Vertigo

Rating: Null/10 (17 February 2006)

No movie stands alone. When we watch it, we bring all sorts of expectations to it, and a large part of that is the genre we expect. If we expect style, we are particularly acute in how we judge that factor, for instance.
In fact, we've come to rely on how a film announces itself. What I find interesting about this one is that it deliberately subverts any expectations we might have along these lines.
For example, most viewers will consider this a "revenge" movie, a very specific subgenre, and judge it on those merits. The problem is that the filmmaker goes out of his way early in the game to announce that these fellows are correct in their assumptions.
He then pulls the rug out from under those simple viewers, just as he does the hero. That's the art here, and you'll have to judge just how important it is to you.
I've become aware in the last few years how important the entry into a film is. The biggest, most shocking thing a filmmaker does is take us to another world. There are two big jumps he or she needs to make. The first jump is in the first few minutes, where the nature of the work is presented. If the movie is a strict genre film, this is easy because we have so many shorthand designators. Music is important.
The second big step has to do with the first plot point. In this case, the episode tells us that the hero (our surrogate) sees only what is intended. His perception is bent, manipulated. His TeeVee is our movie.
I registered this against films that weave stories about how stories are woven. The touchstone of course is "Vertigo," where two forces or beings on screen struggle to create a "movie" in front of us, each one trying to define a false future that merges with the similar future of the movie we watch.
"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," "Open Your Eyes," even "Tampopo" are examples of this notion of storytelling, one that is intelligent and engaging. We have three entities as creators here. We have the guy we think is the master creator, Park, who we see borrows images as if he were in a drugged dream and can dream only in terms that he saw before he was locked up and gassed.
We have the supposed master manipulator, who hypnotizes, drugs, confines, bribes, and uses force and technology to make things turn out precisely the way he wants. Precisely, with no misstep whatever. Nominally he is the one creating the reality we see, but his manipulation is more perfect than that even of Park, so we know he is suspect.
And then we have the fellow that seems to be the puppet. But is he? He is the one that writes. Such comprehensive notebooks or diaries are common code in movies for something we enter. He is the one who dreams, for whom the images on TeeVee become a fantasy life replacing the "real" one.
He is the one with the interesting hallucinations that start with the purely hallucinogenic notion of exiting from a truck onto a grassy rooftop. He is the one who eats life, and in fact traces his roots back to the manipulator by surveying restaurants.
That business about snow and lost tongue and erased memory at the end. Shouldn't that tell us who imagined or created what we see? This idea originated in "2001," where Kubrick played with the notion of who was narrating what we see: is it man, computer or deity? See this. Register it so that you can enjoy it.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.