Tinker Tailor Engineer Tease

(Big long movie rant coming right up…)

Would you believe that a quiet, almost oppressively hushed Serious Movie with a capital SM and one of the most literally giant movies of the year left me feeling exactly the same way?

Here’s a not-fun feeling: seeing a movie that you were really looking forward to and thinking, “Well, that made no sense,” or “Damn, that could’ve been so much better with a few small changes.” Because I love movies and because of this “Yeah, sure, I’ll go along with that just to see how it pans out” side of my personality, I tend to enjoy nearly every movie I watch. So, if I finish a movie and immediately pinpoint exactly what didn’t work for me, then that movie has serious flaws.

Last Monday I saw “Prometheus,” and the next night I finally got “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” from Netflix. On the surface, these movies couldn’t have less in common with one another. If I hadn’t seen them both within two days, I probably wouldn’t even have picked up on the fact that many viewers (myself included) found them hard to follow – and that viewers who disagreed think we’re fracking morons. Judging by the conversation on my favorite movie blogs, the opinion on “Prometheus” is more evenly divided, maybe even more weighted in the “this makes no damn sense” camp. But, man, do NOT read the comments on the “Tinker Tailor” Rotten Tomatoes negative reviews if you have self-esteem issues.

Since I don’t have self-esteem issues, I’ll be glad to tell you exactly what I didn’t like about “Tinker Etc.”

I love big, serious, complicated movies that don’t give you easily marked bathroom breaks. That “Tinker” is big and complicated is one of the main reasons I wanted to see it, along with its excellent cast. I loved “The Constant Gardener,” which, like “Tinker,” is based on a novel by John LeCarre. So please don’t tell me that I didn’t appreciate “Tinker” because I’m an idiot American who prefers my movies Bruckheimer-pureed and fed to me via sippy cup.

“Tinker,” set in the early 1970s, follows a retired British intelligence agent who’s looking for a mole in the top levels of the Secret Service. It’s all very Cold War/trust no one, and Gary Oldman is simply a joy to watch. But I had a terrible time following the plot. Back up in the first paragraph, I referred to it as oppressively hushed; it’s so quiet that it’s almost suffocating. It didn’t surprise me to learn that it was directed by Tomas Alfredson, whose 2008 film “Let the Right One In” I just saw, coincidentally, a few weeks ago – and I didn’t like it either, for a lot of the same reasons.

My problem with “Let the Right One In” – it’s a very interesting coming of age/first love story in which one of the young people happens to be a vampire, and it manages to avoid “Twilight”-ish melodrama – was that I had trouble telling where I was. Okay, literally, I knew that I was on my couch. But filmmakers have spent the last century developing a language to communicate all kinds of things to viewers, such as where we are in place and time, or something like “pay attention to this character.” Most five year olds could tell you that a montage means “time’s passing.” Rules are made to broken, but chucking certain film rules can also be incredibly disorienting, and in this case kept me from engaging with the characters.

But “Tinker”  gave me the same problem. I can’t tell which characters are in this scene because the camera isn’t close enough and it’s too dark. A major character fracking DIES and, if you happen to blink during the single (filmed from the other side of Grand Canyon) shot, you just completely miss this, I guess. I thought that character was dead and we’re just seeing him in flashback, but oh, here he is talking to Gary Oldman about something that just happened in the movie-present. We’re 10 minutes from the end of the movie and I’m still not totally sure of the names of at least three major characters.

The story isn’t that complicated. It’s just put together in such a way to keep the audience at arm’s length. Which is a perfectly valid filmmaking choice (no doubt intentional given that “Let the Right One In” was shot the same way). But for me it was just too much. There’s detachment, and then there’s not being able to differentiate between major characters. And the flashbacks were so poorly handled. That might not bother me as much if “Out of Sight” hadn’t *just* been on TV the same night when I got home from work. (Now that’s a movie that keeps you oriented. Also see “Traffic.”) And no, I don’t buy that the flashbacks are sloppy on purpose to muddy the timeline, because “Martha Marcy May Marlene” managed to pull that off without making me want to punch my TV.

Maybe by the time I got to “Tinker” I was just not in the right place to deal with its blanket of murk. (And super-tiny-subtitles. What’s up with that? Fincher did the same thing in “Zodiac.” Are large fonts considered anti-intellectual or something?)

Now, “Prometheus.” Let’s start with something nice. It’s the most gorgeous film I’ve ever seen. One review wrote that “Prometheus” is probably the first movie where 3D was an essential part of the viewing experience, not just an add-on gimmick. I’d agree with that. I saw it in 3D IMAX , and I can’t imagine seeing it flat. It cannot be overstated – some of the most beautiful, intricate images I’ve ever seen on screen.

I wish that as much work had gone into the story. “Prometheus” is related to the “Alien” movies, though it’s supposedly not a direct prequel. It’s directed by Ridley Scott, who directed “Alien” (still my favorite of the series). That’s part of what bugs me. I’m going to be harder on “Prometheus” than on something like “Alien vs. Predator” because, c’mon – you’re Ridley fracking Scott, and we grade on a curve here.

But “Prometheus” makes no damn sense. I don’t know who among its director, producers or two credited writers is responsible for this, but “Prometheus” is just a poorly told story. Of the creative team, I single out Damon Lindelof because his is the body of work I’m most familiar with, having been a hard-core “Lostie” back in the day. “Lost” is still one of my all-time favorite TV shows, and I’m apparently the only person on the Internet who thought the finale was one of the most perfect I’ve ever seen. See, I loved the characters on “Lost,” where (from what I can tell anyway) the fans who were most into what it all MEEEEAAANS!!! were the ones who thought that the ending was a letdown.

“Lost” shows that you can spin off in all kinds of crazy directions as long as you have a core of characters who are (lacking a better expression) root-for-able, who relate to each other in compelling ways and – above all – who act with a consistent internal logic. A character doesn’t have to act the way you personally would in a given situation. But a well-written character became the person the audience is watching because of specific influences in his or life. Once we see enough of someone – even just the right few seconds – we know how that character is going to react. One of my favorite examples of this is Jean Smart’s character on “24,” whose first scene has her plunging her head into a sink of water because she didn’t like her hairdo. Right away, you know this lady is capable of all manner of crazy.

“Prometheus” has a wonderful cast, but the actor getting most of the praise is Michael Fassbender, who plays an android named David. Fassbender really is wonderful here, easily the most interesting presence on the screen. That’s partly because he’s a gifted actor, of course… and partly because he’s got the only well-written character in the whole movie. David’s the only character whose inner life the audience gets to see. Oh, right, we see that one archaeologist’s dream. But, for me, “She’s got broadly defined religious faith, just like about 6.8 billion other people on her home planet” isn’t the same grade of interesting as “Wow, this robot’s obsessed with ‘Lawrence of Arabia.’ What’s that about?”

Aside from David, most of the other characters are indistinct… and completely stupid. I’m not talking about horror movie-stupid where the prom queen just can’t hear you screaming at her not to go in there. I’m talking about “I’m a scientist on an uncharted planet, and I was all cautious and terrified 30 seconds ago, but this here alien wormy thing is so cute I think I’ll kneel right down and chat with it” stupid. I’m talking “might as well be a different character from scene to scene” stupid. Its characters lacked the narrative unity of those in, say, “The Hangover.”

It’s axiomatic in fiction writing that you never have your characters act just because you need X to happen. Action comes from character, not the other way around. If you want your characters to head a certain way, then write them differently; don’t force them to act out of character just so you can get to point B.

I can’t point at any one thing and say “Damon Lindelof wrote that,” but there are definitely shades of “Lost” here, in the form of big, mythological questions that never get answered. Maybe that’s just his style, or maybe it’s a case of Sequel-itis (“We’ll address that in part two”), but either way I’m over it. As with “Tinker,” I can appreciate that what I didn’t like is the result of a deliberate choice by a filmmaker, but that doesn’t change the fact that I didn’t like it. And now for the REAL rant:

I like ambiguity. I even appreciate it. But, quoting someone I heard recently on this subject, there’s a space between Total Ambiguity and Let Me Spell It Out for You, and that middle ground is called Story. And I might be willing to give “Prometheus” the benefit of the doubt if I hadn’t used up all my “let’s go with it” points on six seasons of white rabbits, three-toed statues and fracking temples when all I REALLY cared about was whether Jack would ever make peace with his daddy issues.

I’m not directing this personally at Lindelof, because – again – I don’t know how many of these choices were completely his. But, in general, this trend in sci-fi toward “ambiguity” is looking more and more like “Even I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.” Is anyone else tired of this? “Hey, Professional Writer, where were you going with XYZ?” “Why don’t YOU tell ME?” Screw that. You’re the professional. You get paid to make these choices. I don’t want to think my favorite writers are throwing darts at a board covered with words like “Random Animal” and “Something Egyptian” and leaving it to their audience to crowdsource the story – but damn. Y’all aren’t making it easy for me.

And the hell of it is, I really liked “Prometheus.” I even want to see it again. It’s an amazing ride, as long as you don’t think about it too much afterwards.

***SPOILERS***

And maybe people who have more patience than I do will enjoy debating whether the Engineers really did think of humans the way humans think of their androids, and they created us because they could and tried to destroy us for the same reason (which is what I took away in the “theme” department).

***END SPOILERS***

But as a movie-lover, all I want are two things: Make choices. Put the camera closer. Oh, I thought of a third thing – Make the subtitle fonts bigger.