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The Big Sleep: The most baffling film ever made?

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Re: The Big Sleep: The most baffling film ever made?

#51

Post by wccrawford »

Causality1 wrote: post #3

arguing that we should embrace ambiguity. This is probably my most despised media trend of the 21st century, and that's saying something. "You decide how it ended" "You decide if she lived or died" "Their motivations for doing that are up to you" "It means whatever you want it to mean" It's an excuse for lazy writing and for being too cowardly to make decisions.

I absolutely agree.

I love being made to think during a movie. I despise the movie ending without an ending.

It's incredibly easy to set up a scenario that could have multiple endings, but it's hard to see what the ending actually is before it happens.

It's a lot more entertaining and satisfying to view that scenario to the end and then have the tale end in a satisfying way.

Any idiot can come up with an ending to those tales. (And they do, because you'll find them posted on the internet afterwards, even if the movie already has one!) Only good writers can come up with good endings.

Re: The Big Sleep: The most baffling film ever made?

#52

Post by WalterBright »

lqet wrote: post #44

Regarding classic film-noir movies, I found "The Lady from Shanghai" by Orson Welles much more baffling, and also frustrating. The first time I watched it, I didn't really get the plot. As a big Orson Welles fan, I assumed it was my fault and consulted Wikipedia. The Wikipedia understanding of the plot was equivalent to mine and didn't answer any questions, so I watched it a second time, and a third time. There are m…

The "Lost" miniseries is enjoyable only once you accept that it simply doesn't make any sense. Just enjoy the moments.

Though "Lost" was on to something with the dialog "it's a snowglobe!" They could have followed up on that, leading to a satisfying conclusion, but as with everything else, it just went nowhere.

Re: The Big Sleep: The most baffling film ever made?

#53

Post by anigbrowl »

lqet wrote: post #44

Regarding classic film-noir movies, I found "The Lady from Shanghai" by Orson Welles much more baffling, and also frustrating. The first time I watched it, I didn't really get the plot. As a big Orson Welles fan, I assumed it was my fault and consulted Wikipedia. The Wikipedia understanding of the plot was equivalent to mine and didn't answer any questions, so I watched it a second time, and a third time. There are m…

I don't remember enough about Welles' life and career without checking to be sure, but there's a good chance that the flaws are the result of welles' running out of money or having control of the film taken away by other producers due to his inability to meet deadlines.

Re: The Big Sleep: The most baffling film ever made?

#54

Post by dragonwriter »

WalterBright wrote: post #52
lqet wrote: post #44

Regarding classic film-noir movies, I found "The Lady from Shanghai" by Orson Welles much more baffling, and also frustrating. The first time I watched it, I didn't really get the plot. As a big Orson Welles fan, I assumed it was my fault and consulted Wikipedia. The Wikipedia understanding of the plot was equivalent to mine and didn't answer any questions, so I watched it a second time, and a third time. There are m…

The "Lost" miniseries is enjoyable only once you accept that it simply doesn't make any sense. Just enjoy the moments. Though "Lost" was on to something with the dialog "it's a snowglobe!" They could have followed up on that, leading to a satisfying conclusion, but as with everything else, it just went nowhere.

> The “Lost” miniseries

Is this different than the Lost series of 6 seasons and 121 episodes?

Or is this just an unusual use of the prefix “mini-”?

Re: The Big Sleep: The most baffling film ever made?

#55

Post by asdff »

WalterBright wrote: post #52
lqet wrote: post #44

Regarding classic film-noir movies, I found "The Lady from Shanghai" by Orson Welles much more baffling, and also frustrating. The first time I watched it, I didn't really get the plot. As a big Orson Welles fan, I assumed it was my fault and consulted Wikipedia. The Wikipedia understanding of the plot was equivalent to mine and didn't answer any questions, so I watched it a second time, and a third time. There are m…

The "Lost" miniseries is enjoyable only once you accept that it simply doesn't make any sense. Just enjoy the moments. Though "Lost" was on to something with the dialog "it's a snowglobe!" They could have followed up on that, leading to a satisfying conclusion, but as with everything else, it just went nowhere.

I'm really surprised LOST still has that reputation years after release. Having seen the entire thing, I think the plot makes sense and there aren't very many holes. The writers omit a lot early on but I felt like it gets answered by the end as you learn more about the island. In the moment as it was being released year by year I can see how it was seen as confusing when you'd wait for a while to get an explanation, but these days you could binge the entire thing.

Re: The Big Sleep: The most baffling film ever made?

#56

Post by LarrySellers »

at_a_remove wrote: post #41

Take Dark City . I believe the studio forced a new opening that more or less explained everything rather than letting you puzzle it all out. I didn't find the movie too hard to work through, but I think Hollywood execs have a fairly low estimation of the audience's intellect. Lynch is a bit harder. Lynch is atypical in two ways that play off of one another. First and most obviously, he has been developing as a film-m…

“I don't know why people expect art to make sense. They accept the fact that life doesn't make sense.” -- David Lynch

Re: The Big Sleep: The most baffling film ever made?

#57

Post by WalterBright »

dragonwriter wrote: post #54
WalterBright wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "Lost" miniseries is enjoyable only once you accept that it simply doesn't make any sense. Just enjoy the moments. Though "Lost" was on to something with the dialog "it's a snowglobe!" They could have followed up on that, leading to a satisfying conclusion, but as with everything else, it just went nowhere.

> The “Lost” miniseries Is this different than the Lost series of 6 seasons and 121 episodes? Or is this just an unusual use of the prefix “mini-”?

Yes, that Lost.

Re: The Big Sleep: The most baffling film ever made?

#58

Post by dang »

technothrasher wrote: post #26
dang wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but not ambiguity about the basic facts of a story. That's a modern thing as far as I know. It's also a risky artistic move because it thwarts one of the main satisfactions in a story, the resolution of tension. If you're going to take that away, you'd better 'give' something that's equally satisfying, or else the reader/viewer will feel cheated.

> but not ambiguity about the basic facts of a story. Really?? The "unreliably narrator" is a classic literary device that introduces ambiguity about the basic facts of many well loved stories. See "Wuthering Heights" as an almost 200 year old example, or "The Handmaid's Tale" as an extreme example of factual ambiguity from about 40 years ago.

Unreliable narrator is something different. How do you know the narrator is unreliable in the first place? Because the story includes enough information to contradict them. The narrator is unreliable, but the author is not—you're relying on the author to subtly inform you that the narrator can't be trusted. That's a device which goes back much earlier, at least to the romantics. What we're talking about here is different. "Unreliable author" might be a good name for it though.

Re: The Big Sleep: The most baffling film ever made?

#59

Post by WalterBright »

asdff wrote: post #55
WalterBright wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "Lost" miniseries is enjoyable only once you accept that it simply doesn't make any sense. Just enjoy the moments. Though "Lost" was on to something with the dialog "it's a snowglobe!" They could have followed up on that, leading to a satisfying conclusion, but as with everything else, it just went nowhere.

I'm really surprised LOST still has that reputation years after release. Having seen the entire thing, I think the plot makes sense and there aren't very many holes. The writers omit a lot early on but I felt like it gets answered by the end as you learn more about the island. In the moment as it was being released year by year I can see how it was seen as confusing when you'd wait for a while to get an explanation,…

Having an "explanation" that it's all pointless magic is not an explanation.

I suspect that the writers originally had a coherent story arc, but the show was so successful they had to extend, extend, extend it, which produced the incoherence.

Re: The Big Sleep: The most baffling film ever made?

#60

Post by jimbob45 »

lqet wrote: post #42
pjmorris wrote: post #9

I was amazed and astonished when I first saw 'The Big Sleep', early in my college career. I'd never seen a movie I had a hard time following before, and I was captivated. There's an old Steve Yegge post where he described presenting for Jeff Bezos. I'm paraphrasing, but Yegge said something like after writing the presentation (no slides), delete every fifth paragraph to keep Bezos intrigued enough to pay attention. I…

This is also exactly how I felt when I first watched "The Godfather: Part 2". There was just so much left out, and so much of extreme significance was only slightly hinted at (just take the scene where Michael realizes the betrayal!). If you only stop paying attention for a single scene, chances are that you will not get the plot. That not only makes you completely immersed in the movie, it also makes for very satisf…

When I watch things with other people and I see them looking down at their phone during scenes like the one where Michael realizes the betrayal, I then know they're not going to have enjoyed the movie because they'll have missed a critical visual cue. I don't want to rewind the scene because that seems passive-aggressive but I also don't want to waste another two hours on their part on a movie that they almost certainly can't enjoy anymore.
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