Overthinking Popcorn Movies

[dream_weaver]

After watching No Country For Old Men, the loose ends and disconnected presentation was disappointing. It's not uncommon to hear charges of over-analyzing a movie. Such allegations are not much of a deterrence.

 

What is rarer is to come across a piece that hones in "the why", like Mike Singer did in Stop Telling Me to Turn Off My Brain.

What’s curious about the “turn off your brain” argument is the way it ignores how people actually watch movies. When a film is really working, people get swept up in it. They lose themselves in the characters and the story. They care about what they’re watching; they feel things about what they’re seeing. It’s only when something is tedious or poorly conceived that they begin to really question what’s not working. Turning your brain on in the midst of a dumb movie isn’t an act of sabotage; it’s a defense mechanism against boredom. If the movie did its job, it wouldn’t happen.

 

When the mind starts wandering from the movie it turns to what's missing here or what is amiss? In No Country For Old Men it starts off by overloading the crow. Watch a scene, switch to a different scene trying to hold the first scene while asking what is the connection here? By the end of the movie, you realize that some questions raised were not to be answered.

 

On the other end of the spectrum, the movie can strike home so well it has to be paused to give some time to understand what is so compelling about it.

 

“Turn off your brain” is less of a defense of a movie than admission of incredibly low standards for entertainment. Why ask so little from something you paid to watch? It’s odd that in an age where people complain so ferociously that movies are so much worse now than they used to be, that some of those same people would turn around and defend those same inferior products with the excuse “Eh, it’s fine as long as you don’t think for even a moment about anything passing in front of your eyes.” When that’s all you require from Hollywood, why is it shocking when they churn out nothing but garbage?

 

As Ayn Rand succinctly points out, the philosophic battle today is for the mind. "Turn off your brain" is a euphemism for "Turn off your mind". Mr. Singer wraps his article up well stating:

We should demand more from films. Instead of asking viewers to turn their brains off, how about we ask the people who make these things to turn their brains on? Do you know what happens to someone when their brains turn off? They die. If they’re lucky, maybe they wind up as a lifeless vegetable, spending the rest of eternity attached to a respirator, thinking absolutely nothing. Does that sound like fun to you?

 

 

What’s curious about the “turn off your brain” argument is the way it ignores how people actually watch movies. When a film is really working, people get swept up in it. They lose themselves in the characters and the story. They care about what they’re watching; they feel things about what they’re seeing. It’s only when something is tedious or poorly conceived that they begin to really question what’s not working. Turning your brain on in the midst of a dumb movie isn’t an act of sabotage; it’s a defense mechanism against boredom. If the movie did its job, it wouldn’t happen.

Edited June 23, 2015 by dream_weaver

[Ninth Doctor]

After watching No Country For Old Men, the loose ends and disconnected presentation was disappointing.

What loose ends? I thought it was quite a good movie. Strong "malevolent universe premise" to be sure, but I feel that way (contra-Rand) about a lot of Victor Hugo. I recall that the movie did leave open whether Chigurh ended up with the money, and whether he killed the wife.  In the book the answers are yes and yes; I don't know if it needed to be spelled out in the movie, I think it works either way.  Best I recall the "presentation" was linear, albeit punctuated with tangential scenes of Tommy Lee Jones talking with characters unrelated to the plot.  Those conversations tie in thematically, however.  By "disconnected presentation", are you thinking of Tarantino, specifically   Resevoir Dogs   and  P ulp Fiction?  

 

In any event, I don't think Cormac McCarthy (or the filmakers) wanted you to turn off your brain during the film.  From what I hear the Transformers movies are a better match for your thesis:

 

[dream_weaver]

Unless I missed it, who killed everyone where the drugs where located, who killed the money-man, leaving it behind?

 

Tommy Lee explaines a number of points to the younger investigator earlier in the movie, but finds the explanation about an entry wound and no bullet did not make sense.

 

Later, he's talking the young wife in the restaurant and mentions how slaughter cows have improved to use a pneumatic device that plunges and pin in and retracts - but it never seems to get tied in deeper than that.

 

It's little things like that which you sit wondering who or when are these questions going to be answered or interconnected.

 

I've not watched the ones you mention, but I have seen few that have little plot to follow. This one I categorize as essentially a naturalism approach. It just happens to be the most recent one watched that I found myself focus more on why the movie wasn't satisfying, and never really got lost into the movie, save for a few parts.

 

As to the "turn off your brain", I've heard that message when sharing analyses in some discussions, not from the fim-maker.  I'd be tempted next time to say "Don't you be telling me to turn my brain off, you should be telling those folks producing this stuff to turn theirs on.

[Ninth Doctor]

Unless I missed it, who killed everyone where the drugs where located, who killed the money-man, leaving it behind?

All we learn is that there was a drug deal gone wrong. That’s the setup. They all killed each other. The “money-man” was wounded in the shoot-out and got away on foot, dying later under a shade tree, where Moss finds his body and the money.

Tommy Lee explaines a number of points to the younger investigator earlier in the movie, but finds the explanation about an entry wound and no bullet did not make sense.

Later, he's talking the young wife in the restaurant and mentions how slaughter cows have improved to use a pneumatic device that plunges and pin in and retracts - but it never seems to get tied in deeper than that.

Indeed. He figures out that Chigurh didn’t use a gun. But he doesn’t figure it out right away. What’s wrong with that? Even Hercule Poirot (sometimes) needed to exercise his “little grey cells” across a chapter or two.

 

It's little things like that which you sit wondering who or when are these questions going to be answered or interconnected.

Yeah, and that’s the kind of thing that ought to “turn your brain on”! C’mon, this is like complaining about Chekov’s Gun on the grounds that you sat through the play wondering if it was ever going to be fired!

[dream_weaver]

Yeah, I missed that. I've been trying to figure out why Chigurh might have killed everyone there, and still have to be chasing the money afterward.

 

 

I should have tossed out one closer to the author's examples, such as Dude, Where's My Car?

[DonAthos]

LOL, I ruined a date with a girl once...

 

I hadn't enjoyed the movie we had seen, and I was interested in discussing it critically afterwards.  She told me that I ought to "turn my brain off" when watching movies like that.  So of course I took issue with that thesis, and well...

 

I still don't believe in "turning my brain off," but I probably could have handled that situation a lot better!

[JASKN]

What a timely post, after the weekend when the dumbest movie I have ever seen, Jurrasicnado, has set box office ticket sale records. A welcomed contrast is Pixar's simultaneous success, Inside Out, which I have yet to see.