Now I’ve seen it. And
I’ll agree it was weird and I did enjoy it, but I didn’t find it to be
incoherent. The plot was strange but
with a weird internal consistency. There
were three levels of plot: the “real” world, the burlesque theatre and the
steampunk action hero. In the real
world, our heroine is committed to a mental asylum which quickly transforms
into a burlesque theatre and brothel.
She plots her escape and each time she tries to achieve her goals, she
is transported into a comic-esque steampunk fantasy world.
The visual elements were somewhat jarring in mixing
technology and fashion from different time periods but it almost makes sense
when you consider that we’re dealing with the point of view of a crazy person
(or someone driven crazy by events).
Regardless of how you feel about the heroine, there’s no doubt we’re
seeing a fantasy world that she has created.
In all, it was a neat bit of writing. I was impressed. Somewhat less impressed by the sexy costumes
of the five teenaged dancers/action heroes but I understand that I wasn’t the
main target audience.
I’ve always enjoyed movies and stories where figuring out
what was real was part of the fun. In Firefly, the final broadcasted episode, Objects In Space, featured scenes from
River’s point of view. River was
amusingly crazy and it was interesting to see her walking through woods and
picking up a branch before telling the Captain: “This doesn’t mean what you
think it does.” Switching to the “real”
view, we see the branch is in fact, a gun.
I loved the season 6 Buffy
episode where Buffy keeps switching between Sunnydale and a mental asylum. Her doctor explains that the entire series
arc has been a delusion. The final scene
is of a catatonic Buffy in the asylum.
At the time, it amused me to realize I was thinking of the world of
demons, vampires and magic as the “real” world and rejecting the asylum as a
hallucination.
Star Trek: The Next
Generation had another great what-is-reality episode where Riker keeps
shifting between an asylum and being in a play.
He worries he’s gotten too far into character and can’t tell what’s real
and what’s not anymore.
Perhaps it showcases my own need for a psychiatrist, but I
enjoy well-written crazy people. Walter
on Fringe, Drusilla on Buffy, River on Firefly. I like characters
who see the world in a unique way. It’s
fascinating to see the distortions which almost, but never quite, make
sense. They have a freedom which the
rest of the world lacks: the freedom to point out boredom and hypocrisy, to
break free of expectations.
There is an old Greek story where a powerful politician
stops to converse with a beggar. The
politician tells the beggar: If you could learn to get along with people, you
wouldn’t have to live as you do. The
beggar retorts: If you could learn to live as I do, you wouldn’t have to get
along with people.
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