Conspiracy theories brought to a new level

What is a good conspiracy theory? Does it need to be believable, trustworthy and reasonable? Do you expect it to be founded on at least some kind of evidence?

No, not at all if you ask me. The good conspiracy theories are the ones with sticky ideas. They’re odd enough to tickle your imagination and spark a conversation. They’re crazy enough to provoke a laugh of surprise. Conspiracy theories have nothing to do with journalism or science. They’re all about entertainment and that’s why they work so well in movies.

We’ve seen quite a few of the more popular theories brought to the screen. The “truth” about the assassination of JFK, the moon landing that “never took place”, secret societies in control of the world and a crashed spaceship covered up by US authorities. We know that territory well by now; we’ve walked the grounds so many times that I’m afraid that the entertainment value is diminishing. We’re ready for some new, fresh and juicy conspiracies to be amazed by, something we haven’t heard before.

This is one of the things that makes documentary Room 237 such an enjoyable watch. While it admittedly touches on the moon landing, it also brings new ideas to the table. Unlike in most conspiracies, it isn’t the government that is accused of manipulation. The one who is claimed to have a hidden agenda is a film director, which of course makes it even more fun to watch for a film fan like me.

Halloween screening
I had the opportunity to watch Room 237 at a special Halloween event arranged by the local film club where I’m a member. We made it a double where we first showed the classic horror movie The Shining and then went on showing this documentary which examines the said movie inch by inch, second by second, backward and forward and from all sorts of angels.

Since I knew what the following film was about, I paid more attention than usual to the details in The Shining. I was constantly checking out the background, looking for patterns, something that could have a second meaning, but alas, unless someone else pointed it out to me, I couldn’t see anything hidden at all. All I saw was a good horror movie, with a great atmosphere, some beautiful, haunting shots and a Jack Nicholson at his best.

I would clearly make a terrible conspiracy watcher. I could never join the ranks of the people we meet in Room 237: fans who have dedicated their lives to analyze The Shining down on atom level. They don’t only make their own interpretations of the movie; they’re also convinced that they are revealing the “true” intentions of the director Stanley Kubrick. Since Kubrick died in 1999, he hasn’t much saying in this. But to be honest, even if he was alive, I don’t think that those “truth” seekers would pay all that much attention to his view on this. It’s a conspiracy after all, so he’d probably be lying anyway.

Oddly enough we never get to see the tinfoil hat thinkers in person; we only hear their voices. Their testimonies are instead illustrated by numerous clips from The Shining as well as from other movies.

One of those voices tells us that The Shining in fact is about the oppression of the original inhabitants of North America.  Another one is equally sure that it’s about The Holocaust. One of the “proofs” of this is that Jack Nicholson’s character uses a German typewriter.  And then there’s the everpresent idea about the assumed falsified moon landing. Kubrick is supposed to have recorded film shots that were presented as taken on the Moon, while they were in fact recorded in Hollywood. His confession of this conspiracy is to be found in The Shining, in the form of hidden messages. According to the tinfoil hat wearer.

A new level of geekdom
I don’t find it that strange that someone falls in love with a movie so deeply that he or she decides to see it a lot of times. We hear about it all the time. I have a friend who probably has seen The Third Man about 150 times. This is remarkable, but I’ve never heard a word of conspiracy thinking or other weirdness coming from him. He just thinks it’s a good movie.

It’s also understandable that someone can become intrigued by a certain aspect of a film, like the people who make timeline spreadsheets of Primer or the woman who is so intrigued by the architecture of the hotel that she draws a map to understand exactly what turns the boy makes on his bicycle tour. However, the fans we meet in Room 237 take geekdom to a new level.

They can spend hours and hours staring at one shot of a cloud that appears in the beginning of the movie. The cloud looks absolutely ordinary to me, but they’re able to find a face in it, the same way as some people claim that they see the face of Jesus on toast slices, in drying paint and whatnot. It’s just that in this case Jesus is replaced by the face of Stanley Kubrick.

The dedicated fans also keep track of the storage room that appears in the movie. In the background you can see a few cans, and if suddenly a can is missing or there’s an extra can, they read something Very Important into it.

Back in the days of vinyl records, there were rumors about certain artists that had secret satanic messages on their records that you’d only hear if you played them backwards. Well, there’s kind of an equivalence of this in Room 237, when one in the tinfoil panel plays The Shining in the normal way as well as backwards, at the same time, with transparent layers. The truth is supposed to appear somewhere in the blurred mess of faces on top of each other.

A mirror of film criticism
Some of the findings presented in the film are more believable than others. I’ve seen it mentioned elsewhere that Kubrick was interested in the technique of subliminal messages, so it seems possible that he might have played with it in one way or another. But most of the theories aren’t particularly convincing to be honest. However I don’t think that’s the point of Room 237. I’ve seen a few negative reviews from people who are dismissing the ideas as silly. But the purpose was never to turn everyone into supporters of the conspiracy theories. The idea is to entertain us as well as to hold up a mirror.

Of course you can’t help smiling at some of the ideas we’re presented here, but the laughs aren’t only aimed at “those crazy people”. It’s also aimed towards people like you and me. The fans of The Shining aren’t the only ones who read meanings into movies, to second-guess the intentions of the director. Most of us who write about movies, either we’re professional film critics, academics or just amateur bloggers, are also guilty of this, although perhaps in a milder form. And that’s ok!

An author or a film maker may have the economical rights to a certain piece of work, but the interpretation rights belong to the audience. Correct or not, who are we to tell? As long as they’re fun, interesting and thought provoking, I’m good.

Room 237 (Rodney Asher, US 2012) My rating: 4/5

 

 

 

This post is a part of a blogathon iniciated by the movie blog network Filmspanarna. The theme was “conspiracy theories”. Here are links to my fellow bloggers:

In English:

Fredrik on film

In Swedish:

Absurd cinema
Fiffis filmtajm
Filmitch
Filmr
Fripps filmrevyer
Har du inte sett den (pod)
Jojjenito
Mackans film
The Nerd Bird
Rörliga bilder och tryckta ord

The beauty of a never-ending stair and a well put time paradox

Are you familiar with the Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher?

He’s the one with the “impossible”, mathematically inspired figures – the stairs where people seemingly walk up and down at the same time, the hands that draw each other and Mobius bands with ands that march and march towards eternity.

My parents loved his art, so I had plenty of access to it throughout my childhood, and I became a fan too.

I came to think of this as I watched the time-travel themed movie Predestination. I think there’s a correlation between how you react to Escher’s pictures and how much enjoyment you get from this film.

If a quick glance is all you need before you’re done with Escher’s images, it may not be for you. You probably think that a short film would be sufficient to share the cool idea and the long format is overkill.

On the other hand, if you like I can’t get enough of “impossible” figures, if you see the beauty in a thoroughly put-together time paradox or a never-ending stair, you’re likely to enjoy it quite a bit. I did for sure.

As always with this kind of movie you make everyone a disservice if you share too much of the plot, so I won’t. What you need to know is that there’s time travel, Ethan Hawke (always good), Sarah Snook (never heard of her but she steals the show) and very nice art direction, despite what I assume is a fairly low budget.

As the movie finished, my brain kept processing the twists and turns of the timelines for a little while longer, just as it did after watching movies such as Timecrimes and Looper. I had things to brood over, but it was doable. It doesn’t require you to either watch it sixteen times or use a cheat diagram as a watching companion to “get” it (looking at you, Primer). It’s balanced, with the right amount of cleverness to make you feel smart when you understand it.

If you’re a science fiction fan you might have come across the short story that the movie is based on: All You Zombies by Robert A. Heinlein. I read this story for the first time after watching the film, and as soon as I had finished it I read it two more times. I know it sounds a bit crazy, but as I told you, I can’t take my eyes off Esher’s pictures.

The film adaptation follows the source material fairly closely, with a couple of exceptions. The view on women has been updated. In Heinlein’s story women’s role in space travel is limited to providing sex and company to male astronauts, basically as some kind of luxury prostitutes. In the movie they’re more capable than that. There’s also an additional storyline about an agent who is chasing a criminal in order to prevent a terrible thing from happening at one point in history. As far as I’m concerned, this addition doesn’t improve on the original idea; it mostly makes the movie a little bit longer and the puzzle a little messier to solve.

However, I think what matters most is the tone and atmosphere, which is spot on. The film noir style expresses the sense of loneliness and melancholy from the original short story very well. I don’t think Heinlein would have disapproved.

Predestination (Michael & Peter Spierig, AUS 2014) My rating: 4/5

 

 

 

Some fellow Swedish movie bloggers have seen this film too. Here’s what they made of it:

Fiffis filmtajm
Fripps filmrevyer
Har du inte sett den (blog)
Har du inte sett den (pod)
Jojjenito
Rörliga bilder och tryckta ord
The Nerd Bird

My top 5 It’s Raining Men usages in film and television

Humidity’s rising, barometer’s gettin’ low
According to all sources the street’s the place to go
Tonight for the first time just about half past ten
For the first time in history it’s gonna start raining men

Can you hear it? Of course you can. It’s one of the stickiest songs I know of. And I curse the moment when the idea to write this post popped into my head. Once again it runs on repeat in my head and I can’t find the button to make it stop.

I’m obviously not the only one who finds it catchy. When look closer at it, it has had a lot of appearances in movies and television over the years. And no wonder: the song text as well as the bouncing, energetic beat works well with scenes that give conclusion and release of hidden emotions. What you can’t formulate in sentences, you can express in a dance.

First I’ll give an honorable mentioning to some of the other appearances that are listed on Wikipedia. I’ve got the feeling this list isn’t complete, so feel free to share in a comment if you have additions to make.

Movies:
Easy Money (1983)
Eraser (1996)
Scary Movie (2000)
Khabi Khusni Kabhie Gham (2001)
Stuck on You (2003)
Vampires Suck (2010)

TV:
The British sitcom Miranda: in the episode “The New Me” in series 2, the title character Miranda dances to the Weather Girl’s version of the song in the streets, later the song was heard in the episode’s credits.

The Simpsons: It’s Raining Men is Homer Simpson’s favorite song. In the episode “Fear of Flying, Moe pulls the record out of the jukebox and tosses it onto the street when he banishes Homer from his bar. It appears again in the episode “What to Expect When Bart’s Expecting” when Fat Tony’s gay horse plays it on a stereo.

And now over to the top list. This is my personal ranking of the It’s Raining Men appearances I’ve seen. It’s based on how well it fits into the context, what emotional impact it has and entertainment value.

5. Friends – from the episode “The one with Chandler’s dad” (2001)

Chandler and Monica go to see Chandler’s drag queen father playing at a club in Las Vegas. The scene is quite emotional and It’s raining men comes in towards the end as a comic relief around the 4 minute mark in this clip. It’s a shame it’s so short, I would have loved to see the whole song, with Chandler.

 

 

 It’s raining men, Hallelujah, it’s raining men Amen
I’m gonna go out, I’m gonna let myself get absolutely soaking wet
It’s raining men, Hallelujah it’s raining men, every specimen
Tall blond dark and lean rough and tough and strong and mean

4. Magic Mike (2012)

It’s not one of the best dance numbers in Magic Mike and the version of the song is somewhat slow and unenergetic. But Channing Tatum’s hip movements – what can you say? Amazing!

 

God bless mother nature
She’s a single woman too
She took for the Heaven
And she did what she had to do
She taught every angel to rearrange the sky
And each and every woman could find her perfect guy

3. After the Wedding (2006)

This scene contains a lot more than just some random dancing at a party, which you know if you’ve seen the film. It conveys love and sorrow, the past and the present and the future, all brought together in one last bittersweet dance.

 

 

It’s raining men, Hallelujah, it’s raining men, Amen
It’s raining men, Hallelujah, it’s raining men, Amen
It’s raining, it’s raining, oh it’s stormy

I feel stormy weather moving in
About to begin about to begin
With the thunder don’t you loose your head
Rip off the roof and stay in bed

 

2. Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)

I don’t remember a lot of this movie, apart from the fight scene between Hugh Grant and Colin Firth. Extra points for moving the fight into the street: “Street’s the place to go.” (Song starts around 1.50 in this clip)

 

God bless mother nature
She’s a single woman too
She took for the Heaven
And she did what she had to do
She taught every angel to rearrange the sky
So that each and every woman could find her perfect guy
Oh it’s raining men, yeah

1. Queer as Folk, UK version season 1, ep 8 (1999)

Sadly they only made ten episodes of this brilliant British TV series about a few gay men in Manchester. It’s Raining Men appeared in the final scene of the finale of the first season. And just how great doesn’t it fit in? Stuart and Vince have been struggling quite a bit with their on-off relationship throughout the series. Then finally they reunite, dancing ecstatically to It’s Raining Men, after sorting things out in a beautiful conversation across the dance floor where words are replaced by looks, smiles and nods.

It only lasts a brief minute (you can fast forward to 9:17 at the clip I’ve included), but watching it again puts just a big smile on my face as it did when I watched the series on Swedish television so many years ago. This is the unquestionable winner.

 

Humidity’s rising, barometer’s gettin’ low
According to all sources the street’s the place to go
Tonight for the first time just about half past ten
For the first time in history it’s gonna start raining men

It’s raining men, Hallelujah, it’s raining men, Amen
It’s raining men, Hallelujah, it’s raining men, Amen
It’s raining men, Hallelujah, it’s raining men, Amen

The original
We’ve come to the end of this It’s Raining Men odyssey in movies and television. In case you didn’t know it, It’s Raining Men was originally performed by The Weather Girls I’ll finish this post with a link to their lovely music video. Enjoy it one last time. And then try to get this song out of your head again. From my own experience it might take you a while.

 

 

This post is a part of a blogathon from the Swedish network Filmspanarna. The theme was “Rain”. Here are links to the other posts :

In English

Fredrik on Film

In Swedish

Fiffis Filmtajm
Fripps filmrevyer
Har du inte sett den
Jojjenito
Mackans film
Rörliga bilder och tryckta ord

The snow, the songs and the sadness – my reasons for loving Inside Llewyn Davis

There are countless of aspiring singers in this world. Even if you only include the ones who have managed to make a real record, there are still thousands and yet thousands of them. Only a handful will fly. The rest will see their dream grow thinner and thinner until it has evaporated altogether. Then they’ll get an ordinary, unexciting job like the rest of us, a box of their unsold records in the cellar the only reminder of that they once believed that they had the potential to do something else. And eventually they have to let go of that too, because they’re moving and there isn’t room for all that old “junk” in the new place.

There are many of them and yet you never hear about them. It’s a matter of logic of course. The moment you hear about them, they lose their status as “unheard of” and they enter that other, smaller category of “moderately to very successful singers”. But there’s more than that to it.

Our current culture teaches us from young age that if you try hard enough you can become anything you want; it’s just a matter of dedication. And this belief is fed by the success stories we’re served in movies, literature and the media, about people who succeed despite having the odds against them. We suck those stories like leeches, never wanting to let go of them. They bring oxygen to whatever fire or hidden dream we carry inside. We want them and we need them. And that’s why the stories of the singers with the broken dreams so rarely are told. It’s too depressing to think about, so we look in a different direction, pretending that they’re not there or pretending that their lives are more glamorous than they are. Deep down we know of course that not everyone can become a star. But it’s not something we like to be reminded about.

Struggles without hope
Coming from this, it’s perhaps not all that surprising that Inside Llewyn Davis didn’t become an instant success with the Academy Awards jury. Struggling artists have been shown before, such as in The Artist the other year, but in that case you weren’t just presented with a problem. You also got a solution and a hope for better times and no shadow was cast on the business. All is well that ends well. Without giving away the end, Inside Llewyn Davis presents a more realistic look on the prospects of the aspiring singer.

To me this was like a much darker, twisted version of the Irish movie Once. They both feature a bearded, talented guy who sings beautiful songs. But in Inside Llewyn Davis, there is no sweet love story, unless you count the cat that spends some time with him on a few occasions.  The singer isn’t just hoping for a record contract: he has already made a record and it hasn’t led him anywhere. And New York is freezing cold, especially if you can’t afford an overcoat.

Plotting around
Those who prefer movies to have proper plots are likely to get disappointed. The film is said to take place during a week, but frankly I had no real sense of time. You just see the musician plotting around, not doing very much apart from playing here and there, trying to get hold of some money or looking for a cat who is on the run. You could say that it’s a little aimless.

But as much as I appreciate good storytelling, I think it’s a little overrated when it comes to movies. It’s not that it doesn’t matter, but it’s not all there is to movie making.

Not all great songs have texts that make sense. Sometimes a few words of nonsense are perfect because of how they sound. Not every great painting needs to portray an existing person or thing. A splash of colour can be much more powerful in provoking a reaction, stir the waters inside you that rarely are visited. A movie doesn’t need to be “about” something particular or have an aim to inspire you to great deeds and to pursuit your dream to be enjoyable.

Why I loved Inside Llewyn Davis
I love Inside Llewyn Davis for the way that the light hits people’s face. I love it for how you can feel the coldness against the legs as Llewyn Davis crosses a patch of snow. I love it for the cat, so help me God. I think it’s a little bit of a cheap trick to insert a charming, quirky pet into a movie to make it more likeable, but every scene that cat is in, he or she steals, that’s just the way it is. I love Inside Llewyn Davis for the melancholy and for how it captures the urge to hit the road, even if it’s a road that doesn’t take you anywhere. I love it because it puts the spotlight on someone who isn’t altogether likeable and who doesn’t pull his shit together and doesn’t personify the American dream.

But most of all I love Inside Llewyn Davis for the music. I don’t think I’ve bought a film soundtrack since I got the one for The Commitments, on vinyl as it was back in those days. I might very well buy the one from this one, because it’s that good. And then I’ll put it in the record player in my car and take a long trip without any set goal. And as I drive I’ll reconcile myself to the fact that I never was a star and that I’ll never become one. Being a beautiful snowflake is all that most of us can hope for. The sky is full of us, and we’re falling, falling, falling, to the ground where we’ll evaporate, and before we know it we’ll be gone, as if we never existed. All there’s left of us is a box of records in the container or a long time forgotten blog post, on drift in cyberspace, read and remembered by no one.

Inside Llewyn Davis (Ethan & Joel Cohen, US 2013) My rating: 4/5

My fellow Swedish bloggers in the Filmspanarna network have also watched this film. Here’s what they made of it:

Except Fear
Fiffis Filmtajm
Fripps filmrevyer
Har du inte sett den
Jojjenito
Movies-Noir
Rörliga bilder och tryckta ord
We could watch movies
Moving landscapes

Filmparadiset

Enjoying a ride isn’t the same as endorsing it

The moment when Jordan Belfort grabbed the dwarf to throw him at a target board I knew where I had him.

People who take pleasure in dwarf tossing you get no love from me. Not that Jordan Belfort needed it. Right from the start it was clear that he was so full of his love for money, drugs and himself, that there wasn’t room for anything else.

I thought I knew what I was in for as I went out on the three hour long ride that is The Wolf of Wall Street. I knew that I would travel in company with a man who was ruthless, boundless and careless – a psychopath, who I wouldn’t want to come near if I met him in real life. Judging from the trailer it looked as if it might get a bit crazy on the way.

But I don’t think I was prepared for how hedonistic the film would be. I knew it would be explicit, but not that it would more or less 180 minutes of sex and drug orgies.

180 minutes of orgies
People have group sex at the office with prostitutes. They’re both snorting cocaine and blowing it into each other’s unmentionable body parts and they’re masturbating publicly. They’re on a constant high, each one of them a chemical plant on legs. I didn’t count, but someone else did, and found 569 uses of the f-word in this film, which makes three times a minute. And it would be more if it wasn’t for all those scenes where they’re too stoned to speak a word.

The mass scenes in the office spays are spectacular, reminding me of the visual joy of The Great Gatsby, although Gatsby’s parties appear small and tidy in comparison.

Of course I enjoyed watching this! The three hours were over before I knew it, not the least because it’s so darkly funny most of the time. There’s especially one scene that will be a competitor for the title “most memorable scene of the year”. It’s when diCaprio gets to show his talent for physical comedy, which I wasn’t aware of that he had. He’s on the level of Rowan Atkinson in body language and control as he – I don’t know how to describe this – is floating down a stair, like a piece of slime, since he’s too high on drugs to even crawl properly. I just couldn’t stop laughing.

Glorifying Belfort?
The question is if the fact that the movie is so entertaining somehow puts Jordan Belfort, who is a real person, in better light. Is he glorified by this film? Some critics have suggested this, but I disagree. Just because you enjoy a ride, it doesn’t mean that you endorse it.

It’s true that The Wolf of Wall Street doesn’t spend a lot of time with those who have paid the price for the orgies in the office at Wall Street – their families and their customers – people with ordinary jobs who lost their savings because they were lied to, cheated and manipulated by Belfort and his colleagues. But the audience isn’t more stupid than that they realize this. We can figure out that there are for every win they make, there’s a victim. We don’t have any doubt about that Belfort is a bad person. Bad as in “bad bad”. He’s not a bad guy with a good heart, who will learn and get better. He’s just someone who has done terrible things and who wouldn’t hesitate to keep doing them if he could gain from it. Without giving away what happens in the end, I’d say that I interpret it as a dark, cynical and satire comment on the state of the world.

I too get sick though thinking about the fact that Belfort actually appears in this film in a cameo and that he will money on it, since it’s based on his book, which he already gets a lot of money from, while, from what I’ve heard in media, his victims still haven’t gotten their money back. But in the end, it would be wrong to let this knowledge affect how I judge The Wolf of Wall Street as a movie.

I had a blast and I would recommend others to see it. Just don’t bring your parents or children with you. This is one you want to see on your own.

The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese, US 2013) My rating: 4,5/5

I watched The Wolf of Wall Street alongside with the Swedish bloggers in Filmspanarna. Here are links to the posts by my fellow bloggers:

In English

Fredrik on film

In Swedish

Except Fear
Filmparadiset
Fiffis filmtajm
Fripps filmrevyer
Har du inte sett den
Jojjenito
Movies-Noir
Rörliga bilder och tryckta ord

Moving landscapes

Back on the Alaska train after 29 years – does it run as well as it used to?

Does the name “Runaway Train” tell you something? No? You’re probably not alone.

Isn’t it strange how quickly a movie falls into oblivion? Runaway Train was by no means a small and obscure movie when it came out in 1985. According to Wikipedia it did pretty well at the box office. Jon Voigt received a Golden Globe award for his performance and it was nominated for three Academy awards. Roger Ebert gave it a four star review. It certainly didn’t pass unnoticed. I watched it around the time it came out, and while I had forgotten about the details over the years, it has lingered in my memory as one of the best movies taking place on a train.

These days very few seem to remember it and I’ve never seen it mentioned on any top list. When I asked a couple of fellow movie bloggers from US they just barely recognized the title. And those guys are knowledgeable cinephiles! I think the American film critic Michael Philips was right when he appointed it “the most underrated movie of the 80s”.

Safe for a rewatch
When a bunch of Swedish movie bloggers decided to devote this month’s blogathon to movies about trains, Runaway Train was the first one that came to my mind. After almost 30 years (OMG, has it been that long?), I wanted to pay it a revisit to see what it was like.

Would I get a ride as thrilling as I remembered it to be? Would it hold up? I approached it with certain caution, as I do with movies from the 80s. The pace is often a great deal slower than we’re used to these days and there’s something about the music that doesn’t work for me: strange, annoying electronic music that just is too much.

But I needn’t have worried. This one is safe for a rerun and I urge anyone who hasn’t seen it to give it a go.

This is the story: two convicts – one veteran and one youngster – escape from a prison in Alaska in the middle of the winter. They jump aboard a freight train. But soon after, the engineer dies of a heart attack and they find themselves on a train running at full speed, out of control. Meanwhile they’re chased by the security staff from the prison.

Great execution
It’s a simple plot, but what makes this movie so great is the execution. I’ve seen other trains running wild, but none that feels so absolutely unstoppable. There’s something very real about this monster wrapped in ice and snow, the hostile landscape and the two desperate men clinging to its outside, inches from their certain death. Watching it I couldn’t help asking myself if all the wonders of modern technology in form of CGI and 3D really have added all that much to the experience. At least in this case, I doubt they could do it any better today. That’s also why I keep my fingers crossed that this movie won’t catch the attention of the people who search the 80s for movies to make again. Runaway Train mustn’t be touched. I can’t see how anyone could make it better today – or even as good. Who could replace Jon Voight as the older villain for one thing? Impossible.

Finally I need to mention the ending. I won’t reveal it here, in case you haven’t seen the film, but it’s just beautiful, one of those endings that send you chills along the spine for its emotional impact combined with cold perfection. See and learn, aspiring filmmakers wherever you are! This is how you do it.

Further reading
There’s a great deal more to say about this movie, but I found someone who said it so much better than I possibly could. I urge you to read this article by Graham Daseler at Bright Lights Film Journal. Apart from a great analysis, it’s also got a lot of information about the making of the movie, including some snippets from interviews with the director Andrei Konchalovsky, such as those samples:

You have to be an optimist to make a film about trains.” director Andrei Konchalovsky states.  “Working with trains was very difficult, dangerous, and complicated.  The engines were an enormous amount of steel, very difficult to stop, and treacherous to work around.”

“”The train is a symbol for whatever you want it to be,” the film’s director, Andrei Konchalovsky, explains.”It can be viewed as a prison because they can’t get out of it, or considered as freedom because they escaped from prison on it, or considered as our civilization running out of control because no-one can stop it.”

However a word of warning is needed: If you’re spoiler sensitive you should wait reading it until you’ve seen the film since it goes into detail about the ending.

Runaway Train (Andrei Konchalovsky, US 1985) My rating: 4,5/5

I watched Runaway Train as a part of a the theme of the month of the Swedish film blogging network Filmspanarna Here are links to the other participants..

In English:

Fredrik on film

In Swedish:

Except Fear
Fiffis filmtajm
Filmitch
Fripps filmrevyer
Har du inte sett den
Jojjenito
Movies-Noir
Moving landscapes
Rörliga bilder och tryckta ord

The one good usage of dream sequences in movies

Dream sequences in movies make my skin itch, almost as badly as it does during long sex scenes. Sometimes I have to bite my tongue not to call out my frustration

“I GET IT! YOU’RE DREAMING/HAVING  SEX. NOW CAN YOU PLEASE WAKE UP/FINISH WHAT YOU’VE STARTED SO WE CAN MOVE ON WITH THE MOVIE, PLEASE?”

Before we start an argument over my lack of love for dreams in movies I want to put in a disclaimer. Yes, there are movies where dreaming is essential and an important part of the story. I loved Inception. I liked Danny Boyle’s latest move Trance quite a bit. Overall I’m a fan of movies that explore various aspects of the human mind, such as in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Matrix. Unlike many others I also liked Vanilla Sky and Shutter Island, not to mention Minority Report.

When I’m talking about my hatred for dream sequences it’s not that kind of dreams I refer to. The dreams, usually in the form of nightmares, that I hate so much are the ones that are tossed into the movie for no particular reason. And here are my objections:

1. They feel like fillers
As much as I love Star Trek and consider TNG the best series of them all, I always cringe when I realize it’s going to be a holo deck scene or – in worst case – an entire episode with it. I always imagined that the amount of holo deck was related to the state of the finances. If they were short on money they did more holo deck. It was cheaper per minute. And that’s how most dream sequences are in movies. They feel like a cheap way to spend some time, to drag out on a story that didn’t have enough of substance to fill an entire feature film.

2. They’re pointless
You would expect from a movie that there should be a reason for every scene they put into it. Shooting costs money and the time of the viewer’s is precious too, so you shouldn’t want to make a movie longer than necessary. But surprisingly dream scenes seem to go under a different set of rules. Over and over again we see scenes where the main characters are engaged doing things that have nothing to do with the plot whatsoever. It’s like a separate track that suddenly appears without any real tie to the rest of the film. You don’t learn anything new about the characters. You don’t learn anything about the story. They’re floating around like an isolated island and you never how why it’s there at all.

3. They undermine my trust and suspension of disbelief.
Nightmares are especially overused in suspension and horror movies and that’s where I hate them most. They’re always used in a manner that makes you believe that what you see is what happening “for real” in the film. There will inevitably be some sound-based jump scares and then things will horrendously bad and then the main character will wake up dripping with sweat and you learn that it was only a dream. I will fall for that trick the first time it’s used in a movie. I do it every single time, because that’s how I watch movies: I immerse myself into them completely. But then the revelation comes that it was “only a dream”, which makes me feel like a fool, and as a result I’ll be much more on my guard for the rest of the movie. My level of suspension of disbelief falls to a minimum and I take a step back from the movie, observing it rather than bathing in it. “Ok, things are going bad, huh? I wouldn’t make a big fuss about it. I bet it’s just another dream.”

4. They’re immensely boring
I never tell other people about my dreams. My number one reason for this is that I never remember them, so there isn’t much of a choice. But even if I did remember them, I wouldn’t say anything about them unless someone begged for me to share it. And the reason for this is that I don’t want to expose others to what I hate so much myself.

Frankly I find it very hard to listen to other people telling me about their dreams. Every time it happens I start drifting away. My head keeps nodding and my mouth is smiling or my forehead is frowning, depending on the tone in the voice of the story teller. In reality I’m somewhere else.

Basically I see dreams as the equivalence of screensavers. I guess they’ve got some kind of function and that our brain needs to do idle work once in a while as a part of its maintenance. But this doesn’t qualify them as material for storytelling, be it as a part of a dinner conversation or in a movie. It’s engaging only to the dreamer herself. If dreaming sparks your creativity, my best advice is to save it for your diary.

One reason to include them
As far as I’m concerned I only see one usage of random dreams in movies. Provided they’re long enough, they’re pretty good for a bio break in case of emergency.

This post is a part of a blogathon arranged by the Swedish film blogging network Filmspanarna. The theme was: “Nightmares” (and yes, I may have stretched it a little bit in this post). Here are links to the other blog posts.

In English:

Fredrik on Film

In Swedish:

Fiffis Filmtajm
Filmparadiset
Filmr
Fripps filmrevyer
Jojjenito
Rörliga bilder och tryckta ord
Except Fear
Filmitch

photo credit: Axel Bührmann via photopin