Month: October 2008

At the end of the screening of The Prestige last wednsday the question was raised, “Why does the one Bourden brother get to live while his brother and Angier both die?” The same question was raised again at the end of class on thursday. I am slightly embarrassed to say it but I spent a good chunk of time this past weekend thinking about this question. I like this film a lot and have seen it more than a few times but I have not been able to, or maybe I haven’;t really wanted to answer this question. The more and more I think about the filmk the more I start to think that Nolan may have spent some time setting up to Bourden as two different people not only to reveal as the prestige of the film but also to answer this very question. I like to identify the two Bourden brothers by the women that they loved: Sarah’s Bourden and Olivia’s Bourden. there are two scenes when we know absolutely which Bourden brother we are dealing with and those two scenes are when they each meet the women they love. Sarah’s Bourden (during the scene in which he meets her) is friendly and kind (he talks to her nephew and explains some of the rules of magic) and through this interaction with Sarah we learn about his character. Olivia’s Bourden meets Olivia, and although I do believe that he does love her, immediately begins to think about how he can use her against Angiers, which says something about his character as well. Judging from these two experiences and knowing that Sarah’s Bourden is the one who loves her then we can assume that every time Bourden tells Sarah that he loves her and she does not believe him (and the one time when Bourden tells her he does not love her) that it is Olivia’s Bourden who is speaking. This would also mean that Bourden is the one who presents Sarah with the key to their new house and it is Olivia’s Bourden who fights with Sarah even after Sarah’s Bourden has asked him to help him out in his relationship with her. Undoubtedly it is not only Olivia’s Bourden who is capable of being short tempered or nasty but Nolan does not show us this, and I believe by only showing us Olivia’s Bourden acting this way he is giving us as the audience clues to the morality and character of each of the brothers. Going on what I have just stated (which I will readily admit is not concrete evidence) I believe, based on what Nolan has shown us about the characters, that it is Olivia’s Bourden who ties the knot on Angiers wife that causes her to drown (and starts the fued with Angiers), but Sarah’s Bourden who shows up to pay his respects at the funeral (this would account for his not knowing which knot was tied) – if this is indeed true that tells us a great deal more about each character. I also think that it is Olivia’s Bourden who decides to go to Angiers show at the end of the film to try and figure out his trick, even after the brothers have decided to let it go. This would mean that it is Olivia’s Bourden who is arrested, tried, and eventually hung and Sarah’s Bourden who kills Angier in order to avenge his brother. The way that it shakes out in the end then is that Oliva’s Bourden accidentally kills Angiers’ wife and then Angiers frames Olivia’s Bourden, while Sarah’s Bourden kills Angiers to avenge his brother and also to reclaim the daughter that is most likely and logically actaully his and not Angiers or Olivia’s Bourden’s. I know that this is a lot of assumption on my part but it is a way that the movie can make sense to me and not end on such a morally ambiguous note. Anyway, I would welcome comments or other thoughts or ideas on the ending.

I felt awful when I woke up yesterday and decided to spend the day in bed resting and trying to feel better. While I was there I decided to try and kill two birds with one stone and do some “research” on GTA while I rested. The more I play GTA the more impressed I become with it. The actual physical story world is enormous (I don’t even have the full map completed yet and it already takes me a good ten to fifteen minutes to go from one point of the map to the other. What is even more impressive than the size of the map is the number and depth of the different narratives and the level of choice that gameplayer has when deciding which story to follow or which course of action to take next. The game is progressed when the main character beats certain missions, with each mission that is completed the player earns more money, power, and respect (the holy trinity of the gang world). However, if one so chooses they can forgo the missions that will finish the game and choose to do other side or fringe missions that will help them become stronger or faster or give them better endurance before trying to complete missions that will take our main story to to conclusion. All in all the game is set up like an enormous movie with a main plot line and main characters and then a collection of other smaller characters and plot lines, but seeing as the game takes longer to play then it takes to watch a movie all of the plot lines and characters have to exist in a good amount of depth and for a long time.

Another idea I had for a paper topic was to do some research on one of the premium chanel networks (HBO, Showtime, ect.) that has consistently popular series and see where and how they come up with their ideas and how these ideas become realized. The idea would be to look at the process of what goes into making a show like The Sopranos, Entourage, or Weeds and use the terms and ideas that we have discussed to see how these programs unfold their narratives soup to nuts – that is from the first basic idea to the finished product. I think that this would be interesting and that their would probably be a lot of research available.

I was thinking about ideas for my paper the other day…well ok I was actually watching football the other day… and then I started to think about my paper and I thought it would be a cool idea to look at NFL or college football as a narrative. I think that the football season can be looked at like a recurring series filled with different plot lines, new developments, and even twists. The season itself offers new “episodes” every weekend and after the season is over there is the off-season which is another sort of show by itself, new characters get introduced via the draft and the plot lines are laid out for the next season’s episodes. What makes the narrative more interesting are network sports shows and talk radio stations that cover every move made by every player and coach on every team – with such intense scrutiny place on the personal and professional lives of our characters the narrative can be looked at like a 6 month long soap opera. Anyway I think that this would be an interesting topic to look into and I think that there is a lot of interesting research and analysis that could be done on it. What do people think?

I really enjoyed Barton Fink for the first hour or so, I thought it was really funny in a ridiculous sort of way but towards the end of the film I found myself restless. Part of my restlessness may be attributed to the last half hour of a three hour screening, and although my attention span is certainly suspect I haven’t felt that way at the end of any of the other screenings so I think it is fair to say that that is not the issue. I think I lost interest because the story became perdictable – after Barton wakes up next to a corpse and Charlie helps him out I felt pretty certain that it was Charlie who had done the killing. When the cops show up to question Barton it confirmed my suspicions and I started to lose interest.

Adding to my frustration was the fact that I didn;t really understand what happened at the end of the film. It wasn’t until after the sceening when I was talking about the movie as I left did I understand that the girl on the beach was the same girl from the picture in the hotel – this raised a bunch of new questions and made me even more confused – did Charlie kill Barton? Whose head was it in the box? If Barton was dead how long had he been dead for? The plot line about Barton’s screen play becamse unintersting to me after a while and so did his interactions with the studio members (althought they were really funy). I also didn’t really understand what the whole dance/fight scene at the USO ball was about. I know that the viewer is not always supposed to understand everything that happens and that we are supposed to work a lot of this out on our own but I left the screening feeling like the movie failed to give me enough tools to do the job on my own.

Anyway if someone feels like explaining some or all of what happened it would be greatly appreciated.

Shortly after last nights screening of The Singing Detective I began to wonder when the show lost my interest. I can remember after the first two screenings I liked it so much that I would show up to the next weeks screening without knowing or caring what the sreened film would be because I was that excited about The Singing Detective. But shortly after the third screening I began to have doubts about how intertested I was in it and after last nights screening I have all but lost interest. Don’t get me wrong, I am still eager to see how the series is wrapped up and how all of the pieces will come together but somewhere in the various storylines and plot twists I lost interest in the story.

I think part of my problem can be attributed to the complex way the story is told and the multiple plot lines. There are so many story worlds within the story world that I find it hard to believe that they will all be completed or meet my expectations. I thought that by last nights episode the story would begin to become more clear and that the stories would begin to come together…and they did sort of – but not enough that I believe that all the stories will come together enough in the last episode so that it does not feel rushed or forced (I hope that this makes sense). I think that because of the way the story unfolds and is told to us, I became more interested in the form then the content. I understand that it is a mystery story and part of the fun is trying to figure out what is happening and what will happen but I feel that in this case the structure takes away from the content, at least for me, because I have become more interested in how the stroy is being told then what the story is.