The Big Sleep: The most baffling film ever made?

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20210812-the-big-sleep-the-most-baffling-film-ever-made

by DrNuke • 5 years ago

145 150 5 years ago

blowski• 5 years ago

Was it really that baffling? As a genre, film noir tends to have a twisting storyline and this was a particularly good one. But compared to, say, a Christopher Nolan or Charlie Kaufman film, this was a walk in the park.

leephillips4• 5 years ago

I love it and have seen it several times, but I still don’t know what’s going on. I believe you, though, because my girlfriend in college tried to explain it to a friend and me after we had all watched it. She had been able to follow it, but we were lost.

chippy• 5 years ago

Now realise that, compared to movies from the last generation, its the bafflement is the actual story, not the twists and turns. In other words, 40 years ago, this news article would bizarre! Everyone who saw the film would have grokked the way the movie was told.

Its like the amazing difference between medieval and modern art works is the difference in how metaphor and meaning is represented rather than the actual story represented. However some might say that it's the story that counts and thats whats interesting.

To be a cultural historian today must be very frustrating.

monkeyfacebag• 5 years ago

Do Christopher Nolan films have a reputation for being baffling? I've never had that experience with them.

On the other hand, we just saw The Green Knight and that one will throw you.

lotsofpulp• 5 years ago

They are certainly baffling without subtitles since the speech is not audible.

handrous2• 5 years ago

On the other hand, we just saw The Green Knight and that one will throw you.

I think I'm going to need at least two more viewings to get from "OK, I see it saying a lot of things about several themes or ideas, and I can tell what at least some of those themes or ideas are, but I have only the vaguest idea what it's saying about them" to "ah, now I get it."

Great movie.

bmitc2• 5 years ago

Nolan's films are not baffling in the sense of creating true mystery or intrigue. They are baffling because they truly are a mess and have inaudible dialog, and that's despite being famous for having tedious monologues.

tclancy• 5 years ago

Same, but have you read the book? I really like Chandler and have read it a number of times so I feel like there's a leg up. For instance, the Sean Reagan character doesn't really exist in the movie and barely registers when I watch it whereas his story is perhaps the biggest thing in the book.

Causality12• 5 years ago

arguing that we should embrace ambiguity.

This is probably my most despised media trend of the 21st century, and that's saying something.

"You decide how it ended"

"You decide if she lived or died"

"Their motivations for doing that are up to you"

"It means whatever you want it to mean"

It's an excuse for lazy writing and for being too cowardly to make decisions.

jerf• 5 years ago

I feel similarly about the "twist" that "it was just a dream!" or something similar. It's already fiction. It's already made up. If I wanted to be stuck with just the stories & endings and such I could make up, I wouldn't be coming to you for a story. Not that there isn't room for ambiguity or complexity or anything, but, I already know what I think. I'm here precisely to find out what someone else thinks, and "well, what do you think?" is not very helpful.

Joeboy3• 5 years ago

"It was just a dream" only works if it suggests an actual ending. Eg. Brazil, Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. I don't think it's a viable twist in itself.

graposaymaname• 5 years ago

Well it might be at times.

But there are movies/stories where it adds a whole different layer upon leaving that decision to the viewer.

For me the final scene in Inception is a really good example of using the above said ambiguity.

leephillips4• 5 years ago

Ambiguity, the planting of multiple possible interpretations, has been a part of art forever. All art: literature, painting, etc. I would even say it’s an integral part of the best art.

dang3• 5 years ago

Yes, but not ambiguity about the basic facts of a story. That's a modern thing as far as I know. It's also a risky artistic move because it thwarts one of the main satisfactions in a story, the resolution of tension. If you're going to take that away, you'd better 'give' something that's equally satisfying, or else the reader/viewer will feel cheated.

telside• 5 years ago

I was so into art film in college because of the cheap weird art film video store down the street.

Having digested so much and having 30 years to think about, I just don't think the medium lends itself to art well. The medium lends itself to cohesive pedestrian narratives. Going beyond that mostly just ends up with bad art and nonsense.

Big Sleep has nothing on Warhol's Sleep. I mean I actually rented Warhol's Sleep before...

stuart78• 5 years ago

Like any other technique, leaving on a question can be a poor substitute for a more fitting ending, but when done properly it can reinforce a core theme within the work.

I am not a huge Inception fan, but I do think the cut at the end is an important part of the movie and a good example of effective ambiguity. It might scratch an itch to show the top falling of hold longer (to confirm he is in a dream), but what value comes from that resolution? Ending the film before the answer allows us to think about what we've seen earlier to try and answer it for ourselves. Even though the movie is over, the audience is left with a part to play as they leave the theater.

ubermonkey6• 5 years ago

This is a deeply predictable (and pedestrian) take, and I 100% expected to see it here (as I expect to see it in any technical forum).

Highly technical people -- developers, engineers, etc -- are much more likely (at least in my experience) to react negatively to nonlinear storytelling. Further, the reaction is almost never "wow, not for me" but instead "THIS IS STUPID".

It's essentially the equivalent of walking through, say, a Mondrian exhibit and spouting "my kid can do that."

I do not know why this correlation exists. I could make guesses, tying the exacting nature of programming with an attraction to well-defined and explicit storytelling, but it is what it is.

THE BIG SLEEP is awesome. MULHOLLAND DRIVE is a tremendous (and award-winning) film. Ambiguity and vagueness are integral to art (and life!).

Years ago, I saw a play by Maria Irene Fornes called THE DANUBE. It's a bizarre, baffling, and beautiful piece, and you cannot really approach it like you would (say) a Marvel film expecting a traditional narrative. That's not what it's FOR. It's an experience. You have to let go of the desire to tick off plot points and characters like players in a football program and just experience the art on its own terms.

Creating something that includes, or even hinges on, ambiguity is challenging in the extreme. It's like when jazz musicians break the "rules" of music and melody; you can only break the rules and have it work when you have really mastered the underlying craft.

Exploring these kinds of challenging works can be incredibly rewarding. I encourage anyone reading this to do so. I long ago decided that if I only ever saw plays/read books/watched movies that I liked, I wasn't branching out enough. Find things that challenge you, and engage them on their own terms. Figure out why (for example) a host of professional movie critics loved Lynch's film when it left you cold and maybe even angry. What do they see that you don't?

ryandvm• 5 years ago

Programmers are generally unhappy with fuzziness or else they wouldn't be good programmers.

yupper323• 5 years ago

I really dislike this take.

Listen, it's fine if people enjoy nonlinear storytelling to make it an "experience" or a canvas with a few straight lines painted on it. But it is stupid, to follow your quote.

If you're using devices to make a story more difficult to follow, just for the sake of making it more difficult to follow for the "challenge", then that's stupid. I'm not claiming The Big Sleep is even in this category, because I haven't seen it, but plenty of films and books are.

If a canvas painted a solid color or with a few straight lines sells for millions, then that's stupid.

People enjoy "stupid" things all the time, and that's fine. There's nothing really wrong with that.

But the important part of my point is: only artists seem to think they're above it.

Causality12• 5 years ago

There's a difference between ambiguity that's integrated into a story and ambiguity that's forced on the viewer. If the only thing that makes the movie ambiguous is that the final shot of the film isn't five minutes longer, then that is the type of film I hate. All Is Lost, The Grey, Save Yourselves, etc. If it's woven into the story from the beginning then I have no issue with it even if it may not be for me.

thom• 5 years ago

It's true! I awake each morning, enraged at the lack of rigour in my dreams. I turn to my wife to tell her I found it hard to suspend my disbelief. She transforms into a crab. Every night it gets worse.

legerdemain2• 5 years ago

You must be one of those art snobs that liked Last Year at Marienbad!

lmm• 5 years ago

Years ago, I saw a play by Maria Irene Fornes called THE DANUBE. It's a bizarre, baffling, and beautiful piece, and you cannot really approach it like you would (say) a Marvel film expecting a traditional narrative. That's not what it's FOR. It's an experience. You have to let go of the desire to tick off plot points and characters like players in a football program and just experience the art on its own terms.
Exploring these kinds of challenging works can be incredibly rewarding. I encourage anyone reading this to do so. I long ago decided that if I only ever saw plays/read books/watched movies that I liked, I wasn't branching out enough. Find things that challenge you, and engage them on their own terms. Figure out why (for example) a host of professional movie critics loved Lynch's film when it left you cold and maybe even angry. What do they see that you don't?

I've had that experience. But I've had it in response to many phenomena, artificial and natural, not just critically respected artworks. If you approach other things on the same terms, you can find the same depth and reward - even when there's no there there.

Creating something that includes, or even hinges on, ambiguity is challenging in the extreme. It's like when jazz musicians break the "rules" of music and melody; you can only break the rules and have it work when you have really mastered the underlying craft.

Citation needed. The effectiveness of GPT etc. suggest that poetic ambiguity may be the cheap trick that many of us have long thought it was; similarly I've seen a few cases where when a critic takes schizophrenic writings seriously and has much the same response as they do to respected artists. Has anyone actually done a double-blind trial comparing "good" and "bad" high-ambiguity works? (e.g. if you make those professional movie critics write their responses independently, without knowledge of the creators, and then compare those responses in an objective way, are they actually more correlated than chance?)

In a world where ambiguity didn't actually take a lot of artistic skill, and whether a high-ambiguity work was perceived as good or bad was more a function of art-community politics (e.g. who the creator is), what would you expect to be different?

nonameiguess• 5 years ago

It's interesting that you're citing a film made 60 years before the 21st century as an example of a 21st century trend. If anything, we seem to be moving in the opposite direction. Star Wars tried to explain where the force comes from. Christopher Nolan includes ridiculously detailed exposition dumps explaining everything (in spite of the ambiguous ending of Inception, everything about how the world worked was explained in meticulous detail). Even the canonical mystery box master himself, Damon Lindelof, took to heart all the backlash about the non-explanation ending of Lost. Nobody expected The Leftovers would ever give an explanation of what caused the Sudden Departure, but it did.

Heck, even David Lynch himself gave Laura Palmer an origin story in Twin Peaks: The Return! And even where he tried to preserve some mystery, the companion book by Mark Frost explained all of it.

psychomugs2• 5 years ago

I really root for Nolan; I very much liked Interstellar and enjoyed Tenet, but I think he's a clear example of someone who excelled so much at a commercial medium that the get-the-most-butts-in-seats factor necessitates the exposition diarrhea. There's just enough ambiguity for the common pseudo-news-site or vlogger to make "the ending of $FILMTITLE REALLY explained" content.

I think Lynch, who's learned to "rule over small films than serve large corporate ones" [1], probably bent over a little bit to get The Return made, but I still left with as many, if not more, questions as I had coming in.

[1] https://youtu.be/GopJ1x7vK2Q?t=567

chowells• 5 years ago

Exactly none of those are what ambiguity means. Ambiguity means that there are multiple resolutions that fit the existing evidence equally well.

That doesn't mean you get to decide. Ambiguity isn't choose your own adventure. You aren't having agency assigned to you in order to be the ultimate arbiter.

Ambiguity is the opposite. You are having agency withheld and being told by the author that you don't get to know.

It's an exercise in accepting that some things are unknowable and a challenge to you to find enjoyment in the story despite that.

Maybe you fail at that challenge. That's ok. Some people demand their art be unlike life, in that everything is always fully explained. But some people enjoy the construction, the ride, and the occasional recollection and reconsideration as time goes on. Ambiguous art is for for them.

But it's not a choose your own adventure story for anyone.

ghaff• 5 years ago

It depends on the film. Without getting into a long rambling film analysis, there are certainly films (Inception is probably one), for example, in which the ending really is ambiguous and those assert otherwise are probably looking a little too deeply into discerning patterns in the tea leaves. There are others (probably including Total Recall) where there is a logical argument to be made as to why the film actually ended in a particular way.

wccrawford• 5 years ago

I absolutely agree.

I love being made to think during a movie. I despise the movie ending without an ending.

It's incredibly easy to set up a scenario that could have multiple endings, but it's hard to see what the ending actually is before it happens.

It's a lot more entertaining and satisfying to view that scenario to the end and then have the tale end in a satisfying way.

Any idiot can come up with an ending to those tales. (And they do, because you'll find them posted on the internet afterwards, even if the movie already has one!) Only good writers can come up with good endings.

recursive2• 5 years ago

Sometimes I enjoy not being satisfied. On a few occasions, I've even not watched or read the end of a work, just to keep the possibilities open in my mind. Stories with big open questions have the ability to stick with me longer. Sometimes I like that.

pjmorris• 5 years ago

I was amazed and astonished when I first saw 'The Big Sleep', early in my college career. I'd never seen a movie I had a hard time following before, and I was captivated.

There's an old Steve Yegge post where he described presenting for Jeff Bezos. I'm paraphrasing, but Yegge said something like after writing the presentation (no slides), delete every fifth paragraph to keep Bezos intrigued enough to pay attention. I feel like that's what happened to either the script or the filming of 'The Big Sleep.'

EDIT: Every third paragraph, link to Yegge post: https://gist.github.com/kislayverma/6681d4cce736cd7041e6c821...

seph-reed3• 5 years ago

This was a really nice read.

I've made a habit lately of "checking out" on having any opinion about anything I can't truly analyze. And this is a great example of why.

I'm surrounded in content telling me why Bezos is a monster, and they make a good argument. But for all that hatred, I've never once heard a single mention of him being smart, let alone intimidatingly smart, let alone "a first class genius" or "better regarded as hyper-intelligent aliens with a tangential interest in human affairs."

This seems like an important character detail to have been left out.

soneca• 5 years ago

I remember reading about him being very smart multiple times. Just not on articles commenting Amazon workplace environment and such, as it should not be indeed.

On articles about the beginnings of Amazon, the writing culture, or anything that is in part a biography on Bezos, I always see it mentioned how smart he is.

yumaikas3• 5 years ago

I wonder how much of "smart" is due to his power, and how much of it is due to his intellect.

I say this not because I don't believe he doesn't have an impressive intellect, but because, well, what if someone had his intellect, but worked in an Amazon warehouse due to circumstances outside of their control?

1123581321• 5 years ago

You usually find that in anything talking about his DE Shaw background.

aidenn0• 5 years ago

Per TFA there was an early cut with Marlowe in voiceover explaining things. This was removed at some point, which does indeed support your theory.

lqet3• 5 years ago

This is also exactly how I felt when I first watched "The Godfather: Part 2". There was just so much left out, and so much of extreme significance was only slightly hinted at (just take the scene where Michael realizes the betrayal!). If you only stop paying attention for a single scene, chances are that you will not get the plot. That not only makes you completely immersed in the movie, it also makes for very satisfying rewatches.

jimbob45• 5 years ago

When I watch things with other people and I see them looking down at their phone during scenes like the one where Michael realizes the betrayal, I then know they're not going to have enjoyed the movie because they'll have missed a critical visual cue. I don't want to rewind the scene because that seems passive-aggressive but I also don't want to waste another two hours on their part on a movie that they almost certainly can't enjoy anymore.

zmp0989• 5 years ago

Funny (to me) story about the first time I watched the first two Godfather films. I was in high school and home pretty ill. My dad rented both films for me. I was so out of it that I didn't know which family was the Corleones until midway through the 2nd movie.

blacksqr• 5 years ago

I remember I had to watch "The Long Goodbye" with Elliot Gould three times to figure out exactly what was going on [0]. A detective job in itself.

A good movie nonetheless.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:The_Long_Goodbye_(film)#A...

candlemas• 5 years ago

Leigh Brackett also wrote the screenplay for that movie.

YeBanKo• 5 years ago

The linked article reads like a pure idolization. It’s like Bible, except written not more than a thousand years ago but now, and by fishermen, but by sw engineers, the message is the same though.

Graffur• 5 years ago

That post is cringe inducing. Yegge had to put himself down " I don’t know why it’s not in there. It should be. I’m a dork." to keep Bezos happy?

Let's face it: Bezos isn't some alien from another planet. He's privileged and lucky. He's lucky he had engineers come and help him build his company.

bmitc2• 5 years ago

The advice to arbitrarily delete every third paragraph makes zero sense. That whole piece is just cult of personality. The advice is also an insult to real writers who know how to actually craft intriguing stories.

zabzonk• 5 years ago

I remember watching it (I'd seen it before) with an audience of stoner undergrads at St. Andrews University (not the brightest of people - I was at Edinburgh) and having to explain what exactly was going on, not helped by being somewhat stoned myself.

But do films (or any art) have to "make sense"? For example, I've never really worked out what the original "Solaris" is about, but it doesn't stop it from being both scary and moving.

themodelplumber• 5 years ago

But do films (or any art) have to "make sense"?

In a lot of ways I think it depends on your role, and the role of the film in your experience. If your role is to enjoy, then I hope the film was created with your preferred perceptive style in mind.

If your role is to write a paper on a film, maybe the make-sense films make that whole assignment much easier.

Solaris is a tremendous sensory experience on its own. You can pick up on a lot of the implications by interpreting the film's sensory output as metaphor. From facial expressions to positioning, texture, and sound / music.

A lot of people find that relaxing because the metaphor-extraction process is like a background process for them and it feeds their intuitive grasp of what's unfolding in the "big picture" of the film. They tend to take in and process much of life in the same way.

At the same time, not everybody enjoys that, and it will make some people downright uncomfortable. To be comfortable with a film, maybe they need to be able to piece it together logically for example, or at least be able to create by themselves an explanation/exposition of the contents where one didn't exist before.

Incidentally, I find the sensory-experiential/metaphorical approach (my go-to) much less fulfilling while watching films created by people who are more logical and detail-driven.

For example, I was rewatching _The Spanish Prisoner_ the other day and it was painfully clear that Mamet really wanted viewers to track his labyrinth of aphoristic details.

From a sensory-metaphor perspective there wasn't much to work with, and the film didn't seem to "make sense" from that intuitive standpoint.

But it's less painful IMO, and maybe even more pleasurable, when you know the kind of gifts and preferred perspectives the director is working with, and at least you're aware that you can make a decision to change your perceptive focus, or watch something else. That aspect makes sense to me, and helps me watch films that wouldn't otherwise make sense in this way or that one.

LarrySellers2• 5 years ago

When I realized that The Big Lebowski is The Big Sleep + bowling it blew my mind

AutumnCurtain• 5 years ago

Definitely very inspired by. The whole Jackie Treehorn element in particular

at_a_remove• 5 years ago

Take Dark City. I believe the studio forced a new opening that more or less explained everything rather than letting you puzzle it all out. I didn't find the movie too hard to work through, but I think Hollywood execs have a fairly low estimation of the audience's intellect.

Lynch is a bit harder. Lynch is atypical in two ways that play off of one another. First and most obviously, he has been developing as a film-maker (as one would hope over the decades), but he expects that his audience would have kept up with him, introducing a kind of filmic vocabulary. I would say that Mulholland Drive is much, much more comprehensible once you have understood what Lost Highway is on about. In turn, Lost Highway is an extended riff off of the dualism you would see in Twin Peaks and Fire Walk With Me. As to the second factor, Lynch is very heavy into TM and he would like to present images, sounds, and such to the viewer, and then find out what the viewer thinks of them. Not in a "this is up to you to puzzle out," rather he is pitching rocks and skipping stones off of what he likely believes is to be a collective unconscious or a shared cultural experience, then being excited about what might pop up. It's a genuine interest, I think.

LarrySellers2• 5 years ago

“I don't know why people expect art to make sense. They accept the fact that life doesn't make sense.” -- David Lynch

psychomugs2• 5 years ago

I've been on a mini Lynch binge recently (Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, and a lot of his interviews on Linda Faludi's excellent channel [1]) and I feel like this quote sums him up.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVdYdogQM2xd29HUOED4EbQ

newsbinator2• 5 years ago

They accept the fact that life doesn't make sense.

Most people, in most cultures, don't accept it as fact that life doesn't make sense.

What % of people would agree with the statement "everything happens for a reason"? Or even "because God did it".

Of those who don't think everything happens for a reason (i.e. life makes sense... to someone), the vast majority nevertheless believe we live in a universe of physical rules.

We accept we could get wiped out by an asteroid or a deadly plague, sure. That makes sense.

We don't accept we could get wiped out by a Lynchian fever dream. That doesn't make sense.

RobertoG2• 5 years ago

That's great insight about Lynch.

I was totally puzzled by Mulholland Drive, then I read an explanation in a IMDB review, watch it again, and I was amazed that everything made sense. It was encrypted and somebody gave me the keys. That's really an artistic experience.

earleybird3• 5 years ago

Great artists are often misunderstood, many who are misunderstood are not great artists - The Sphinx :-)

LaundroMat• 5 years ago

Do you still have that link somewhere?

hmsshagatsea• 5 years ago

Dark City’s changes, like most of the time a studio interferes with a creator’s vision, is all about profitability. It’s too risky financially to make a film that does not have wide appeal. It’s nothing personal, just business. And when they test these films they take any criticism rather harshly. They simply don’t have the time or the foresight to find out if people will like it after a little bit.

slim• 5 years ago

The corollary is one should start David Lynch from Eraser head :) Which in a way is his easiest film because you can't read it in a superficial level, there's simply no superficial level. You go straight to the cipher.

jasonwatkinspdx2• 5 years ago

Yeah, that intro to Dark City was a crime against the audience. And honestly I think it was really shortsighted/cowardly of the studio. If you look at two movies that came just a year later, The Matrix and Sixth Sense, a big surprise reveal was central to both of their appeal. And this shouldn't have been a surprise to the studios... the twist in The Usual Suspects came half a decade earlier, not to mention Empire Strikes Back.

My second least favorite thing studios do is cut the trailer in a way that makes the movie seem totally different or even a totally different genre.

Aside: a friend gave me the Sixth Sense dvd as a birthday gift one year, which I had yet to see, and my idiot roommate at that time was in the room couldn't restrain himself from trying to cleverly address my friend in a way that communicated he knew the twist. Except he'd never touched on clever in his life and gave it away instantly. Nice one Paul. Nice one.

gfxgirl• 5 years ago

I must have been lucky. I saw Dark City opening week and there was no explainer. I bought the DVD as soon as it came out, no explainer there either. I bought the Bluray later, no explainer there.

On the other hand I did see Blade Runner when it had the narration the first time I saw it. Luckily I've seen it without many times since.

lqet3• 5 years ago

Regarding classic film-noir movies, I found "The Lady from Shanghai" by Orson Welles much more baffling, and also frustrating. The first time I watched it, I didn't really get the plot. As a big Orson Welles fan, I assumed it was my fault and consulted Wikipedia. The Wikipedia understanding of the plot was equivalent to mine and didn't answer any questions, so I watched it a second time, and a third time. There are massive plot holes. I really believe that Welles was not interested in a coherent plot, he just needed a vehicle for beautiful cinematography and great acting. But it is so frustrating if you try to follow a complicated plot, only to realise at the end of the movie that not even the director was able to understand it.

WalterBright6• 5 years ago

The "Lost" miniseries is enjoyable only once you accept that it simply doesn't make any sense. Just enjoy the moments.

Though "Lost" was on to something with the dialog "it's a snowglobe!" They could have followed up on that, leading to a satisfying conclusion, but as with everything else, it just went nowhere.

dragonwriter• 5 years ago

The “Lost” miniseries

Is this different than the Lost series of 6 seasons and 121 episodes?

Or is this just an unusual use of the prefix “mini-”?

asdff2• 5 years ago

I'm really surprised LOST still has that reputation years after release. Having seen the entire thing, I think the plot makes sense and there aren't very many holes. The writers omit a lot early on but I felt like it gets answered by the end as you learn more about the island. In the moment as it was being released year by year I can see how it was seen as confusing when you'd wait for a while to get an explanation, but these days you could binge the entire thing.

anigbrowl• 5 years ago

I don't remember enough about Welles' life and career without checking to be sure, but there's a good chance that the flaws are the result of welles' running out of money or having control of the film taken away by other producers due to his inability to meet deadlines.

okareaman• 5 years ago

Whew! I thought it was just me.

telesphore• 5 years ago

It's a matter of setting up expectations and balancing that with good story telling.

Ambiguity, elision, out-of-order story telling, etc. are all part of art but it's a delicate balance. There's a contract that artists set up with the audience that will allow them to use these techniques. Primer is one of those where I'm OK with my confusion because the story was interesting without all the answers, and it was setup pretty early on that this wasn't an A to B story. On the other hand, the fade-to-black ending of The Sopranos was, in my opinion, a total violation of that contract. Nowhere did they setup that kind of ambiguity. Yes, it's a series vs. a movie but my point still stands.

No Country for Old Men, again IMO, rides that line a little close. Sure the Bardem character checks his boots at the end but there were some other major gaps that I don't think were set up. It was well acted and produced but expectations were not managed so it still goes into my meh pile.

When it works the it's a lot of fun figuring things out. I'll have to give The Big Sleep a try.

Edit: At the other end of the spectrum, expository lumps are no fun either.

lqet3• 5 years ago

On the other hand, the fade-to-black ending of The Sopranos was, in my opinion, a total violation of that contract. Nowhere did they setup that kind of ambiguity.

I respectfully disagree. One of the qualities of "The Sopranos" was exactly that things weren't always spelled out explicitely. Also, I did not really find the ending to be extremely ambigious. I mean, it is pretty clear what happened.

FireBeyond• 5 years ago

I mean even that exact ending was spelled out a few episodes before, when the characters are (and I'm paraphrasing) discussing death, and how you never know, because for you, things are just happening around you, you're living, then ... nothing.

Michael Imperioli even pointed it out on a late show interview, that there were multiple hints in the previous episodes that spelled things out entirely clearly.

d23• 5 years ago

No Country for Old Men, again IMO, rides that line a little close. Sure the Bardem character checks his boots at the end but there were some other major gaps that I don't think were set up. It was well acted and produced but expectations were not managed so it still goes into my meh pile.

Really? This is one of my favorite movies. What did you find overly ambiguous? If anything I felt the closing dialog and monologue were sort of on the nose about the theme of the movie, but I don't mind that.

PopePompus• 5 years ago

My takeaway from Primer (perhaps my favorite movie) is that the confusion is the message of the movie. If a time machine existed, and was used repeatedly, it would become impossible even for the persons involved to maintain a clear understanding of what had happened and what was happening.

version_five2• 5 years ago

One thing I'd add to the article is that a key feature of the Marlow novels is their meandering plots. I read once that Raymond Chandler stories are about the journey, not the destination, so basically you're following Marlow around as he does stuff (that is mentioned in the article). The stuff he does is locally interesting, and it makes the stories good. But judging the stories based on their plot synopsis doesn't really get you anywhere. I've read all the Marlow novels, a while ago now, but I'd be challenged to give a decent summary of any of them. Its about the individual scenes.

smackeyacky• 5 years ago

This is very much my experience of those novels. Not quite as opaque as Conrad's "Heart of darkness" but I get the idea that you are supposed to be as much in the dark about what is happening to Marlowe as Marlowe is himself. It helps with the immersion.

twelvechairs• 5 years ago

TV has shifted this way, where its now common to have long running series where different writers, directors, etc. across every episode. Everything is logical in its immediate context but can seem illogical in the broader context of the entire series/show.

mixmastamyk• 5 years ago

Yes, lots of characters change at random, just when you think you know them.

fenomas• 5 years ago

Yeah, he talks a lot about this in his essays - one quote I liked was "a good mystery is one you'd read even if the end was missing". He was definitely rebelling against the classical mystery format, where every clue must be clearly presented so that the reader can guess whodunit.

meijer• 5 years ago

The young Lauren Bacall somehow looks very contemporary. No idea why...

jbgreer• 5 years ago

I'm a big fan of 'The Big Sleep', Kubrick & Lynch. I also enjoy nonfiction literature that dumps you in the middle of the story. I find encountering unfamiliar words, characters, etc. interesting, and the extra work to figure out the context is satisfying. My wife, on the other hand, hates that sort of thing, such that I recognize there are works I cannot recommend to her, or movies we can only watch with my finger on a pause button, ready to explain. She's not dumb, but she certainly has less appreciation or patience to put up with that sort of thing.

BatFastard• 5 years ago

Primer has got to be the most baffling movie ever made, impossible to keep track of the timelines! Still an awesome movie!

munchler• 5 years ago

The great thing about Primer is that most of its important events don't even appear in the movie itself.

If you like Primer, I highly recommend Shane Carruth's other movie, Upstream Color. Very different from Primer, but similar in that both movies let viewers figure things out for themselves.

chadcmulligan• 5 years ago

There was a story I heard that the actors couldn't follow what was going on either, there was a large blackboard with arrows and scenes to help them figure out where they were.

For anyone who's thinking of watching this weekend, the Maltese falcon is another great Bogart movie, and not quite as complex as the big sleep, and my personal favourite.

jedimastert• 5 years ago

If you wanna talk about baffling movies (or just a fun story) check out The Terror

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3Qo-bntEZc

wrp2• 5 years ago

For anyone who had trouble understanding the plot of The Big Sleep, I would really like to hear what the difficult points were for you. It's one of my favorite movies and while the plot was convoluted, I never felt it was confusing. I see this as an opportunity to understand how some other people process narratives.

georgeecollins• 5 years ago

If you have ever read the book-- and I recommend it-- the movie is very much like the book and the book makes sense. Partly because you are reading and you can take the details in. But it makes sense to me.

exabrial• 5 years ago

I don't know... you probably haven't seen Sharknado. The real mystery is why does this film even exist

mikhailfranco• 5 years ago

I highly recommend the BBC radio versions of Chandler's Marlowe books, starring Ed Bishop as Marlowe. The collection contains 6 x 1.5hr plays, including The Big Sleep.

https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details/Raymond_Cha...

The plays are rarely rebroadcast on the BBC:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007k360

rwmj• 5 years ago

Ed Bishop out of UFO? (Checks Wikipedia, and yes it is!)

The Big Sleep: The most baffling film ever made?

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