Movies where they let the audience be confused

Cafe Society
1

Was thinking about this the other day while watching Surrogates on netflix. But it really applies to almost every modern sci-fi. That is, they seem almost terrified to let the audience be confused for even a second. Something out of the ordinary (like the surrogates in Surrogates) are explained in a voiceover in opening minutes of the movie. Seems like a lot of these types of movies would be a lot cooler if you just had to figure out what was going on (the old “show don’t tell” adage). I know they don’t give the audience credit for much, but in Surrogates I feel like most people would figure it out pretty quickly when you see young Bruce Willis go into the recharging station and the old Bruce Willis “wake up”. No, instead it’s all laid out in the explanatory montage before the opening credits. How much cooler would Avatar have been if you had to figure out what the avatars were.

Anyway, what are some movies where they allow the audience to be confused or to figure it out on our own.

p.s. the trailers for Inception look interesting. Something about controlling dreams. Here’s hoping they don’t have the fake news montage explaining it all in the first scene.

2

Well the Stepford Wives remake didn’t exactly make it clear whether the wives were being killed & replaced with robots, brainwashed & turned into cyborgs, or something else. Of course this didn’t exactly help the film and was the result of executive meddling more than a deliberate choice by the filmmakers.

The Bewitched [del]remake[/del] reimagining has some weird moments where Isabel Bigelow has relatives who are exactly the same as characters in the show she’s remaking (Aunt Clara, Uncle Arthur) that go unexplained. The only explanation that makes sense in-universe is that somebody in the Bigelow family worked on the original Bewitched and borrowed aspects from their own life (like real writers do) and Isabel’s parents were so pissed they never let her watch it (she was aware of the show and mentioned they never let her watch it). Still doesn’t explain how they moved next-door to Gladys Kravitz.

3

Primer. There’s about one or two scenes of expository explanations, but there’s an awful lot that’s not explained (including a relatively important line that’s barely audible, and mostly known only from the DVD subtitles). And you can’t get much more confused than this movie.

4

Both Wild Things and Employee of the Month (not the Jessica Simpson one) play the little trick where they leave out important scenes that would explain the film and let them play over the credits so you can see how clever they are.

Personally, I always thought that was exceptionally lazy film making: “Look! You never guessed this huh? You know… the thing you never had any reason to even suspect because we never told you anything about it?”

5

Donnie Darko. I dare you to make less sense.

6

Daybreakers was pretty good about this (and was an excellent movie overall). It’s a movie where almost everyone in the world has turned into a vampire and the consequences to the vampires of running low on humans. But the movie showed you what had happened rather than have some expository prologue tell you.

7

This is what popped into my head.

I have been informed that for the story to make sense, I need to go to the official website and read shit and watch some more stuff…no. No! Put it in the fucking film! Fuck your stupid gimmicks!

For all that, I enjoyed the movie. I have no idea what the hell happens in it, but I enjoyed watching it.

8

I actually hated Donnie Darko because it was too simple:

Everything cancels out to “A plane engine falls on Donnie’s room, the end.” All the stuff in the middle is just a shaggy dog story. At least the other story I could mention that uses a dropped timeline like this had the protagonist learn and mature from his experiences.

9

Dark City was almost like this, but the studio forced the director to include an opening narration to explain things.

Interesting to note that Nolan included Dark City in a list of movies that inspired Inception. Nolan’s movies are usually light on narration and throw you right into the action (especially The Prestige), so I’m interested in the direction that Inception takes.

10

Dare accepted.

Southland Tales also by Richard Kelly is even more bizarre and even after reading all the extra stuff about is still confusing. Probably why it feels like a spiritual sequel to Donnie Darko.

11

The Fountain.

I got it by the end, but until then it’s deliberately arranged so you really can’t fathom it until you have seen the whole thing.

12

A Boy and his Dog.

Somebody actually said to me after watching it that it didn’t make sense because the hero,his gf and his dog didn’t have any food one minute and the next he was feeding his desperately weak dog.

Clue, his gf didn’t appear in the scene.

13

Bladerunner is definitely a case of this. They leave out key information, much of which you can eventually figure out,and some of which is a stretch for the audience to get, but it all would’ve helped enormously to let tyhe audience in on earlier in the film. Some of these facts:

1.) we’ve had a big war, and the effect has been to make life on earth worse. I believe in the novel, Earth is more radioactive; in the movie, it might be environmental – they don’t make it clear.

2.) One result has been to kill off lots of animal species. This is why the Voight-Kompff test makes such a big deal about killing animals or saving them, or possessing things made of leather – it’s a major crime to kill them, and probably not to sabve them if you can. It’s also why it’s assumed that the snake and the owl are animal replicants – artificial animals are more likely than real ones. And why the snake has serial numbers on its scales that can be traced.

3.) The environmental effects have screwed up California’s weather, which is why it always seems to be raining.

4.) California culture has turned even more polyglot, with a lot of Asian (the noodle bars, Geisha advertising imagery, street argor), although with other stuff (the street argot has German mixed in.)

5.) Because of the war, Earth is no longer the best environment for people either. In the novel, they wear protective clothing. In both novel and movie, people are encouraged to go to the offworld colonies , but the movie never makes this clear why. William Sanderson’s character failed the physical, which is why a talented guy is still on Earth.

6.) This may be opening a sore point, but when the film was released, Deckard wasn’t supposed to be a replicant. I dug out an interview with Ridley Scott from the time of the film’s release, and he explicitly says “We considered making Deckard a replicant…” which indicates to me that that isn’t the case. Reportedly, neither Ford nor Hauuer thought he was while they were filming, and hated the idea when it was later suggested. There was nothing suggesting it in contemporary reviews or writings. And it sure as hell isn’t the case in the novel.

7.) It really bugs me that Scott, in an interview, complained that “American audiences hate having introductory crawls” giving information. Not onlyt isn’t it true (What the hell starts every Star Wars movie?), but Scott even starts Bladerunner off with such a crawl. Which contains vital information (like what a replicant is), but leaves out pretty damned vital stuff (all of the above.)

The Big Sleep is legendary for being impenetrably confusing. Reportedly, many cast members couldn’t figure it out.

as for The Stepford Wives, it’s only the remake that’s confusing – the original is perfectly clear. The remaker looks as if it simply can’t make up it’s mind aboiut exactly what it wants to do, or be. It looks as if Frank Oz couldn’t resist the urge to use CGI to make several jokey scenes that weren’t consistent with the rest of the plot. Others on this Board have suggested it’s the fault of higher-ups at the studio. In any case, the the TSW remake is a visually gorgeous but mentally deficient guilty pleasure, that only works if you turn your brain off.

14

Kubrick’s 2001, of course.
I recently saw a little masterpiece called Ink that was well worth the intense attention required to be paid. I think it was on Hulu or Crackle, and I can’t recommend it enough.
At the recommendation of a friend, I watched Dark City without the introduction, and found it a most pleasant puzzle to solve.

15

Good example. You can read Kubrick’s novel, which many people think “explains” the work, but that’s only Clarke’s interpretation. Kubrick’s mind was clearly working in a different direction. You can see something of the tension between Clarke and Kubrick in the various versions of the story recorded in Clarke’s book The Lost Worlds of 2001.

Clarke is 1/2 of the creative mind behind it, so his more rationalist view has a much justification to be correct as Kubrick’s, which leads to the intersting result that the creative team behind this film had clearly different ideas about what it was supposed to “mean” and be about.
For an interesting interpretation, read the essay written about it by a New Jersey high school student in Jerome Agel’s book the Making of Kubvrick’s 2001. my own high school English teacher knew hers, and told me about this before it was published.

16

To go one further, Richard Kelly’s The Box doesn’t bother explaining anything and in the end the whole boils down to the work of one of six groups: hyper advanced aliens, sentient lightning, government experimentation, magic, Cameron Diaz’s deformed foot or God (those last two might be the same thing).

17

It’s been a long, long time since I saw it, but isn’t the last line in the movie something like “Yeah, but she sure had good taste. Get it? Good taste?”

18

I don’t recollect the movie version, but the book Catch-22 seems to be a confusing mish-mash of incidents before the reader can figure it out. I suspect many readers never do figure it out. The chapters hop back and forth in time, spiraling into Snowden’s death, and then the narrative becomes linear after Snowden spills his big secret.

The movie MEMENTO (was that the name? about the guy who can’t remember anything, and the movie is told backwards?), IIRC, explained very little.

19

I’ll second this. I’ve only seen it once but I was intrigued and would love to see it again. (What’s that important line you mention, btw?)

20

Memento has the main character narrating what’s going on but by the end

you find what he’s telling you may have just been made up in his head, may be far off from reality, and he’s just as confused as you are