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Message: <blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 1291031" data-attributes="member: 812">No, I am not. In fact, I can't think of a single film I hold that opinion about.Sometimes I see a twist coming and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I enjoy a film and sometimes I don't.Identity is a rather flimsy pot-boiler saved from utter tediousness almost entirely by John Cusack's lovely performance.The Usual Suspects is an over-rated caper flick that again boasts great performances and enough snappy dialog to overcome its own shallowness. And has unfortunately delivered us into the clumsy, self-important hands of Brian Singer. Sigh.But let's take two other famous "twist" films -- The Sixth Sense and Fight Club. I disliked the former and loved the latter. In both cases I saw the twist coming (it's a funny state watching a film and being aware of where it's going -- I wouldn't say I "figured it out", more like in the back of my head a voice was wondering "maybe THIS is what's going on..." so that when it came I wasn't surprised), so that's obviously not a key determiner to my enjoyment of the films. But on reflection, what DID make a difference was the manner in which the twist was presented.The Sixth Sense tricks you. Which is no great feat for a director, of course -- all he has to do is NOT show you the character doing anything that will later on be inconsistent with what we learn about them. He doesn't have to be particularly clever to pull this off -- the advantages he possesses as director make it a very straightforward thing to do. Even bad mystery writers generally manage to succeed at this. But the primary problem of The Sixth Sense isn't the director's trick -- it's the absurd resolution of the child's problem. For the entire film he's being tortured mentally and physically by these spirits and suddenly they get revealed as... [spoiler]just little kids who happen to possess videotapes of their parents murdering them.[/spoiler] The "wrap-up" is insipid and puts an end to any pretense by the film to deal with any real-life issues of grief and loss.Fight Club lies to you. The director doesn't trick us -- he outright lies to us. He shows us things that are not true -- and to be sure we understand that we have been lied to, he later shows us scenes we've already seen, but showing us the absurdity of the supposedly "real" sequence of events. The twist in the story tells us we're not seeing any sort of "reality" in this film, and if you follow the chain of logic, the ENTIRE film starts to come apart. [spoiler]I mean, seriously, are we expected to believe that a bunch of guys came across Edward Norton beating himself and thus formed this massive religious movement? THE WHOLE FILM IS A LIE.[/spoiler] Fight Club only makes sense on the metaphorical level -- the film is about the death of the self as a necessary step on the road to enlightenment. It's the cinematic equivalent of D.H. Lawrence's "The Ship of Death".</blockquote>

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