🎬 #133 Learning From Characters.

What I can imagine is a big draw for actors is being able to live multiple lives. One of the more poignant aspects of living real life is that you’re one person, you can’t choose to be 100 different types of character. Or maybe you could, I’ve never tried. You can only learn first hand by doing things yourself, trying and failing. And there’s a limit to the amount of avenues you can pursue, the amount of chances you can take, as your own single character with one go round the track. There’s only so much time. But through books, through written knowledge you can compress time and choices, like a cheat code, you can pick up things without having to live through them. And I think that’s one of the amazing things about sitting down to watch a film. They let us step into a different character’s shoes, into another life and see how that turns out, in a compressed time period. Sometimes a whole lifetime of choices is summed up in 2 hours. Films are encoded with timeless, universal lessons. Lessons we can learn from watching, as a proxy for trying it out for ourselves. All from the comfort of a cinema or our own homes that house our lovely, little one-time lives.

Happy choosing, happy viewing

Bry

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FILM ONE: EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE
LESSON ONE: IT’S NEVER TOO LATE

2022 Dir The Daniels
2 hrs 19 mins

This film is literally the brilliant summation of the point I’m trying to make in the opening of the newsletter. It’s a film that’s pure wish fulfilment - that we can do everything all at the same time, we can live all the lives we want. We don’t have to cut off our options - they all exist out there, somewhere, for us to slip into - even if that wonderful life involves having hotdog-esque fingers.

We follow Michelle Yeoh’s character ‘Evelyn Wang’ as she confronts her many regrets in life, while also trying to do her taxes in time before she loses her and her husband’s business. She’s in a marriage that’s long gone stale, she’s questioning everything in mid-life, while also juggling a tense relationship with her daughter. She needs an escape. And she gets one in the form of a multiverse / Matrix ride through all the possible versions of her life, if she had made different choices - all explored through different film genres. Everywhere, is a film that takes 40 minutes or so to really land the point and its poignancy - but when it hits, it hits hard. Suddenly the emotional power of everything clicks into place, after a whirlwind journey through a frenetic and nimbly executed visual feast with The Daniel’s trademark wonderful oddity.

When all is said and done, and as inviting as the other choices are - Evelyn realises that what she has is special, because it is as it is. It’s never too late to make a different choice about how we react to our current situation, the current point that’s a culmination of all our choices. It teaches us that we’re all a prism - the plain light of the world hits us and there’s nothing we can do about it - but, we can choose to turn it into a rainbow.

TL;DR: The Daniel’s visual epic touches parts that few films reach.

*Available for a small rental fee on Apple and Amazon in the US and the UK.

Fact: The VFX team consisted of a core group of 5 people, none of whom studied VFX formally - they were all self-taught from YouTube tutorials.

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FILM TWO: LOOPER
LESSON TWO: SOMETIMES IT’S BEST TO TAKE YOURSELF OUT OF A SITUATION

2012 Dir Rian Johnson
1 hrs 59 mins

Looper is more than a smart time-travel film. But it uses its premise to literally confront ourselves with ourselves, regrets, choices, and the unique view of looking over your life from a vantage point a few decades in the future. The theoretical proposition of ‘what advice would you give to your 25 year old self’ is played out.

There are many, many memorable sequences in Looper, the film that launched Ryan Johnson into the really big leagues. One of them still makes me feel funny. You’ll know which one I mean if you’ve seen the film and will understand which one I mean after watching it for the first time. It’s a very unique form of torture aided by the advantage of time travel. That’s all I’ll say.

Another sequence, ‘the time-jump montage’ is really beautiful in the context of the film but even in a 2 plus minute clip, it packs a lot of power, by dissecting a character’s life into chapters in an emotional captivating way. I’ll include it below so you can have a look. It’s my favourite in the film.

But to get to the lesson. Sometimes we feel we’re vital. That we need to hold onto something tightly, try to keep ourselves in the loop, no pun intended. Make ourselves a critical part of a situation. But when we get a fresh perspective, or take time away, we realise that we’re not all that vital - in the most liberating sense. In fact, sometimes things work better without us, for others and ourselves. Sometimes removing ourselves is the solution. Just hard to see that, without the benefit of seeing another character go through it for us.

TL;DR: Rian Johnson’s sharp entry into the ‘time travel’ genre is really much more than that - it’s a captivating take on wisdom, perspective and life-problem-solving.

*Available for a small rental fee on Apple and Amazon in the US and the UK.

Fact: The script for the film appeared on 2010’s Blacklist as a favourite unmade screenplay.