Second life

Rating: Null/10 (22 March 2014)

I came to this after a difficult viewing of a film about the psychologic nature of truth, how memory governs a story, looking to replenish myself with something similar but more straightforward. It felt good to be back within comfort zones.
It wasn't a spy film by accident, a genre that is in a deeper sense all about how we witness things. My yardstick of an effective spy film is how much of the spying is left to the viewer and how much is pieced for his amusement, how difficult it is to stay tethered to a shifting order of things.
Here we're so very comfortably tethered. On the boat we learn that he has no memory and it probably won't come back. One of the very first scenes is immediately in Langley so we know he's CIA. We quickly know about the specific mission. He's tracked, makes an escape. Video game opponents are activated to find him. "I want Jason Bourne in a bodybag by sundown" back in Langley. Great fights and car chases.
Most of the dialogue in crucial moments is so that we know exactly what's going on. So we share some of Bourne's uncertainty about the deeper reasons yet at the same time know much more than he does as we switch back and forth from his situation to the larger plot. Obviously it would be a much riskier film if we were called to fathom the larger mechanics from his pov alone, but for tonight it worked for me fine.
Damon would be completely wrong for this except his hardened spy is given to us via his wide-eyed boyish persona. So we follow an ordinary American youth who might as well have been backpacking across Europe, who is assailed by paranoid perceptions (looking out for exit doors etc), whose body is at crucial moments suddenly possessed by another self who pre-exists in a different narrative.
I liked that they put him next to an ordinary girl with a beat-up old Mini worrying about a visa, it draws out this boy in his late-20s who would have all the time to fall in love while hitching a ride to Paris but for this previous narrative of political wrongdoing.
In the end the son turns against the irascible father, played by Cooper and channeling American Beauty (the son was a filmmaker there, here he's struggling to piece an 'inner film'). He meets the girl in an island. It's all so childishly simple around that commentary.
I have the feel I'll be able to enjoy this again in the future as a North by Northwest pop-up without any baggage of cinematic mastery attached.