Movie and storytelling musings
Jan. 4th, 2009 08:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missroseroseLast night Monica came over and we watched Bad Influence
, a 1990 Curtis Hanson thriller. It was well-done and enjoyable, but not great; I've been trying to figure out where, exactly, it could have been better.
The plot is a semi-Faustian story set in the decadence of late 80s yuppiedom. James Spader plays Michael, a wussy financial analyst with a beautiful apartment full of stuff he never uses, a beautiful (and rich) fiancée he almost never sees, a job where he constantly buckles under the bullying of his coworker, and absolutely no idea why he's so miserable. Drowning his sorrows in a bar one night, he meets Alex, a handsome playboy drifter sort, when the latter improvises a New York dagger and rescues him from violence at the hands of a jealous lunkhead. Soon Michael is enthralled with the charismatic stranger, who inspires Mike to improve his life as well as follow him down into the seedy underbelly of city nightlife. But when his nighttime activities inevitably start to bleed into his waking life, Michael decides he wants nothing more to do with his new friend, which Alex takes a little...personally.
Slickly directed (Hanson would later go on to great acclaim for L.A. Confidential
, an excellent film noir with some of the same ideas but a much more complex story) and very well produced, Bad Influence is eminently watchable. However, its real strengths in storytelling lie in the first half, when Alex is an ambiguous force in Michael's life. You never get the sense that his intentions are truly benign, but he provides a much-needed destabilizing influence for the meek financier. While his methods at times cross the line between playful pranks and outright maliciousness, they never fail to cause Michael to reevaluate his life, which he desperately needs to do. And the dynamic between the two men, a sort of thanatophilic attraction that occasionally borders on obsession, is fascinating to watch.
Unfortunately, the second half of the movie isn't nearly so compelling. Once Michael boots Alex from his life, Alex's character goes from "enigmatic, beguiling stalker" to "giggling psychopath". The question of his motivations, which gives him depth and interest, is tossed out the window; suddenly we don't need an explanation, except that he's So Crazy! All the dubiety and fascination and seductive atmosphere that's in the build-up kind of fizzles out, and the story devolves into a formulaic cat-and-mouse chase which, while still well-told, holds no real surprises and therefore not much in the way of tension.
I've been mulling it over, and I can't quite figure out how to make it any better. The problem with Faustian stories is that they can only really end in two ways - either the Faust character's repentances are accepted and he redeems himself/is redeemed, or the Devil character wins and the protagonist dies in bondage. Neither allows much room for uncertainty, and yet it's that very moral ambiguity that makes the first half of the story so interesting.
I think, if I were to write such a story, I'd toss out the Faust bit entirely. The overarching theme of the first part of the film (that unfortunately gets left by the wayside later on) is the emptiness of Michael's life; the golf clubs he never uses, the sun deck he barely notices, the fiancée he doesn't even know. In many ways he's an excellent personification of the problems with the "he who dies with the most toys wins" mentality that was so prevalent through the 1980s. But he's still young, and there's time for him to make changes - which he does, when Alex comes into the picture and cajoles him into really looking at himself for the first time.
So, instead of Faust, why not make Michael into Young Goodman Brown? Instead of leading Michael on a random rampage through L.A. crime and nightlife, what if Alex had taken him to the homes all of Michael's successful colleagues and friends - Patterson, the bully at work; his fiancée's wealthy parents; his supervisor who holds the keys to the promotion he wants - and shown him how miserable and empty their lives were? Alex would very definitely still be a Satan-esque character, but less a crazed psycho and more a subtle manipulator; and all the creepier, I think, for that. And after seducing Michael (perhaps literally) with the tantalizing knowledge that there might be a better future out there for him...he disappears. He's a drifter, after all, and he's sown doubt and discomfort in Michael's mind, kicking out his assumptions from underneath him - which, of course, is his job. And it'd be left up to Michael whether to go back to his numbing, buttoned-down existence. If he could even do it.
I'm not sure what inspired this particular line of thought. I guess I just felt like the movie's set-up deserved a better payoff. Perhaps audiences in 1990 weren't interested in that kind of uncertainty - it was still the "most toys" era, after all. But that changed pretty quickly - soon enough, movies like L.A. Confidential and Fight Club
came along, exploring similar themes but in a much murkier (and, to my mind, more interesting) fashion.
, a 1990 Curtis Hanson thriller. It was well-done and enjoyable, but not great; I've been trying to figure out where, exactly, it could have been better.The plot is a semi-Faustian story set in the decadence of late 80s yuppiedom. James Spader plays Michael, a wussy financial analyst with a beautiful apartment full of stuff he never uses, a beautiful (and rich) fiancée he almost never sees, a job where he constantly buckles under the bullying of his coworker, and absolutely no idea why he's so miserable. Drowning his sorrows in a bar one night, he meets Alex, a handsome playboy drifter sort, when the latter improvises a New York dagger and rescues him from violence at the hands of a jealous lunkhead. Soon Michael is enthralled with the charismatic stranger, who inspires Mike to improve his life as well as follow him down into the seedy underbelly of city nightlife. But when his nighttime activities inevitably start to bleed into his waking life, Michael decides he wants nothing more to do with his new friend, which Alex takes a little...personally.
Slickly directed (Hanson would later go on to great acclaim for L.A. Confidential
, an excellent film noir with some of the same ideas but a much more complex story) and very well produced, Bad Influence is eminently watchable. However, its real strengths in storytelling lie in the first half, when Alex is an ambiguous force in Michael's life. You never get the sense that his intentions are truly benign, but he provides a much-needed destabilizing influence for the meek financier. While his methods at times cross the line between playful pranks and outright maliciousness, they never fail to cause Michael to reevaluate his life, which he desperately needs to do. And the dynamic between the two men, a sort of thanatophilic attraction that occasionally borders on obsession, is fascinating to watch.Unfortunately, the second half of the movie isn't nearly so compelling. Once Michael boots Alex from his life, Alex's character goes from "enigmatic, beguiling stalker" to "giggling psychopath". The question of his motivations, which gives him depth and interest, is tossed out the window; suddenly we don't need an explanation, except that he's So Crazy! All the dubiety and fascination and seductive atmosphere that's in the build-up kind of fizzles out, and the story devolves into a formulaic cat-and-mouse chase which, while still well-told, holds no real surprises and therefore not much in the way of tension.
I've been mulling it over, and I can't quite figure out how to make it any better. The problem with Faustian stories is that they can only really end in two ways - either the Faust character's repentances are accepted and he redeems himself/is redeemed, or the Devil character wins and the protagonist dies in bondage. Neither allows much room for uncertainty, and yet it's that very moral ambiguity that makes the first half of the story so interesting.
I think, if I were to write such a story, I'd toss out the Faust bit entirely. The overarching theme of the first part of the film (that unfortunately gets left by the wayside later on) is the emptiness of Michael's life; the golf clubs he never uses, the sun deck he barely notices, the fiancée he doesn't even know. In many ways he's an excellent personification of the problems with the "he who dies with the most toys wins" mentality that was so prevalent through the 1980s. But he's still young, and there's time for him to make changes - which he does, when Alex comes into the picture and cajoles him into really looking at himself for the first time.
So, instead of Faust, why not make Michael into Young Goodman Brown? Instead of leading Michael on a random rampage through L.A. crime and nightlife, what if Alex had taken him to the homes all of Michael's successful colleagues and friends - Patterson, the bully at work; his fiancée's wealthy parents; his supervisor who holds the keys to the promotion he wants - and shown him how miserable and empty their lives were? Alex would very definitely still be a Satan-esque character, but less a crazed psycho and more a subtle manipulator; and all the creepier, I think, for that. And after seducing Michael (perhaps literally) with the tantalizing knowledge that there might be a better future out there for him...he disappears. He's a drifter, after all, and he's sown doubt and discomfort in Michael's mind, kicking out his assumptions from underneath him - which, of course, is his job. And it'd be left up to Michael whether to go back to his numbing, buttoned-down existence. If he could even do it.
I'm not sure what inspired this particular line of thought. I guess I just felt like the movie's set-up deserved a better payoff. Perhaps audiences in 1990 weren't interested in that kind of uncertainty - it was still the "most toys" era, after all. But that changed pretty quickly - soon enough, movies like L.A. Confidential and Fight Club
came along, exploring similar themes but in a much murkier (and, to my mind, more interesting) fashion.
