Oblivion (Joseph Kosinski, 2013)

[colinr0380]

It is difficult to talk about this film without spoilers for the second half of the film but I ended up very impressed by it. Beautiful production design and soundtrack, but that it only to be expected from the director of (the rather unfairly maligned) Tron: Legacy. I especially like the contrast between the two beautiful idyllic versions of home, one in the clouds and the other rustic (again a little like Tron: Legacy's 'off grid' safe-haven for Flynn father and son that crops up in the middle of that film). Both are attempts to live isolated from the mass of humanity, wherever they are hiding. I'll spoiler tag the rest:

Spoiler

The aspect that I most liked is that somehow Oblivion manages to condense events similar to those of the entire Matrix trilogy down into one very fast paced film (from learning your world isn't a real one through to the lovers, at least seeming so at first, both sacrificing themselves in a trip to the heart of the enemy. There's also one slightly drawn out action sequence - the massacre of the Scav base by the drones - which could compare to the fight for Zion in Matrix Revolutions, although not drawn out quite as much) with a hefty dose of Philip K. Dick's Imposter thrown in (are you still 'you' if you are a clone?). As well perhaps as a couple of ironic 2001 allusions (the aliens coming to wipe everyone out, the clones as 'star children', etc).

I also very much liked the unorthodox love triangle in the film, which for such a bizarre situation managed to feel believably complicated and emotionally nuanced, especially in the moment where our hero invites one of the clones of his lover to come to the surface with him, something that would have caused no end of problems if she had accepted but was extremely touching in the offer and its inevitable refusal. And it really is her tragedy as well (even though eventually the main heroic trio turn out to be interrelated in the manner of high tragedy), as someone forced to enter into a semi-loving relationship with someone already married, and with flashes of memories of his wife as an ideal woman, multiplied by a million clones! Though that does suggest that if it had been Jack and Julia together in the pilot's module rather than Jack and his co-pilot Victoria they would have been an unstoppable husband-and-wife team. At least the tragedy of their separation allows for the chink in the armour that the Scavs are able to find and exploit all that time later.

That combined with the way that this particular clone of Jack is patrolling areas containing his memories (a quite neat subversion of the way that films often conveniently have their characters encounter significant past locations to help trigger memories (as well as being kind of a La Jetée idea)) gets explained eventually by the idea that there are clones covering all 'sectors' of the world and the film is just focusing on the one in this significant location.

Another interesting connection to Tron: Legacy would be that both feature a love story between a human and an artificial person which isn't considered something problematic or insurmountable. Instead it acts as a way of bridging two separate worlds, and saving them both.

[manicsounds]

Director Kosinski says he'd worked on the story since 2005. When the movie "Moon" came out, I wonder what his thoughts were on it.

[domino harvey]

I was also very impressed by the film, maybe more so than even Colin.

Spoiler

I'll leave the actual mechanations to the film and Colin's long spoiler tagged write-up, but I appreciated how the film metes out its narrative information selectively, using the elisions to build-in its clever plot twists, and the film's reorganization of known quantities helps imbue the deceptively simple Wall-E-esque first act with an even sadder reality in retrospect. The moral quandaries that arise from the film would be at home in a good episode of the Outer Limits, and it was nice to see a big budget sci-fi film that was willing to prod the audience into engaging in the fallout of the scenario without hitting them over the head with it.

The futuristic production design is clever and a good contrast to the unnecessary opulence of last year's Prometheus. That film seemed bound to looking as expensive as possible, whereas this one streamlines everything in a logic direction, with flying vehicles and domiciles clearly influenced by Apple products (and just as likely to be commonplace in a near-future sci-fi tale) but never in an obnoxious or ostentatious fashion. And the score by M83 is wonderful-- if there's any justice, there'd be an Oscar nom in their future, but I wouldn't hold my breath. I didn't hear much about this while it was in theatres but hopefully it finds its deserving audience on home video. This is a smart, clever, well-made sci-fi action pic.

[warren oates]

The film is visually impressive and certainly indicates the promise of its trained-as-an-architect director. And I was with it for about 45 minutes and still like it enough to consider it a guilty pleasure for this year's list. Oblivion may be less opulently designed than Prometheus, but it's definitely no less narratively muddled in its own very problematic way. What colin takes for narrative innovation and economy, I can't call anything but bad writing. From a more incisive critic than me, here's just a taste of the ways in which the storytelling goes off the rails the longer it goes on: Everything You Know About "Everything You Know Is Wrong" Is Wrong.

[knives]

That's a very silly essay that seems to only be asking for more bloat from the movie rather than the lean version we get. It also seems to be wrongly assessing the film given it does give that mini-mystery he is asking for with the nature of the crashed survivor not to mention how early it is revealed what Cruise's true nature is. That essay reads almost like the person fell asleep during the middle hour of the film.

[warren oates]

The crashed survivor mystery is over too soon to work they way you're suggesting it could. And, like the link says, that particular resolution should contain the answer to Cruise's weirdly unasked question, which would immediately end the film. The even bigger problem for me, mentioned in the comments section, is how Cruise's existence makes any sense for the film's ultimately revealed bad guys. Or to put it another way, the second big messy cliche of the script is that it's not only an "everything you know is wrong" twist but that all this time it's also been "all part of the villain's plan." Yet the kind of super-intelligent baddie we end up with has zero good reasons for

Spoiler

relying on an army of human clones to be drone techs when it could just as easily fabricate other purpose-built robots who would never need to be misled so elaborately and would never be in danger of recovering their memories or rebelling.

EDIT: I also think there's been a little confusion about what I'm talking about when I mention appropriate interim goals for a protagonist in a film that wants to keep its central mystery so obscured for so long into the runtime. It can't just be anything -- like fetch the widget, then go to coordinates X. If the hero's not plunging into the central mystery around him (like Neo in The Matrix is), then it has to be something that literally deflects our attention from the weirdness of what's happening, like the misdirection in a magic trick, so we don't ask the obvious questions we'd otherwise be asking. That's why that blog post cites The Sixth Sense, which is sort of the poster boy for that kind of move.

[colinr0380]

I don't think the narrative is particularly innovative but would agree that it is economic when compared to the Matrix trilogy, which it is really condensing the three main themes of into one two hour film. Apart from that slightly bloated drone attack on the Scav base (which is the equivalent of the much more bloated defence of Zion in Matrix Revolutions), a lot of Oblivion is very precise and streamlined. And I also agree with knives that the mystery is completed by the mid-point of the film with the trip 'out of the boundaries' of the world to discover the truth (Matrix Reloaded). Then it becomes more about taking on the mantle of being a new saviour and bringing the conflict to an end through sacrifice (Matrix Revolutions).

If you want another example of Kosinki's films featuring call backs to the Matrix that are interesting riffs on the original material, see the End of Line club from Tron: Legacy (a film that I really enjoy aside from these scenes, despite their action and Daft Punk DJ cameos!), which is a barely concealed version of the Hell club from Revolutions, with Michael Sheen taking on the role of flamboyant proprietor with an important object that our heroes need from Lambert Wilson's Merovingian.

[domino harvey]

Yet the kind of super-intelligent baddie we end up with has zero good reasons for

Spoiler

relying on an army of human clones to be drone techs when it could just as easily fabricate other purpose-built robots who would never need to be misled so elaborately and would never be in danger of recovering their memories or rebelling.

Spoiler

I don't think this is a fair criticism. Based on the world as presented in the film, the invaders need someone to provide drone repairs. Cloning the two already technologically trained humans they've captured allows the aliens to accommodate (and acclimate) everything around one central pair of "devices," which is ostensibly serving the same function as planning, designing, testing, and producing mechanical variations of the same-- and, we can only assume based on the evidence offered by the film, this method was easier and more functional for their purposes. That they'd clone two astronauts, who'd have sustained all the necessary non-robotic functions necessary for drone repair, is hardly nonsensical or a plot hole. That the oppressors didn't anticipate the persistence of human resilience says more about their arrogance as an alien race than their sloppiness. Saying that not cloning is "easier" is supposition based on nothing in the film and isn't really a valid line of attack.

[colinr0380]

Spoiler

That they'd clone two astronauts, who'd have sustained all the necessary non-robotic functions necessary for drone repair, is hardly nonsensical or a plot hole. That the oppressors didn't anticipate the persistence of human resilience says more about their arrogance as an alien race than their sloppiness. Saying that not cloning is "easier" is supposition based on nothing in the film and isn't really a valid line of attack.

Spoiler

Even more than that, I'd suggest that the aliens do understand the capacity for human resillience and even to a certain extent human emotional drives and feeling of connection to their home planet too, knowing that they would get better and committed work from their clones if they were under the impression that they were fighting the good fight to protect rather than destroy the rest of humanity.

But they fundamentally misunderstand the concept of commitment and love between individuals versus friendship and being good teammates, which is perhaps only exacerbated by the clones being in the sector of the world with significant memory-triggering landmarks that cause the relationships between Jack and Victoria to collapse faster than usual.

We can see the aliens are aware of and trying to work out the flaws (in the manner of a manager doing a rather blunt appraisal, raising questions that only plant even more seeds of doubt about the relationship!) but have not yet realised their wrong match-up mistake yet during the early sections of the film.