Ahh, I had a nice day. My vacation is almost over, alas, but I'm ready to go back to work. Feeling... restored.
I watched The Killer tonight, the new Fincher movie. It was good, he's a great director, but I've really been chewing on the Themes, and it's making me like it even more. Very bleak, almost like that insanely bleak Kurosawa noir movie I saw earlier this year, The Bad Sleep Well.
It's also a big ol' indictment of capitalism and the state of the world, which is fun. Specifically, the way that it's all nobody's fault. All this horror and violence in the world is just part of this big machine we're all caught up in. Nobody intends harm, and the fact that any happens is just an unfortunately externality.
There's just a way things are done, and if it happens to be cruel, well, it's not personal. Nothing is personal, ever. It's just all business! That makes it all okay, somehow. It's easier to forgive the exploiters than the people down in the trenches, who actually have to do the work. The only way to survive is by not thinking about it too much.
Like I said: very bleak. I was kinda expecting some sort of... big Thing at the end, like Fight Club or Seven or whatever, but it really plays the whole assassin-revenge plot to the T. I think it does work, and doesn't offer any easy outs or answers. Also reminded me of that TV show Poker Face, in that unlike most modern movies and TV it feels like it's set in the real world.
Like, after that I watched the first episode of the new season of Fargo, and it was... fine. That show feels very formulaic at this point, but I'm interested to see what happens in this one, why not. Seems to be kind of a History of Violence thing this time, and Jon Hamm is playing a villain. Anyway, it's just all set in very... standard locations, I guess, for a TV show of any kind. Big suburban homes, offices, police stations, etc etc.
There's a certain feeling to being a place where you are like... backstage. Behind the polished, presentable reality of a business or whatever. There's a certain feeling to it, and movies and TV tend to avoid that entirely, but both The Killer and Poker Face seem to be seeking that out, and using it (for very different purposes).
