Just wrapped up a show for HBO/Cinemax (via Universal) about a remarkable new movie, WANTED, directed by Timur Bekmambetov and starring Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman among others. It’s ironic that this entry should come right after one about kids because this is about as far from a kids movie as you can get. Or is it? Certainly, from the perspective of creative energy, the movie scores high and will match any kid’s imagination for crazy things to do with items like bullets (crush each other in mid-air, decorate them, bend them), cars (gymnastic flips, jumping off buses, driving on walls) or trains (becoming surfboards, getting wedged in chasms) to mention just a few items. But any peace-loving analysis of the film — a coming-of-age-story set in a group of hereditary super-assassins — will inevitably lead to its extreme moral shadiness.

Still (and this may just be because I have been staring at every frame of it for the last couple months) the sheer beauty of the filmmaking makes it impossible to ignore. It has what I like to call “Piñata Energy”. Though possibly the most savage moment at any kid’s birthday, the piñata — ripe with a volatile mixture of violence and sugar — also usually represents the peak moment of “togetherness” the party will experience. Not even the blowing-out-of-the-candles causes such a focus of attention. As Marshall Rosenberg, guru of Non-Violent Communication, likes to say, our society has — over the last 10,000 years of “Domination Culture” — figured out many ingenious ways of making violence fun. WANTED is a great example of this. Bekmambetov, who owns his own visual effects house (and the VFX are truly brilliant), adds a dark Russian humor to the spectacular, and completely surreal proceedings. In a scene with blatant piñata parallels, for example, the lead character Wesley (pitch perfectly played by James McAvoy) smacks his pompous, two-timing best friend in the head with a computer keyboard (see Figures A and B below). A mixture of computer keys and torn out teeth, floating in mid-air, spell out his newly empowered spirit.

Here Bekmambetov explains where he’s coming from:

I love the audience. I want to give them something exciting for two hours of their life. Because life is not so easy and happy. And for two hours they should enjoy something rich and enthusiastic and energetic and funny.

And, like a the true artist he is, Bekmambetov has clearly poured abundant love into every shot of the film. The story doesn’t lack self awareness — with Dostoevskian damnation, the ending leaves Wesley in even worse condition than when we met him — but that, very clearly, isn’t the point. Bekmambetov’s business is to, with almost childlike enthusiasm, render his (and probably our) world as fully and vibrantly as he possibly can. The spontaneity — or the grand illusion of spontaneity — is infectious: watch now, ask questions later.

But what are the questions? Should we boycott the tooth-rotting, violence inducing piñata — as well as movies like WANTED — because of the negative cultural conditioning they doubtlessly contribute to? My wife and I refused to have piñatas at our kids’ first few birthday parties. Now, even though we try to stuff them with healthy treats, they are at every party we throw. Have we succumbed?

The answers to these questions are very tricky, and dig very deep. It seems worth it to ask them, though, while we still can.

My show on WANTED premiered on Cinemax on June 19th. Please see my long form page for an excerpt.

Consider these two quotes:

“I am like a cinema screen – clear and empty – the pictures pass over it and disappear, leaving it as clear and as empty as before. In no way is the screen affected by the pictures, nor are the pictures affected by the screen. The screen intercepts and reflects the pictures, it does not shape them. It has nothing to do with the rolls of film. These are as they are, lumps of destiny (prarabdha), but not my destiny; the destinies of the people on the screen … I feel myself as if floating, aloof and detached.” — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj; “I AM THAT”

“A story is not just there for entertainment, I think it’s there to in some way help you in life. As a storyteller, especially in films, you get to be something like a therapist for two hours. If the end isn’t right, it feels like if at the end of a therapy session your therapist said, “Oh, yeah, okay, that’s an interesting point, but I have another appointment. See you next week.” You go out there thinking, “Is this guy in any way interested in me or does he just want the money?”” — Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck; writer and director of “THE LIVES OF OTHERS”

It’s a conundrum I often return to. How to reconcile the necessary manipulation involved in the telling – and watching – of stories with the peace (or “clarity” or “emptiness”) that so many of us also desire?

I was really moved, and fascinated, by THE LIVES OF OTHERS, which, in many ways, has this conflict at its core. The main character, Weisler – a picture of detachment (image above) – is sent to spy on a playwright and his wife, but becomes so emotionally involved in their lives, that he ends up severely jeopardizing his own. What’s the message here? Never watch anything? Live as a monk? Even though he wrote the screenplay for THE LIVES OF OTHERS in a monk’s cell (click here for a great interview about this), the man who made this film clearly would not agree with this approach. In fact, as he insinuates, we are all driven to watch – to get to the end, to be moved, to have our clarity and our emptiness shattered. In a sense Weisler is the utimate audience member – a man whose life is totally changed by the scenes that he witnesses. He does not need his money back.

But that’s not the typical audience member – even, sad to say, the audience member who has seen the Oscar winning LIVES OF OTHERS. If we were all to watch movies like this man does his job, we would, certainly, all go crazy. And here, perhaps, we can circle back to Nisargadatta Maharaj. Perhaps, as he does in the quote above, we use the technology of movies (and stories in general) to practice NOT going crazy. Though few of us can boast of being as “blank-screened” and peaceful as the masterful Maharaj, most of us can boast of not being as pathologically sad, lonely, repressed and susceptible as Weisler.

So the truth (as it tends to) may lie somewhere in between these two quotes. Our lives are changed by stories – but not a lot. We are all capable of being clear and empty and destiny-free – but don’t do it too often. The force of life is strong, and the more practice we get in negotiating it, the better. So here’s to more watching. (And telling.)

(NICKELODEON) Good question, not fully answered here. The second of two videos for THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS, also for KA-BLAM! Do not try this at home! Directed by Jesse Gordon in collaboration with The Ink Tank/Asterisk Animation.