I just finished watching one of the single best films of 2012, and one of my new additions to all-time favorite romantic movies. I happen to run one of the last small business DVD rental stores in my region, and every week I am inundated with new movies to review, preview, order and stock. It's safe to say I am overly saturated by media. As selective as I still try to be with what I do and do not watch I am still regularly disappointed and sometimes just plain pissed off at the terrible quality of entertainment being mass produced and, even more sadly, mass consumed in this society.
There's a lot of reason to deride TV, Film and entertainment media in general for being vapid, recycled and ultimately lacking in enduring quality. Indeed, there is no doubt that most of what is produced for this market is entirely meant to be immediately consumed and discarded in time for the next empty trifle, but when I watch movies like this I'm connected to all the truly poignant and meaningful stories I've ever found valuable to have spent the time to experience, and regularly re-experience, myself.
Now to be fair, the lynch-pin twist of "Ruby Sparks" is the inexplicable power of an author's writing being physically manifest in the real world; something which has already being done in film and very well done as well, namely in Stranger Than Fiction (a movie I also love a great deal). But it is not whether or not something has been done. It should not, in truth, really be the question because we already understand quite early on in life that others have been living it for a very long time and have, in the aggregate, experienced all manner of what it has to offer. Being original has nothing to do with doing something that has never been done in any fashion, manner or degree. It's just simply not possible to stand that far removed from the experience pool of humanity.
It is, in fact, a great driving force when we are young to experience first-hand and for our own selves the things others have; basic motor skills, then learning to read, then to play a musical instrument or master the challenge of Chess. We yearn to do specifically that which has been done and has been proven in the doing to bring meaning, fulfillment and happiness to the lives of men. This yearning is foundational in our very origins as man, and it is only in embracing and placing as near the center of your values as fallibility will allow the acceptance of the concept of first principles that you do, indeed, conceive and subsequently create anything original.
Now in a movie year which has been stoked to the eyeballs with highly anticipated release such as "The Dark Knight Rises," "The Avengers," "The Amazing Spiderman," "Men In Black 3," "007 Skyfall" or the first part of the single film I've been waiting to see made since infancy, "The Hobbit"; and in this year with so many reboots, remakes and needless sequels such as the aforementioned "Spiderman," or "Total Recall" and "Taken 2," respectively, (none of which were even bad movies) I have to say that the best and most truly impactful films I've seen have been ones I knew next to nothing about before watching them and which floored me for all the world only because they were clearly inspired and created by the use of true originality.
Films such as "The Cabin In The Woods," a complete rethink on the idea of the hallmarks of horror by media god Joss Whedon, who's "Firefly" series is still my personal TV bible; or "Take Me Home," a masterpiece romantic comedy that was inspired, filmed and produced entirely independently and yet until I looked into it after, I would never has guessed so. Or the quietly awesome return of Antonio Banderas to being a complete badass in "The Big Bang," which paid an incredible homage to film noire and old-fashioned private eye novels with brilliant writing and a stunningly engrossing visual style.
The moment I read the teaser synopsis of "Ruby Sparks" I knew I wanted to watch it. Because, unlike these other films of "saving the world" and big action, this was a movie that paid attention to the fact that small-stakes stories often hit you the hardest. It's the mistake so many story-tellers make: to bring so much consequence to bear in the actions of the characters that the empathic capacity of the audience members towards the characters and the plot is saturated and actually rendered somewhat numb and disconnected on the deepest personal levels.
It's the difference between the 144 minutes of gripping, simmering intrigue and guile that was "Casino Royal" and the stripped-down, dissapointing and 100-minute-long chase scene that was "Quantum Of Solace." It's the difference between the performance-driven brilliance of films like "Red Eye," "Phone Booth" and "Buried" compared to the generic flavorless humdrum of flicks like "Contraband," "Haywire" or "The Hunger Games." And for all the love I have for Tolkien, it's the difference between the simplicity of purpose and tantalizing allusion to a broad fantasy world in "The Hobbit" compared to the oversupply and often drudgingly oblique detail in "The Lord Of The Rings."
Because, when we come right down to it, "Fight Club" was about the Narrator's need to give himself permission to be who he truly wished to be, not a social revolution or the need we all sometimes feel to haul off and punch something. "Kingdom Of Heaven" (despite it being an epic-scale action film) was really just about a man living and learning by his principles, and not letting the scale of his circumstances be his excuse to abandon them. "Warrior" was about the pain and healing of a broken family. "Taken" was about nothing more than a man's pure devotion, ingenuity and tenacity in rescuing his daughter from harm, not some grand spy game as per usual Hollywood style.
Fact is, it's easy to venerate stories built on cliche, big budgets, high-stakes and monolithic antagonists. Watch a movie or read a book like that and you can pretend to yourself that important choices and the necessity for great personal integrity are things only needed once in a great span of years and only by those to whom fate or chance has delegated the position of affecting many. Because if you instead found it moving to witness the story of an actual genius mathematician struggle with the sanity-eroding nightmare that is schizophrenia, or the intellectually and emotionally challenging narrative of an average man coming to grips with the backsliding drudgery his middle-age has become, you couldn't help but be moved, however slightly, to show the commitment and courage it took that character John Nash to face and overcome his illness without drugs in "A Beautiful Mind," (as the actual John Nash achieved in real life) or the honesty and willingness to let go of the facade you've built around your true self portrayed in the character of Lester Burnham in "American Beauty."
See, it's easy to want stories with overblown proportions, because then you can escape from the reality that maybe you don't live up to the person you want to be in the relationships you wish were better; relationships that have nothing more at stake than what good they might do for both parties, if only good was what each was actually working for. It's difficult to see portrayed, even in what you know to be pure fiction, the behaviors you know you don't perform but wish you could find it in yourself to embrace. Far easier it is to simply watch the next piece of overblown drama, child violence, "comedy" and supposed "romance" lazily hurled at you by those without any remaining spark of real excitement and curiosity left to them.
So, as much as folks like to deride and abuse the producers of media, I regularly find it just as if not more sickening to observe the consumers of media, what they consume and the "reasons" they give for why they find it so appetizing a meal. Taste in food may be a matter of preference, but nutrition is not. And taste in the principles, perspectives and behaviors we feed ourselves through stories may be subjective, but integrity and originality are not. The way we satisfy that drive to do as has been done before and experience those things others have experienced, even if we may never be able to realize it except vicariously through stories, is only truly satisfying, truly inspiring and truly motivating when done for the sake of seeing one's own true self more clearly for the experience.
So be cautious of the tales you tell yourself and of what sort of stories you are looking to hear, because you live what you rehearse; and the question YOUR story will ultimately come down to:
"Just how strong was my character?"
Now to be fair, the lynch-pin twist of "Ruby Sparks" is the inexplicable power of an author's writing being physically manifest in the real world; something which has already being done in film and very well done as well, namely in Stranger Than Fiction (a movie I also love a great deal). But it is not whether or not something has been done. It should not, in truth, really be the question because we already understand quite early on in life that others have been living it for a very long time and have, in the aggregate, experienced all manner of what it has to offer. Being original has nothing to do with doing something that has never been done in any fashion, manner or degree. It's just simply not possible to stand that far removed from the experience pool of humanity.
It is, in fact, a great driving force when we are young to experience first-hand and for our own selves the things others have; basic motor skills, then learning to read, then to play a musical instrument or master the challenge of Chess. We yearn to do specifically that which has been done and has been proven in the doing to bring meaning, fulfillment and happiness to the lives of men. This yearning is foundational in our very origins as man, and it is only in embracing and placing as near the center of your values as fallibility will allow the acceptance of the concept of first principles that you do, indeed, conceive and subsequently create anything original.
Now in a movie year which has been stoked to the eyeballs with highly anticipated release such as "The Dark Knight Rises," "The Avengers," "The Amazing Spiderman," "Men In Black 3," "007 Skyfall" or the first part of the single film I've been waiting to see made since infancy, "The Hobbit"; and in this year with so many reboots, remakes and needless sequels such as the aforementioned "Spiderman," or "Total Recall" and "Taken 2," respectively, (none of which were even bad movies) I have to say that the best and most truly impactful films I've seen have been ones I knew next to nothing about before watching them and which floored me for all the world only because they were clearly inspired and created by the use of true originality.
Films such as "The Cabin In The Woods," a complete rethink on the idea of the hallmarks of horror by media god Joss Whedon, who's "Firefly" series is still my personal TV bible; or "Take Me Home," a masterpiece romantic comedy that was inspired, filmed and produced entirely independently and yet until I looked into it after, I would never has guessed so. Or the quietly awesome return of Antonio Banderas to being a complete badass in "The Big Bang," which paid an incredible homage to film noire and old-fashioned private eye novels with brilliant writing and a stunningly engrossing visual style.
The moment I read the teaser synopsis of "Ruby Sparks" I knew I wanted to watch it. Because, unlike these other films of "saving the world" and big action, this was a movie that paid attention to the fact that small-stakes stories often hit you the hardest. It's the mistake so many story-tellers make: to bring so much consequence to bear in the actions of the characters that the empathic capacity of the audience members towards the characters and the plot is saturated and actually rendered somewhat numb and disconnected on the deepest personal levels.
It's the difference between the 144 minutes of gripping, simmering intrigue and guile that was "Casino Royal" and the stripped-down, dissapointing and 100-minute-long chase scene that was "Quantum Of Solace." It's the difference between the performance-driven brilliance of films like "Red Eye," "Phone Booth" and "Buried" compared to the generic flavorless humdrum of flicks like "Contraband," "Haywire" or "The Hunger Games." And for all the love I have for Tolkien, it's the difference between the simplicity of purpose and tantalizing allusion to a broad fantasy world in "The Hobbit" compared to the oversupply and often drudgingly oblique detail in "The Lord Of The Rings."
Because, when we come right down to it, "Fight Club" was about the Narrator's need to give himself permission to be who he truly wished to be, not a social revolution or the need we all sometimes feel to haul off and punch something. "Kingdom Of Heaven" (despite it being an epic-scale action film) was really just about a man living and learning by his principles, and not letting the scale of his circumstances be his excuse to abandon them. "Warrior" was about the pain and healing of a broken family. "Taken" was about nothing more than a man's pure devotion, ingenuity and tenacity in rescuing his daughter from harm, not some grand spy game as per usual Hollywood style.
Fact is, it's easy to venerate stories built on cliche, big budgets, high-stakes and monolithic antagonists. Watch a movie or read a book like that and you can pretend to yourself that important choices and the necessity for great personal integrity are things only needed once in a great span of years and only by those to whom fate or chance has delegated the position of affecting many. Because if you instead found it moving to witness the story of an actual genius mathematician struggle with the sanity-eroding nightmare that is schizophrenia, or the intellectually and emotionally challenging narrative of an average man coming to grips with the backsliding drudgery his middle-age has become, you couldn't help but be moved, however slightly, to show the commitment and courage it took that character John Nash to face and overcome his illness without drugs in "A Beautiful Mind," (as the actual John Nash achieved in real life) or the honesty and willingness to let go of the facade you've built around your true self portrayed in the character of Lester Burnham in "American Beauty."
See, it's easy to want stories with overblown proportions, because then you can escape from the reality that maybe you don't live up to the person you want to be in the relationships you wish were better; relationships that have nothing more at stake than what good they might do for both parties, if only good was what each was actually working for. It's difficult to see portrayed, even in what you know to be pure fiction, the behaviors you know you don't perform but wish you could find it in yourself to embrace. Far easier it is to simply watch the next piece of overblown drama, child violence, "comedy" and supposed "romance" lazily hurled at you by those without any remaining spark of real excitement and curiosity left to them.
So, as much as folks like to deride and abuse the producers of media, I regularly find it just as if not more sickening to observe the consumers of media, what they consume and the "reasons" they give for why they find it so appetizing a meal. Taste in food may be a matter of preference, but nutrition is not. And taste in the principles, perspectives and behaviors we feed ourselves through stories may be subjective, but integrity and originality are not. The way we satisfy that drive to do as has been done before and experience those things others have experienced, even if we may never be able to realize it except vicariously through stories, is only truly satisfying, truly inspiring and truly motivating when done for the sake of seeing one's own true self more clearly for the experience.
So be cautious of the tales you tell yourself and of what sort of stories you are looking to hear, because you live what you rehearse; and the question YOUR story will ultimately come down to:
"Just how strong was my character?"
For less philosophically heavy reviews and commentary on movies, music, television and so on visit also my friend Brian Ericksen's blog "Sneezing Into The Wind"
