any of the intermediate versions thrown at the audience.

So, when watching this movie, you have to think to yourself, what level is real here? The only real that makes sense of this story is the Real needs of the Major Stars to come out On Top and Together.

posted by dan @ 9/29/2004 07:11:00 AM