The Big Sleep: The most baffling film ever made? • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by jcrawfordor » Wed, Aug 18, 2021, 9:09 PM UTC

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-”?

I've heard a joke along the lines of "I loved LOST, it's a shame they only made one season" from multiple people. Whether they allow one or two seasons of the show to actually exist in their memory depends on the person.

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

#62

Post by Causality1 » Wed, Aug 18, 2021, 9:09 PM UTC

ubermonkey wrote: post #14

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.

This is a deeply predictable (and pedestrian) take, and I 100% expected to see it here (as I expect to see it in any technical forum). Highly technical people -- developers, engineers, etc -- are much more likely (at least in my experience) to react negatively to nonlinear storytelling. Further, the reaction is almost never "wow, not for me" but instead "THIS IS STUPID". It's essentially the equivalent of walking thr…

There's a difference between ambiguity that's integrated into a story and ambiguity that's forced on the viewer. If the only thing that makes the movie ambiguous is that the final shot of the film isn't five minutes longer, then that is the type of film I hate. All Is Lost, The Grey, Save Yourselves, etc. If it's woven into the story from the beginning then I have no issue with it even if it may not be for me.

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

#63

Post by seph-reed » Wed, Aug 18, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

soneca wrote: post #23

seph-reed wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a really nice read. I've made a habit lately of "checking out" on having any opinion about anything I can't truly analyze. And this is a great example of why. I'm surrounded in content telling me why Bezos is a monster, and they make a good argument. But for all that hatred, I've never once heard a single mention of him being smart, let alone intimidatingly smart, let alone "a first class genius" or "better…

I remember reading about him being very smart multiple times. Just not on articles commenting Amazon workplace environment and such, as it should not be indeed. On articles about the beginnings of Amazon, the writing culture, or anything that is in part a biography on Bezos, I always see it mentioned how smart he is.

> Just not on articles commenting Amazon workplace environment and such, as it should not be indeed

I think the distinction between "evil" and "evil genius" is actually kind of important for a world that often anchors its reality to Hollywood narratives. It sets up a more believable antagonist, and makes it clear that -- unlike the grinch -- their heart is not likely to change.

It also sets up the challenge: be smarter. If he was just greedy, it might be a race to the bottom (greed always wins). But in this case it's a race to the top (intelligence seems to win).

I also think the distinction between "greed wins" and "smart wins" extends with a similar lack of mention into other popular "villains" like Elon or THE ZUCK.

At least for me, knowing that the richest person in the world is also considered extremely smart by the smartest people he could pay to work with him... it makes me feel that -- unlike politics -- business is not yet a complete race to the bottom.

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

#64

Post by recursive » Wed, Aug 18, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

Joeboy wrote: post #32

jerf wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel similarly about the "twist" that "it was just a dream!" or something similar. It's already fiction. It's already made up. If I wanted to be stuck with just the stories & endings and such I could make up, I wouldn't be coming to you for a story. Not that there isn't room for ambiguity or complexity or anything, but, I already know what I think. I'm here precisely to find out what someone else thinks, and "well,…

"It was just a dream" only works if it suggests an actual ending. Eg. Brazil, Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. I don't think it's a viable twist in itself.

"Scenic Route" is another movie that does this. I like it.

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

#65

Post by psychomugs » Wed, Aug 18, 2021, 9:14 PM UTC

LarrySellers wrote: post #56

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

I've been on a mini Lynch binge recently (Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, and a lot of his interviews on Linda Faludi's excellent channel [1]) and I feel like this quote sums him up.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVdYdogQM2xd29HUOED4EbQ

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

#66

Post by recursive » Wed, Aug 18, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

wccrawford wrote: post #51

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 th…

Sometimes I enjoy not being satisfied. On a few occasions, I've even not watched or read the end of a work, just to keep the possibilities open in my mind. Stories with big open questions have the ability to stick with me longer. Sometimes I like that.

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

#67

Post by leephillips » Wed, Aug 18, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #12

leephillips wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ambiguity, the planting of multiple possible interpretations, has been a part of art forever. All art: literature, painting, etc. I would even say it’s an integral part of the best art.

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.

This may not be a counterexample, because they are probably classified as modern, but people carry on disputes about the basic elements of the plots of Nabokov’s novels. There is no general agreement about the actual plot of Transparent Things, and a lot of argument over what really happened in Lolita. In many of his works, such as Pale Fire and Bend Sinister, you have to think a lot just to apprehend what the plot was, and when you get it, it is as if the author has emerged at the end to consume the story from the beginning, in a glorious spiral of invention. The ambiguity itself is the main element of the plot.

Pardon my EDIT: The Prisoner, from 1967-8, was when ambiguity came to American TV, and with it Art (although there were precursors). To this day people argue about the plot of that one. People were so distressed at what they perceived, at the time, to be a lack of resolution (or their inability to deal with metaphor) that McGoohan had to go into hiding for a while. Really, the problem is that most people just don’t pay attention.

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

#68

Post by asdff » Wed, Aug 18, 2021, 9:18 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #59

asdff wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, it is one of the most highly regarded series in history by critics, so some people thought the explanations were sufficient at least. Abrams and the writers were planning from the outset to do that many seasons and wrote a story bible outlining all the lore and mythology referenced throughout the writing. Having story arcs over the course of years was intentional and a novel idea at the time when most TV series plots were written on a per episode basis.

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

#69

Post by psychomugs » Wed, Aug 18, 2021, 9:23 PM UTC

nonameiguess wrote: post #15

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.

It's interesting that you're citing a film made 60 years before the 21st century as an example of a 21st century trend. If anything, we seem to be moving in the opposite direction. Star Wars tried to explain where the force comes from. Christopher Nolan includes ridiculously detailed exposition dumps explaining everything (in spite of the ambiguous ending of Inception, everything about how the world worked was explai…

I really root for Nolan; I very much liked Interstellar and enjoyed Tenet, but I think he's a clear example of someone who excelled so much at a commercial medium that the get-the-most-butts-in-seats factor necessitates the exposition diarrhea. There's just enough ambiguity for the common pseudo-news-site or vlogger to make "the ending of $FILMTITLE REALLY explained" content.

I think Lynch, who's learned to "rule over small films than serve large corporate ones" [1], probably bent over a little bit to get The Return made, but I still left with as many, if not more, questions as I had coming in.

[1] https://youtu.be/GopJ1x7vK2Q?t=567

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

#70

Post by zmp0989 » Wed, Aug 18, 2021, 9:24 PM UTC

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…

Funny (to me) story about the first time I watched the first two Godfather films. I was in high school and home pretty ill. My dad rented both films for me. I was so out of it that I didn't know which family was the Corleones until midway through the 2nd movie.