looper

Nov 23, 2012 01:36

So I watched Looper today and it was amazing. Like really really really good. It's a movie about time travel and though I had some questions about the logistics of the time travel (as is want to happen with all time travel films), the plot itself was very interesting. I especially enjoyed the motivations of the characters and why they do what they do. Also the implications of going into the past to change the future. It's something lots of people address but I don't know many who've addressed it quite like this. I would say it's a more compassionate spin on the concept than what others have done.

I'm here actually to comment about one scene in particular though. I keep thinking about it and playing it in my brain because it is just perfect. From a writer's perspective, from a story teller's perspective, I thought it was such an effective way of conveying horror and brutality.

Basically Loopers are people who live in the past and kill people who get sent to them from the future. They eventually must confront their own selves though because in thirty years they themselves are to be sent back to be executed. Sometimes people fail at doing this and when this happens both of their versions must be hunted down and taken care of. One of the ancillary characters fails to kill himself and allows himself to get away. His name is Seth. Old Seth gets away and Young Seth gets captured. We don't ever see what happens to Young Seth although we know he is in the custody of his bosses. We do however catch up with Old Seth. As Old Seth is trying to escape he notices that his fingers are going missing one by one.

As the audience you immediately realize that whatever his happening to him is being done to his younger self at that very moment. On his arm he sees instructions etched into his forearm. He needs to go to a specific location at a specific time. One his way to get there more of his limbs begin disappearing. First his fingers. Then his nose. Then his feet. Then his forearms. And so on and so forth until he is crawling to the door of his destination and piece by piece his limbs just disappear, his cloths sag, and he's just this torso lying on the floor outside this door. Then the door opens and this guy shoots him in the face.

In the background you see medical equipment and someone on a bed attached to a respirator. You don't really see a person but you assume that's Young Seth, who will be kept alive for the next thirty years so that he can then be executed.

I absolutely loved this scene. It was such an elegant way of giving you torture but not showing you anything. In your brain you can only imagine the kind of hellish pain Young Seth is in as his body is slowly removed from itself piece by piece. But instead of showing you the torture, which would be gruesome but boring, we see Old Seth struggling to escape as what is being done to his young self immediately impacts his body. And as an audience member you look on in horror and disgust because you don't need to see it. You can already imagine it. It's more horrifying in fact because you are being asked to think about it in your head, to just picture in your mind what is being done to Young Seth.

It's fantastic.

nerdiness, fangirl alert, movies, nanowrimo, reviews, writing

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