12 Monkeyhog Day

SOURCE CODE

Last week, some colleagues and I got an early look at Source Code (trailers), the sophomore effort from friend of the blog Duncan "Zowie Bowie" Jones, as well as an all-too-brief look at the man himself. First, the Jones appearance. Like a small, English Bigfoot caught in a grainy home movie out in the woods, he seemed to pass in front of our field of vision only long enough for us to wonder if what we were seeing was the real thing before he strode back behind the treeline. During the sighting, he seemed to be trying to lower expectations a bit among the Moon fans like us in the audience (sadly, too few in the free screening), telling us not to expect his second film to be all that similar to his terrific first. (Whether he meant in terms of its subject matter or its quality, he didn't specify.) After maybe forty-five seconds at the mic, Jones hurried off, leaving the lights to fall and his film to speak for itself.

Though Source Code certainly is different from Moon, and not as good, neither it nor Jones has anything to be ashamed of for what it is, which is a gripping, engaging, well-above-average action movie. Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) abruptly comes to on a commuter train headed for Chicago, his last memory being piloting an Army helicopter in Afghanistan; he doesn't know where he is, what he's doing there, or why the stranger sitting across from him, Christina (Michelle Monaghan), seems to know him. After eight minutes, an explosion destroys the train, and Colter is now isolated in a small, dark room with few features other than a screen on which a militarily attired woman, Goodwin (Vera Farmiga), anxiously questions him about what he just saw. It's soon revealed to Colter that, using a technology called "the Source Code," his consciousness is being thrown into an alternate reality based on the last eight minutes of the life of one of the train passangers before he, Christina, and the other passangers were killed in a bombing, but an alternate reality that he can fully explore and affect. His involuntary mission is to discover who was behind the bombing in order to prevent other attacks predicted to follow; but he can only do this eight minutes at a time, reliving the last moments of a dead man's life over and over until he finds the truth.

The obvious point of comparison for Source Code is as an action/thriller Groundhog Day, but with our hero forced to relive the same eight minutes in order to prevent terrorist attacks, instead of forced to relive the same minor holiday in order to become a better person and get the girl. However, the film I was most reminded of was 12 Monkeys, in which a man from the near future is forced by a mysterious authority to travel back in time to gain intelligence about a past, seemingly inevitable catastrophe. (Hence the mangled compromise of this post's title.) Though Jones didn't write Source Code, it shares with Moon (which he did write) a ready willingness to borrow what it needs from other films, but with its own spin. (I already noted the influences of Silent Running, Solaris, Blade Runner, and 2001, to name a few, on Moon.) It uses a high-tech narrative device and action-movie setting to examine, like Ramis's and Gilliam's respective films, how inevitable or open-ended life actually is, whether we're in the driver's seat or the future is set in stone. Surprisingly heady stuff for a springtime actioner full of pretty faces.

Jones has openly described Source Code as a "one for them" film. (I believe the term he used was "director for hire.") But really, the only actual negativity I can direct at the film is relative, in comparison to the "one for me" Moon. Sure, Gyllenhaal, Monaghan, or Farmiga doesn't turn in anything like Sam Rockwell's extraordinary performance, possibly the best of his career; but everyone delivers solid work, especially Gyllenhaal with his character's blend of military professionalism and understandable frustration with the situation into which he's been forced. The story doesn't have the same surprises and thematic challenges, but it's still one of the most intelligent and compelling films of its kind that we've gotten in a while, and one that interweaves its intelligence with the action and suspence quite well, in both conception and execution. If this is Jones's "one for them" film, we should be so lucky as to have more like it during the rest of his career.

Gettin' Hitched

THE 39 STEPS

I've been trying the past couple years to broaden my acquaintance with the filmography of Alfred Hitchcock beyond just watching Psycho over and over again. I've seen Vertigo, Rear Window, The Birds, and Notorious, and they, along with Psycho, are some of the best films I've ever seen in every respect: storytelling, technique, performances, suspense, and, let's not forget, humor. There's always some kind of comic aspect to be found somewhere in his films, from the matronly patron fretting over humane pesticide in Psycho to the rarely seen newlyweds in Rear Window. Not only does it provide some much-needed lightening of the mood and balancing of the tone, but it goes a long way toward humanizing the characters, making us care about them more, and thus fear for them more. But no film of his that I've seen has showcased Hitchcock's comedic side as much as The 39 Steps.

We're introduced to our dashing young Canadian hero, Richard Hannay (Robert Donat), in a London music hall where patrons test the encyclopedic knowledge of "Mr. Memory" with often absurd questions (including the old man who keeps trying to ask his question even after shots are fired and the audience stampedes). He finds himself with a beautiful spy calling herself "Annabella Smith" (Lucie Mannheim), who claims to be trying to keep aeronautical secrets from being passed to a foreign power. (Structurally the film mirrors itself, beginning with a music hall followed by Hannay in the company of a woman, and ending with Hanny in the company of a woman followed by a music hall.) Annabella is soon murdered, but not before telling Hannay cryptically of "the Thirty-nine Steps" (perhaps the MacGuffiniest of all MacGuffins) and a man whom she was supposed to meet in Scotland. Now wanted for Annabella's murder, Hannay travels to Scotland to try to get to the bottom of the conspiracy and thereby clear his own name.

One great way that Hitchcock maintains the suspense is by constantly shifting Hannay's environment and whom he's with: from the music hall to his apartment, to the train to Scotland, to the cottage of the pious crofter (definitely a Calvinist, he) and his long-suffering young Glaswegian wife—and sorry to nitpick, but it would take a wee bit more than an afternoon's hike to get from the Forth Bridge to what's clearly supposed to be the Highlands—to Ard-na-Shelloch, and so on. He—and the audience with him—remains uncertain where he'll find himself next, and who he can trust there. I also liked how Hitch upset expectations; the foreign-accented femme fatale who freely admits her mercenary outlook is trustworthy, while plenty of respectable-seeming natives turn out to be traitorous foreign agents or their unsuspecting pawns.

There are also some great little filmmaking techniques and tricks sprinkled throughout, like the first shots of Hannay at the music hall where we don't see his face, the scream of the woman discovering Annabella's body blended with the whistle of the train Hannay's riding as he makes his escape, or the camera going from looking in the window of a moving car to suddenly stopping and watching the car drive off. They don't necessarily make the film more suspenseful, but they definitely make it more interesting and fun to watch.

As I mentioned before, The 39 Steps is shot through with humor; in fact, it's easily as much a comedy as a thriller. In that respect, I have to say the film it reminds me of the most is Pineapple Express; Dale and Saul are similarly on the run from a murderous conspiracy, but there are so many laughs that you almost forget the mortal danger they're in. In The 39 Steps, there's the aforementioned scene at the music hall, then Hannay's interaction with the milk man, the "unmentionables" salesmen and the old vicar on the train, and the (comedically ingenious) scene at the election rally. Then, when Hannay meets up (again) with the bizarrely appareled Pamela (Madeleine Carroll), the film becomes a quasi-screwball comedy, with much sexual-tension-infused witty bickering between an attractive young man and woman who can't help but find themselves in one zany situation after another. Though humor and romantic relationships are staples of Hitchcock's thrillers, The 39 Steps is the only one I've seen in which they're so central (except maybe the romantic aspects of Vertigo and Notorious, but there isn't nearly as much comedy in those).

I'm reminded of a story someone (I don't remember who) told about sharing an elevator with Hitchcock. The two of them were alone in the elevator; then, when more people started getting on, Hitchcock started into the middle of describing a gruesome murder scene with great detail and relish. Soon the elevator stopped, the doors opened, and the eavesdropping fellow-passengers hesitated a moment before leaving, not wanting to miss the end of his lurid tale. When Hitchcock and the storyteller were again alone in the elevator, the latter anxiously asked what happened next; but, as Hitch explained, nothing happened next, he just made it up on the spot to amuse himself with everyone else's reactions. Hitchcock clearly saw a natural link between humor and fear, between comedy and tragedy, and so was never afraid to infuse some humor into his thrillers, which only improved them. That's nowhere more evident than in The 39 Steps.