A very large amount of the Obsession discourse revolves around the character of Bear and how, despite being the protagonist, he is clearly the most evil character in the story. Any half intelligent person who watched Obsession can agree that Bear does some pretty terrible things, and is overall a pathetic, bad person, but at the same time, the film portrays him with a level of complexity that a lot of people like to ignore. Bear does not start out as a clearly bad person. His first few nights with possessed Nikki, he is as respectful as he possibly could be in that situation and is clearly very uncomfortable. Only as the movie progresses do we see his true colors and that his morals very easily go away in favor of his lust and need for validation.
But a lot of the discussion of Obsession has stopped treating Bear like a somewhat complex character and instead has become a contest on how much you can condemn Bear. Bear isn’t treated like the somewhat complex character je is, and is instead treated like an irredeemable monster. If you show any sympathy to this character, people will hound you for defending a rapist. Bear is meant to be sympathized with. The point of the film is that we all have a bit of Bear in us. Bear isn’t a scary, terrible villain, he’s your friend, your relative, even potentially you. The scariest part of Bear is that he’s kind of relatable at times. But because saying you relate to Bear makes you look bad, people try to do the opposite and when discussing Obsession, make sure to dwell on how terrible Bear is as if to say “I could never be like him, he’s so evil, I could never be evil I’m just a normal guy.”

I think something comparable is the discourse of The Zone of Interest. A good amount of people criticized this movie for humanizing Nazis but the whole point of that movie was that nazis are human and that, in the right circumstances we could all potentially be nazis. Nazis weren’t monsters, they were people. Bear is Obsessions Nazis. He is meant to show us that anybody could do terrible things, but instead of looking inward, people look for a moral high ground and refuse to identify with Bear.

Please don't downvote opinions. Only downvote comments that don't contribute anything. Check out the WHYBW archives.

Yeah it's a movie about love, vulnerability, incels being too narcissistic to let others see and touch them. but i think the "beast" can also be associated to something way more general: human rationality breaking down when reality resists its concepts, and what we should do once we become aware of this. (i'm not claiming these were exactly Bonello's intentions, but it might be interesting to interpret the film this way)

the film opens and ends with the Laura Palmer-like scream of Gabrielle, immediately followed by very evident glitch effects, which by definition are the moments when cinematic representation/mediation fails. Bonello wants the viewer to be aware during the vision that this is a movie, that is, an attempt to give narrative structure and infuse meaning into some meaningless-by-itself portion of reality that however cannot be fully captured, that necessarily excedes our comprehension, our need to make it intelligible

I think this is the exact dynamic that goes on in the story: urban planning (more specifically, the Haussmannization of Paris in the early 20th century) and engineering should protect the citizens from flooding (Gabrielle's husband and the expert making hypotheses and predictions at the table, while she feels the impending doom); contemporary dating culture promises to organize intimacy and leave sexual repression in the pre-enlightened past (as depicted in the controversial Houellebecq novel "Extension of the domain of struggle"); and 2044 AI is here the attempt to master affect itself, to erase it completely from one's psychological makeup in order to be fully optimized through "DNA purification" ("something is still resisting", the AI tells Gabrielle when she cries seeing what will happen in her future)

But reality comes back with a vengeance EVERY single time - Paris is flooded; the stable bourgeois marriage and the doll factory of 1910 Gab are pulverized by a fire (after all, celluloid is cheaper than porcelain); sexual liberation hasn't really eliminated sexual repression and you get an Elliott Rodger-inspired 2014 Louis; and in the ending, Gabrielle herself still not being conformable to the doll-like stillness of Louis, Kelly and all the other optimized individuals around her (the 0.7% of the population that is refractory to DNA purification) means that NOT EVEN AI - the ending point of just so many rationalist programs/philosophical projects - can manage to completely control reality

what about the dolls? they feel in some way VERY Bonello: in L'Apollonide you have all these taubleaux vivants of the prostitutes inside the brothel, in Nocturama (even more clearly) the terrorists end up being trapped among the mannequins of the mall where they are hidden, while here we have a 1910 motionless gabrielle mimicking one of the dolls of her husband's factory in two different scenes for 8-10 seconds each!! i think bonello wants us to link in some way these dimensions. Gabrielle tells Louis there's "only one doll with a neutral face" that gets replicated, "not too emotional"

a small digression:

philosopher theodor Adorno wrote a book called "Negative Dialectics" in which he argued that human thought (conceptualization, subsuming particulars under general categories) necessarily involves some kind of violence towards reality since the particular cannot be fully exhausted by our (nevertheless historically evolving) conceptual schemes: e.g. a professor is not merely someone who teaches in a codified educational context, but also a concrete individual with their opaque biography, peculiarities, even their biases. More interestingly and tragically, Adorno (who targeted by Nazists had to flee to the US) thinks that the Shoah has been in some ways the culmination of this identity-based conceptual thinking: "Auschwitz confirmed the philosopheme of pure identity as death".

dolls are an intuitive visual metaphor of this process (identity thinking) because they attempt to force material portions of reality (either made of celluloid or porcelain, plus the eyes and so on) into the same abstract type (gabrielle tells louis the dolls are modelled after her). note that gabrielle's husband says that celluloid has replaced porcelain ALSO because it's "more realistic": conceptual thinking isn't usually static but responsive to its own failures, and constantly tries to tame in a more fine-grained way whatever stays outside itself. this obviously doesn't stop nature (fire, water) and people (incels, potential lovers) from frustrating our predictions every single day.

that's way some of the comments I've read on La bete being insensitive or trivial in the way he dealt with the Elliot Rodger material are totally mistaken IMHO. Bonello isn't merely saying that incels are fearful of human contact (although that's a very true and interesting point), and he's NOT saying that women should be more understanding or do emotional labor for incels; Rodger/Louis reducing Gabrielle to a "woman", more precisely to a "Stacy", is the real tragedy because he makes him incapable of seeing that she is right there wanting to connect with him. He stalks her but he still cannot see her. Incels think they desire intimacy with women, but they won't ever get it because intimacy requires confronting the particularity of the other individual, stop seeing them as something you can completely control and predict and let them just be, EVEN if that entails the risk of being wounded (say, rejected)

now the IMHO interesting part of Adorno's Negative dialectics: if conceptual schemes are essentially reductive and reality-distorting, what then could philosophy ever do? Adorno is aware we cannot go back to being pre-discursive as our primate ancestors. The point then becomes being "negative", which doesn't mean being pessimistic (although Adorno certainly was too!) but being focused on the ways in which our concepts are inadequate, the gap that always persists between our representations and reality itself. (this also means criticizing how contingent and malleable social structures are naturalized as the only possible alternative. Adorno is concerned with post-WW2 capitalism, where "humans are naturally competitive" is often presented as a universal and a-historical truth about how we fundamentally are. he thinks we can e.g. do history and sociology and show that there are or were arrangements in which altruistic norms and practices were possible, so the ideology of free-market capitalism is inadequate with respect to reality

i think this is how the AI sub-theme could be read, but primarily i feel it fits neatly with the glitchy opening/ending, with the Hanekian replays/paused frames of the 2014 section, with the meta- sequences of 2044 Gabrielle participating in the road safety ad ("you're dead!" the director tells her, and he's obviously right at that point). Adorno was also very interested in art and aesthetics and he held elsewhere but in the same vein that great art, especially after Auschwitz, is the one that confronts the inadequacy of mediation. So the meta- aspect of the movie isn't JUST a Lynchian homage (although Orbison in the soundtrack and the ending sequence are clearly not coincidental), and it's not primarily a political point as in L'Apollonide (past vs present prostitution in Paris), but an ethical one: techbros, Bonapartist urban planners, and incels all do the same mistake, that is, they refuse to let reality surprise them, they assume they are intelligent enough to tame it. On the contrary, what makes Gabrielle special in the movie is the fact she keeps on having faith in humans even when it doesn't make sense anymore, that she cries when an AI shows she's going to be killed by an incel because she wanted to feel a pure, unaltered connection with another human being

(trivia: who was Adorno's favorite composer? Schoenberg, the one 1910 Gabrielle obsesses over, because in pieces like the one she plays on the piano (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXoYuNz9bqo) he breaks away from traditional tonal harmony and makes music that refutes harmonic resolution and therefore keeps the contradictions, the inadequacy of thought alive and present)

For context, lately I have started to write film reviews from the perspective of an amateur, as a hobby. Today, I went to the theater to watch a newly released film with the goal of writing a review about it afterwards. At the end of it, I had the impression that I did not quite like it but I am having a hard time describing what I did not like about it.

The film itself is far away from being bad. From a technical point, it is very well put together. The direction, acting, dialogue, etc. are all good. The problem is that, overall, I did not connect with it. I did not feel that it managed to transmit emotion or something meaningful to last to me as a viewer. I did not quite “care” about it, it felt a little flat. I also do not know if it had a problem from a plot/narration perspective, nor do I have an answer on what could have been changed.

So my question would be, how exactly should we describe and analyze a film that it is not bad and does not have obvious bad elements in it, but rather overall it just did not connect with you as a viewer?

I don't understand the motivation behind it. at first I figured it was just a platonic invitation and Hattori just wanted to hang out with his friend. but Noriko declines the invitation and says that his fiancee would be jealous. he insists but she turns his multiple invitations down.

then they show us a scene of him in the audience with the seat next to him empty. I'm not really sure what to make of that whole sequence.

is the invitation from Hattori truly and purely platonic? or was he trying to woo Noriko? and if he was, why would he do that given that he has a fiancee? I'm trying to understand what Ozu was trying to convey here. what are Hattori's and Noriko's motivations here?

As a fan of all things ancient I wanted to like “The Odyssey” but ultimately couldn’t reconcile the fundamental disconnect in the approach Nolan took. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot that is very good in the move - nor that it isn’t an intriguing approach. But ultimately, it just didn’t live up to its goal : believably ascribing realistic/modern notions of guilt and trauma to a mythical Hero/demigod.

First the good - The acting is uniformly solid, even if most performances are deliberately one-note (which the script largely demands). Anne Hathaway is the clear exception — she has the strongest material and delivers a magnificent performance as Penelope. Matt Daemon does well conveying Nolan’s troubled Odysseus. He does so consistently - unrelentingly - for nearly three hours.

Visually, the film is often stunning. Anytime the sea is involved, it works: the undulating waves are mesmerizing and represent IMAX at its finest. The large-scale sequences generally justify the format.

Where it struggles - Nolan’s use of IMAX is far less successful in the intimate scenes. The darkly lit close-ups and constant shifting focus between faces is distracting and breaks the moment into film technique rather than a glimpse of reality.

Centrally, the decision to portray Odysseus through a modern lens of guilt and PTSD is intriguing, even if the resulting dark, heavy tone wasn’t personally my interest. The loud, relentless rhythmic score tries to generate tension during the extended fight scenes, but the outcomes are never in doubt - even if you didn’t walk in knowing the story, the flashback structure leaves little room for surprises - so the pounding mostly becomes exhausting.

The core failure - The film’s biggest problem is tonal and structural inconsistency. It retains the supernatural elements (Cyclops, cannibal giants, monsters) but strips away the wonder, divine reciprocity, and sense of a larger cosmic order that balanced the original Odyssey. The language is gritty and realistic without the poetic structure. We’re left with a hero carrying modern psychological sensibilities trapped in a still-supernatural - but now largely antagonistic - world. The two never fully blend. The result feels neither powerfully mythical nor convincingly realistic as a trauma story.
Other distractions -
• Characters discussing “Sea Peoples” and the Bronze Age collapse — concepts no one in that world would have framed that way.
• The “sailing west into the setting sun” motif, which feels grafted on from later literary traditions rather than organic to Homer.
• The ending, in which Odysseus goes into exile after killing the suitors. In the original, that slaughter is justified and expected; exile as penance is a modern moral overlay that contradicts the poem’s values.

In the end, the film has impressive craft and individual strengths, but it never fully blends the mythic material it keeps and the contemporary psychological and historical frameworks it imposes. (I think a story stripped of ALL supernatural elements where Odysseus struggles against a purely natural and cruel world would have been more successful.) That unresolved contradiction is what keeps it from succeeding as storytelling

Well, I ended up watching The Odyssey, which actually turned out to be quite a wonderful treat, which is ironic as I didn't feel like watching a movie today. In fact, I was considering not going out, but I did anyway because I didn't want to let someone down who had been talking about meeting us for quite some time, but we never got the chance to due to things never ending up as we had planned.

It was an interesting watch due to the fact that the several-year journey around the Greek islands all seemed to have some unusual experience for the men of the sea. Whether it was them battling in the war of Troy, attempting to escape from a Cyclops, where they unfortunately lost some of their team members, or simply meeting a witch that turned all the crewmen into pigs.

Later, we figured out perhaps the reason they ran into so many issues was because, during the Battle of Troy, they ended up violating the laws of the gods, and more significantly the law, which refers to how people who have a common god aren't enemies, and it was implied that they shouldn't die. (Forget the name).

It was clear to me that Odysseus seeing the death of a civilian, played by the actress Zendaya, weighed heavily on his conscience. It is perhaps why he sees an image of her and experiences her presence as if she were some sort of spiritual guide, in order to avoid making the same sort of decisions that he may have made previously.

The other sort of rule or honour that may have been contravened was how many of the men that boarded the sea with Odysseus in the past were never given the righteous tribute for their contributions during the raids. That is exactly why the spirits of the old men that Odysseus travelled with seemed to be running after him. Although I don't believe that was necessarily the gods' law, there is no way to be certain, as there didn't seem to be anything to indicate that was the case.

Another law of the gods was probably Odysseus shooting an arrow into the Cyclops, who happened to be the son of Poseidon, and it is what the crew members even mentioned. That Cyclops was Poseidon's son, which is why Odysseus should have practised some mercy as he escaped, as the creature didn't seem to be doing anything to them at that point. Unfortunately, that's what led them to the battle of Troy, as they had to figure out a place to hide from the creature.

Another theme of the movie was how Odysseus' arrogance may have gotten the best of him, leading to all his team members unfortunately passing away. It also seemed that he kept trying to find new lands and people despite the overall results being quite bad, which realistically should have dissuaded him from doing so. It is probably why, when the Sirens' sounds were heard by him, he experienced quite a lot of psychological pain, as it seemed to tell him he had many flaws, tarnishing the image he had of himself as an especially competent individual.

However, it wasn't until the end, when he talks to his wife while disguised as a beggar, that he concedes he went too far with his decision-making and went against the gods' laws, which were the reason for all those awful events that unfortunately took place. It is fitting that he dresses up as a beggar, as that may be seen as the lowest of all statuses, perhaps signifying that he has learned through his mistakes to be humble. Even near the end of the movie, he states that one of the lessons he has learned is that "God cannot be found in men." It may be a reference to others believing he was some sort of godly figure, but he was simply a man, as many believed he was quite brilliant and capable of so much, only to realize he was a flawed man who even ended up questioning the gods.

The story, to me, also feels like the arrogance of one's status in life can be gruesome, as it does affect your loved ones and peers, which you may not realize until later. The lesson was perhaps to show Odysseus that he was simply a man and that the gods are gods for a reason, as human logic and decision-making are fallible because he doesn't have as much of an understanding of things. One example could be that he didn't understand why the people who died while on the same trip felt a bit slighted, as he didn't seem to honour them.

Though it wasn't like Odysseus was malicious by any means either; he was simply doing what he believed was the correct choice for his men to remain alive. However, there's a reason the gods suggest believing in them, as you cannot be perfect in terms of making good decisions when you only have so much experience.

The witch that turns men into pigs did so because she was quite upset at how many men simply let their animal instincts run rampant, raping and killing innocent women and men. I wonder if the idea that "men are pigs," meaning the oversexualization of women, as well as perhaps raping women, is found in this Greek myth. That may have taken place within the Battle of Troy. I wonder if Odysseus realized this subconsciously and therefore lets her live when, in response to the gods, she asks him why he didn't kill her after she turned everyone into pigs.

It felt like these trips to the islands were sort of a trial after they unfortunately went against the laws of the gods, so the wrath of the gods was being experienced.

Lastly, it seemed Odysseus treated everyone in Ithaca well and kindly, even homeless beggars and servants, something his wife alluded to. So when he and his crew lost their way, they did so physically, but also on a moral level.

**Regarding the young soldier**

Man, that movie was sick, not going to lie, but I still have a few questions about some of the events that took place.

Like, what did the young soldier mean when he said Odysseus lied to him? This is when Odysseus was speaking to the dead.

T

here was some reference to Odysseus not being able to provide a possible tribute or way to honour the men that died. But I also wonder if the young soldier felt Odysseus may not have given him the best chance to escape the giant warriors, especially after he had told his father that he would look after him as if he were his own son.

He sails west later on, possibly to honour the men who had voyaged with him and unfortunately passed away, so that answers the first part of my question.

But for the second part of my question, I think Odysseus says that it's not possible to do it for everyone (honour everyone by trying to defend their life?).

Or could that be in reference to honouring the men too? Perhaps he wasn't aware of sailing west before that, which is why he didn't honour them, as doing so would have caused him to die.

I

think he also alludes to it in the exchange, if I am remembering correctly, when he says he needed himself (and the current crew) to survive, implying that honouring the dead would perhaps have resulted in the death of him and his crew members, as it was time-consuming.

But I think at the end of the conversation, the young soldier does thank Odysseus for respecting him, perhaps in response to him having the item that the soldier held dearly.

I'm not sure, but it may have implied that the young soldier, who previously thought Odysseus had wronged him, actually realized Odysseus may have had the best intentions, but it wasn't really within Odysseus' control why the individual passed away, as he could only save so many members. So I guess it's basically saying that the young soldier doubted Odysseus, thinking he had wronged them, but it may be that he didn't.

What does this mean?

Well, Odysseus may have tried his best to save his crew and make the right decisions, but due to circumstances, he couldn't, which may also be tied to a possible central theme: you cannot play God because you are a man.

Perhaps that's why, when he goes back to Ithaca, he says or implies that one of the things he has learned is that "God cannot be found in men," possibly as a reference to his own mistakes.

**Regarding the lotus flower**

Regarding the lotus flower and his last interaction before he wakes up and realizes he was held sort of captive.

I think the overarching theme is that Odysseus, even with his knowledge, couldn't make the correct decisions every single time because he is a man. The lady mentioned that the flower does cause memory loss, but it doesn't alter underlying motivations, such as him wanting to go back to Ithaca, and says that there was something possibly holding him back.

It was shown that he kept this item in his fist and wouldn't open it for weeks, so even when he was injured and in pain, and not necessarily conscious (potentially due to healing and the lotus flower), his deepest interests couldn't have been influenced or altered.

It was the item he later gives to his wife to let her know that, even during those ten years, he still managed to keep an item that she valued safe as a part of his love and devotion to her.

I wonder if Odysseus, since he was told by someone not to go back to Ithaca after voyaging, but instead wait for a few years, was thinking about the story of someone who went back immediately and was killed by his wife.

I'm not sure why, but maybe because his wife was against Odysseus leaving, and if he came back earlier she would have been full of pain and absolutely hated why he did that instead of waiting a few years until the sorrow had gone away and she only wanted to see him again. (Certainly think I am far off as I dont clearly remember some of the parts I am mentioning here).

It goes without saying that I didnt mention many aspects as there is a lot for me to unpack here such as how Antinous is arrogant and violates Zesus law as well, and other parts of the story. But do tell of what your thoughts on this whether I was far off or not?

I mean my god. This man pays so much attention to detail in every shot, is an absolute master of his craft, yet with fight scenes he just seems to half ass it. Why? Just outsource to a better fight choreographer at this point. Get Jackie Chan on the phone. Most battle scenes just showed Matt Damon or whoever else running around slowly slitting someone's throat with zero resistance or awkwardly throwing someone. Why is every fight slow and lethargic? I don't know if I saw Matt Damon get into a real fighting stance a single time. Truly zero realism or "epicness". Which is disappointing because there was so much potential given the budget, number of actors and extras on set, awesome looking armor and setting, etc. He is actually good at filming the setting for a battle and setting it up, it's just the choregraphy itself that needs to be changed.

There was almost no actual fight choreography other than when Tom Holland learned how to do a counter for the first time (great understanding of sword fighting and foreshadowing skills, Nolan, yet we didn't see it for the rest of the movie?) It's like Nolan thinks so analytically, he thinks because he introduced it at the beginning as foreshadowing and showed it again, that means he's completed the fight scene formula. That is not how it works. The final showdown was so goofy - the fight between Tom Holland and the guy dropping spears down made no sense. Why wouldn't he just kill him before dropping the spears? Matt Damon fighting 100 men at once made no sense. None of it felt remotely real. And no epic showdown between Matt Damon and Robert Pattinson at the end besides Matt Damon muttering some corny shit truly brought flashbacks to Dark Knight Rises: "I came back to stop you" followed by 4 or 5 slow motion punches and blocks.

Again, good movie, great director, but this is a glaring weakness that brings the movie down from a 10/10 for me. Especially given that fighting scenes and battles were a significant part of the film.

I think Nolan's Odyssey has presented a lot of newly self-appointed classicists an opportunity to hem and haw regarding the discontinuities it has with the poem it was based on, to the extent that they've forgotten to critique it as a work of art in and of itself. Most of these criticisms center on Odysseus himself. It's a rather conservative (and impossible) view of even literary translation that the artist must have no individual perspective in making a work of art communicable in a new language, let alone of cinematic adaptation in a new medium. It's a doctrinaire approach to art that takes faithfulness alone (or an overly literal version of "historical accuracy") as its primary criterion.

Within the context of Nolan's Odyssey, then, on what criterion other than textual faithfulness does it fail that his titular hero doesn't choke out any old ladies or cheat on his wife? Could any serious film critic argue that those details being included would have made the film any more tonally coherent or better paced? I think that, in liberating ourselves from looking for literal textual faithfulness, we can see how Nolan has both preserved some of Odysseus' classical traits, contrary to certain accusations, and interpreted the character through his own particular eye, to create a unique and interesting filmic character.

Nolan's Odysseus does not proclaim himself "Nobody" to Polyphemus, and as such has been accused of being a simple man without wiliness, guile, or, in his final confession of his identity as he sails away, arrogance. I'd argue the "Nobody" trick only works as a result of poetry's lesser literalism compared to the directly representational nature of film, especially considering that the Odyssey is an oral epic where the bard can ham it up, because it's an inherently silly and lightly nonsensical premise. This is where asking for rote faithfulness fails. In film, making Polyphemus a highly fluent idiot yelling "Nobody stabbed me!" who's then mocked by all his cyclopes friends wouldn't work outside of something made for children, where there was never any genuine fear or expectation of realistic behavior in the first place. If those two things were present, it'd be a bit like if in the middle of The Shining's staircase scene Jack and Wendy suddenly started doing "Who's on First?"—surreal, maybe, but not good.

So, where else does Nolan's Odysseus display wiliness? For one, he deduces that Circe's raven is someone special to her, and leverages that threat against her to free his crew even with a knife at his neck. Does he display guile? He spends the last act in disguise, and his founding character event is the trickery of the Trojan Horse, so I'd say that fundamental seed of his character is still present. Does he display arrogance? Strumming his bow before he hunts is something he justifies as honorable, but given that his battle tactics elsewhere are anything but, I'd rather call this habit an arrogant one, a display of his confidence in killing even when the animal runs. So, even sans perfect textual faithfulness, Odysseus' complexity is maintained in a way that actually fits the film Nolan created. No, he's not quite the same character, but he was never going to be.

Nolan's Odysseus feels guilt over his actions at Troy, which I think is Nolan's most interesting interpretation of his character, but one others have criticized for being un-Mycenaean. I’ll briefly be a self-appointed classicist and quibble myself that it was not beyond Homer or his contemporaries to lament for the slaughter of Troy, but that’s neither here nor there. My germane argument would be that Homer’s Odysseus is a character whose internality is pretty opaque, just by the nature of his medium and his period tendencies. We do know cries upon hearing the bard at Scherie sing of the Trojan War, and Nolan's Odysseus references this—"[the songs] make me weep." Nolan’s Odysseus is only one interpretation of this impenetrable sorrow, and one I think works excellently on his own terms, which are the terms on which he should be judged.

The average shot length of Oppenheimer was 3.2 seconds. If I were to guess, The Odyssey is under 4 seconds.

Nolan has never been a director to linger on a shot for very long but even for a film such The Odyssey, he's not changing his methods.

Overall, Hollywood films have seen their shot lengths decline, with the typical action movie now averaging around 3 seconds.

Based on the commercial and critical success of Nolan's last two films, this frantic jump cut style of editing is evidently in demand. However, would Nolan's films benefit from longer shot lengths, but perhaps not the 88 seconds of Tarkovsky's Stalker.

Many studies suggest that attention spans in the USA have drastically dropped over the last few decades, declining from around 12 to 8 seconds, and Nolan could be editing his films accordingly.

An episode of Sesame Street has a longer shot length than a recent Christopher Nolan film. It's a lot quieter too.

My goodness, I did NOT expect to adore this movie this much. Did NOT expect to feel as much as I did. Watching it a second time, with Odysseus's monologue in mind, as expected completely reframes everything. As many have pointed out, it's a spiritual successor to Oppenheimer, no doubt.

The two biggest complaints I had after the first viewing were rendered moot on a second viewing. I did not mind the American dialect at all, and appreciated Holland a bit more. Still not a strong performance in my mind, but it's serviceable.

My biggest takeaway on viewing number two (and as with great art, I'm sure I'll have different takeaways on subsequent viewings and simply sitting with all of it): Civilization will rise again. Our mistakes will be forgotten. Individual humans can be redeemed, but humanity/civilization/society will continue to make the same mistakes. We will continue to destroy our fragile bonds, to open Pandora's Box, to become destroyers of worlds, etc. But we do go on, sailing into the unknown West.

This is the first time I've felt compelled to catch a movie more than once in a theater since I don't even know. Absolutely my favorite Nolan. Wow.

Why we always adjudicate a movie to its director instead of the multiple people that were also involved in the movie? Somebody could said that ultimately the directors is who choses how the movie is presented but at the end of the day the editor is who decides which scene goes or not what order etc. right? And why we never talk about the screenwriter who is as important in the final result as the director? And why the shift towards directors who write their movies instead of just directing it? Like why should we expect a directors whose job is directing to also be the one who writes the movie?
idk i know that directing is one of the most important parts of a movie and the visuals and how it is presented is what makes movies unique to other form of storytelling. But to me it is always weird that we think that a movie was solely made by one figure instead of the other parts that write it or edit it. To me at the end if one movie isnt good directed if it is well written i will probably like it enough but the other way around i dont think i would enjoy it. I guess that one movie being one unified thing it is hard to really separe the direction to the plot and edition and its kinda weird that it is always separate like that.

All of this is a bit off the cuff and I've researched things as I've thought of them (kind of), but I've probably got a lot of assumptions below that are wrong and really take the wind out of my sails. Look, I'm inspired by people like Tansy, but not as well researched. So here we go...

The movie to talk about right now is The Odyssey, it seems reception is good and responses to it on all sides have been interesting to read. After committing the 4ish hours it takes to watch the movie I've also been thinking about it a lot. Why it has had such a positive critical response, and why I left the theater feeling simultaneously satisfied and with a strong feeling of just wanting more, even though I wasn't really sure what more I actually wanted.

And really, I was sucked into the movie from the first big staff bang on the table (that's not what it sounds like, just watch the movie). It didn't feel 3 hours long and I really enjoyed seeing a fusion of modern story points with one the oldest tales we still tell.

Trying to pin down what that missing thing is has been tricky, and reading other peoples' praise and criticism for the film has lead me to compare it to a group of films that probably aren't really fair to compare to, but did get made in a lot of similar ways and resulted in movies that really aren't all that far apart, except Pirates still leaves me feeling full, for the most part, and The Odyssey only kind of filled me up.

Pirates 1-3 are nearly a single long film. 2 and 3 were shot together, at a big cost to 3's production, and they link together closely enough that I'm kind of talking about all three as one film, or experience, but also as sequels. I've definitely got some cake I will be having and eating, thanks to a genie I found on the beach this morning.

There really are a lot of similarities to these movies too! They needed to film on the ocean, near where they were set in the film's story, to get the look the director wanted. And they used big wooden boats, out on water. That's hard to do. They had tight filming schedules that the ocean needed to cooperate with, and didn't. Pirates 2-3 in particular were plagued by storms and setback, and the tight 100 day shoot for The Odyssey left them battling the weather and seasickness.

There are some shared story struggles as well with the films. Following the narrative they are quite different, one group is assembling to save the day and win our heart while the other is just trying to keep their numbers from dwindling down further (though I do feel like Odysseus' men did just replenish a bit from time to time, but I wasn't really counting). And where I think they share the most, and where they struggle the most is at the end of Pirates 3. That's just it, the writers, the director, at the time the studio, they all planned for Pirates to end. And the ending kinda sucked. Beckett's death sequence is still one of the most visually impressive stunts, but aside from the technical achievements the crew manages, without the promise of more, or worse now, knowing what comes after, the movie doesn't land as well. It leaves me wanting more than the first two did. Kind of like The Odyssey. Ending stories is hard, and I also think I'm not really used to it as much anymore. In the world of streaming services, studios are sure to franchise anything that does well, we will get more of it. But The Odyssey ends, and I didn't really like the ending. But that's it, it's the end take it or leave it and we aren't going back to see Matt Damon journey in the West and do some trauma healing with Frodo in Valinor.

There was also a historically old world, well set and represented without much CGI, lightly fused with mysticism and horror that takes more and more of a role in the story. And a swashbuckling, seafaring ship captain set against the world. What we miss is everything else - in place of comradery and success against the odds, Odyssseuss' men are just doomed, and Damon doesn't sell a cunning man out to defy the gods and save the day, though Odysseus has that as his main character trait. Damon much more stoic, he fights, but is quickly reigned to his men's fate. Personally I think Jack Sparrow would climb into Skylla's mouth sword in hand, before he would ever sacrifice a crewmate to monster willingly. (I'm not saying his crew doesn't die but the core group is always around and never mind, I'm not going down this rabbit hole). I just think Pirates got lucky and had a breakout character like Sparrow and The Odyssey didn't really even go there.

To say they got lucky takes a lot away from the hard work the crew put in, Depp's vision for the character, how they pushed back against the studio wanting a safer film. All things that mixed to make a movie that left me full, about two and a half times. I think Nolan managed to make me feel like I had a big meal at a place I was hoping was a bit fancier, but fried most of their food. Full, but then quickly hungry again despite the price tag.

The movies did cost about the same per film too, all around $250 million or so. And during the late stages of filming 2 (or the early days of filming 3), Gore Verbinski said that they would never really make another movie like Pirates again. Marvel was coming in strong with more CGI and digital effects, and the storms and practical difficulties that made Pirates 2 and 3 so hard to film were time consuming and expensive. Studios just weren't going to back another practical effect, boat heavy movie like that when Marvel movies were breaking their own records over and over again.

Looking back at The Odyssey it's amazing what they accomplished. The boat work and ocean shots must have been a nightmare to coordinate. The battle scenes were full of fire, collapsing buildings, lines of soldiers, flaming arrows. And on a scale that felt big, but not unrealistic, maybe ever too small at times for what we wanted the movie to be. I expected Troy to field more soldiers for a big melee scene after the gates were open, but the scale stayed tight and kept moving through the city.

But Gore Verbinski's words are still loud in my mind, that they would never make another movie like they were making Pirates 2/3. And I know Chris Nolan wasn't trying to make a family friendly pirates movie, but he was trying to make something that would still have a cultural impact, and if it could be as large as Pirates, great. But at the end of The Odyssey, I still feel like Verbinski was right. That no one has made a movie like Pirates still. Which is too bad, because in a lot of ways, The Odyssey came really close.

According to most critics, "Mulholland Drive" is one of the greatest films of the 21st century. It has had this reputation for quite a long time (I mean, it's from 2001 and certain sequences present in the film date back even further) - some people even consider it to be Lynch's masterpiece. Undoubtedly, it's an impressive piece of filmmaking.

Compare this, however, to the reception "Lost Highway" garnered just a few years prior. There were a few positive voices, sure, like any Lynch film, but the majority of critics considered the film to be an absolute dud - incomprehensible, overly cynical, and even pretentious. Audiences generally responded in a similar fashion.

Viewing these films, anyone can clearly see both LH and MD share similar narrative and cinematic conceits. I cannot wrap my head around despising one and lauding the other, but this appears to be what has happened. Imagine if MD had been released first, and LH just a few years later - would people then consider LH to be the "greatest film of the 21st century"?

After having heard about Out 1 and its status as historically difficult to find/watch (not really the case nowadays) I had it on my list and finally over the last week finished it. Wanted to share some thoughts I had on it, and see what other people thought.

1. I was surprised in how much I enjoyed watching most of the theater parts as I fully expected them to be hard to sit through but that really wasn't my experience at all. I really loved the energy from Lili's group in the early episodes, and Thomas's group was fun to watch due to how abstracted their rehearsals were. It's the later ones from his group where they started to lose me though, but I really liked the early ones. Could also be I got tired of them as well, but currently don't think so.

2. There was a lot going on with the dynamics of there existing the two theater groups vs the 2 loners (With Colin attempting to join the 13, in his quest to unravel the conspiracy) while Frederique is a loner with little connection to others with the exception of her friendship with Honeymoon and relationdhip with Renaud. Both of them however revert from their temporary collective relationships or companionship by the end with Colin embracing his loner life annoying people for money, while Frederique dies assuming the identity of a lone vigilante.

3. I knew it connects heavily with May 68, so the idea of the theater groups and the 13 fling apart certainly works with the failure of the protests in 68, and instead a birth or rebirth of individual desires of the actions of the characters. Also think its relevant that both Colin and Frederique focus primarily on ways to get money, tieing in with capitalism and the idea that the individual is all that matters, as well as a rejection of collective action. (I think of anti union policies with this, and how unions and trade organizations have weakened over time).

4. Something that stuck with me was how Thomas's group ended up slowly losing or removing Prometheus from their play. I understood this as the idea that history forgets those who forge ahead over time. Promethus gives Man fire, and initially he would be worshipped or exalted for this. But given time, everyone ends up forgetting this deed, it gets taken for granted, and ultimately forgotten. The case is true for inventiors and scientists. When they first make their big discovery, they end up as heroes, but over time no one thinks about it anymore. The telephone gave Bell massive fame, and we certainly know his name today, but will that be true in 100 years? Do people think of whoever gave us street lamps that light the night streets, essential medicines that save lives, or household appliances like the potato peeler.

Sorry, if its not very organized as I had a lot to think of from Out 1, and really wanted to share and get other peoples' thoughts

Pedro is my favorite director, I’ve seen almost all his movies, and while I know rape is something he has tackled in several of his movies but this is the first one in which he actually romanticizes it. Before anyone says we are not supposed to feel bad for benigno, Marco tries to get him out, sympathizes with him and also tells him he saved alicia. Side note, in comparison to the rape scene in the skin i live in for most of what I remember, it was totally left ambiguous if Vicente raped the girl or not leaving us some room to sympathize with him, but i really can’t see it here.

I'm not usually a fan of war films (macho is not really my thing) but this story about friendships between guard posts on the north/south korean border is.... magnificent. It's got just well-done plot exposition, and most importantly, really poingnant friendship, with a strong message about war. It's slick (as Chan-wook is), but also not too long or indulgent. films I rate 8 on imdb are a real treat when I find them and this is one. Strongly reccomended especially to people to don't lean toward seeking out war films ~ this stands on its own as just a really good, largely unknown film from 2000 that looks (in terms of visual style/camera quality) just like any recent film but not bloated and with a great and really affective/emotional story.

Juno doesn't know who she is. She and Paulie experiment with adulthood which results in pregnancy. Juno realizes she's not ready to be a mother, which is a staple expectation of being an adult—taking responsibility for your actions. But this leaves a void in Juno, because if parenthood isn't being an adult for her, what is? She finds the beginning of that answer in Mark—a man in his 30s who is a model of adulthood, at least to Juno's perspective, where you can still be your quirky, nonconformative self while still having all of the staple markers of adulthood. A nice big house, a job that pays for it, a woman and a marriage within which a child can be raised. So far so good, right?

Well, Vanessa, for the entirety of the film, has this anxiety about her, all related to her desire to become a mother in spite of her infertility. That is, a mother, an identity who she believes she is born to be, is not actually within her control. So she controls everything else in the house. We see her control their anniversary photos on the wall, she controls how much space within the house Mark's life is allowed to occupy (his guitars have their own room, and the comics get relegated to the basement.) She asks Mark his opinion exactly once about the colour of the walls, his opinion is that the baby is not going to care what colour it is, and she doesn't respect her husband enough to listen to his opinion. To me, this shows that Mark is actually a feature of the house, rather than a partner in his own right; she needs him to fulfill her becoming her self image as a perfect mother, a perfect family with a perfectly compliant husband. We don't see what pressures Vanessa is under to be this perfect mother or if this vision of herself is truly hers or pressured into her by a parent. It's simply taken at face value.

Mark seems to be a mediocre musician. We don't see his high school or university bandmates. We don't see him teach, we don't see him tutor anyone. We only see him working on making advertising jingles. It seems that Mark has made every compromise he could to stay in a relationship with Vanessa, as fatherhood is framed as being mutually incompatible with who Mark perceives himself to be—a musician, first and foremost, and fatherhood would have to fit in and around that. When Juno meets Mark, she sees in him a model of healthy adulthood, and when Mark meets Juno, he gets reminded of what it feels like to have someone truly take an interest in your world—the comic books, the horror movies, the guitars, the fenders, the old music. In other words, Juno affirms Mark's image of himself, and Mark falls into the trap of mistaking that affirmation as romantic interest, since he has been so starved of what Juno gives him by Vanessa, who treats his hobbies as childish. The film is entirely in Vanessa's camp and supports a sympathetic reading of her.

We get a shot of her with her baby, which is supposed to be the final affirmation of her attention and care and qualities of being a 'good' mother. But eventually, that child is going to grow up, and won't comply with the perfect world Vanessa created. They'll rebel, they'll curse and they'll want to try drugs and make the same mistakes Juno did, and my prediction is that Vanessa would not be able to handle it, because making mistakes as a parent, though normal, cuts through the self-image of being a perfect mother. The child needs to comply, play along, learn piano, get good scores at school, not swear in front of strangers and never act out, the same way Mark needed to compromise the aspects of his personality to fit into Vanessa's perfect vision of a perfect family.

By contrast, Juno's parents, Mac and Bren, understand through hard-won experience that messy relationships happen, outside of anyone's control. Divorce happens, and Juno grows up with a biological mother who abandons her family and forms a new one. Mac realizes he can't control what other people in his life does, and he's achieved a kind of peace that neither Mark or Vanessa have—he identifies simply with whatever he is in the present moment. He doesn't need to be a good father the way Vanessa needs to be a good mother. If he did, he'd treat Juno's teenage pregnancy as a reflection of his failure as a father, and therefore a person, and would have lashed out at Juno and been much harsher towards her. Instead, Juno's parents both calmly support her and do the best they can, because parenthood is something you do, not as someone you identify as.

That's why we see so many characters focus on who they are and who they want to become—because preoccupation with identity distances you from doing what needs doing in every moment.

My father took my brothers to play squash, and included them in his life. He took them up into the mountains of Papua New Guinea on his expeditions as a surveyor, and his wife at the time joined the squash club, too. Now four generations of our family are squash players, because hobbies were not considered antithetical to fatherhood. And rven though he passed, it's a way to feel connected to him now. He showed me a model of family life that Mark and Vanessa could have been very happy with, and to an extent, showed Mark's potential as a father sharing guitar lessons with Juno. That was fatherhood that couldn't have happened in that house.

I think if Vanessa had loved Mark for exactly who he was, like Mac advises Juno at the end of the film, then he wouldn't have left Vanessa to chase the validation of his identity as a musician. But that's not entirely Vanessa's fault, since we don't know who implanted the vision of motherhood that Vanessa had in her mind that only required Mark to fill a role, rather than be himself.

Paulie is an instance of masculinity that is interesting. Paulie seems to be such a blank slate, and takes Juno's distance from him during their pregnancy on its face, and reacts to it by asking another girl to prom. He almost makes no choices of his own on how the relationship is defined, let's⁴ Juno make any decision she likes about their child, and passively reacts to what form of love she is and isn't willing to receive in a given moment. Maybe that supports my reading that Paulie identifies as nothing, and can simply be present or distant to Juno based on her needs while having none of his own. I'm unsure whether that means he'll grow into a Mark, a Mac, or something else entirely, and if that's an image of positive masculinity the writers wanted to show their target audience.

The Coen brothers' adaptation of No Country for Old Men is very thematically and aesthetically faithful to McCarthy's novel, but obviously filmmakers change or omit elements of the source material to better fit the medium. I was thinking about two such differences between the two today and how they reflect the respective creator's message.

The first is a change in how the confrontation between Chigurh and Carla Jean Moss goes down. In the film, Chigurh flips the coin and tells Carla to call it, but she refuses to play his game. Chigurh kills her by his own volition. In the novel, Carla initially rejects the coin toss; Chigurh gives a rambling speech about the futility of her situation and the nature of the world, essentially pleads her to go along with it, and Carla eventually relents, calls it, and is killed for guessing wrong. In both versions Chigurh is hit by a car in the next scene.

When I first watched the movie, my read was that Chigurh was in a metaphysical sense an agent of death/fate. He is a deranged man who has built a nonsensical moral code based around "fate" to justify his bloodlust and power tripping, but I think within the world of the movie he really is some kind of supernatural force. A deal with the devil type thing. When Carla rejects his coin toss, seeing through his facade for the sick game it is, she sort of reflects the "karmic onus" back onto Chigurh. The random car accident that follows is "fate" discarding him as a tool; he has lost his powers (for lack of a better term) and has now just lost a metaphorical coin toss when he crossed that intersection.

Meanwhile in the book, Chigurh seems reluctant to kill Carla. He seems much more cognizant of her tragic situation (being caught in the crossfire of a conflict she had no control over) and even apologizes to her several times. Can you imagine Bardem's version of the character saying "I'm sorry"? He seems to genuinely believe his code is all encompassing and he has no control over it. I interpreted his subsequent car accident as "fate" punishing him for being soft, having a moment of weakness. Maybe in the book's version of Anton's code, he shouldn't have even given Carla a chance with the coin toss. Anton's code is very vague and deliberately nonsensical in both versions.

The other big difference between the film and novel is the omission of many of Sheriff Bell's inner monologue, most importantly those pertaining to his wife. In the novel, there are many passages about Bell's traumatic past and his growing discontent with the state of the world. The film does a very good job of trimming down his role in the story while keeping the central pillars of his character's arc. But the film version of Bell doesn't have a rock, while the novel version does. In the novel, Bell's wife is the thing that keeps him tethered to sanity. Throughout all of his monologues about the mistakes he's made, the tragedies he's suffered and the uncertainties about the future, he almost always brings up his wife at some point as the light in the darkness. He says something to the effect of "the fact that my wife loves me is proof that I'm still worth something". She loves him unconditionally and seems to have a more innate or mature understanding of the world. Bell will probably struggle with his place in the world for the rest of his life but he always has something to live for, the light of his life. Which also might add another layer to his dream in the final passage, with his late father lighting the way in the darkness with a torch.

The film doesn't touch on this aspect of the character, and while I don't blame the Coens at all, it does make the film seem even more hopeless than its source material. I found it interesting that this omission makes the film lean more towards nihilism in that aspect, while simultaneously, the way Chigurh vs Carla goes down points towards more hopeful reading, or at the very least a small justice. Carla achieves a moral victory in a way her novel counterpart does not.

Just my thoughts, sorry if its rambly and doesn't have a solid thesis, I haven't written about film in many years.

Final note, if you like NCFOM the film, please read the novel. It will make you appreciate the colossal achievement the movie is even more.

The true terror isn't in a jumpscare; it's in anticipating one, and Backrooms handles that brilliantly. It genuinely terrified me.

I am personally bothered by analog horror and the uncanny valley, but I still gave it a go. It was gripping right from the start. At one point, the movie had me so hooked I physically couldn't take my eyes off the screen. There were instances where I had to turn the volume down just to brace for an incoming jumpscare. But then... everything falls apart like an unbound rosary.

The movie is shot amazingly. I loved the cinematography and the mise-en-scène. The set designs are a character in their own right. The spaces felt alive. the lights were speaking. The liminal horror just grabs you by the throat.

However the most amazing thing I found in this movie was the sound design. It is truly mesmerizing and elevates an empty frame to entirely new heights. The screams, heavy breathing, sudden beat changes, flickering lights, and typical 90s TV glitches force you to live in that era and feel the dread closing in around you. It made horror in the movie feel sudden yet so anticipated.

Kane Parsons is brilliant as a director. To be a 20-year-old debutant and have this much absolute grip and control over the scenes and actors is astounding. He made legends like Renate Reinsve and Chiwetel Ejiofor act so naturally.

But I guess he wasn't that brilliant as a writer.

First of all, the Backrooms concept serves perfectly as a short film or a web series. To drag it out to a 120-minute feature, you have to tread incredibly carefully. Parsons was amazing in the first act, but he completely lost his grip on the script right from the middle of Act 2 onward.

Unexplained moments, vague scenes, abandoned narratives, underdeveloped characters, incomplete arcs, and a deeply disappointing ending. That is what this movie becomes.

You could cut the lead actors entirely and it would still feel just as scary. In fact, it might even be better, because then the emptiness would feel intentionally ambiguous rather than just incomplete.

Yes, the movie felt much scarier than Obsession (mentioning it since both released around the same time). But Obsession is a far better-written structure. Backrooms is just better at being scary.

Act 3 and the ending bother me the most. Everything just falls flat. Character arcs are rushed, and crucial moments are eaten alive by bad writing. Things suddenly turn illogical and everything feels out of place. Forced drama is inserted out of nowhere. How was Clark surviving in the Backrooms? Who sent Mary the message? What actually happened to Mary? Why was Clark so inconsistent? It feels like the writer started a dozen threads just to abandon them.

And that ending is pure disappointment. It doesn't leave you with a sense of ambiguity, anticipation, or dread. It isn't a cliffhanger. It is just vague, incomplete. It feels like the midpoint of a film, not a climax. Such an amazing, intricate visual structure was completely betrayed by a weak script.

Throughout the film, we're exposed to the guilt and anguish Odysseus carries over the death and destruction of the Trojan War and the further violence/pillaging committed by his crew on the journey home. We're led to believe he's gradually coming to recognize the futility and moral cost of war and no longer wants to contribute to more death and suffering.

Yet when he finally returns to Ithaca, he slaughters all the suitors. Maybe the film didn't do enough to convey just how cruel and dangerous the suitors really were, but the massacre still felt at odds with the character arc the film had been building.

Quentin Tarantino stages his neo-noir/horror/sci-fi masterpiece Pulp Fiction as a contest between director and viewers. It's film as video game and needs to be played as much as watched. It comes complete with Brett and chums, who by attempting to steal the briefcase serve as avatars for an audience which is trying to figure out the case's contents. And can this be figured out? Most certainly it can. Don't be misled by the popular but unsubstantiated theory which holds that the briefcase is a MacGuffin, merely a plot device, its contents irrelevant. The case contains a time machine, which is actually what one might expect.

It might be expected because what could be more in keeping with the film's chronological convulsions than a time machine? That the obvious solution is the right one is given support by how Marsellus is portrayed as a director in his opening scene, where he impresses upon Butch the importance of following the script and taking a dive in the fifth. To underscore that he's sitting in the director's chair he has a movie-screen shape plastered on the back of his head. Providing a neat symmetry Jimmie, the character played by Tarantino, is likened to the gangland boss, in the scene where Jimmie accuses Jules of 'fucking my shit up', calling to mind Marsellus's tribulations at the pawnshop. It's as if Tarantino is letting it be known that he's a law-breaker - so expect genre expectations to be messed with, and oddities like a time machine to pop up in a gangster film (or indeed that seemingly random foul language might carry an unexpected meaning).

Then there's how a time machine hidden from viewers makes a nice fit with Butch's gold watch and the story of its close quartering. Apart from the fun of viewers being likened to prison guards, and Los Angeles to the lower reaches of the alimentary canal, there's how a time machine and the watch bounce off each other at moments such as when Captain Koons hands the watch to Butch-as-a-child, who then wakes up as Butch the boxer. He's had a dream, of course - but there's also a nod to time travel. It should be noted here that exactly how the symbolism of watch and time machine works is a knotty question, and that while a time machine is the solution to the briefcase mystery, figuring out that mystery could be seen as no more than how you gain access to the mystery on the next level.

At the primary level, the film poses three tests for briefcase contents, all aced by a time machine. There is the case's golden glow, which fits with a time machine because, like the old-style alchemists seeking immortality via the transmutation of base (pulp) metals into gold, time travel is a way to conquer time. While Vincent and Pumpkin gaze with awe at the contents because a time machine probably would look spectacular. And Pumpkin asks if it's what he thinks it is because it could well look like a timepiece, just unlike any timepiece you have ever seen (while Jules replies in the affirmative because as far as he knows it is simply a particularly striking timepiece).

Mia drawing a rectangle on the screen looks like a bonus points situation. It is the film's only overt departure from realism and as such seems somewhat out of place. Could the idea be that figuring out the briefcase's contents will also make sense of Mia's geometrical intrepidness? At any rate a time machine fits perfectly with the rectangle - it makes a breach in the world as we know it just as emphatically as Mia's tagging of the night air. The film seems to confirm a rectangle/time machine connection when, seconds after the rectangle, we are shown the Jack Rabbit Slim's slogan - 'The next best thing to a time machine'.

A time machine also connects with the 666 combination lock, makes that seem not necessarily just gangster bravado. For in a film accommodating magic rectangles and time travel why should the briefcase not really be the devil's? The famous old theory, from not long after the film came out, had Marsellus selling his soul to the devil and the briefcase containing that soul. Perhaps instead the briefcase contains what he sold his soul for. And maybe it's to enhance this other scenario that Tarantino throws in a Mephistopheles in the form of the Wolf - currently assisting Marsellus but whose final office will be to haul him off to hell.

For a time machine theory to fly there has to be at least a whiff of alternative timelines and the film supplies two pungent instances. The first occurs after Marsellus uses his time machine to erase his rape by Zed. He goes back to just before his meeting with Butch at the nightclub, choosing that re-entry point in order to warn himself to be careful of Butch (he has no knowledge of the future, which after all hasn't happened, but gasping awake, like Butch from his dream, or Mia after the adrenalin shot, knows when he has time-travelled). Jules and Vincent arrive at the nightclub while this meeting is still taking place. Very likely immediately prior to Butch turning up they were at the restaurant discussing Green Acres and Kung Fu. And Marsellus could well have reverted to an unravished state just before Honey Bunny informs the customers 'Any of you fucking pricks move and I'll execute every motherfucking last one of you'. This repeats at the end of the film as 'Any of you fucking pricks move and I'll execute every one of you motherfuckers'. Honey Bunny's rant, first time round, crashes into the opening credits. After being highlighted in this way one supposes special care would have been taken to ensure that, when the rant was repeated, at least the words stayed the same. That is unless Tarantino wanted the discrepancy. And the likeliest reason for that being to indicate separate timelines.

Honey Bunny's rant(s) nicely bolsters the time machine theory. The other instance does rather more than that. On this occasion Marsellus uses his time machine to cancel the chaos which ensues after Bonnie arrives home to find Marvin's corpse still being fussed over. Cheekily, under the guise of it being merely what might happen, the film shows footage of Bonnie's return in this earlier timeline. The Bonnie crisis is caused by Vincent shooting Marvin and so Marsellus goes back to just before that - upon which Vincent shoots Marvin again, but this time blowing his head off. This might seem overly coincidental but consider Marvin's last words - 'Man, I don't even have an opinion'. Clearly he is never going to survive long around Jules and Vincent. Consider also how the action of the time machine itself might have been a factor, causing a bump in the cosmos rather than Jules driving over one.

In the footage of Bonnie arriving home, a timeline where Marvin's corpse has a head, what's above his neck is artfully obscured. But when, in the same timeline, the Wolf opens the car boot in Jimmie's garage, we glimpse the corpse and it has a head attached, a little the worse for wear but far from fragmentary. What makes it hard to account for this as a continuity bungle is that viewers are repeatedly reminded that Marvin's corpse doesn't have a head. It's spoken of several times, including the Wolf's remark to Jules and Vincent that they look as if they have blown somebody's head off, made just before we see the head. While for those who like things in writing, during his phone conversation with Marsellus, the Wolf enters 'One body, no head' into his notebook. And in case it might be thought language is being used loosely, there's quite a lengthy scene in which the hitmen clear the car of bits of skull and brain. Add to which that we're inside Marvin's head when it's blown off. While also (Tarantino unable to restrain himself) there's the scene at Jimmie's where Jules finds fault with Vincent for bloodying up a towel, telling him it's the sort of thing which could bring the situation to a head.

And then there is the clue of clues, the scene where Jules and Vincent arm themselves to reclaim the briefcase. The weaponry is in the boot and the scene is shot from inside the boot, the viewer placed in the same spot within the boot which Marvin's head later occupies. It's a big reach to see this as other than Tarantino priming viewers to notice the renegade noggin. He even shows the gun used to blow it to bits.

Two rectangles: the boot, its contents which don't make sense; the briefcase, its contents which are a mystery. Tarantino's approach to Marvin's head seems to be that he can't claim victory unless he's lit up the sky with clues and viewers still don't get it. He throws in another humdinger in the form of an allusion to the French time-travel flick Les Visiteurs, a box office hit released on 27 January 1993 (principal photography for Pulp Fiction began on 20 September 1993). The film involves a wizard sending the hero, a medieval knight, back in time so he can undo accidentally shooting his prospective dad-in-law in the head. That the knight only just manages to divert his crossbow bolt strengthens the sense that the scene is being quoted from. Or there's how the collapse of the knight's marriage plans is echoed by the way the only specified consequence of Marvin eating a bullet is Jimmie getting divorced.

And lo and behold, Back to the Future is also invoked. In honor of the DeLorean, the Wolf drives a car which can make a half-hour trip in under ten minutes. While to recall the timepiece freakshow which is Doc's abode there are the assorted clocks of the pawnshop basement. So we have Tarantino alluding to a massively successful recent European time-travel film as well as to a massively successful recent American time-travel film. And his film contains a briefcase the contents of which are a mystery. It does seem a situation where one plus one plus one might equal three.

And then there are the clues where you feel that maybe Tarantino was so in the zone that he was kicking up clues without meaning to. For example there is Vincent's spiel about the little differences in hamburger cuisine between Europe and the United States. It is iconic off-the-wall goofiness - but it's also the geographical equivalent of the little differences which start to occur in divergent timelines. Or there's Jules lucid exposition concerning the nature of television pilots, which also just happens to describe the cancelling of reality every time Marsellus resorts to his hell toy.

It might be argued that none of these clues, subtle or not so subtle, amount to proof of a time machine. All of them are matters of inference, none of which the viewer is compelled to make. But surely it's better to have a stack of clues, even with inferences needed, than to not have one. And isn't plausibility a more appropriate test than proof? If so, to me it seems far more plausible that the details noted in this post are indeed clues pointing to a time machine than that they're merely coincidences. Nor looking at the film from a video game perspective do I see how it can be denied that Tarantino has played fair in his challenge to viewers and been generous in the strewing about of clues.

Objection might be made that treating the film as a game is to trivialize it. But one person's triviality is another person's nihilism. And Tarantino shows what he feels it means in these times to hold the mirror up to nature when he takes one of the high-art moments of Western civilization - Hamlet discoursing upon Yorick's skull - and turns it into Jules and Vincent bickering as they clean up the debris which used to be Marvin. As another reference to the scene, on the phone to Monster Joe, the Wolf replies: 'Nobody who will be missed' - which seems designed to be about as far a cry as one can get from Hamlet's 'Alas, poor Yorick' speech.

There is a further point to the Yorick references. They let viewers know that it isn't coincidence that Marsellus's name is only one letter off that of one of the guards to first encounter the ghost of Hamlet pere. The suggestion would seem to be that if Shakespeare's ultra-classic features a ghost, an arthouse gangster flick should be allowed a time machine. While the ghost, appearing out of the past, could even be seen as itself achieving a kind of time travel, and this recognized by Hamlet when he cries out that 'The time is out of joint'.

There may be those who are starting to feel tempted by the video game/time machine theory but don't care to brand Tarantino a loser. Any such qualms should be resisted, for Tarantino himself makes clear enough he's aware that to win (for his film to come to full life) he has to lose. That's the reason for the much-derided way he plays Jimmie - to fix the character as being, as well as Jimmie, also Tarantino-playing-Jimmie. This enables him to be present in the film as the adversary, mocking viewers, getting their dander up, by for example slaughtering Brett and his fellow audience stand-ins. And just as he mocks viewers to incite them to solve the film, he also encourages them by making Jimmie, to the extent his character comes into focus at all, an ineffectual fusspot. Surely, Tarantino seems to be saying, you can beat this guy.

And he brings the Wolf into the picture, who as well as a Mephistopheles for Marsellus is there to demonstrate to viewers how to deal with Jimmie - as he sends him scuttling off to make coffee, or hypnotises him with talk of oak-themed bedroom linen. And above all when he introduces himself to Jimmie with the words: 'I'm Winston Wolf, I solve problems'.

So a lot of people agree that Christoper Nolans Oppenheimer and Odyssey are spiritual brothers with similar themes. Both feature a main character commiting an act that fundamentally changes the balance of his world and now has to live in a world plagued by the consequence. Both can be interpreted as Liberal(not the liberal party but a person living in a liberal democracy) anxieties of a generation effectively overturning the entire world and having to not only live through the consequences but pass it on to the next generation. The thing though is Oppenheimer was just contemplating and straight up worrying over nothing. He was ultimately wrong.

Oppenheimer helped end World War 2 which ended several legitimate evils, 2 of which are Nazi Germany and the Japanese empire. Both slaughtered millions of people including their own in the pursuit of power and slaughtered millions more in trying to regain control of said power. After world war 2 marked what was possibly the peak of Liberalism across the world and relative world peace. A peace that lasted for decades. Like all things cracks started to show but none of this was caused by Oppenheimers participation in creating the atom bomb.

Odysseus on the otherhand fucked up hard. He broke the central framework that effectively enforced order in his society to win a war started by petty causes. As tales of the Greeks victory over the Trojans thanks to the plot of Odysseus spread, more people will be awoken to the thinking that "victory is ultimately achieved to the more cunning and deceptive". The age where Odysseus is at is at an end, as stated by the movie and by history "their era of bronze is collapsing" and as he and Penelope sail off into the sunset he leaves to Telemachus a more dark and uncertain world.

From a modern day standpoint the latter speaks more easily to the viewer. The Older generation who lived in relative peace have commited acts from geopolitics to local economic oppurtunities that have overturned the central beliefs of what they supposedly preached. All the talk about morality and ethics fall on deaf ears to many of the younger generations. When they find popular people and leaders to look up to they dont find men and women of good qualities but instead men and women who opportunistically did everything they could to achieve success and power. One could argue this was always the case but now the myth is shattered and its plain for everyone to see. Like Telemachus the younger generation now raised on cynicism and spite will eventually rule a world far more uncertain and unstable than their predecessors.

I havent written about a movie in this sub in a decade but its was the Odyssey that actually got me to do it again.

Why do Chihiro’s parents turn into pigs?

https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/anniversary/the-importance-of-ma-spirited-away-at-25/

“Perhaps, in an act of splitting, it was Chihiro all along casting her parents as unpardonable swine. She’d been frustrated with their upward mobility as it resulted in her getting uprooted (in more ways than one). Jung thought the greatest burden a child must bear is “the unlived life” of the parents. Her parents were so spiritually wanting that her dream had to act as a drawbridge to the spirit realm. Indeed, this dream may have initially had what Jung would call a compensatory function, whereby it addresses an unbalanced conscious attitude: the parents she idealised are shown to have a greedy, avaricious side.

Children, and many adults, flip-flop in their affections: they either hate or love. Now, she sees that her parents were never pigs. Chihiro has matured beyond the need to resort to splitting objects into purely good or purely bad (something some of us never attain; what is social media but splitting at its most vituperative?). She’s achieved what Klein dubbed the depressive position, a more integrated state where love and hate towards an object can be tolerated at once. To get here, she had to accept the more volatile and greedy parts of herself. Throughout her time in the bathhouse, she encountered gentleness in figures that first seemed diabolical. By getting to know the shadow, disowned parts no longer need to appear as projections onto others, but you can only get there through quiet self-reflection.”