Day 154: Carnage

Following a fight, the parents of the two children involved meet to discuss what happened and how best to go about resolving it. They start off as overly polite and attempt to remain adult about things but it soon descends into chaos after being stuck together in the same room for a while.

Having never been in a fight, I’ve never had to experience the sheer awkwardness of parents attempting to be sensible about dealing with it. There’s a part of them that’s obviously furious that it would happen and that their child is hurt, but there’s also a part that realises that it was the children who did it and the adults have to behave in a polite way. Penelope (Jodie Foster) is clearly furious that her son was beaten up but she also tries to rise above it and see things in a more impartial way. Her attempts at being the bigger person, however, fail right off the bat due to her inability to stop making little remarks at every available opportunity. It’s clear that she doesn’t have the support of her husband and that she forced him into the meeting; he starts off doing exactly what she wants but in the end, he doesn’t actually care about any of it. The other mother, Nancy (Kate Winslet), tries to be accommodating to Penelope and Michael (John C Reilly) because she knows her son has done wrong but she doesn’t care about resolving it in a healthy way, she just wants it over with. After continual provocation from Penelope, she lashes out and tries to lessen her son’s responsibility in the incident. Her husband, Alan (Christoph Waltz), couldn’t care less about any of this as he is completely preoccupied by his work. During the time they spend together, he continually answers his phone in the middle of everybody talking and as the film progresses everyone becomes more irritated by it. In the end, nothing is resolved and everybody has said and done things that they will no doubt later regret.

I kept comparing this film to ‘Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ despite them not having similar storylines. The set-up is similar in that there are 4 people and they are mainly confined to one place and they all get progressively drunker and more aggressive. Carnage is the poorer of the two, so I’d suggest watching the other if that’s what you’re looking for. It’s not that it was bad, but it was all done too quickly. I understand that they were all on the edge anyway and that it certainly wouldn’t have taken them long to topple into anger but I would’ve preferred if it had been drawn out. The film itself is only 76 minutes long and it does do well in that short amount of time but it might’ve benefitted from taking some time to build the tension.

7/10

Day 76: Finding Neverland

J.M. Barrie (Johnny Depp) finds inspiration for ‘Peter Pan’ in a family of four young boys and their wonderful mother.

James helps Peter (Freddie Highmore) to become a child again, to not only think of how sad he is that his father died. But Peter is always expecting the worst and he can only pretend so far before it just becomes another lie for him. He has stories within him and James helps him to see the worth in writing them down and believing in them. The relationship between the two is great, I love James’ patience with him as he helps to rediscover his childhood.

Favourite bit of the film is when Sylvia (Kate Winslet) is too sick to go to the play, so James brings the play to her. It is so wonderful and just so sad. She gets to see the influence her children had on James and she knows their childhoods are forever immortalised within the story. And she gets to see Neverland for herself, as James promised she would.

Completely forgot just how sad this film is, bloody hell.

Peter:   It’s just… I thought she’d always be here.

James:  So did I but in fact, she is because she’s on every page of your imagination. You’ll always have her there. Always.

Peter:   But why did she have to die?

James:  I don’t know, boy. When I think of your mother I’ll always remember how happy she looked sitting in her parlour, watching a play about her family, about her boys that never grew up. She went to Neverland and you can visit her anytime you like, if you just go there yourself.

Peter:   How?

James:  By believing, Peter. Just believe.

8/10

Day 62: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Painfully introverted gentleman, Joel (Jim Carrey), meets loud and exciting lady, Clementine (Kate Winslet), and understandably falls in love. But their relationship inevitably doesn’t work and they both end up getting involved with this company who can erase specific memories, and they decide to erase each other. While Joel is going through the procedure he realises that he doesn’t want to lose his memories of his time with Clementine and he tries to resist it but it’s too late.

To carry out the procedure, the company needs Joel to collect all the items he has that remind him of Clementine. Fair enough I understand there’ll be a lot of tangible things that he can hand over and be rid of but what about other things? You associate certain songs with people, and smells, and places. You can’t erase those, surely you wouldn’t be able to get everything together to make that possible. Of course this kind of procedure isn’t possible currently but maybe it will in future. Until then people will just have to stick with what they usually do when they’re trying to forget someone: get drunk. And that’s never all that successful. 

The film jumps from memory to memory as the technicians are erasing them. The last time he saw Clementine they had a fight, and I’m not surprised they broke up because this was what was said:

Clementine:  You’re freaked out because I was out late without you. And in your little wormy brain you’re trying to figure out, ‘Did she fuck someone tonight?’

Joel:  No see, Clem. I assume you fucked someone tonight. Isn’t that how you get people to like you?

In the immortal words of Cher in ‘Clueless’, that’s way harsh. Of course the thought of her off fucking someone was clearly what kept him up until 3am when she eventually got home, so it was obviously a problem for him but he definitely could've voiced his insecurities and concerns in a better way. You can’t just throw it out there in an argument, once you say something like that there is no going back. And obviously that’s what happened; they split up and she had him erased, prompting him to do the same. That’s not the only time he was so completely rude to her in their relationship though. At one point he tells her she’d be a bad mother. I mean, you can’t just say these things and expect her to be alright with it. She wakes him up saying that he never tells her things and that she tells him everything. He says that constantly talking isn’t necessarily communicating, and she is hurt by it. No wonder she felt bad being with him if he kept saying things like that. Although, of course, it wasn’t always like that. They are lying out on the frozen lake together under the stars and he tells her that he is the happiest he’s ever been, being right there with her. Which is sweet but then the memory is gone and he’ll never have it back.

I’m not sure about this memory erasing business. On one hand I can totally understand why you would have it done. If you’re having a difficult time moving on from someone, it makes sense you would want to do anything you could that might help. But then, you’re not just erasing the bad things that eventually spoiled the relationship, you are also erasing the good things that made you happy. Like with Joel, he’ll never have that memory back of being the happiest he’s ever been, and that’s just awful. Your relationships with other people (not just talking romantic ones) can give you insight into different aspects of yourself. With Joel and Clementine, he never did anything and always shied away from socialising with people, but then Clementine came along and just constantly pulled him out of his comfort zone, pushing the boundaries of who he thought he was. To erase that time together is to erase the knowledge that you can do so much more than you think you are capable of, that you don’t have to be who you’ve always thought you were. My thoughts on this always change from viewing to viewing of this film but today I’ve decided memory erasing is a bad idea. But I’m never consistent on that.

They both end up finding out what happened and they listen to the tapes of them talking about each other. I say talking but it’s really just a complete tearing down of the other person. He talks about how she’s insecure so will fuck anybody and she talks about how totally boring and pathetic he is. It must be so difficult to listen to all the bad points of your relationship before you even get a chance to have the relationship, and to have perhaps negative things about you pointed out so mercilessly. She tries to leave but he catches up to her and they both know it will probably not work but they decide to go for it anyway.

Joel:  I can’t see anything that I don’t like about you.

Clementine:  But you will. But you will, y’know, you will think of things. And I’ll get bored with you and feel trapped because that’s what happens with me.

Joel:  OK.

Clementine:  OK.

9/10