The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

Mmm... big yellow cocktail.

The Long Goodbye [Philip Marlowe #6] (1953) by Raymond Chandler: It's difficult to assess a Raymond Chandler novel when you've read a lot of the novels influenced by Chandler's hard-boiled detective style, much less seen great movie adaptations and great movies influenced by Chandler's transformative work.

The voice of the Chandlerian narrator -- in this case and many others, Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe -- is that of a cynical, world-weary detective who will nonetheless try to do the right thing. As first-person narration, it's almost infinitely adaptable. 

The narration of the original theatrical release of Blade Runner echoes it. The bleak world of Chinatown subverts it. The triumph of The Big Sleep lies partially in almost perfectly adapting it to the big screen, with help from Chandler himself (and Leigh Brackett, who 30 years later would help write The Empire Strikes Back, the most world-weary Star Wars movie of them all.

Chandler famously railed against the artificiality of most mystery novels in his essay "The Simple Art of Murder." The Long Goodbye seems like the fictional expansion of that essay. Marlowe doesn't so much solve a couple of mysteries as get caught in their undertow before being vomited upon the shore. 

It's a triumph of style and characterization. As a plot, The Long Goodbye makes Murder on the Orient Express look like a true-life case study -- and as the climax recedes once and once again, things get stranger and more complex.

Chandler's depiction of grimy, gaudy Los Angeles rings about as true today as it did then -- or at least as truthy. Philip Marlowe exists not as a possible character, but as the more poetic extrapolation of Dashiell Hammett's earlier Sam Spade. Humphrey Bogart played them both, which somehow makes all the sense in the world. Highly recommended.

Blade Runner On a Train

The Girl On the Train (2016): adapted by Erin Cressida Wilson from the novel by Paula Hawkins; directed by Tate Taylor; starring Emily Blunt (Rachel), Haley Bennett (Megan), Rebecca Ferguson (Anna), Justin Theroux (Tom), Luke Evans (Scott), and Alison Janney (Detective Riley): 

Based on a best-selling psychological thriller, The Girl On the Train is neither thrilling nor psychologically believable. Unpleasant pretty people do unpleasant things. Someone gets murdered. Whodunnit? Who cares! Emily Blunt's portrayal of an alcoholic probably merits inclusion in the Hall of Fame for Unintentional Funny Bad Performances by Otherwise Capable Actors. Not recommended.

Blade Runner 2049 (2017): based on characters created by Philip K. Dick; written by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green; directed by Denis Villeneuve; starring Ryan Gosling (K), Dave Bautista (Sapper), Robin Wright (Lieutenant Joshi), Ana de Armas (Joi), Edward James Olmos (Gaff), Sylvia Hoeks (Luv), Jared Leto (Niander Wallace), and Harrison Ford (Rick Deckard): 

A slow-burn fever dream of a movie, and a worthy successor to the cult-favourite original. Ryan Gosling is pitch-perfect, while the visuals are marvelous. It doesn't quite equal the original because Jared Leto as the new 'Tyrell' is terrible in that specifically Jared Leto Hambone Way. More operatic scenery chewing from Rutger Hauer, or someone like Rutger Hauer, would have helped give the film more drama. Nonetheless, it's a haunting work at points, one that stays in the memory. Highly recommended.

Spoiler-heavy thoughts on Blade Runner 2049

VIVA LAS VEGAS

1) Ryan Gosling's character is called 'K' and then 'Joe', which seems pretty clearly a nod to Franz Kafka's THE TRIAL . But I also wonder if K was chosen for Sir Kay, adoptive brother of King Arthur, with Deckard and Rachel's child being the Arthur figure for the replicants.

2) My meta counter-reading of Jared Leto's character goes like this: he's a parody of Ridley Scott and his belief in the loopy, overcomplicated scenario in which Deckard is actually a replicant in the original movie.

For one, BR 2049 does not answer the question 'Is Deckard a replicant?'

Instead, Jared Leto's character, when he meets Deckard, hypothesizes a ridiculously complicated plot in which Deckard is a replicant who was programmed to fall in love with Rachael and procreate with her, thus creating the first natural-birth replicant who can also reproduce naturally. 

Deckard's look of 'WTF?' during this scene can be read as commentary on Harrison Ford's oft-stated disdain for Scott's belief that Deckard is a replicant. 

And this plot makes even less sense than previous 'Deckard is a replicant' explanations, given that Tyrell could simply, you know, have had the Deckard replicant have sex with Rachael rather than programming it to believe it's a Blade Runner and send it on a mission to catch other replicants (all with the cooperation of the police and gov't) so that in the course of events it would meet Rachael, fall in love with her, have its life saved by her, and run away with her.

So if Jared Leto (whose character is blind and sees with the aid of several flying cameras deployed around him at all times, basically making him the Director of his own film crew) is Ridley Scott, Jared Leto's character makes way more sense and is actually a great piece of commentary on Ridley Scott.

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974) by Philip K. Dick

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974) by Philip K. Dick: Winner of the John W. Campbell, Jr. Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel of 1974, beating out Ursula Le Guin's revered The Dispossessed. Set in a Dystopian America of 1988, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said presents a world in which America is a terrible, terrible place to live. 

The powers that be have isolated the universities, where college dissidents have been literally forced underground by the government as a result of the Second Civil War between Nixon's presidency and all forms of civil disobedience. America is now a police state with a Police Marshal at the top and five regional Police Generals below that position. A person can't function for long in society without a host of official IDs, and as the students and protesters don't have such ID's, they're easily discovered by the seemingly endless series of official checkpoints throughout America. 

But the masses -- especially those living away from the depressed inner cities -- still need entertainment. And Jason Taverner, popular talk-show host and singer, is one of America's most popular and well-paid entertainers. 

However, one morning, Jason Taverner wakes up in a fleabag hotel room with no ID. He at least has 5000 dollars in his pocket. But as he soon discovers, he no longer exists either on record or in anyone's memories. What has happened? Well, it's a Philip K. Dick novel, so the answer turns out to be typically reality-bending.

Taverner's odyssey to find out what has happened takes him through various levels of the new American society, from ID forgers to police bureaucrats to middle-class potters. The novel soon provides him with a co-protagonist, Police General Felix Buckman. Buckman isn't actually a bad guy -- he's spent his career at the top trying to save the lives of the enemies of the State, though he's still a dystopian bureaucrat with more than one skeleton in his closet.

This is one of Dick's sharpest, most focused later novels. Nonetheless, it still abounds and swirls with those brilliant, disturbing flashes of Dickian imagination. Most prominently in terms of the novel's critique of certain beliefs both real-world and science-fictional, in this world, there are highly intelligent people genetically engineered to be supermen (indeed, Taverner is one).  They're called 'Sixes,' after their batch number (a nod to Dick's own Nexus-6 androids in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the basis for Blade Runner?). But the sixes couldn't conquer the world because they can't stand being around one another: the superman abhors the superman, and thus fails to conquer.

There is a bizarre form of phone sex that can cause permanent brain damage and ultimately death. There are flying cars and pin-sized nukes and... conventional 33 1/3 LPs and 45s in juke boxes? Cigarettes are heavily regulated by the State, while pot and mescaline are readily and legally available to all. African-Americans are now seen as a rare, exotic group that's close to extinction thanks to decades of genocidal eugenics. And behind it all, there's a dystopia based on fear and paperwork. 

There's also hope, though, especially as the novel ends. The dystopian police state will not endure as long as people are capable of small acts of empathy and compassion, and of creating beauty. And entropy affects everything, good and evil, the same: the dystopia will succumb to entropy just like everything else. It's a fine novel that sends back echoes of the world we live in, refracted by Dick's prismatic and unique imagination. The title is derived from a song (an ayre, actually) by 16th-century composer John Dowland ("Flow, my tears, fall from your springs"). You'll have to read the novel to discover the significance. Highly recommended.

Metropolis



(L-R): Joh Fredersen, Rotwang and the robot. Yes, Rotwang's look influenced Peter Sellers's Dr. Strangelove, Christopher Lloyd's Doc Brown and Christopher Walken's Max Schreck in BATMAN RETURNS.

Metropolis, adapted by Thea von Harbou from her novel of the same name, directed by Fritz Lang, starring Alfred Abel (Joh Fredersen), Gustav Frohlich (Freder Fredersen), Rudolf Klein-Rogge (Rotwang), Fritz Rasp (The Thin Man), Theodor Loos (Josaphat), Erwin Biswanger (11811 - Georgy), Heinrich George (Grot), and Brigitte Helm (The Machine Man/Maria) (1927; this version restored 2010) (145 minutes; 210 minutes premiere, 153 minutes mass distribution):

Simplistic in characterization and message (that message, flashed on the screen at the start, really is, quite simply, "The Heart must be the Mediator between the Head and the Hands!", with the figurative level of this statement simply being Head = Management/Government, Hands = Workers/Citizens and Heart = unh, somebody who wants to mediate between the two), Metropolis is nonetheless a towering achievement in science-fiction film for the complexity and scope of its visual and special effects. Its vast and teeming cityscape looms over later science-fictional cities such as those in Blade Runner and Batman Returns, as do many other often startling visual elements herein.

In today's dollars, Metropolis would have cost something north of $200 million, and it nearly bankrupted the German studio that produced it. Lang wouldn't return to epic science fiction again, and would flee the Nazis for Hollywood in the 1930's, there to become a well-regarded director of film noir. Along with the expressionistic German crime film M., Metropolis is a high point of his career. He's one of the essential directors of world cinema's rapid stage of artistic growth in the 1920's.

The film itself depicts a battle between labour and management, who in the world of the future are also governor and governed. Down below the streets of Metropolis (yes, the city really is called Metropolis), workers manipulate often hilariously touchy machines to keep the city running. Apparently the city of the future is in constant danger of being blown up if a worker passes out at his 12-hour shift. As is often the case in science-fiction movies and television shows, the designers of the future have never heard of fail-safes or fuse boxes.

Up above, the rich frolic. But young Freder Fredersen, son of city patriarch Joh Fredersen, falls in love with a young, beautiful revolutionary, Maria, and tries to make things better for everybody. In response, Joh Fredersen gets old, crazy-ass, crazy-haired scientist/magician Rotwang to make a rabble-rousing robot in the likeness of Maria to destroy the revolution. But Rotwang has his own vengeful plans. And some idiot has built the Undercity of the workers directly below the reservoir! Oh noes! Will the dangerous idiocy of the designers of this city never end?

Rotwang and Maria/Robot-Maria are beautifully acted. Brigitte Helm's Robot-Maria moves like a demented marionette in contrast to normal Maria's more languid movements. Of course, this is a silent movie, with silent-movie acting -- big gestures and big facial expressions. But Helm really stands out.

Then there are the visuals of the film: massive sets, detailed models, and visual effects that, in total, took two years to complete, given the technical limitations of the time. Much of the movie still looks terrific, most notably the scene in which Rotwang gives life to Robot-Maria. Lang also used astonishingly large armies of extras for many scenes. Metropolis is a film that could only be made with CGI today unless the filmmaker had an unlimited budget.

This version, compiled in 2010 using newly discovered 16mm footage, is almost complete -- written narration explains the two missing segments. It would be nice if someone fronted the money to fix up the 16mm footage, which is still quite damaged and not the same aspect ratio as the rest of the film. James Cameron? Spielberg? You listening? For a couple of million bucks of CGI, you could fix one of the most important movies ever made!

In any event, don't make the mistake of watching one of the cheapo, 90-minute versions that still populate discount DVD bins everywhere. And really, really, really avoid the 88-minute-or-so 1980's version with the Giorgio Moroder (Flashdance, Footloose) soundtrack. Seriously. Highly recommended.