Confuse Me Please?

It’s not everyday that I find myself writing over 1,500 words in 20 minutes. In fact, it’s not everyday I do most things. Sure I get up everyday, brush my teeth, take a dump, and so on, but if you think about it, and once again look closer you’ll see how little you do on a daily basis. In fact, scrap that, it’s the opposite. Or is it? Yes it is... no it isn’t.

Confused yet? Yep, thought you would be, or if you’re not, read it again and then say the word tuna in your head for a bit, then watch/re-watch ‘Inception’ (depending on how cool you are) and try and figure out how the hell Ariadne and Cobb got to limbo. 

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is, a lot of people avoid a lot of movies because they’re scared they’ll get confused. If you think about how easy it is to get confused it’s nothing. I’ve always thought that if a movie confuses you in such a way that you think about it for days, maybe weeks, or even months afterwards, it’s a good thing. It shows that movie has had a lasting impression on your brain and so, you are more inclined to see it again. A good example of this is of course ‘Inception’ which I saw twice then stopped myself from seeing it a third time, before pre-ordering the DVD 3 months before it’s released. When I first left the cinema, there was no doubt a feeling of “Wow, that was like, amazingly good.” but also a feeling of “I understood that”. But within a few hours, after I had got my speech back I began to test myself on how much I did actually know, which was surprisingly little. I went round and round in circles in my head for at least a week, before deciding to go for a second time. Believe it or not, immediately re-watching it does NOT help. If anything, I was more lost than before because I was trying to search for answers that simply weren’t there, and so, I was unattached from the plot and what was going on. I eventually found solace in the answers of others from online chat-rooms and such, which may not actually be the correct answers, but definitely could be classed as believable. I gave up searching for the definitive answers after I realized that they didn’t actually exist. 

To bore you with another example would be cruel, so here it is (but have no fear, it’s a good ‘un). I present example numero dos, ‘Donnie Darko’. In some ways, similar to ‘Inception in the sense that it makes you think afterwards, not as much however, and in a different way. Whereas ‘Inception’ has you questioning certain aspects of the plot and how the characters got from one place to another within the dreamscape as well as the whole “is it all just one big dream?” thing, ‘Donnie Darko‘ makes you question nothing but the end. With two versions of the film out there, apparently presenting different takes on the end, it’s difficult to find a definitive answer, much like ‘Inception’, and so you do think about the movie, but you’re thinking about the movie straight away, once the credits are rolling, not 2 hours later slumped over your computer frantically searching Google. Sure when the ‘Inception‘ title comes up just after the screen cuts to black and we’re all still wondering whether or not the top topples or not, you instantly think “was it a dream then?” but it’s the real ripples of that which throw the other parts of the plot into question. You think for minutes about the spinning-top as you know that there is no answer, but the other questions like, “How the fudge did the kicks work?” make you assume there is an answer, so you trawl through comment after comment, clip after clip, looking for an answer which again, isn’t there. ‘Donnie Darko‘ has you thinking from the moment the screen goes blank but only for long enough for you to come up with an ideal ending, before you just throw it on the pile marked ‘watched’. 

For a poor example of this (which is difficult, considering there are few) we have to journey into independent cinema and look at a small (in running-time as well as budget) film called ‘Primer’. ‘Primer‘ is essentially a movie about time-travel, but with a twinge on it. The fact that the characters never mention anything about time. In fact, they don’t seem to mention anything significant at all. Which is why ‘Primer‘ is bad. ‘Inception‘ and ‘Donnie Darko‘ are good (well brilliant) because they give you enough to chew on, meaning it’s reasonably simple to come up with a definitive answer. ‘Primer‘ however, gives you nothing to work with and just says “go on, get on with it.” And when you don’t feed something, it dies, meaning any interest I had in finding out what the hell this movie was about, died in seconds. Even just the way the story is told makes it impossible to piece anything together and it results in a situation similar to that of a dementia patient angrily throwing a bunch of jigsaw pieces out of a window. The only reason this movie is recognized at all is because it is probably the most confusing film ever made. It may be confusing, but it’s not irritating. It would be irritating if you wanted to know what happened, and nobody wants to know what happened. Hours after ‘Inception‘ had been released, you could Google it and find hundreds of people desperately seeking answers, and hundreds of people answering them, but now, 3 years after ‘Primer‘ was first released to the global market, still nobody has a clue. In fact, out of pure research, the only man I have found to have any understanding of it what-so-ever is a man called Jason Gendler who is/was a Masters student in Critical Studies at the University of California’s Department of Film and Television. That’s not good confusing. That’s bad confusing, very bad confusing. Because that’s the type of confusing which makes us think “Screw it, it’s not worth it”. You can test how good a film is by weighing up how much you generally care about it.