No, not this guy :

But the movie starring Michael Keaton that came out in 2014.

I watched it recently via Netflix. I watched it in my usual piecemeal fashion, a half hour at a time, while eating. But I don’t think that makes much of a difference.

I quite liked it. It’s shot in this over-the-shoulder documentary fashion that I find extremely compelling. But it is more than the usual “shot documentary style to make it seem more real” schtick that we are all tired of. It’s shot as if it was one long continuous shot, even though it takes places over several days. So it gives you a feeling of watching things happen in realtime. And there are no cuts. None. If the story moves from one place in the theater to another, it is accomplished by following a character to the new place.

It sounds complicated when I explain it like that, but it’s actually extraordinarily fluid and naturalistic. It’s very interesting to me artistically to see what happens when you take away the artificiality of something we all learn to accept as little children : cuts. For me, it made the movie extremely engrossing. It made me feel like I was really there.

I have two warnings about the movie, though : it is definitely arty, and it definitely an actors’ movie.

This is clearly a movie made by and for actors. Every scene is filled with the sorts of things actors and actresses love : complex emotion, relationship conveyance, emotional peaks (and lulls), a broad mood spectrum, complex-yet-simple dialogue you can really act the fuck out of…. and probably a lot of other things I can’t think of at the moment.

I don’t mind this, except in the occasional moment where you can sense the artificiality of it because the scene doesn’t quite seem connected to the plot, or the dialogue is a little artificial. At those moments, it reminds me of the sort of thing a gaggle of acting students would come up with, which is no horrible thing. I have a great fondness for actors and acting, and the various lovable foibles of their profession, and so it doesn’t confront me much to have the occasional moment where their metaphorical slip is showing.

And for the vast majority of the time, the scenes flow into one another and the whole thing makes sense. Telling a story from multiple points of view as this movie does – the camera is not always following Michael Keaton – always draws me in. It lets a movie tell more of the story than just one character’s arc, and I love the density that allows.

The buzz on this movie was that people were asking what really happened and what does it all mean and so on. I see why, but for me, it was not very mysterious. Even the quite weird aspects, like (spoiler) Michael Keaton’s character’ apparent superpowers, made sense to me. There have been times in my life where I have felt such mental intensity that it felt like I was about to have Carrie level telekinesis.

I guess that, despite not being in any sense a media snob (I like David Lynch AND the A-team), I have watched enough allegorical and symbolic film that the relatively straightforward devices used in this movie (like (SPOILER) the angry, cutting voice in Michael Keaton’s head) don’t challenge me at all. It’s just part of the scenery to me.

But for others, I can see there being some need for answers. Heck, if the 22 year old me watched it, he’d be pretty mad about the lack of explanations for things and the movie not giving us definitive answers about anything or making it clear what is “real” or not.

But I am forty-two, and a writer, and I accept that some stories don’t have an ending, they just end. No climax, no final showdown, nothing. It still irritates me when it happens because of bad writing (or, if it’s TV or a movie, bad editing), but I accept that it’s not a bad thing in and of itself.

Same with the lack of explanations or definitives. I am totally down with deliberate acts of vagueness. It’s a valid artistic choice. Sometimes, explanations just plain don’t fit the narrative or the tone of what you are going for. Some stories are best simply experienced, without explanation or definition, just like real life. Others operate on some version of dream logic (again, David Lynch) and things are as real as they seem in dreams.

And in some cases, explanations would only serve to distract the audience and pull focus away from the plot.

The movie has quite the cast, no doubt due to the actor’s feast of a script. Edward Norton, Naomi Watts, Emma Stone, Zach Galifinakis…. and those are just the ones I’ve heard of. I particularly liked Galifinakis’ performance as the highly put-upon second banana of the stage production that is the main plot of the film. He does a bang up job of making us feel the high level of stress the guy is under even when he is putting on his happy face because he has to cajole temperamental actors into behaving like adults.

I have always identified with that role, whether it’s Zach Galifinakis or Kermit the Frog. It seems like the sort of role I could easily find myself in, being both the sort of person who wants things to get done and the sort of person who seems to be destined to be the sparkplug that keeps everything going. I can completely imagine myself as the one guy who knows what is going on because I am the one in charge of the big picture.

I’m the one driving the bus full of wacky people, and taking care of boring stuff so that they can shine.

Then again, I want to shine too. Conflict!

Can you be behind the camera and in front of it at the same time?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.