Cloud Atlas Shrugged
On Facebook I've been fangirling over the new trailer for the Cloud Atlas movie, directed by Tom Tykwer and Andy and Lana Wachowski. Tywer's made some good movies and one great one, but he's also responsible for the execrable Perfume, which I note was also his last foray into big-budget Euro art films. (Is it on the Hate list? No -- but maybe it should be.) The Wachowskis have a good visual sense and a not-completely-naive philosophical sense, but haven't really done anything artistically significant. (V for Vendetta definitely is on the Hate list.)
I am distressed to see that critics and trade writers, with one eye on the bottom line, keep evoking The Fountain, which not only resides on the Hate list, but practically rules it. But the concern is well founded, you have to admit, and not just because any philosophical rumination that gets too close to Hollywood deliquesces into New Age goop, feel-good sentiment, or both.
Readers of this blog know how (uncharacteristically, I hope) invested I am in the character of Sonmi-451, to the point of naming the blog after her segment in the novel. I could and probably should write a whole post about that. (Maybe I already have?) But right now I am possessed by certainty that the movie is going to fuck Sonmi's segment up. And maybe all the segments. Why?
I've been re-reading the novel, more to cope with my disintegrating personal life than with an eye to any critique, and what I notice is that one of its themes is the relation of the life of the text to the life of the author. The six segments are, within the narrative, six documents, of more or less questionable authority and provenance. One of them is presented "in-world" as fiction in another segment. Another story -- Sonmi's story -- is revealed to become unintelligibly lost as time goes on.
I won't say that film can't do this kind of thing, but it almost never does. Some films do question the authority of what they show on the screen (Rashomon, famously), but almost always by showing you what might have happened. But to question the validity of what's on the screen in a way analogous to what the novel does-- I guess you'd have to show the movie getting made. That opportunity exists here (Sonmi watches Cavendish's story as a film; Cavendish makes self-conscious comments on how to film his story, as well as evaluating Rey's story in terms of its filmability) but I'm hard-pressed to think of many films that do it and do it well. (The Muppet Movie comes to mind.)
But Sonmi's story is all about this problem. How odd to notice that for all the tragedy of her story, she's barely a protagonist in it, because her agency is so completely circumscribed by necessity and violence. All she can control is what she thinks and feels in response, and even that is circumscribed because she can't really trust that anything that happened to her wasn't scripted for the benefit of others. Her commitment to truth makes her reliable in that sense, but all she can report are her reactions to others' untruths, and so the ultimate meaning of her story is far from certain.
For this reason, the danger is that in the film she will become a passive waif in need of rescue, where in the book her vindication is her preservation of her integrity in spite of the impossibility of her rescue. (Another danger with these stories is a focus on freeing of slaves, when the reality the novel seeks to face is that most enslaved people are never freed.)
It would anyway be very challenging to depict the changes in Sonmi's mind on the screen, or her reflections on her former self. But without these things, the story would become very thin indeed, and I fear the temptation to rescue her would be irresistible.
I think about these things all the time, since WPA has a lot of the same concerns. Cloud Atlas is probably the closest thing I have to a direct influence, and I'm sure some the lines one could draw would be embarrassingly stark. (Six characters, huh?) But also because it exposes a way that film could have developed, but never really did. It's almost as if we decided that photos were too enthralling ever to question, even as we grew more and more skeptical of the written word. But maybe it's just the medium: it's impossible to mistake a word, even from an eyewitness, for the thing it reports.
Well, anyhow, I'm prepared to be disappointed. But I still recommend "An Orison of Sonmi-451" to anyone who'll listen to me.
I am distressed to see that critics and trade writers, with one eye on the bottom line, keep evoking The Fountain, which not only resides on the Hate list, but practically rules it. But the concern is well founded, you have to admit, and not just because any philosophical rumination that gets too close to Hollywood deliquesces into New Age goop, feel-good sentiment, or both.
Readers of this blog know how (uncharacteristically, I hope) invested I am in the character of Sonmi-451, to the point of naming the blog after her segment in the novel. I could and probably should write a whole post about that. (Maybe I already have?) But right now I am possessed by certainty that the movie is going to fuck Sonmi's segment up. And maybe all the segments. Why?
I've been re-reading the novel, more to cope with my disintegrating personal life than with an eye to any critique, and what I notice is that one of its themes is the relation of the life of the text to the life of the author. The six segments are, within the narrative, six documents, of more or less questionable authority and provenance. One of them is presented "in-world" as fiction in another segment. Another story -- Sonmi's story -- is revealed to become unintelligibly lost as time goes on.
I won't say that film can't do this kind of thing, but it almost never does. Some films do question the authority of what they show on the screen (Rashomon, famously), but almost always by showing you what might have happened. But to question the validity of what's on the screen in a way analogous to what the novel does-- I guess you'd have to show the movie getting made. That opportunity exists here (Sonmi watches Cavendish's story as a film; Cavendish makes self-conscious comments on how to film his story, as well as evaluating Rey's story in terms of its filmability) but I'm hard-pressed to think of many films that do it and do it well. (The Muppet Movie comes to mind.)
But Sonmi's story is all about this problem. How odd to notice that for all the tragedy of her story, she's barely a protagonist in it, because her agency is so completely circumscribed by necessity and violence. All she can control is what she thinks and feels in response, and even that is circumscribed because she can't really trust that anything that happened to her wasn't scripted for the benefit of others. Her commitment to truth makes her reliable in that sense, but all she can report are her reactions to others' untruths, and so the ultimate meaning of her story is far from certain.
For this reason, the danger is that in the film she will become a passive waif in need of rescue, where in the book her vindication is her preservation of her integrity in spite of the impossibility of her rescue. (Another danger with these stories is a focus on freeing of slaves, when the reality the novel seeks to face is that most enslaved people are never freed.)
It would anyway be very challenging to depict the changes in Sonmi's mind on the screen, or her reflections on her former self. But without these things, the story would become very thin indeed, and I fear the temptation to rescue her would be irresistible.
I think about these things all the time, since WPA has a lot of the same concerns. Cloud Atlas is probably the closest thing I have to a direct influence, and I'm sure some the lines one could draw would be embarrassingly stark. (Six characters, huh?) But also because it exposes a way that film could have developed, but never really did. It's almost as if we decided that photos were too enthralling ever to question, even as we grew more and more skeptical of the written word. But maybe it's just the medium: it's impossible to mistake a word, even from an eyewitness, for the thing it reports.
Well, anyhow, I'm prepared to be disappointed. But I still recommend "An Orison of Sonmi-451" to anyone who'll listen to me.