I still have plenty of 2009 movies yet to see, including of course the awards season releases. I'm also sure that there are a few hidden gems that I overlooked in the years before. Even though it might be too early to call, here are my top ten favorite films from 2000-2009. 
10. No Country for Old Men (2007)
Directed by: Ethan and Joel Coen
Starring: Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones
Written by: Cormac McCarthy (novel), Ethan and Joel Coen
Academy Awards: 4 wins, Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actor; 4 nominations, Film Editing, Cinematography, Sound, Sound Editing
IMDB Ranking: #110; 21st Century’s Most Acclaimed: #21
9. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Directed by: Michel Gondry
Starring: Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Tom Wilkinson
Written by: Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry, Pierre Bismuth
Academy Awards: 1 win, Best Original Screenplay; 1 nomination, Best Actress
IMDB Ranking: #58; 21st Century’s Most Acclaimed: #4
8. Children of Men (2006)
Directed by: Alfonso Cuaron
Starring: Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Caine
Written by: Alfonso Cuaron, Timothy Sexton, P.D. James (novel)
Academy Awards: 3 nominations, Best Adapted Screenplay, Film Editing, Cinematography
IMDB Ranking: #179; 21st Century’s Most Acclaimed: #77
7. Good Night, and Good Luck (2005)
Directed by: George Clooney
Starring: David Strathairn, George Clooney, Frank Langella, Robert Downey Jr.
Written by: George Clooney, Grant Heslov
Academy Awards: 6 nominations, Best Picture, Director, Actor, Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Art Direction
21st Century’s Most Acclaimed: #81
6. The Departed (2006)
Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg
Written by: William Monahan, Alan Mak and Felix Chong (Internal Affairs screenplay)
Academy Awards: 4 wins, Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Film Editing; 1 nomination, Best Supporting Actor
IMDB Ranking: #50; 21st Century’s Most Acclaimed: #28
5. In the Bedroom (2001)
Directed by: Todd Field
Starring: Tom Wilkinson, Sissy Spacek, Marisa Tomei, Nick Stahl
Written by: Andre Dubus (story Killings), Robert Festinger, Todd Field
Academy Awards: 5 nominations, Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actress, Adapted Screenplay
21st Century’s Most Acclaimed: #44
4. The Wrestler (2008)
Directed by: Darren Aronofsky
Starring: Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood
Written by: Robert D. Siegel
Academy Awards: 2 nominations, Best Actor, Supporting Actress
IMDB Ranking: #120; 21st Century’s Most Acclaimed: #159
3. Oldboy (2003)
Directed by: Chan-wook Park
Starring: Min-sik Choi, Hye-jeong Kang, Ji-tae Yu
Written by: Jo-yun Hawng, Chun-hyeong Lim, Chanwook Park, Joon-hyung Lim
IMDB Ranking: #116; TPSTD Ranking: #816; 21st Century’s Most Acclaimed: #75
2. Requiem for a Dream (2000)
Directed by: Darren Aronofsky
Starring: Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans
Written by: Hubert Selby Jr. (novel), Darren Aronofsky
Academy Awards: 1 nomination, Best Actress
IMDB Ranking: #63; 21st Century’s Most Acclaimed: #76
1. Memento (2000)
Directed by: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Guy Pearce, Joe Pantoliano, Carrie-Anne Moss
Written by: Jonathan Nolan (short story Memento Mori), Christopher Nolan
Academy Awards: 2 nominations, Best Film Editing, Original Screenplay
IMDB Ranking: #26; TPSTD Ranking: #956; 21st Century’s Most Acclaimed: #18
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Luhks' Top Ten Films of the Decade
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
The Complete IMDB Top 250, Part Two (1931-1939) by Luhks
Frankenstein (1931)
“You have created a monster and it will destroy you.”
Director James Whale’s version of Frankenstein no longer scares audiences, but his experiment still achieves immortality. Mary Shelley's landmark science fiction novel, even when reduced to its most basic elements, retains a considerable degree of power. The visionary art direction proves essential to the film's condensed storytelling. The misty graveyard where Frankenstein collects his raw materials; the dungeon laboratory where he conducts his experiments; and the hilltop windmill where master confronts his creation all create the proper gothic atmosphere. The alchemy between Boris Karloff's performance and the outstanding makeup department brings the iconic character to life. Frankenstein’s monster might be the grandfather of all of cinema's living dead: the slow-moving, groaning, cold, gray, decaying embodiment of human mortality.
Luhks Rating: *****
King Kong (1933)
“Oh, no, it wasn’t the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast.”
A few characters drive the plot of King Kong forward: the beautiful actress Ann Darrow, the lavish filmmaker Carl Denham, and the gallant hero John Driscoll. However, the human drama serves only as a sideshow for the main attraction. The title speaks the truth: Kong is the king of his own movie, a tragedy with a 25-foot gorilla as its hero. The visual effects used to animate Kong are not impressive because they look realistic, but because they add enough life to his movements and reactions to make him a sympathetic creature. After fixating on his pet human female, Kong rescues her from danger three times. He conquers his jungle foes from land (the tyrannosaurus rex, royalty among dinosaurs), from water (a massive snake-like reptile), and through the air (a giant pterodactyl). The context of these scenes conditions the audience to revel in each of his chest-pounding triumph, so that his ultimate battle against man becomes a heartbreaking one. Kong earns his crown, but not his queen.
Luhks Rating: *****
Duck Soup (1933)
”Here are the plans of war. They're as valuable as your life. And that's putting them pretty cheap. Watch them like a cat watched her kittens. Have you ever had kittens? No, of course not, you're too busy running around playing bridge. Can't you see what I'm trying to tell you? I love you.”
The mustachioed screen persona of Groucho Marx might invite comparisons to Charlie Chaplin, but Groucho’s brand of comedy is anything but silent. Only an all-sound picture could communicate his genius, which relies on his complete mastery of every facet of spoken English. Furthermore, Groucho is downright funnier than any other comedian in his time, and perhaps any other time. Most comedies settle into a steady rhythm of setup and payoff. The Marx Brothers effortlessly manage to go a step further: the payoff of one gag doubles as setup for another one. When everyone else fires jokes from a musket, the Marxes use a machine gun. Groucho delivers the rapid-fire zingers, Harpo executes a perfect pantomime, and Chico blends both styles (with Zeppo playing a supporting role). Both their verbal and physical humor carries a nasty edge to it that is rare to find in other American classics. Groucho’s subversive insults are every bit as sharp as the dangerous pair of scissors that Harpo uses for constant vandalism. Duck Soup also features a story that involves politics, diplomacy, espionage, and war. These plot elements serve the same function as all of the straight-man characters in the film: to provide more targets for the Marx Brothers to knock down.
Luhks Rating: *****
It Happened One Night (1934)
”I want to see what love looks like when it's triumphant. I haven't had a good laugh in a week.”
With the benefit of hindsight, It Happened One Night seems as if it were always destined for greatness. Any romantic comedy made today must be envious of its collection of A-list talent; director Frank Capra, screenwriter Robert Riskin, lead actor Clark Gable, lead actress Claudette Colbert all won Oscars for their work, and the film also earned Best Picture. At the time it was made, though, Columbia Studios was on poverty row, struggling to make B-pictures at best. Perhaps some of that professional angst, as well as the struggling nation’s class resentments, became the fuel for Capra’s creative fire. Somehow, this little love story, about a savvy reporter sharing a bus trip with a pampered heiress, stumbled upon the formula for the beloved screwball comedy sub-genre. As is often the case, the original template avoids the flaws of its later imitations. The witty motor-mouth dialogue and the farcical situations never become so ridiculous as to detract from the storytelling core. In public, circumstances force the two to play the part of husband and wife; in private, they go to great lengths to conceal their affection from one another. The sustained romantic tension between the two leads always takes place behind a curtain (and in a few inspired scenes, a literal one).
Luhks Rating: *****
Modern Times (1936)
“Don't stop for lunch: be ahead of your competitor. The Billows Feeding Machine will eliminate the lunch hour, increase your production, and decrease your overhead.”
The stylistic similarities across Charlie Chaplin’s body of work are easy to recognize, but the recurring themes of poverty and wealth are just as important a feature. This film retains its silent roots, but Chaplin definitely had something important to say. Modern Times expands upon those earlier experiments to become his most overtly political film to date. The Tramp suffers through a dangerous and dehumanizing ordeal that sends him from the factory assembly line to the sanitarium to the streets. He and his homeless female counterpart, played by the beautiful Paulette Goddard, spend the rest of the film stealing food to survive, trying to stay out of (or sometimes get back into) prison, and working low-paying jobs with little success. Their search for a real home leads them only to false ones: breaking into a department store, squatting in a rundown single-room shack, and imagining a comfortable place in the suburbs. The film’s most inspired and self-aware gag involves Chaplin’s arrest for accidentally leading a workers’ protest march. The House Un-American Activities Committee, apparently lacking a sense of humor, later accused him of holding Communist loyalties. Although much of the film could be interpreted as a call for political change, Modern Times also reflects a deeper dissatisfaction with technological progress. The film ends at dawn, with Chaplin walking into the sunset of his artistic era.
Luhks Rating: *****
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
“Now it isn't that I don't like you, Susan, because, after all, in moments of quiet, I'm strangely drawn toward you, but - well, there haven't been any quiet moments.”
After a disappointing commercial release, director Howard Hawks surmised that his screwball comedy failed because his characters were so madcap that the film lost its grounding. Decades later, Bringing Up Baby is regarded as one of the greatest comedies ever made, and perhaps the greatest entry into the screwball subgenre. Actually, all the zaniness of this movie can be attributed to one center of gravity, socialite Susan Vance, played to perfection by Katharine Hepburn. Every other character in the film, exemplified the scientist played by Cary Grant, serves the role of straight man. Hepburn’s character simply overpowers their seemingly firm grip on sanity and normalcy through her infectious lunacy. No actress has ever delivered a stronger comedic performance; Hepburn was fearless enough to embrace a dangerous leopard on the set as if it were just another co-star. The visual gags designed around the massive wildcat (the titular Baby) work every bit as well as the script’s constant wordplay and situational hi-jinks. In a story filled with instances of human dominance over nature (hunting, domestication of animals, paleontology), Kate Hepburn reminds us that some forces are too wild for any man to tame.
Luhks Rating: *****
The Lady Vanishes (1938)
"My father always taught me, never desert a lady in trouble. He even carried that as far as marrying Mother."
Before Alfred Hitchcock mastered Hollywood, he first thrilled audiences with the most successful British movie of his time. The Lady Vanishes allows Hitchcock to create a few signature stylish moments, and to engage a few of his obsessions: passenger trains, the MacGuffin, the ordinary person wrongfully accused (here, in fact, wrongfully accused of making wrongful accusations). Hitchcock's three-act structure resembles any magician's vanishing trick (which, not coincidentally, can be found aboard the train). The Pledge first introduces the range of characters as a railroad delay forces them to stay overnight at a quaint inn. Next, The Turn transforms into a mystery within the confinement of the train-cars: the disappearance of an elderly lady whose existence is confirmed only by a protagonist with a head injury. The final segment, The Prestige, reveals the twisted truth, and then accelerates into nonstop action. Unlike some of his most famous works, this film relies on more of an ensemble cast, a colorful group of British travelers returning home from a fictitious country to the east. In some ways, the master of suspense exploits the fear of foreign dangers, but he also finds plenty of comic relief usually at the expense of the British caricatures. The most memorable running joke involves Charters and Caldicott, two men so fixated on a cricket match that they remain oblivious to the intrigue around them. Always a great showman, Hitchcock earns as many laughs and gasps, to keep his audience entertained.
Luhks Rating: *****
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
”I'll organize revolt, exact a death for a death, and I'll never rest until every Saxon in this shire can stand up free men and strike a blow for Richard and England.”
Warner Brothers' 1938 Robin Hood movie is neither the first nor the last Hollywood re-telling of the English legend, but it might be the definitive version. The film’s surface aspects remain its primary attraction: the charisma of Errol Flynn, the porcelain beauty of Olivia de Havilland, the whimsical musical score, the extravagant medieval sets and costumes, and the spectacular action set-pieces. Director Michael Curtiz pushes the heavily-saturated three-strip Technicolor process to its limits. Color proves to be essential to the Robin Hood character, the English variation on the green-man myths found across cultures, whose clothing signals his harmony with natural law rather than the order imposed by man. However, the most impressive visual moment, a climactic sword-fight that casts giant shadows on the castle walls, would succeed in black-and-white. This particular adaptation prioritizes escapist fun over other creative goals. Sherwood Forest and Nottingham Castle serve as one giant playground where Robin can dress up, have fun with his toys (swords and arrows), hang out with his buddies (the Merry Men), impress the pretty girl next door (Marion), and defeat the mean neighborhood bully (Prince John), all before dad (King Richard) comes home from work (the Crusades) to stop the game before dinner. Its innocence makes even the 1973 Disney version seem bleak by comparison. Like the other famous British green man, Peter Pan, The Adventures of Robin Hood refuses to grow up.
Luhks Rating: *****
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
”Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.”
An artist’s personal expression can produce greatness, but sometimes market competition can achieve the same result. After Disney made history with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first full-length animated feature, MGM responded by investing heavily into a family film one of its own literary properties. Despite marginal success upon its initial release, The Wizard of Oz might be the most watched movie in history. Two key creative decisions transformed this adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s novel into a classic that would be revisited by each generation. The first idea was an unqualified stroke of genius: to film Dorothy’s Kansas home in sepia-tones before transitioning to Oz with brilliant Technicolor in all the shades of the rainbow. For children today, who have never seen a black-and-white film before Oz, the Gale’s Dust Bowl farm even takes on a dream-like quality of its own, every bit as alien as the fantasy land of Oz. Even seventy years later, there might not be any film that benefits more from the use of color to define locations, characters, and events. Second, converting children’s literature into a musical was quite a gamble. Songwriters Arlen and Harburg managed to avoid the fatal flaw of the musical genre, tacked-on songs that interrupt and prolong the story rather than enhance it. Judy Garland’s performance of “Over the Rainbow” so deeply conveys a sense of childhood longing, both gloomy and cheerful, that it deserves its reputation as the greatest original song ever on film.
Luhks Rating: *****
Gone with the Wind (1939)
“Take a good look my dear. It's an historic moment you can tell your grandchildren about - how you watched the Old South fall one night.”
On multiple levels, Gone with the Wind represents a triumph of American excess. Begin with the Old South, a culture so decadent that its weekend barbecue rituals required a midday nap. Throw in a crushing defeat in the Civil War that burns their society to the ground. Introduce Scarlett O’Hara, a vortex of self-absorption from which no one can escape. Add romantic hero Rhett Butler, the captain of cool; and the Wilkeses, the pinnacle of gentility. Combine those elements into Margaret Mitchell’s thousand-page, Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel. Hand the story over to producer David O’Selznick, who spared no expense in tracking down the perfect cast, multiple screen-writers and directors, hundreds of crew members, and thousands of extras. Shoot over a half a million feet of film with every color camera in Hollywood, and then trim it to a four-hour epic. Watch it become the biggest box-office success of all-time, and then set records at the Academy Awards in a legendary field of competitors. Everything about this film is larger than life, but especially the melodrama. Although the film’s racial politics are regressive and the sexual politics are progressive, there is no grand message behind it all. To quote Sunset Blvd., it is “just a story,” but it would be foolish to dismiss such a compelling one. The result still equals the sum of its parts.
Luhks Rating: *****
Note: Frankenstein (8.1/10) and Bringing Up Baby (8.1/10) are no longer on the official list.
Monday, October 12, 2009
The Complete IMDB Top 250, Part One (1921-1931) by Luhks
The IMDB Top 250 is probably the most well-known movie list in the world, composed by aggregating the votes of thousands of normal moviegoers. In January 2009, I set out on a quest to watch, rate, and review the entire collection. My quest is nearing completion, and I present, in chronological order, the first group of films.
The Kid (1921)
“A picture with a smile – and perhaps, a tear.”
This simple title card description summarizes Chaplin’s modus operandi quite well. The Kid teeters back and forth between pathos and slapstick. Unlike other Chaplin classics, though, the tears invoked by the melodrama actually might outnumber the smiles. A desperate unwed mother abandons her newborn child, hoping to give him a more fortunate upbringing. Instead, the boy ends up being raised by a man equally poor man, as the mother quickly ascends to the upper class. The touching relationship between son and his accidental father carries the majority of this film. In poverty, both the Tramp and the Kid still lead rich lives, as long as the other is present.
Luhks Rating: *****
Safety Last! (1923)
”Will you climb the Bolton Building - twelve floors – for five hundred dollars? / Say, for five hundred dollars, I’d climb to Heaven and hang by my heels from the pearly gates.”
Harold Lloyd is remembered (or, perhaps more accurately, has been forgotten) as the third genius of silent comedy behind Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. Safety Last, his most famous feature, is built from the same components: the unnamed protagonist of humble origins, devoted to a single love interest, as he stumbles his way from one sight gag to the next. Lloyd’s bespectacled screen persona displays neither Chaplin’s comic charm nor Keaton’s impeccable physical timing. Nevertheless, Safety Last still forges its own legacy with one unforgettable set piece. Lloyd the actor compensates for his shortcomings by putting his own life and limb at risk to please his audience. At the same time, his character does precisely the same thing to impress his girl. Unable to climb the proverbial corporate ladder, Lloyd's only option is to climb a 12-story department store with his bare hands. The stunt work impresses, even when the humor and storytelling do not.
Luhks Rating: *****
Sherlock, Jr. (1924)
”By the next day the master mind had completely solved the mystery – with the exception of locating the pearls and finding the thief.”
At only 44 minutes long, Sherlock Jr. could be classified as either a short or a feature film. Despite running short in minutes, this Buster Keaton feature runs long with imagination. Keaton plays a downtrodden movie projectionist, hoping to win a girl's heart heart, while also training to become a detective. When his luck in his waking life takes a downturn, he reinvents himself in a dream. From this point, Sherlock Jr. achieves more than one instance of movie magic, in a literal sense. Keaton approaches surrealism with one expertly crafted illusion after another. When the dreaming projectionist walks through the screen into the movie universe, Keaton seems to express his own desire that his films might cross directly over the barrier between the eyes and the human imagination.
Luhks Rating: *****
The Gold Rush (1925)
Say, there, that’s no stowaway. That’s Big Jim’s partner, the multi-millionaire!”
Strangely, a plot summary of this silent comedy might sound terribly depressing. A lone prospector travels to the frozen Klondike in search of gold. He battles against the elements, and such severe starvation that he must eat his own shoe to stave off hunger. At a nearby dance hall, he faces constant cruelty from a woman he adores, her group of friends, and her bully of a boyfriend. He also faces life-threatening dangers from a homicidal miner, a ferocious black bear, and his own mad companion who nearly resorts to cannibalism. The film somehow manages to remain an extremely light-hearted comedy throughout all of these morbid events, because, in essence, Chaplin's films are live-action cartoons. Perhaps a more accurate statement would be: many cartoons are essentially hand-drawn imitations of Chaplin. The Gold Rush features Chaplin at his most cartoonish, in the most complimentary sense of the word.
Luhks Rating: *****
The General (1926)
”There were two loves in his life: his engine and his sweetheart, Annabelle Lee.”
Buster Keaton’s signature film The General might be the greatest of all silent comedies, because the film refuses to sacrifice character or story for the sake of laughs. Make no mistake, it still offers some of the most clever visual gags ever devised. Keaton’s character Johnny Gray, a deadly serious man on a mission, never plays the clown. At the same time, The General also might be the greatest action movie ever made, with an awe-inspiring collection of stunts and lengthy chase scenes of relentless intensity. The pacing makes it difficult to recall many individual scenes, but it is impossible to forget the overall experience. The viewer never laughs at the character, or even with the character, but instead finds humor in the elegant symphony of chaos of his universe. Perhaps because the story was based on the record of a true incident, or because of its symmetrical structure, The General does not suffer from the disjointed episodic feel of its contemporaries. Each moment forms part a seamless whole, a story that gathers more momentum than a charging multi-ton locomotive.
Luhks Rating: *****
Metropolis (1927)
”There can be no understanding between the hand and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator.”
When people today talk about Fritz Lang’s science fiction masterpiece Metropolis, many will mention that the visual effects are amazing, for its time period. The qualifier is unnecessary. The visuals of Metropolis would be an amazing achievement in any era. The images alone are so inspired and beautiful that they need no added justification. This tale of a stratified urban society is rich with religious allusions, as well as an overt political allegory. The most thought-provoking element of the film is the way in which it blurs the distinctions between the organic and the artificial. The dehumanized workers have become extensions of their instruments. The inventor Rotwang, aided by his own mechanical hand, creates a robotic woman (with a remarkable performance from Brigitte Helm) who behaves in some ways more human than her living prototype. Lang portrays the metropolis itself both as an intricate piece of machinery and as a massive organism. Today, the film still stands tall as a towering work of art as monumental as the fictional city it portrays.
Luhks Rating: *****
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)
“The song of a Man and his Wife is of no place and every place; you might hear it anywhere, at any time. For wherever the sun rises and sets, in the city’s turmoil or under the open sky on the farm, life is much the same: sometimes bitter, sometimes sweet.”
As its title suggests, F. W. Murnau composed this silent masterpiece more like music than like fiction. Sunrise creates a progression of emotions almost exclusively through the power of its images. Not one frame of film goes to waste. The visual effects, cinematography, editing, lighting, set design, and of course the actors’ faces tell a fairy tale that transcends words in a script. Even the rare title cards often contain an inspired degree of visual expressiveness. The Two Humans together explore the many dualities of life: man and woman, city and country, love and hate, night and day, sadness and joy, loneliness and unity. The story strives to be broad, in order to become universal. Like a true song, Murnau’s film can speak volumes to people of all tongues, without saying a single word.
Luhks Rating: *****
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
“You think it’s beautiful to die for your country? The first bombardment taught us better. When it comes to dying for your country, it’s better not to die at all. There are millions out there dying for their countries, and what good is it?”
Most of the power of Lewis Milestone’s Best Picture winner derives from its literary source material. Most of the power of Erich Maria Remarque’s novel derives from its real-world source material. Young soldiers fight for their lives against all of the dangers of World War I trench warfare: nationalist hysteria, commanding officers, shells, bullets, bayonets, dirt, disease, vermin, hunger, loneliness, guilt, fear, insanity, and the ignorance of society. The characters are technically German, the actors speak English, but they just as easily could be French or any other nationality. Although it was produced in the early days of sound, the production values still impress alongside any other war epic made since.
Luhks Rating: *****
M (1931)
”It seems to me you could just as easily give up all of those things if you learned something useful, or if you had jobs, if you weren’t such lazy pigs. But me … I can’t help myself. I have no control over this, this evil thing inside me, the fire, the voices, the torment!”
Working in Germany during the 1930s, Fritz Lang did not make this film during what could be called the height of free expression. Both the director and his star Peter Lorre fled from persecution within two years of its release, and the Nazis banned the movie a year later. Regardless, Lang managed to bury his social commentary beneath the surface of his film, for future generations to uncover. M uses the story of serial child killer to expose the ugliness of the larger culture. The film progresses through a series of ironies: the playfully whistled tune "In the Hall of the Mountain King" becomes a sinister death march, a blind man makes the only reliable eye-witness, criminals run a better investigation than the police, and the violent mob proves to be as monstrous as the killer. The expressionist aesthetic creates a pervasive mood that will shadow the audience long after the final frames.
Luhks Rating: *****
City Lights (1931)
”Tomorrow the birds will sing.”
In 1931, Hollywood had transitioned to all-sound pictures, and the United States found itself mired in the Great Depression. The great filmmaker Charles Chaplin responded to these challenges precisely the way his Little Tramp character reacts his own: with a shrug and a smile. On the technical side, he retained the essence of his physical silent humor, but complemented it with a remarkable musical score and sound effects (literally, a few bells and whistles). On the creative side, his story subverted notions of wealth and poverty. The Tramp enters the film jobless, homeless, and friendless, the subject of public ridicule. However, the blind girl who sells flowers on the street believes him to be a handsome millionaire. The actual millionaire is a suicidal drunkard, but in his intoxicated stupor, he treats the Tramp as his closest friend. The same core idea underlies both relationships: this penniless man does indeed possess extraordinary worth. Another inspired sequence replaces the financial metaphor with a physical one: love empowers him to hold his ground in a boxing match against a man twice his size. Ultimately, though, this man not by the size of his wallet or his muscles, but by the size of his heart.
Luhks Rating: *****
Note: Safety Last! (8.4/10) and Sherlock, Jr. (8.4/10) are no longer on the official list.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Lost Episode 5.14 The Hole in the Heart by Luhks
All five seasons of Lost follow a parabola of sorts, with highest points of action at the beginning and end of each year’s collection of episodes. Season Five literally opened with a lot of flash, a razzle-dazzle series of time jumps backward, forward, and sideways. Eventually, the drama settled down into a smoothly-curved valley inside the happy yellow houses of the 1970s Dharma Initiative. Episode 5.13 Some Like it Hoth, which closed with Miles peering into the window of the Chang home, represented the last fleeting moment of domestic tranquility before the Island accelerated back into crisis mode. The Variable revamps the show’s conflict quotient, without using any Because-You-Left-style or Constant-style time travel. Instead, it relies on the old Lost tools of the trade: a tragic series of flashbacks, a handful of twists and reveals, and a desperation plan to get everyone back to where they are supposed to be. Along the way, Jeremy Davies provides the year’s best performance (by any cast member not named Terry O’Quinn), during both his first lead effort and his swan song. The Variable is one of those rare achievements that succeeds both as a character study and as a thrilling piece of plot development.
The early minutes of The Variable briefly send the audience back to the season opener, with a literal repetition of the meeting between Chang and Faraday. The limitless energy source beneath the Orchid station served as the catalyst for this season’s grand storyline. The oversized magnet under the Swan dragged Oceanic Flight 815 to its destiny, while the Orchid sent its characters back in time to create that destiny. These pockets of energy represent the epitome of the Island’s natural and supernatural powers. After Daniel arrives in the middle of the night, mankind wages a one-day battle to strike the Island directly in its heart. Faraday’s plan confronts these mighty natural forces using world’s strongest man-made power, the hydrogen bomb (or, perhaps something even stronger, the human will). Faraday, along with his lone disciple Dr. Shephard, briefly becomes Lost’s own version of Dr. Frankenstein, the man of science, driven by emotion to rebel against the natural order. The ultimate outcome remains unresolved, but this episode certainly foreshadows which side will win the battle. By the end of The Variable, Mother Nature reasserts her superiority quite emphatically, in the form of Mother Eloise.
LOCKE: And then a light went on. I thought it was a sign. But it wasn't a sign. Probably just you going to the bathroom.
Over the past few seasons, Lost writers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz have produced (in my judgment) the most consistently excellent scripts on the show. The Variable adds another instant classic to their growing resume. Their writing almost always offers more depth beneath the surface than the average episode. Seemingly insignificant details often elevate the meaning to otherwise straightforward scenes. This particular episode uses the recurring image of characters being interrupted by a knock on their door. Daniel’s first stop on the Island is to awaken Jack from his sleep. Shephard had been lying dormant since he arrived in 1977, awaiting further instructions. After one look at the Doc in his Dharma jumpsuit, the audience already knew what Daniel soon told him: “You don’t belong here at all.” Jack is already out the door and ready for action, before he even gets dressed, and well before he hears Daniel’s plan. By contrast, James and Juliet remain inside their home for the entire episode. Three separate times, a character knocks on their door and disrupts the LaFleur household (first Jack, then Daniel, then Radzinsky). The final knocking comes from within the house, when Phil, the skeleton in their closet, finally makes his presence known. Like the Oceanic Six before them, living the Lie is only a temporary solution. Sooner or later, destiny will come knocking, whether from outside or from within.
At the end of He’s Our You (the most recent Kitsis/Horowitz episode), LaFleur was able to contain the initial fire sparked by Sayid. It was only a matter of time before Jack and Kate literally would blow up any chance of happiness in this Dharma community. Juliet had been hearing the alarm bells in her head since their arrival, but James needed to hear Radzinsky actually sound the alarm itself before he could understand the inevitable. I wish I also could argue that the 1970s shootout at the motor pool (in which Captain America Jack Shephard detonates a barrel of gasoline in front of his decidedly-Eastern-sounding-comrade Radzinsky) doubles as some sort of clever historical commentary on the Cold War, global warming, and the oil resources in the Middle East. Even I have to draw the line somewhere. Sometimes, an explosion is just an explosion. However, it still warms the heart to see Jack following in the footsteps of his mentor Locke, by improvising some pyrotechnics without any dynamite or C4 on hand.
CHARLIE: My greatest hits. You know, memories. They're all I've got.
Although Lost has used its traditional flashback format only sparingly since the end of Season Three, The Variable provides probably the strongest sequence of flashbacks since Greatest Hits. Each of the four moments in this walk down memory lane contains plenty of emotional power, in its own way. The back story begins with the image of Daniel as a gifted young boy playing the piano, while a metronome swings back and forth (similar to his mother’s Foucault pendulum from 316). Each tick on the device reminds Eloise of her son’s impending death, the finite number of seconds that remain in his life. A person can respond to mortality in two ways: either dedicate your time in the tireless pursuit of some extrinsic purpose; or live in the moment, and pursue things like love or music, for their own sake. This idea carries over into the second flashback, in which Eloise continues to push Daniel to forego happiness in the pursuit of greatness. The scene concludes by revealing Eloise’s loving inscription inside Faraday’s journal, the ironic counterpart Desmond’s copy of Our Mutual Friend. The blank journal becomes an interesting image for Daniel’s life itself: a gift from his mother, an apparent tabula rasa waiting to be filled. Although Daniel is free to guide his life story by his own hand, the book has already been written. The contents of his journal, all of the thoughts and memories he recorded, already exist at another point in time. Ultimately, the journal outlives Daniel himself, and its collection of words and numbers becomes his only form of immortality.
The other two scenes focus on a story idea left unexplored since early in Season Four: Daniel’s memory loss. Daniel shares the same affliction as Leonard Shelby, the main character of the 2000 film Memento, which gets my vote for best movie of the decade. (The shot of Phil bound and gagged in LaFleur’s closet also provides a visual homage to a similar moment from that film.) Faraday’s condition not only renders all of his natural gifts useless, but it also forces him to live in a state of constant grief. Daniel can remember what he did to Theresa, but without any new memories, he remains trapped in that time period (the broken record playing the same song over again). Although the Island does heal his mind, just as Widmore promised, the intact memory merely allows his heart to be broken a second time. After being unable to remember anything, Daniel becomes incapable of forgetting the death of Charlotte. The scene offers no direct explanation for why Daniel breaks into tears at the sight of the sunken Oceanic airliner, but the dead bodies of Charlotte and Daniel exist somewhere on the Island, independent of his memories. When Eloise visits her son for the final time, once again at the piano bench, the condition reduces Daniel to a childlike state. He transforms into that same boy, seeking to earn his mother’s conditional love. It almost seems as if Eloise pushed her son to grow up too quickly, and fate found a way to compensate. The most basic human constants (things like memory, age, and love) simply do not work the way they are supposed to work in the life of Daniel Faraday.
DESMOND: Well, Moriah is the mountain where Abraham was asked to kill Isaac. It’s not exactly the most, festive locale is it.
CAMPBELL: And yet God spared Isaac.
DESMOND: Well one might argue then, God may not have asked Abraham to sacrifice his son in the first place.
CAMPBELL: Well then it wouldn't have been much of a test, would it brother? Perhaps you underestimate the value of sacrifice.
Eloise Hawking urged her son to give up many aspects of his own life, in service of a larger destiny. The concept of sacrifice is a familiar one in the Lost mythos. The superb second half of Season Three drew comparisons to one of the world’s most famous sacrifice stories, the Binding of Isaac from the book of Genesis. The looking-glass Lost universe inverted the details of this story in a number of different ways. Desmond disobeyed the universe’s command to sacrifice Charlie, and he was eventually rewarded with a son Charlie; Locke struggled to slaughter his father in biblical fashion in the Others’ initiation ritual, so he outsourced the job; and Ben’s burdensome sacrifice was not the killing itself, but the decades of waiting before he could gas Roger. Season Five’s Dead is Dead revealed another permutation, as Widmore ordered Linus to sacrifice his adopted daughter in the name of the Island. Eventually, the angel of death named Keamy offered Ben a chance to sacrifice himself in Alex’s place. Unlike the Hebrew God, Widmore was not bluffing. The Variable provides its own variation on the human sacrifice story, with another unhappy ending. Ultimately, Eloise and Charles agreed to bind their son to the Island’s altar, knowing full well that his life would not be spared. Despite its fatalistic motivation, the slaughter required three separate acts of free will, once from Widmore and twice from Hawking. The two British Hostiles somehow managed to distinguish themselves within Lost’s rich tradition of parenting. 
What possible justification could Hawking and Widmore have for sending their own son to be killed? Did they receive the Island’s divine command as a test of loyalty, or did they seek to avoid some scientific doomsday prophecy, or both? Hawking’s words from Flashes Before Your Eyes reveal some insight into the meaning of her job of keeping people on the right path: “If you don't do those things, […] every single one of us is dead.” Rightly or wrongly, Eloise seems to believe that the fate of the world rests in the balance. (Unless it is possible to erase one timeline and create a new one, perhaps changing history would result in the destruction of the universe.) Season Five's central biblical reference comes not the Book of Genesis, but from Christian scriptures. In the words of John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” The Variable offers a twisted, subversive, science-fiction re-telling of the gospels, with Daniel Faraday as its Jesus, Eloise Hawking as its Virgin Mary, and Charles Widmore as its God. If the fate of the universe depended upon sacrificing your child, which choice would be the right one?
Before The Variable, Eloise Hawking would have ranked near the absolute bottom of my list of favorite Lost characters. Not only is Fionnula Flanagan one of the weakest recurring actors on the show, but the writers have not done her any favors with her material. In the past, she was barely a character at all, but more of a transparent storytelling device. She served as nothing more than a Lindelof/Cuse spokeswoman to dispense information, and a lamp-post to point others on their way. The Variable accomplished something nearly impossible: it transformed Ms. Hawking into a genuine Lost character. Even her previous conversations with Jack and Desmond now become revelations of character rather than plot. Her monologue about course correction in Flashes Before Your Eyes now doubles as an attempt to convince herself that she did the right thing with Daniel. A woman who has believes so strongly in her cause that she would sacrifice her son’s life, certainly should have no qualms about sending another young man to lose his freedom. (One can imagine the thoughts that might be running through her head: “You want your damn three years back, Desmond? I want my son back!”) The younger actress, Alice Evans, also made a key contribution, by showing some recognizable human emotions during her early flashback scene: glimpses of fear, doubt, and even self-loathing. Season Five Eloise occupies one end of the Lost parenting spectrum opposite from Season Two Michael, who was willing to sacrifice everything and everyone else to save his own special son. Each parent believed (falsely, of course) that no other options existed, that his hand was forced when he pulled the trigger. Eloise’s motivations might never make perfect sense, but the character finally has developed some substance. After a season filled with the theme of motherhood, Mama Eloise might be the ultimate metaphor for the Island’s true nature: it gives life, nurtures a person’s gifts, pushes and pushes person to fulfill some role, and then it takes that life away.
LOCKE: That's not work. That's a joke - rats in a maze with no cheese. [...] I was never meant to do anything. Every single second of my pathetic little life is as useless as that button! You think it's important? You think it's necessary? It's nothing. It's nothing. It's meaningless. And who are you to tell me that it's not?
The self-referential title of Episode 5.14 makes for a rather bold fashion choice worth noting. Supporting scribes Kitsis and Horowitz present The Variable as the spiritual inverse of Season Four’s revered classic The Constant from Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. Both episodes portray the four-dimensional Lost universe as a fixed equation, in which the past is just as much a function of the future as vice versa. For Desmond Hume, this perspective on the universe offered great comfort. If your destiny is to spend the rest of your life with someone you love, then even oceans of space and time can be overcome. As Benjamin Linus reminded the audience back in Cabin Fever, fickle destiny can have a major downside as well. Faraday’s fate was sealed with a gunshot before he was even born: a lifetime of solitude and misery, in which any woman he loved would be hurt terribly. In The Constant, complete strangers (Jarrah, Minkowski, Faraday, even Widmore) all joined forces to help Desmond find his love again. In The Variable, Daniel is so alone in his quest that even his own family conspires against him. On Desmond’s path, love can somehow make a person bulletproof. For someone like Daniel, love guides that bullet directly into his heart. Desmond and Penny are the outliers in this system, the unique and miraculous exceptions that prove the rule. The Hume family’s brief appearance here emphasizes the contrast between their story and the rest of the Lost narrative. The sheer bliss of another Desmond-Penny reunion becomes a cruel cosmic joke, to amplify the magnitude of Daniel’s tragedy even further.
Among other ideas, The Constant also focused on the relationship between emotions and reason (so much so that my review of the episode last year was entitled “The Heart and the Head”). Desmond overcame a crisis of the brain, through his unbreakable attachment to Penelope. In its own way, The Variable re-affirms this same principle of the supremacy of the heart over the head. The same force that healed Desmond’s mind also conquered Daniel’s brain. More than any other character, Faraday is defined by his intellectual gifts. Even the strongest mind can fall powerless to a grieving heart. Ultimately, his plan to destroy the energy underneath the Swan does not make any rational sense. Three different characters in the episode (Miles, James, and Kate) refer to Daniel as insane, and for good reason. For one thing, basic thermodynamics holds that energy cannot be destroyed. Logistically, his plan should also be impossible: if Daniel does not arrive on the Island in 2004, then he can never exist in 1977 to detonate the bomb (or, for that matter, when he first told Eloise to bury it in 1954). His eventual ‘we’re the variables’ explanation to Jack and Kate does not support the conclusion that the past can be changed. Human decisions may be unknown, but each action only occurs once. To extend the equation analogy, the value of one variable may depend on the value of another variable. One person’s decision to change the past causes another person to cancel its effects (e.g. Sayid’s choice to kill Ben caused Kate’s decision to save him). The outcome of one side of the equation remains constant, even as the values on the other side vary. His speech did not express the thoughts of a scientist, but only the hopes of a desperate soul. 
The artistry of Lost thrives on its own unique blend of smoke and mirrors. The smoke conceals its secrets until the most opportune moment. The mirrors reveal deeper truths by reflecting back opposites. The previous episode Some Like it Hoth drew a nearly explicit comparison between Season Five of Lost and The Empire Strikes Back, Episode V of the Star Wars saga. Hurley’s favorite Star Wars sequel climaxed with the daddy of all pop culture plot twists, those four words ‘I am your father,’ which turned a fictional universe upside down. The Variable includes a smaller moment of parent-child revelation, in which Charles Widmore, the ruthless leader of his own empire, reveals himself to be the father of the gentle Daniel Faraday. The more consequential surprise occurs in the episode's final moments, when Eloise shoots him in the back, just before hearing the words, "I'm your son." Lost’s Daniel Faraday already knew that he was the son of a bitch, but he never understood the full extent, until his dying breath. Perhaps the more meaningful line, however, came from Eloise, with the three words: "Who are you?" We all need mirrors to remind ourselves of who we are, and Daniel is no different. Any number of reflections might answer that question, either by comparison (Leonard Shelby, Dr. Frankenstein, Orpheus, Jesus) or by contrast (Isaac, Luke Skywalker, Walt, Desmond). Daniel's own answer to the question might be the most complete. Like any one of us, Daniel Faraday amounts to exactly what his parents made him.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Lost Episode 5.13 Nobody's Perfect by Luhks
With only three episodes remaining, the grand canvas of Lost’s fifth chapter is coming into view. Even after several months, the season premiere still seems like a fresh part of the collective consciousness. As with its season-opening predecessors, the first scene of Season Five established the overarching tone for the story that followed. Man of Science, Man of Faith began with button-pusher Desmond peering up from the Swan station at Locke and Jack above him. A Tale of Two Cities introduced trouble in paradise for Ben and Juliet in the Others’ village. The Beginning of the End highlighted the tenuous return to civilization for the Oceanic Six. Because You Left shifted the spotlight away from the core group of characters into the Chang family home. Nearly every element of that scene hinted at the story elements to be explored over the next few months: the inner workings of the Dharma Initiative, the ongoing war with the Hostiles, time travel, the famous Hitler hypothetical, dead characters reborn, uncovering ancient ruins, false identities, domestic tranquility disrupted by crises, mothers, fathers, and children. 
Episode 5.13 Some Like it Hoth revisits that same family unit of Miles, Lara, and Pierre (and even finishes with the return of Daniel Faraday, the other principal character from the opening scene). Over the first half of this season, the Wheel at the Orchid station caused Lost’s temporal structure to fall out of joint like Chang’s beloved Willie Nelson record. After a period of uncertainty, the past four episodes have returned to the traditional single character-centric format, along with its steady rhythm of flashbacks. Compared to Sayid’s He’s Our You, Kate’s Whatever Happened, Happened, and Ben’s Dead is Dead, the melody of Miles' Some Like it Hoth sounds the most similar to classical Lost tunes. Like many seminal episodes from the first three seasons, this first-ever Miles episode provides a fresh look at the inner life of a character with a tough outer shell. Early in the episode, Miles speaks some words central to almost every character on the show: “I need you to tell me why I'm this way... how... how I do the things I do. And I need to know […] about my father.” (Later, Bram tries to recruit him to his team, by offering that same reward.) Miles does not obtain any easy answers to his questions, but his journey on and off the Island does give the viewer an understanding of how Miles evolved from the infant from Because You Left into the misanthropic hustler of Confirmed Dead.
After a streak of considerably self-referential episode titles, the name Some Like it Hoth derives its meaning from two films outside the Lost universe: the classic 1959 comedy Some Like it Hot, from Billy Wilder; and The Empire Strikes Back, the 1980 sequel to Star Wars. Lost is no stranger to Star Wars references, but it has acknowledged liberally the influence of the famous movie saga along the way. For people like Hurley and for the writers of Lost, Star Wars represents more than just a movie series, but a common point of cultural reference as useful as The Bible or The Odyssey. Three decades after George Lucas set out to bring his vision to the big screen, J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof approached an ambitious television project with many of the same objectives. The two works exist at the intersection of past and future. Both Star Wars and Lost seek to create an enduring cultural myth, within a science-fiction universe. The heroes still fit many of the same basic archetypes (the prodigy chasing his father's shadow, the martyred mentor, the reformed every-man-for-himself scoundrel, the bumbling sidekicks), and the basic religious and psychological roots remain the same. Whereas Lucas' films pushed the limits of technology in the film industry, Lost has experimented with narrative techniques. Working as a serial ensemble drama, Lost has been able to dig much deeper into the minds of its characters and the substance of its literary sources. 
The Star Wars trilogy has served as such a predominant influence on Lost, and the references in many episodes are so overt, that it is difficult to know exactly how far to extend the analogy. Hurley’s discussion of the famous ending to The Empire Strikes Back deserves special attention. Although Empire is the second film in the saga, it is officially known as Episode V. This reference might hold greater significance when the final segments of Season Five are complete. Perhaps the Empire (Widmore? Dharma?) will re-establish itself on the Island stronger than ever. Perhaps another character (Daniel?) is being set up for an “I am your father”-type revelation. Perhaps some other novel twist is in store to turn our perception of the Lost universe upside down. Despite Hurley’s attempts to change the past and to re-write the script, the climactic sixth chapter in this saga is also inevitable. WIth Hurley's editorial comments about Return of the Jedi, the writers of Lost make one difference abundantly clear: they feel confident that they can produce a more satisfying ending than Lucas did. A year from now, we can judge how well they lived up to that boast. For now, the new group of players led by Ilana and Bram operates more like Boba Fett and Jabba the Hutt, and less like the Ewoks. Hugo is not the only one trying to make some 'minor improvements' to his beloved saga. 
Hurley also makes a direct analogy between the central father-son conflict of The Empire Strikes Back and the relationship of Miles and Pierre Chang. This comparison does not make much intuitive sense, but Hurley's heart is in the right place as he tries to encourage his friend to re-connect with family. In fact, the core elements of the relationship seem to be backwards. Luke led his life idolizing his dead father, with the false belief that Anakin died as a genuine hero. Lara Chang convinced her son to despise his father, by claiming that he abandoned his family for selfish reasons. Dr. Chang's heartwarming interactions with his infant son suggests the opposite. The ultimate revelation of this story is not the identity of Miles' dad, but the reversal of perspective on his true nature. Most likely, Pierre sent his wife and son away from the Island, because (much like Jin earlier in this season) he wanted to save his loved ones from certain death. The enigmatic Dr. Pierre Chang has concealed his true nature behind many different masks: Dr. Marvin Candle of the Swan, Dr. Mark Wickmund of the Pearl, and Dr. Edgar Halliwax of the Orchid. The most important role of his life is still to come: to do whatever is necessary to convince his wife to leave the Island forever, even if it means that she will hate him. Based on the Swan orientation video, the older Chang in the family (as opposed to the younger Skywalker) will lose a limb along the way. 
This episode offers fewer connections to its other main cinematic allusion, Some Like it Hot. The film is widely regarded as one of the top comedies of all time. Hot's Lost counterpart mixes in plenty of similar story elements: music, booze, buddies on the road, and people living under false identities. The title phrase ‘some like it hot’ comes from a discussion of musical tastes midway through the film. Jazz musician Joe (played by Tony Curtis) disguises himself as a millionaire named Junior, in an effort to impress lounge singer Sugar (played by Marilyn Monroe). When she expresses her enthusiasm for hot jazz music, Junior takes the opportunity to look down his nose: “That fast music, jazz? […] Well, I guess some like it hot. I personally prefer classical music.” Lost’s Some Like it Hoth includes its own variation on this highbrow/lowbrow distinction. Here, Lara Chang’s appreciation for jazz (specifically Miles Davis) makes her appear more refined in comparison to her husband, a country music fan. This script has no aspirations of snobbery, but it is particularly concerned with embracing its populist roots: not only with Hurley’s opinions on Star Wars, but also some beer guzzling, jokes about foul odors, polar bear poop, diaper-changing, the circle of trust, necrophilia, fish tacos, use of the word douche, and a cumbersome pun on the little Dutch boy with his finger in the Doc. The emphatically unpretentious dialogue from Gregg Nations and Melinda Hsu more closely matches the tone of Kevin Smith than the films of Wilder or Lucas. Some Like it Hoth positions Lost about as far away from high-culture affectations as possible.
(On a personal note, writer/director Billy Wilder is my favorite filmmaker, and I could not resist giving his movies my highest recommendation. However, Some Like it Hot is actually my least favorite among his works. If you want to experience two Wilder masterpieces, then I suggest The Apartment and Sunset Boulevard. Those two films stand right alongside the first two Star Wars films among my personal favorites.)
Our familiar Lost characters might not be using humorous disguises and voices like the protagonists of Some Like it Hot, but nevertheless their cover with the Dharma Initiative is about to be blown. Despite an extensive résumé of cons and deceptions, and after fooling the entire world with the Oceanic Six Lie, the Lost team cannot match wits with an incompetent security guard and a drunk janitor. Dharma's other unfriendly father figure, Roger Linus, plays a prominent role in the episode. Mr. Linus might not be the world’s greatest dad, but even he tends to notice something amiss when his dying son disappears from the infirmary. Both Kate and Jack have some experience in dealing with a parent who has a drinking problem. Roger allows them to use those old dysfunctional habits once more. Kate decides to take pity on the poor guy and drink a Dharma brew alongside him. Jack first tries to cover for his inebriated co-worker, and then becomes confrontational when things begin to unravel. Interestingly, Miles is not the only person who has passed up a second chance to contact his dead father. The mainland is only a submarine ride away. James could be getting even with dad, or Kate could be making amends with Wayne, or Jack could be working with Christian rather than cleaning up after his fellow workman. For many people (including Back to the Future's Marty McFly), checking in on your parents would be the first thing to do if you were transported thirty years in the past. In Hurley's words: "It all could've been avoided if they'd just, you know, communicated." These Lost souls have decided to take their chances with Dharma and the Hostiles rather than confront their own personal Darth Vaders.
Moreover, this side plot exposes one of the central ideas of the overall 1977 Dharma storyline. Apparently, whenever someone sets out to try to do some good, they end up causing harm instead. When Kate makes an effort to ease Roger’s pain, his mind jumps from despair to angry suspicion. When Jack tries to defuse his fears, he amplifies Roger’s paranoia even further. Similarly, James escalates the growing crisis when he punches out Phil. Thus far, the group’s primary accomplishments have been to bring Ethan into the world and to corrupt the innocence of young Benjamin Linus. Their hearts may be in the right place, and even their heads as well, but the end results are pretty far off the mark. Hugo still clings to the naïve hope that the past can be rewritten, for something as minor as the Star Wars trilogy or as significant as global warming. If Faraday has returned to try to prevent future tragedies, expect the results to be nothing short of catastrophic. (The episode includes two other smaller images of failed efforts to alter history: Miles’ aborted attempt to delete the surveillance footage, and Jack’s interrupted effort to erase a lesson on ancient Egypt.) When Luke Skywalker tried to lift his X-Wing from the swamps of Dagobah, it sunk all the way to the bottom. Yoda's famous advice echoes Lost's fatalistic approach: "Try not. Do or do not. There is no try." On this Island, effort and good intentions lead to failure.
The Star Wars universe used the term 'the Force' (an energy field that connects all living things) to explain its fantasy aspects. The Island of Lost of course emanates its own powerful forces as well. Electromagnetism serves as a key element of Lost's science-fiction mythology, and a metaphor for the Island's overall power. In this episode, Alvarez, Dharma’s unfortunate ditch-digger, suffered the consequences of whatever unrestrained forces rest under the Swan construction site. Hurley offers a reminder that the Swan station pulled the Oceanic airliner out of the sky decades after it ripped out Alvarez’s filling. On a more symbolic level, the Island’s powers to attract and to repel include more than just metal objects. Oceanic 815, the Kahana freighter, and Ajira 316 all seem to be drawn in by the Island’s attractive forces. The Island follows its own rules of magnetism of human beings: it pushes away the majority of the world is pushed away, and it draws only a few special individuals toward it. The more such people gathered in the same place, the greater their aggregate charge becomes. Season Five has slowly revealed that Charlotte, Daniel, and now Miles were all children of the Island to different degrees. Looking back on Confirmed Dead, the energy surrounding the helicopter must have been off the charts.
This story goes to great lengths to explain the precise nature of Miles’ supernatural gift. His initial off-island flashback scene from Season Four implied that Miles could speak with the souls of the dead. This episode scales back his communication skills, into one-way eavesdropping on the deceased. The central contradiction of his character remains intact. As I wrote after episode 4.02: “Many other characters would rejoice at the chance to speak with the departed, but, in a true Lost reversal, the only dead people Miles cares about are the dead presidents printed on bills.” To put things delicately, Mr. Straume is not exactly a people person. The revised take on his powers offers some insight into how Miles’ colorful personality took shape. At the age of eight, he was already exposed to things far beyond his years. Unlike Hurley’s experience, in which friendly ghosts keep him company, Miles’ link to the spirit world amplified his loneliness. Spirits could not listen to anything he said to them, and his mother did not lend a sympathetic ear, either. His solution was to shut out the rest of the world as best he could. Hearing the unfiltered thoughts of the dead must have altered his perspective of humanity in other ways as well. In Confirmed Dead, Miles argued that there was no point in taking care of Naomi’s body: “What’s the point? […] It’s just meat.” This episode carries its somewhat nihilistic meat comparison even further, with Alvarez’s corpse delivered alongside a case of sandwiches, and Felix’s body examined inside the kitchen of a restaurant. Miles’ sixth sense causes him to view the body itself in material terms. He does not hear the voice of the soul, but only those thoughts physically stored in the brain at the time of death. A corpse is just a package, which might contain some valuable information. (Interestingly, Chang's examination of Alvarez's body is equally swift and precise. Pierre shares several elements of his son's personality as well, and perhaps the family curse.)
The flashback storyline highlights Miles' search for the truth about his own past. Miles could have waited until after his mother's death, and then learned all of the information from her that he needed. Instead, he made a point to ask those questions while he was still alive. Like the grieving father Mr. Gray, Miles might not have been searching for the truth, but for peace of mind. Later, when Bram's mysterious group gives him a second chance to learn the truth, Miles turns down the offer once more. In 1977, the Island offers him daily opportunities to interact with his dead father. Which belief would cause Miles more pain: thinking that his father never mattered in the first place, or feeling that he lost such a special person? The final sequence of the episode includes what is, in my opinion, the most poignant moment of the time travel story, and one of the best scenes of Season Five. The image speaks volumes on its own. The sight not only transforms his view of Pierre, but Miles will never be able to look at himself in the same way. Miles tried to believe that he never missed out on anything worthwhile. Now that Miles understands exactly what he lost, soon he will lose it all over again. All of us have a few holes in our hearts, but that empty space exists to remind us of the substance that once stood in its place.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Lost Episode 5.12 Kill Ben, Vol. 2 by Luhks
Although it might seem odd to reveal a story's ground rules just before the final chapter, Lost has always thrived by revealing things out of order. The titles of episodes 5.11 and 5.12 make for an intriguing pair. Whatever Happened, Happened recycles the words spoken by Lost physicist Daniel Faraday twice already this season. In due course, the equally redundant phrase Dead is Dead was also spoken by Ben midway through this episode. These two titles express rather explicitly two main rules of storytelling that have been established and tested over the course of the series. In order to maintain the dramatic weight of any chapter, two principles are necessary. First, the past cannot be changed. Second, death is permanent. Only in science fiction do these basic tautologies of life need to be proven. The life-threatening injury to young Ben Whatever Happened, Happened provided a not-so-subtle lecture followed by a not-so-subtle demonstration of that first rule. The main plotline then went to great lengths to prove that Ben’s gunshot did not kill him, but helped transform him into the man he became, even with some unnecessary amnesia ex machina thrown in to eliminate possible inconsistencies. Again, for the second straight week, the powers that be were asked to judge whether Ben Linus had a right to live. As an child in the hands of adults, and as an adult in the hands of Island gods, the end result turned out to be the same.
The follow-up episode Dead is Dead used a less direct approach to illustrate a related question. Although Lost characters will not be traveling back in time to prevent historical deaths, could the Island offer some other method to escape from the grim reaper? Dead man walking, John Locke, now represents the main exception to the rule of Island death. Three statements appear to be true simultaneously, which creates an impossible contradiction.
(1) Locke is dead.
(2) Dead is dead.
(3) Locke is not dead.
This contradiction might not pose the same threat to the space-time continuum as last week's, but one of those three assumptions must be revised in order for the Lost universe to make sense. When Sun was confronted with the resurrection of Locke, she immediately challenged the first statement. She concluded that Locke’s death must have been staged from the beginning. In the early stages of Season Five, many fans reacted the same way (with some even suggesting that he might have been paralyzed by Dr. Arzt’s Medusa spiders). As Ben knew at the time, and as the audience soon learned, John Locke's body definitely died inside that lonely hotel room. 
CHRISTIAN: Claire, your mother is alive, but she’s not really living.
CLAIRE: What the hell’s that supposed to mean?
CHRISTIAN: It means that now may be the time to look at other alternatives.
The next possible explanation is to challenge the second premise: maybe dead does not mean dead. Certainly, the Island can heal people from cancer, paralysis, and nearly fatal wounds. The souls of the dead can already communicate to special people like Miles and Hurley, through words and visions. The resurrection of a month-old corpse would stretch the limits of the Island’s healing powers, but the overall believability would not suffer. (At this point, adding another supernatural feature to the Island would be as difficult to accept as adding another name to Ben’s list of murder victims.) Although Locke cannot explain the details of his transformation, he assures Sun that “I’m the same man I’ve always been.” Another way to read the title phrase is to say that “dead” is dead. In other words, if Locke’s body can be restored to life, then the concept of death no longer carries much meaning on this Island. 
Of course, the third explanation is to refute the final premise: Locke actually is dead, despite the appearance to the contrary. More accurately, Locke is not Locke. The man we now see standing on the Island is not the same man who died in Los Angeles. The episode includes a number of suggestions that Locke has become one with the Smoke Monster, in a manner similar to the re-animations of Christian, Yemi, and Alex. Ben’s trial at the mercy of the Monster seems to begin much earlier than his arrival at the Temple; Locke questions a number of Ben’s past decisions in conflict with the Island’s will, ranging from his treatment of John to the use of Dharma’s facilities, and of course, his role in Alex’s death. When Ben summons the creature, and he warns that “what’s about to come out of that jungle is something I can’t control,” Locke arrives in its place. When he reaches the vents beneath the Temple, John conveniently leaves the room while the Smoke delivers its verdict, and then returns as soon as it finishes. Throughout the episode, Locke certainly behaves differently from his previous self. Remnants of his old personality remain (just as Christian’s ghost appeared to retain his old memories), but the new Locke is empowered with unparalleled knowledge, confidence, and mastery over his old weaknesses. At the very least, the Monster has aligned itself completely with John, by using its manifestations to command Ben and Sun to follow his lead. 
In my assessment, the most likely solution must fall somewhere between the second and third possibilities. The new John Locke appears to be a more evolved, more substantial version of the other incarnations of the Monster. His existence is permanent, and open for everyone to see. If taken at face value, his assertion that he’s ‘the same man as always’ suggests that Locke’s communion with the Monster began well before he exited the coffin. John has survived one fatal injury after another, but his unbreakable body continues to regenerate. The new Locke appears to be both puppet to larger forces, and puppet-master controlling his own destiny. His will, the Island’s will, and the Monster’s will are one and the same. Locke is a man, and simultaneously Locke is not a man. The Catholic conception of the holy Trinity embraces this same paradox of entities that are distinct but the same. The Island is the father, Locke is the son, and the Smoke Monster is the Holy Spirit. 
CHANG: Don't be absurd! There are rules, rules that can't be broken.
Somehow, Locke has bypassed one of the most important rules of the Lost universe. The flashbacks of Dead is Dead focus on a different type of rule-breaking, the violation of man-made Island laws. Throughout this decades-long story, the most prominent rule seems to be the segregation of Hostiles and outsiders, preserving the difference between Us and Them. By bringing Benjamin into the Temple, Richard Alpert broke that time-honored code. Later in the episode, Ben reveals that the wall around the Temple was designed to protect it from the wrong kind of people. More correctly, the Temple was built to prevent people like Ben from entering as well. After one seemingly minor exception made for a harmless little boy, the structure of Widmore’s society began to crumble all around him. A decade later, more bastard children are seeping through the cracks. Ben has already taken Ethan, another of Dharma’s lost boys under his wing. Against Widmore’s direct orders, Ben spares the life of Danielle, another foreigner, and then brings her child back to Hostile society. Baby Alex provides Ben with a golden opportunity to undermine Charles’ authority in public. By that point, the rules had already been changed, and the new impure order established. 
Although Widmore’s policies might not have been noble, his people certainly embraced a stronger connection to the natural world. The episode offers contrasting glimpses of the Widmore and Linus regimes. King Charles commanded his people from horseback, as they lived in tents surrounding a campfire. Mr. Linus led his people from behind a desk, into their acquired real estate, complete with electricity and running water. Three years after Linus' exit, those yellow houses remain unoccupied, as the Others have re-established their roots. Certainly, the technophobic John Locke shares Widmore’s vision of Island living, and disdains the Linus lifestyle. In the end, it seems doubtful whether Ben ever understood the will of the Island, or whether the con-man simply played the political process better than anyone else. Ben may not have cared about any rules, but he did exploit his people’s reverence for those rules to his own advantage. Eventually, he arranged to exile Widmore from the Island for violating those same boundaries between Us and Them that Alpert and Linus had crossed years before. According to the Hostile rule book, stealing a stranger’s child is acceptable, but fathering your own child off the Island is unforgivable. Widmore was banished by an outsider, because he associated with outsiders. 
LOCKE: Because it's not fair! You make people think that you're their family. And then you leave their life in ruins. And I'm not going to let you do it again!
Ironic references to friendship are scattered throughout the script of this episode: from Widmore’s reassurance to Ben that he is ‘among friends now,’ to Caesar’s favorite catch-phrase, to the triple entendre on Our Mutual Friend. When Locke jokes that Ben ‘makes friends everywhere he goes,’ his retort is layered with meaning: “I've found sometimes that friends can be significantly more dangerous than enemies.” Time and again, Ben uses friendship as a weapon. He postures himself as an ally, in order to strike at the most vulnerable point. Widmore and Locke both fell victim to this brand of trickery, and newcomer Caesar suffers a similar fate. Ben manipulates the well-intentioned Ajira leader into distrusting Locke, just so he can put himself back in John’s good graces with a shotgun blast. For an episode ostensibly about atonement for past sins, Ben’s shows absolutely no remorse on his path back to the main Island. His way of apologizing for the murder of one of his closest companions is to lie through his teeth, and then set up another innocent man to be killed. 
Unfortunately, our friend Caesar managed to become collateral damage in the dealings of the Island’s triumvirate of Linus, Widmore, and Locke. Apparently, Caesar’s regime on the Island came to an end almost before it began. Although ‘dead is dead’ on Lost, one need only look back one episode for proof that ‘shot in the chest’ does not necessarily mean 'dead' on this show. With such a promising introduction to this character (played by the excellent Saïd Taghmaoui), I hope that Caesar’s longevity matches the model of Octavian rather than Julius. While Linus acted quickly to eliminate the threat presented by Caesar, he seems to have overlooked the greater danger posed by Ilana and her cronies. Two episodes earlier, Ilana claimed to be a bounty working for the Avellino family, one of Widmore’s alleged associates. The presence of a massive steel crate indicates that ... going to Guam ... might not exactly have been her primary objective. Ilana’s coup was swift and merciless, complete with its own secret riddle for separating friends from foes. The game of Island Risk has been suspended for a few years, but the players are ready to resume. Widmore warned Locke of the war coming to the Island, and Ilana’s special delivery seems to put a few pieces into place. (What lies in the shadow of the statue? My answer: Paulo Lies.) 
EKO: Every Sunday after Mass, I would see a young boy waiting in the back of the church. And then one day, the boy confessed to me that he had beaten his dog to death with a shovel. […] And he wanted to know whether he would go to hell for this. I told him that God would understand -- that he would be forgiven, as long as he was sorry. But the boy did not care about forgiveness. He was only afraid that if he did go to hell -- that dog would be there waiting for him.
This episode finally sets the stage for Ben to fulfill the friendly promise he made a season ago, only to close the curtain at the last moment. The purpose of the marina scene seems to be to absolve Ben in the eyes of the audience, before the Monster does the same. Ben’s personal set of rules is a strange one: lying with every breath in your body is expected, stealing children from their parents is mandatory, gassing an entire village is just another day at the office, and shooting an unarmed man is good sport. However, killing a woman in front of her kid is off-limits. After all, the little tyke reminds him of the thing he loves most: himself. Can one good deed redeem an entire lifetime of evil? (Or, to be more precise here, can one momentary-hesitation-before-performing-an-absurdly-heinous-deed redeem an entire lifetime of evil?) In this particular story, the answer seems to be: maybe. Throughout this episode, Ben shows no remorse for any of his actions, except for two. He begs Desmond to forgive him for trying to kill Penny, and he pleads with the Island to spare him after sending Alex to her death. In both cases, the line between genuine repentance and pure fear becomes hard to distinguish. The Monster persuaded him to change his ways, not by appealing to his sense of duty, but to his self-preservation. The manifestation of Alex threatens to hunt him down and destroy him if he disobeys its orders. Ben’s directs an apology to Desmond perhaps for the same reason, because he fears that the raging Scotsman will finish the job he started.
Although Ben survives his encounter with the Monster, his final judgment leaves some room for ambiguity. The prosecution makes no opening statement, but simply recites the evidence. The series of flashes depicts the full span of his relationship with Alex, from the moment he refused to kill her, to the moment he granted Keamy his permission to kill her. The main issue of interpretation seems to be the same question posed by Widmore: did the Island want him to sacrifice Alex? Either way, the verdict would need to be guilty. If the Island wanted Alex to die all along, then Ben disobeyed its will when he adopted her. If the Island wanted Alex to live, then Ben failed the test when he refused to surrender. When Ben confesses that “it was all my fault,” the re-animated Alex agrees with him. Although the verdict is not entirely clear, the sentence is unmistakable. Instead of death, the Monster condemns him to a lifetime of imprisonment, as Locke's servant. (The Island’s policy for capital punishment seems to suffer from some of the same racial biases as the American justice system. The Monster executed Mr. Eko for lesser crimes, and Christian appeared just before Michael’s death. Always the master manipulator, Ben understood how to play the system to his own advantage.) For a man like Linus, submitting to someone else’s leadership might be a fate worse than death. I suspect that Ben will make at least one more attempt to seize power before the series is complete. Perhaps even more certain than the rule of 'dead is dead', we all know that Ben is Ben.
As the instruments of power continue to be passed from one set of hands to the next, every generation believes that it can be special, that it can avoid the mistakes of the past. Ben promised himself that he would not become selfish like Widmore, that he would always serve the Island's best interests. The corruption of that promise began almost immediately after it was made. Ben could not fight the inevitable. Widmore's fall from grace offered a cautionary tale that Ben ignored. Eventually, the younger generation finds itself standing in the same position that it swore to avoid. Now, the torch has been passed from Linus into the hands of Locke. As strong as he may be, he would be naive to overlook the lessons of his predecessors. He must overcome the dangers from his enemies, the dangers from his friends, and the dangers from within. By many indications, though, (particularly the fact that he was recently deceased) Locke is indeed special. He has proven that he would sacrifice anything for the Island, including his own life. He truly is different from the men who preceded him, but that difference alone might not be enough to change the rules of the game permanently.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Lost Episode 5.11 Kill Ben, Vol. 1 by Luhks
Thus far, Season Five of Lost has been a veritable bloodbath. During the first ten episodes, characters have been slapped, shot, stabbed, scorched, smashed, shredded, strangled, skewered, spinally-snapped, sonically-showered, and stricken with sci-fi sicknesses. Episode 5.10 He’s Our You was one of the most violent episodes in recent memory, not just in terms of its physical brutality, but also the wounds inflicted on the psyche of Sayid Jarrah. The final scene ended with the cold-blooded attempted murder of a 12-year old boy, struck down with a bullet through the chest. The follow-up, Whatever Happened, Happened, reveals the domino effect set off by that event. Episode 5.11 shows no further acts of violence, but instead focuses on the combined efforts to save young Benjamin’s life. On Lost, no good deed ever goes unpunished, and the rest of Ben’s adult life is Lost history. Repairing his body is itself a destructive act. Mr. Linus can look forward to thirty years of lying, kidnapping, and murder on a massive scale. The adult Linus would undoubtedly be back next week to add further crimes to his lifetime total. Of course, if you adopt Hurley’s theory about being erased from existence, then Ben’s personal path of destruction would be incomparable to the harmful effects of changing history, by letting him die. Regardless, though, episode 5.11 provided sixty minutes of relative peace within a season of escalating bloodshed.
The story of Whatever Happened, Happened operates on two parallel levels. On the macro level, the episode explains the same overarching principle expressed by the title. As lead writers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have done since the beginning of Season Five, they continue to explain the Island rules through the mouths of characters. As if the past explanations provided by Eloise Hawking, Pierre Chang, and Daniel Faraday were not adequate, Miles Straume reiterates those same ideas to Hurley in two central scenes. If anyone had any lingering doubts whether Lost would adopt the multiple timeline approach to time travel, their conversation explained Lost in direct contradistinction to Back to the Future. These elements essentially amounted to a televised producer podcast halfway through the episode. Ken Leung and Jorge Garcia did an admirable job of trying to stay in character, even though they were really playing the roles of Lindelof and Cuse. Lost’s lead writing tandem often employs this same feigned-ignorance, question-answer format during their own promotions. Hurley managed to stump Miles with a possible contradiction involving Ben’s memory. That problem gets resolved at the end of the episode (albeit in the most unoriginal way possible) with some Temple-induced amnesia. Although the reactions of Hurley and Miles are both realistic on some level, their entire exchange took on an undoubtedly patronizing tone. I hope that the remaining episodes of the series can minimize this type of direct exposition to the audience, but the trend is certainly growing (particularly in the Lindelof/Cuse scripts).
DIANE: You can't help who you love, Katherine. And for good or bad, I loved him.
On the micro level, the episode sets out to answer smaller questions surrounding Lost’s female lead, Kate Austen. Neither the mysteries addressed nor the outcomes revealed here offered much surprise. What did Sawyer whisper to Kate on the helicopter? He told her to take care of Clementine. Where did Kate leave Aaron? She left him with Carole Littleton. Why did Kate go back to the Island? She came back to find Claire. Along the way, the drama generates heated discussion in all four legs of the series’ predominant love quadrangle. Many people have concluded that the long-term commitment between James and Juliet brought an end to the days of on-again, off-again Island romances. In reality, this episode offered no more finality than Season Three’s similarly-toned Kate drama I Do (also written by Lindelof and Cuse, and also referenced here). By the end of this chapter, Juliet approaches a showering Jack by shouting “I needed you”, while Kate and James reunite on another sweaty trek through the jungle. The text of the episode indicates that Jim and Julie are permanent, but the subtext of the scenes reveals the opposite. Kate’s favorite Patsy Cline theme song provides a succinct explanation of the constantly shifting entanglements: “The only thing different, the only thing new: she’s got your picture, I’ve got you.” During their three years apart, Kate has clung to the ‘picture’ of James in the form of baby Aaron. Similarly, Juliet only took an interest in James after he became the shepherd of the left behind flock, following the image of Jack. Expect to see more innuendo and suggestive glances until the end of Season Six.
Increasingly, the time-bending narrative of Season Five has highlighted the never-ending debate between free will and determinism. That overarching theme adds another texture to the romantic rivalries of Jack-vs.-James and Kate-vs.-Juliet. Each of these individuals has been torn between two different sides of their own being. The James-Kate and Jack-Juliet pairings fall more closely to the deterministic side of the universe: the attraction between people who share similar personalities, careers, and experiences. The Jack-Kate and James-Juliet pairings exist more on the free will side of the spectrum: people with contrasting characteristics, who decide to change themselves for the benefit of their partner, almost as a form of wish-fulfillment. Their relationships are not as simple as that classification, but the underlying conflict is present in all four characters. Do you love the person who reminds you of your past, or the person who offers a tabula rasa for the future? As the grand Season Five narrative blends fate with free will and past with future, the original distinctions between these options have also become less distinct. Coincidentally, the agent of change throughout these rivalries has always been Benjamin Linus. During Season Three, the adult Ben consciously grouped James with Kate and Jack with Juliet as part of his master plan to save himself. When Ben turned the Wheel, he inadvertently produced the opposite effect. Three years later, it was again Ben who sent them all on a collision course once more, in his plot to restore his Island rule. In this episode, little Ben’s surgery serves as the catalyst to force those old tensions back to the surface.
MICHAEL: Look, I'm going after my son. I'm going after my son, and nobody is going to stop me, okay? Okay, that is my right. That is a father's right.
Another useful analogy for these relationship dilemmas is the conflict between nature and nurture. Kate Austen’s back-story dramatized this struggle through her two paternal figures: Sam Austen, who raised her as his own; and Wayne Janssen, her biological father turned step-father. During this episode, the ghost of Wayne revisits the adult Kate in the form of Roger Linus. Her conversations with Roger re-frame the abusive, alcoholic father in a more sympathetic light. The younger Kate viewed Wayne only in black-and-white terms, as the personification of evil in her life. (The name Janssen refers to Jansenism, a branch of Catholic thought that emphasized original sin and human depravity.) Through Roger, the Island allows Kate to interact with a proxy for Wayne, to see her father through adult eyes, in all the shades of gray. Roger’s dialogue emphasizes that he had the potential to be a decent guy. He began fatherhood with the best intentions, but circumstances and extreme weakness overcame him, until his own child eventually hated him. Across the globe in 1977, Wayne is alive somewhere, and most likely undergoing the same process. Little Benjamin’s loss of innocence in this episode parallels Kate’s path to adulthood. Both characters murdered their fathers in an attempt to purge the part of themselves that they hated. In the process, Ben and Kate succumbed to the dark side of their natures: the path of murder, lies, and manipulation. Neither of them raised children from their own bloodline, but they adopted Alex and Aaron in hopes of a pure, fresh start.
Blood itself serves as a prevailing motif throughout the episode, both in physical and symbolic terms. Little Benjamin survived the initial gunshot, but he is slowly bleeding to death on the inside. Kate donates blood from her own veins to sustain him (incidentally, after she had denied surrendering a sample to him as an adult). Ultimately, only Richard Alpert’s blood-oath initiation ritual inside the Temple can heal his wounds. On Lost, blood connections entitle parents and children to certain rights and responsibilities, despite conscious efforts to deny them. The old cliché says that blood is thicker than water (or, in the parallel maternal imagery used in this episode, milk is thicker than juice). The episode’s flashbacks explore two mirroring parental relationships. Kate and Aaron share no biological connection, but she desperately tried to keep him as her own. Little Clementine is descended from James, even though he disowned her from birth. Both characters try to make amends for their violation of natural duties: Kate surrenders custody of Aaron, and James becomes a distant part of Clementine's life. In the events of Whatever Happened, Happened, Kate comes to terms with her own blood. Meanwhile, though, Benjamin begins the process of denying one’s heritage and facing the inevitable consequences all over again.
MIKHAIL: I will try to make this as simple as I can. You are not on the list because you are flawed. Because you are angry, and weak, and frightened.
As a whole, this episode idealizes the concept of childhood. Kate, James, and Juliet, who have all killed adults under various circumstances, find it unthinkable to let Benjamin die without doing everything in their power. Ben is no ordinary child, but one who would grow into quite possibly the most destructive force on the Island. Despite all of the crimes that lie ahead of him, they all believe that Benjamin has a right to live. All three characters share a special vulnerability when it comes to children: Kate devoted herself to Aaron, James refused to steal from couples with young kids, Juliet watched countless infants die in that same village. When Kate delivers Aaron to Ms. Littleton, she speaks of him in nearly angelic terms: “You're gonna see that he's so sweet and kind and good.” In her mind, Aaron is the anti-Wayne; something untainted that she wishes could be a part of herself. For three years, Kate was able to insulate herself from the sordid world of adult motivations. She replaced the often petty Island politics with the purity and simplicity of childhood. Aaron’s honesty is absolute. When Aaron asks for something to drink, it means that he’s thirsty. Whenever one of the Island adults asks for something, they could be acting out some Freudian angst and/or dragging you into a Machiavellian long con. At the end of the episode, Ben’s loss of innocence is visualized a dramatic entry from sunlight into darkness. Kate’s “bye-bye baby” moment serves as her own departure from Aaron’s idyllic world, back into the Island gloom. Eventually, though, Aaron will eat from the same Tree of Knowledge as all of us, and his innocence will be corrupted by the outside world. As with any boy, there is no guarantee that baby Aaron will not grow into a man like Ben.
One of the recurring trends in the script of Whatever Happened, Happened is the basic impurity of adult motivations. Even some of the most seemingly altruistic actions contain varying degrees of selfishness. A person might even deceive herself into believing that her motivations were absolute, but the mind is too complex to operate that way. Cassidy helps Kate understand that her decision to protect Aaron was influenced by her own emotional needs. (Mama Cass herself seems to carry some ulterior motives as well.) The episode refers back to two dramatic instances of self-sacrificing behavior from James and Jack, but frames them in a more negative light. From Cassidy’s perspective, Sawyer’s leap from the helicopter was an attempt to escape from his responsibilities in the outside world. Later, James’ reaction to the accusation reveals that fear of inadequacy played a factor in his decision to return to the Island. Similarly, Jack’s heroic sacrifice at the Hydra station was at least partially motivated by a desire to get away from everyone else. Juliet also confronts him with the accusation that the he did not come back to save anyone except himself. There are two explanations for every action, and both contain elements of truth. 
LOCKE: Desmond, what if I told you that for all that—all those years that you and all the men before you were down there pushing that button—what if I told you that it was all for nothing? [...] Tomorrow we're going to find out what happens if that button doesn't get pushed.
Despite its many overt references to ‘doing the right thing,’ the most intriguing element of the episode came from the man who defied intuition and refused to do any thing. Jack’s justification for denying help to Benjamin could have followed the same utilitarian route as Sayid, a refusal to become complicit by aiding Ben in his crimes. Instead, it went a step further. According to the rule of Whatever Happened, Happened, the ultimate outcome was never in doubt. Whether Jack chose to put another bullet in Benjamin, or to perform life-saving surgery, or to make sandwiches for Miles and Hurley, the Island would have found a way to restore Ben back to his original course. For a man who literally poured his own blood, sweat, and tears into trying to save Boone, another young man injured on the Island, this realization reshapes his entire worldview. Apparently, he would have accomplished the same result by banging his fists on the hatch. The ‘do no harm’ oath becomes meaningless, as Jack can accomplish neither harm nor good in this situation, no matter what he does. Since actions no longer have any tangible consequences, individuals need to find some other principle on which to ground decision-making. Jack defines his new purpose as the same journey of self-discovery as Mr. Walkabout himself. If you apply the Lost notion of course correction, then Ben also would have made it to the Temple no matter what Kate, Juliet, and James decided to do. In the end, their efforts to save him did not benefit Ben (a fact that is highlighted by the realization that he does not remember them). Instead, the experience was designed to ease their own pain, to help them get to where they needed to be. By saving Ben, they too were saving their own souls.
The work of the Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, offers a useful system to categorize these different journeys. Many Lost characters gradually evolve from the aesthetic stage of life, defined by the pursuit of beauty and pleasure; to the ethical stage, defined by adherence to social responsibility. This process is typically characterized as 'the redemption arc’ followed by characters such as Charlie, Sawyer, etc. Other characters, like Locke and Jack, began their stories in the ethical stage of life and then progressed toward the religious stage. Kierkegard’s concept of religiousness did not match the ordinary sense of the word, the observance of organized rituals. Instead, the religious stage involved a heightened awareness of universe that often runs contrary to intuition and reason. Here, Jack Shephard embraces two essential paradoxes of Lost. He decides to follow a more meaningful path, by realizing that his choices are meaningless. He seeks to free himself from the prison of cause and effect, while also becoming a slave to the will of the Island. Refusing to help Benjamin required a Lockean leap of faith that bordered on insanity. However, it would have been equally insane for him to keep doing the same thing over and over, while expecting a different outcome. By adopting this new faith, Jack has also become more empirical. He changed one of the key variables in this Island experiment, and now he is waiting to observe the results.
As Season Five moves into its final act, childhood has assumed an increasingly prominent role in the story. Ranging from the younger versions of adult characters (Miles, Charlotte, Ethan, Sayid, Ben) to their ultimate successors (Charlie, Aaron, Ji Yeon, Clementine), children have taken more tile space on the grand mosaic. Even an adult character as twisted as Ben or Ethan started out with innocence. Even children as innocent as Aaron and Clementine might be corrupted by experiences like their predecessors. Within every grown-up lives a child. This comparison serves as a double-edged sword. Youth is associated with purity, but it also indicates childishness, ignorance, and immaturity. In the overall relationship between the characters and the Island, it is difficult to determine who are the parents and who are the children. Aaron helped raise Kate just as much as Kate helped raise Aaron. Have these adults been assigned as caregivers for the Island in its infancy? Or, has the Island adopted all of these children who were in need of nurturing? 
