a question about A series of Unfortunate events.

[HPL]

I saw this tonight and got a kick out of it. Dark, but not too depressing, quite funny and rather surreal.

One thing has been bugging me. Exactly what is the style of the world they inhabit? Or the style of the movie?

Their world is dark and apparently on somewhat of a technological level with ours(they mention fax machines), Olaf has rather slim walkie talkie and a remote to lock his car doors from a distance. However, Snicket is shown typing with an old typewriter, the cars are older looking and have reel-to-reel tape players. Many things have a rube-goldberg aspect to them(the paddle boat across the lake) and the world seems covered in a perpertual overcast.

The term Gothic came to mind, but it feels like it should be more then that. Dark childern’s book? It feels a lot like Edward Scissorhands, or the nightmare before christmas (Actually, I’m not sure it should be considered a childern’s book as it’s pretty dark for kiddies). Dark Fairy tale?

[ccwaterback]

http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/movies/long/lemony.html

The whole movie is very dream-like. In the movie, everything does happen for a reason, like in roleplaying games. There is always a way out of a bad situation, which is the premise of Violet and MacGyver’s feats. In addition, there is a lot of deliberate anachronism in the movie; the movie looks like a dream. For example, Olaf drives an antique car with power door locks and lock knobs that can disappear (as if by magic, but this isn’t clear). Olaf’s dark, dingy mansion is across the street from a contemporary, quaint house, while the Baudelaire mansion is located in what looks like a suburb in industrial England. In the “Harry Potter” movies (2001, 2002, 2004), there is at least a sense of how the witches and wizards’ fantastical inventions came to exist (by magic), and there is a more or less clear separation between the Muggle world, which looks like the real world, and the wizard world. In “Unfortunate Events,” it is difficult to discern any history behind the simultaneous existence of Olaf’s power door locks and Mr. Poe’s “car stereo”: a bulky audio tape reel player. In “Unfortunate Events,” no attempt is made to explain the fantastical inventions and fantastical situations; they’re simply there. While “Harry Potter” and “Unfortunate Events” may both be products of idealism, “Unfortunate Events” makes no effort to ground its fantasticism in any reality, not even a fictional one. As a result, it encourages idealistic ways of thinking and discourages looking for patterns in objective reality that are based on history. Sequels to “Unfortunate Events” may explain some of the stranger elements of the movie, but as it stands, the movie’s redeeming elements have the context of a fantasy world.

[Garfield226]

That’s an interesting link ccwaterback (even if it does go into a lot of analysis for something that wasn’t terribly (IMO) deep).

However, I’d be interested in if there’s an actual name for this style.

“Gothic Victorian with anachronism?” Or something. Or what about a name for the end-credits style of animation?

[Hello_Again]

I would say the movie had a slight “Steampunk” feel. Steampunk was a movement in Science Fiction somewhat related to Cyberpunk. Instead of vastly futuristic technological wonders, however, Steampunk presents readers with steam-driven Victorian technology run amuck in peculiar ways. Needless to say, Steampunk authors often present a dark or dystopian view of a world where the Industrial Revolution flourishes unchecked.

The real-life inventor Charles Babbage’s “Difference Engine” – an entirely mechanical calculator – is the ultimate Steampunk artifact, and in fact, several steampunk novels have been written around it, including “The Difference Engine” by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson. Some more recent Steampunk novels include “The Light Ages” by Ian Macleod and the works of China Mieville.

Read all about it:

Steampunk

[Anaamika]

I saw it this weekend - I was quite disappointed by the ending. A great, slightly darker movie, with handsome/cute kids and a pretty good story but the lousiest ending. It just doesn’t go anywhere. Every reader of books dies to know what happens next?

[HPL]

@Anaamika

I saw it this weekend - I was quite disappointed by the ending. A great, slightly darker movie, with handsome/cute kids and a pretty good story but the lousiest ending. It just doesn’t go anywhere. Every reader of books dies to know what happens next?

You mean how they left it open for a sequel? Yeah, I was a bit dissapointed by that, though I loved the Motage where Olaf had to endure everything he put the kids through.

Now I’m tempted to read the books just to find out what happens next.

“I’m sorry. I don’t speak monkey!”