Mickey 17

Essential Worker

or

"Go Ye Forth and Multiply"

Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) has a sketchy past-he has an issue with a loan-shark-and so he wants to get off-planet as soon as possible. Fortunately, there's a private mission to the planet Niflheim that has been spear-headed by a former Senator Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) to form a colony where he's the Supreme Leader (Marshall has lost his last two elections and no doubt wants to leave democracy behind). Mickey, seeing the long lines of potential volunteers for the exploration flight, volunteers to be an "expendable"--a low-level worker position that no one wants, mostly because the fine-print is egregious, saying that he can be assigned guinea-pig positions that will probably kill him, at which point he will be "re-printed" body and mind, his memories downloaded into the new Mickey. In the 4.5 years it takes to get to Niflheim, he's died and been re-manufactured 11 times. Once land-fall occurs, Micky dies a few more times testing the environment and the various vaccines for the planet's endemic diseases, before anyone else is allowed out in the glacial environment. And, at the time of the movie's start, he is Mickey 17.

But, at the movie's start, that won't last long. 17's fallen into a crevasse in the freezing cold, nothing's broken, but there's no way he can get out. His co-hort from Earth, Timo (Steven Yeun), has a job as a pilot and he could rescue him from his predicament...but, hey, why bother? They're just going to make another one, anyway. He leaves with a genuine "Hey, nice knowing you. Have a nice death." And a question everyone asks, "Hey...what's it like to die?" After all, Mickey's had experience.

I won't give too much away, but 17 survives the fall and the cold and is only too happy to get back to the base-camp where he gets a bit of a shock. Despite the lack of protocol and general laxity of safety conditions—especially in the science department—it seems they're very johnny-on-the-spot (or one should say Mickey-on-the-spot) for replacing their expendable: another Mickey has already been re-printed, who, of course, is Mickey 18. Because cloning is not an exact science, 18 is a bit more aggressive and less forgiving than his predecessor (hey, he's young, having only a few hours of life to his credit). But, the two have an immediate problem: duplicates are illegal in the colony and so, they it's a literal case of there not being room enough for the two of them, which makes both Mickeys beside themselves.

One of them, then, has to go. Although they basically have the same brain, they are of two minds on the matter. 18, of course, says that because 17 is considered dead, he's overstayed his welcome and he needs to die; 17 considers 18 to be unnecessary and superfluous and so he should be the one to die. Neither one of them wants to have a twin—do they split their rations?—and, besides, Mickey 17 has a girlfriend, Nasha (Naomi Ackie), who's one of the base's security forces, and although she's intrigued with the possibilities, neither one of the Mickeys are into open relationships.

The problem is, the question of who lives and who dies is out of all of their hands—duplicates are illegal and if it's one thing former Senator Marshall is consistent at it's in following the rules that he's put in place (and that's just about the only thing he's consistent about other than maintaining absolute power over the colony). This puts Nasha and the two Mickeys in conflict with the social order and their functions, but, hey, movies need conflict and there's quite a lot of it in Mickey 17.

It's clever, entertaining, and adaptor-director Bong Joon Ho (he of Parasite, Mother, and The Host) has created another of his intricate little "trap" movies where you wonder where he might be going with it, but it's less devious then his previous films, and suffers from a "Chekhov's gun" situation which makes the resolution of the film feel slightly telegraphed and less of a surprise than in previous work. There are a couple superfluous characters (besides the extra Mickey) and one sees a trope (let's be kind and call it "inspiration") from an early "Star Trek" episode that makes it seem overly-familiar. That's a slight disappointment. 

And he gets entertaining work from his cast—Pattinson plays dual roles, of course (actual multiple versions of the same character), and, dang, if you can't tell the two of them apart merely by his playing of them, and Ackie has never been more kinetic as she is here. Ruffalo and Toni Collette (playing Marshall's Lady MacBeth of a wife) play it broad, but then, the characters are broad, as most autocratic figures are before they fall into the self-destruction of self-parody.

That broadness will, no doubt, raise hackles in some quarters, but those hackles are always on the alert, anyway. Best to look at the more subtle statement Mickey 17 is making about the irony of "essential workers" being regarded as the most disposable in business and governmental circles. Twas ever thus, whether it's in war, shirtwaist factories, or food-processing plants during a pandemic, this "dammit-I-can-have-it-both-ways" canard of the powerful sees far less exposure than it should. I'd like to see more of it, if only in the public interest.

 

The novel on which Mickey 17 is based has a sequel called "Antimatter Blues", but if it gets made into a movie, I'm sure they'll call it Mickey 19.

Wilhelm Alert @ 01:17:00

 

Internatio-noir: Mother and The Square

Written at the time of the films' American releases. Since then, Bong Joon-ho directed the film Parasite, which won the 2020 Best Picture Oscar, as well as awards for best script and best direction.

"The Knots of the Heart"

 

"A boy's best friend is his mother."

Mother Yoon (Hye-ja Kim) ekes out a living dispensing naturopathic herbs and running an underground acupuncture practice, all for her backward son Do-joon (Bin Won), 28 and a perfect example of not knowing what he doesn't know. With severe ADD, he has problems with memory retention; the least little thing, shiny or not, will distract him. The phrase "Hold that thought" is lost on him, an impossibility with his sieve-like mind. His type never learns.

You'd think his mother would. Mother Yoon watches her son like a hawk, and though she doesn't approve of him running with "a bad crowd," she can do nothing, or else the boy will storm off and get into some other trouble, or go drinking until all hours, or get beat up. Something...and usually bad. The cops know all about him. He's crossed their paths more than once.

So, when a young girl ends up dead on the night Do-joon goes on a bender, the police arrest him and hold him for trial. And he has no answers for what he was doing that night. This sends Mother into a maternal tizzy, and she works the neighborhood, trying to make nice with the victim's family, obtaining the services of a shady lawyer, but when those avenues prove unrewarding, she begins to investigate the case on her own, pursuing every blind alley and path paved with her Good Intentions.

And you know where that leads.

One could say that this is a Hitchcockian nightmare with its themes of dangerous Moms and wrong-man incarcerations, but Mother (aka "Madeo"), directed by Bong Joon-ho (who directed the monster hit The Host) hails from Polanski-town,with its themes of obsessiveness, self-delusion and destruction. As played by the internalized Kim, the title character is so wrapped up in her maternal self-sacrifice that that she doesn't see how much she's giving up to save her son. As she digs deeper into the victim's past, she must come to grips with her own, and for all the searching her final destination is her own Soul.

Sounds grim, and even a little cruel. Cruel, it is. But, Bong—as he showed with his previous monster movie—has created an intricate little trap of a film, with moments of horror and humor combined, sometimes with their arms so tightly wound each other, they could strangle, whether from love or malice. One senses an ironic glee from the director, who keeps inserting little touches of humor into the proceedings to keep things from getting too heavy, and makes one think that maybe God puts us through such trials, because it's such good sport to see us flail.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

"Thank Christ for infidelity, I say"

 

If Bong is having a good time torching the ants in Mother, Australian director Nash Edgerton is chortling and cracking open a Foster's, making life miserable for the denizens of The Square. It, also, is a tightly wound thriller—more in the classic film-noir mode—with its Aussie blue-collar workers effortlessly slipping into "tough-guy" mode. It begins, as many noir's do—with an illicit affair, and the attempt to make it legit—but it soon crumbles around its own foundation, turning into quicksand. Like construction, it's not a good idea to go in and throw away the blue-print.

Foreman Raymond Yale (David Roberts in a fine "everyman" performance) is building a resort of "honeymoon suites" for Hubbard Construction in Sydney, Australia. He's getting a bit of side-work in, as well, (or "a bit of mischief" as is the phrase) in an affair with Carla Smith (Claire van der Boom). Both are trapped in loveless marriages: he's just "middle-age-crazy" and her husband (Anthony Hayes) is a low-life criminal. One day she discovers hubby has stashed a bag of cash in the attic—a sizable sum. She decides to tell Ray in an attempt for them to skip out and start anew with a nest-egg. Ray's hesitant. Carla takes that as a sign that an affair is all it's going to be and dumps him.

And if everything was going to be fine..that's where the movie would end. Ray can't give up Carla, so they plan their escape and to hide the theft of the loot, they arrange to burn down the Smith's house—the evidence of the switched bag will burn up, and no one will be the wiser.

Well, the last part's true, anyway. The Square is a noir deep in the tradition-ditch of such illicit classics as Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and Body Heat. The perfect plot starts to unravel before it can be set in motion, and soon both Carla and Ray are hip-deep in complications that get worse and worse, and messier and messier—the perfect trial for a relationship. For all the efforts to "make things better," things simply couldn't get worse...until they do.

Director Edgerton, who, before he started turning out short films* worked as a stunt-man, always finds the good angles to shoot from, and is more than happy to lead the audience into several very uncomfortable situations that have a gritty realism to them, all to make the audience squirm as much as the characters do, then tops it off with a neat little irony that twists the knife. Like his protagonists, this director might be too clever for his own good. It will be interesting to see what he does in the future and whether he'll deepen his material. For now, though, as an exercise in noir, this one is pretty special.

* The Square is preceded by Edgerton's 2007 short Spider, which is a good preparation for how sadistic a film-maker he can be to his audience. The less said the better, but don't be surprised if the film leaves you wary of the director, and tempted to walk out before the feature starts.

Parasite

...God Laughs
or
"Are You Being Served?" 

Here's an amazing multi-hyphenate movie that says a lot about class-clash while also being a wicked satire and a bit of a thriller, and it comes from a quite brilliant filmmaker out of Korea, Bong Joon-Ho.

It is an intricate story of how one can succeed—if  given the right contacts and allowed to grow into a position once enough information is learned to take advantage of the cracks in society and exploit them—without really trying.

The Kim family—father Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho), mother Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin), son Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik) and daughter Ki-jeong (Park So-dam)—live in a sub-basement apartment in a Korean slum that can barely contain them. When we first see them, disaster has struck—the free wi-fi they've been sponging off has stopped and they do a quick reconnaissance to see if there is some place where they can pick up another signal; it turns out there's a hot-spot right above the toilet. The family has no income other than making pizza boxes for a delivery service. It is apparent that Ki-taek is not unaccomplished; there is a medal on the wall from the past, but it is something that he has not been able to parlay into employment. Things are so desperate that at one point a fumigator is spraying the street for pestilence and Ki-taek orders the windows open: "Free fumigation!"

The kids are tech-savvy, with some exploitable skills and they are sharp enough that they can do some basic negotiating to make their situation a little better with the delivery service. But, the family ekes out an existence by taking advantage of any free perks they can pick up. One advantage that young Ki-woo has is a friend who's a university student; on a visit he bestows on the family a prosperity rock, and for his friend an opportunity—he will be studying abroad and asks that Ki-woo might do him a favor. He has been tutoring the daughter of a rich family, the Park's, and asks if Ki-woo will continue the English language tutoring. He has feelings for the daughter and knows he can trust his friend with her, rather than somebody else. He sets up a meeting with the girl's mother, and Ki-woo's sister forges papers for him to make it appear that he's a university student, too. 

Ki-woo goes to the interview and is impressed with the expansive he-tech house where the Park's live. He has been clued in that Mr. Park (Cho Yeo-jeong) is a little dim and he impresses her as well as the Park's live-in housekeeper Gook moon-gwang (Lee Jung-eun), who seems to have more control over the house-hold. Mrs. Park has certain ways of doing things, but is entirely lax about others; she is a bit clueless about her kids—the daughter Da-hye (Jung Ji-so), who instantly develops a crush on Ki-woo and the younger son, Da-song (Jung Hyeon-jun) who has some developmental issues. Da-song has a vivid imagination, which is tolerated by the Park's; for instance, he's seen ghosts in the house, which have brought on seizures, and he's currently going through a phase where he is fascinated by American Indians, threatening all visitors with rubber-tipped arrows.

Mrs. Park doesn't know what to do with Da-song as he can be a disruptive influence and wishes there was something she could do to channel his energies. When she shows "Kevin" (she insists on calling Ki-woo "Kevin") one of her son's paintings, he sees an opening, expressing interest in the style and mentioning that he has an acquaintance who might be able to help the kid with his art and using it to channel some of his energy—an "art therapist." Mrs. Park is intrigued and wants to meet this person.

"That person" is his sister Ki-jeong, only—in the plan that brother and sister work out—she is "Jessica" from America, who is studying in Korea. A trip down to the local internet cafe and she has documents that will impress Mrs. Park, and so the Kim's soon have two new sources of income and they start to make a lot more money for the family. The Park's, including tech-exec Mr. Park, is impressed with how well "Kevin" and "Jessica" are working out and it makes the lives of the parents that much easier.

If only they left it there. But, the Kim kids, while in the Parks' home, see opportunities—there is the chauffeur for Mr. and Mrs. Park and then, there is the housekeeper. A little training, a few test-drives of the newer model vehicles in the show-rooms, new set of clothes, a little blackmail and a little taking advantage of weaknesses, and the Kim's are soon all a part of the Park's lives, almost inseparable, each Kim assigned to a Park and their needs. Life is good. All the Kim's are steadily employed and all of the Park's are none the wiser to the subterfuge employed to get there.

But, it can't be that easy, can it?

Of course, it can't. And that's where the plot outline stops (due to spoiler issues) and the appreciation of Parasite (or gisaengchung or 기생충  if you would prefer) begins. Because once things start to settle down—and settle in—things only get more complicated and Parasite begins to take on another (...er) layer...story(?) from what it first appears to be. Because the plot eventually takes advantage of the issues of displacement and parity—if the Kim's can do this, why can't someone else?—and it is then that Parasite becomes more a thriller than a social satire (even a comedy) and becomes its own thing taking pages out of All About Eve and the Hitchcock playbook, clever little film that it is.

One also wonders what side to root for. Oh, sure you may have an "ideology"—that quaint little construct that replaces thought—and one could have a pang of resentment towards the Kim's (if they're so clever, why don't they find work—and the answer to that is "they do") or the Park's (how did they get so rich if they're that complacent and clueless?), but really, the audience is left a little adrift in this, not unlike the rudderlessness one feels when Janet Leigh is offed in Psycho and we start to latch onto Anthony Perkins in our attention—although it's uncomfortable doing so. The fact is the Kim's are clever enough to gain our respect and the Parks evoke the sympathy one has for the victim—even if they are still the ones "in charge."

They are in charge. They are, after all, the ones holding the purse-strings. The Kim's could be "let go" at any time (if their various subterfuges are found out) and washed out back to their ghetto apartment—which Bong demonstrates in which the Kim's must make a narrow escape back to their residence in the middle of a monsoon, following the same route as the drainage-water—and if the audience wasn't sympathetic to the Kim's there would be no tension...and it is there in abundance. The Kim's put themselves into a precarious position and, anxiously, the audience watches, dreading that it will all unravel.

The clash of class is palpable—one might even call it something of a strategic war—but, one feels it less in the characters than in the production design. This is one of those movies where the architecture defines what we see and may be one of the best examples of it since Kurosawa's High and Low (or Bong's Mother, actually) and the domiciles of both the Parks and the Kims are wonderful extremes in the use of space (or lack of it) to drive home a point. And the extravagant Park house (which already has had articles written about it in Architectural Digest) has one little surprise to it that might be the cleverest piece of irony in the movie-year. Certainly, the film has layers, not only in terms of strata but in terms of (shall we say...) "plot."

Post-script: Well, now Parasite has made something of a bit of history winning the latest Best Picture "first" at the Oscars. One waits for the inevitable back-lash: Is it deserving? (yes) Is it just some tokenism for a foreign film (no, it's that good and obviously so for Academy voters to appreciate—and when has a "foreign" film ever won for Best Picture—other than something British, that is?)

No. This is just good film-making where the term "foreign language film" is a meaningless term, when the language involved is the visual one of film, which have shared so many influences around the globe that despite the text involved has become one universal language, imported and exported throughout the world.

It is that sort of inclusive communication where one can nod one's head and, despite the clutter at the cineplex, call movies art.

A schematic of the much-discussed Park house of Parasite