Sunday, August 19, 2007

The Simpsons' Movie

Ever since I started watching The Simpsons, I've always believed the writers of the show are the wittiest people on Earth. After watching the movie, I had more reason to believe so. Who else can start parodies right from the appearance of the 20th Century Fox logo. And when Homer says at the start of the movie, after watching an Itchy and Scratchy movie in the theater, pointing to every member in the audience, "I can't believe we're paying to watch something we could see on TV for free! If you ask me, everyone in this theater is a big sucker! Especially, you!", one can't help but laugh out loud, and wonder how true that is, and be amazed at the nerve and sarcasm of the writer who wrote that. This was just a sign of how witty the things were gonna be throughout the movie. It was the best joke... SO FAR, as Homer would say in the movie.

The plot of the movie is a parody of several action films and at many places more than subtly critical of the U.S Government. The writers have understood the fact that fans of The Simpsons don't like it for the plot, but for the intelligent humor and the witticisms. However, since this is a big-screen movie that they are making which has to run over a length of one and a half hours, they needed a plot that can carry the movie to such a length. So it ends up being highly cinematic and partly loses the charm of the episodes. But this doesn't take any credit away from them. There were plenty of laugh-worthy moments in the movie for all sections of the audience. For the younger lot for whom it's just physical humor that's the attraction, there was Spiderpig walking under the ceiling. For the teens, there was Bart skateboarding naked across town in what was a very well animated sequence, taking enough care to hide Bart's willy for most of the sequence, and showing it for one split second, which was enough to evoke a collective roar of laughter from the audience. The scene that topped it all was the one where a robot faced with the task of defusing a bomb, succumbs to pressure and destroys itself. It was intelligent humour at its best. Screw Asimov's three laws. This is possibly what the future would be like.

The portrayal of the characters was good, but not exceptional in the movie, with Homer getting most of the screen time with his goofy nature and irresponsibility being highlighted too often. It must be appreciated that as many side-characters as possible were included in the movie. One of the best lines in the movie was The Comic Book Guy saying "I've spent my entire life doing nothing but collecting comic books... and now there's only time to say... LIFE WELL SPENT!" One significant sidekick who was missing was Sideshow Bob. He could have been given some screen space at all, if not none. Maybe he will be, in the sequel, which is shown to be Maggie's first word at the end of the movie. At the end of it all, it was a movie well worth spending money on, rather than downloading it illegally on the Internet, which Bart himself had to promise not to.

Sunday, August 5, 2007

The Prestige!


"Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called 'The Pledge'. The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call 'The Prestige'."

This quote is all the more relevant to the making of the movie, than to the movie itself. The brilliance of Christopher Nolan lies in the fact that he has presented the movie itself as a great magic trick. The Prestige, the hardest part of the trick, is as hard to interpret as it would have been to conceive and present. The more you watch the last segment of the movie, the more interpretations you get with each time you see it, at least that's what the director intends you to. You should not be satisfied with being fooled. "Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it because you're not really looking. You don't really want to know the secret... You want to be fooled."


Among the many questions you are left pondering at the end of the movie, the one I consider the most important is "Was Borden a better magician than Angier?" My answer would be No. The director has let the viewer know the trick behind The Prestige of Borden, with no ambiguities about it, but what he has shown to be Angier's prestige is only meant to fool the viewer. And the average viewer wants to be fooled. He doesn't want to introspect anything beyond what the director(in this case, the magician) has shown him. If you have seen this movie and truly appreciate it you would prefer not to believe that the Transporter machine works, plainly because of the fact that the beauty of magic lies not in science but in clever deception, apart from the fact that a cloning machine is impossible, that too in the 1890s. Come to think of it - which magic trick used in the movie, or even otherwise employs scientific methods to achieve the means? Every magic trick is the fruit of shrewd deception on part of the trickster. Deception is the essence of magic, and is the essence of this movie, too. I do not wish to delve too much into the argumentative aspects of the movie, I just want to reaffirm my stand that a cloning machine cannot work, considering that the movie attempts to dignify the dirty tricks behind magic, and does it quite successfully. After watching this movie, one sure will develop a heightened opinion of the directorial skills of Christopher Nolan whose previous works include Memento and Batman Begins. This movie certainly is one of my all-time favourites.