Looper

In the year 2044, Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a specialized hitman, or "Looper." He waits at certain spot where his victim will materialize in front of him, tied up with a bag over his head, to be dispatched by Joe's shotgun or "Blunderbuss." and then disposed of. The body disposal is the important part, since Joe is working for gangsters thirty years in his own future (2074) where sophisticated tracking makes it impossible to make a body disappear. Luckily for the mob, in 2074, time travel has been discovered, although it was almost instantly outlawed and carries severe penalties. Being the perfect method to get rid of enemies, and not hung up on the illegality, the mob has taken over time travel exclusively, although they do it in strict secrecy. To maintain that secrecy, Looper's sometimes have to get rid of their older selves, when the 2074 bosses deem them a threat. A Looper killing his future self, is called "closing the loop" for obvious reasons, and your self assassination is your last job, carrying a big payday and retirement.

We're introduced to Joe on an average day. He kills a guy, collects his pay (silver bars strapped to his hooded victim.) incinerates the body, and then hits the town. We see that Joe has a drug problem, in this case taken in the eyes, with an eye dropper. In Joe's present, the haves and have nots have embraced their differences, making "vagrants" public enemy number one. There have also been incidents of people developing telekinesis, although rather than producing superhero's, it's limited to guys trying to impress woman by floating quarters, which Joe calls "tacky." Joe doesn't care much about class warfare, he has his own crowd, which includes his favorite prostitute, Suzie (Piper Perabo.) He hangs out with other Loopers and when he isn't on the job, it's a constant party.

A bump in his lifestyle happens pretty quickly though, when it seems the big boss in the future, known only as "The Rainmaker." is closing everybody's loops. This is first presented as a happy occasion, Joe informs us that most Loopers aren't "forward thinking." and having 30 years to spend your money no doubt seems like a good thing at the time. Joe is a bit more forward thinking than most, trying to learn French and saving half of all his pay days for his eventual retirement to France.

Except for his friend Seth (Paul Dano) who shows up late one night at Joe's window. He tells Joe that he recognized his future self, from a tune he was whistling and taking advantage of his hesitation, Seth's future self got away. Joe reluctantly hides Seth in his floor vault, as the mob arrives looking for him. Joe is escorted to the present day mob boss, Abe (Jeff Daniels) who was   sent from the future long ago to coordinate everything. Abe knows that Joe is helping Seth, but rather than resort to torture, he tells him "I'm just going to talk a little bit." We learn that it was Abe that recruited Joe, his youngest Looper yet. At the time Joe was a vagrant kid on his own, but Abe tells him "I gave you something that was your own." Abe reveals that he knows Joe very well. He gives Joe three choices, he can die, give up his savings or call the cops. He also advises Joe to go to China rather than France. Joe's no hero, he turns Seth in. He quickly finds himself in the same dilemma however. His future self (Bruce Willis) arrives at the appointed place without a hood, making Joe hesitate a moment, all his future self needs to turn the tables.

We witness young Joe's transformation into older Joe. The specialized hitman becomes a full on gangster over the years, becomes very dangerous and then the right woman "saves his life." and settles him down. It's quickly discovered that young Joe, has failed to close his loop, and Abe's men, headed up by the bumbling Kid Blue (Noah Segan) make finding him priority one. He knows they won't kill him as that could affect the time stream somehow, but they are well aware, that taking a limb off the younger version can make the older one easier to find. With some assistance from his older self he evades capture. Younger Joe arranges a meeting with himself and learns that the Rainmaker cost older Joe the woman he loved, and in the past he has an opportunity to make this right by finding the rainmaker when he's a kid and making sure he doesn't grow up. Older Joe. However, even in the future, nobody knows anything about the Rainmaker, only that he came out of nowhere and assumed control of all the crime families in no time all, all by himself, a seemingly impossible task. Older Joe has three possible addresses, and three possible kids.

Younger Joe picks one of the addresses and camps out, knowing that his older self will come there eventually. The address he picks belongs to a single Mother, Sara (Emily Blunt) who is raising her son, Cid (Pierce Gagnon) He lets her in on what's happening and they develop a working relationship, based on the idea that he'll help protect them. Cid turns out to be a gifted child in many ways, and Joe can't help but bond with the both of them. It's only a matter of time however, before Abe's men, Sara and Cid, and both Joe's have their confrontation.

Looper keeps the time travel simple. As Older Joe points out, figuring out all the rules of time travel can give you a headache and usually leads to making diagrams on tables with straws. Time travel here is a one way proposition, and older Joe's memory is fuzzy when younger Joe is in action, becoming clearer, every time young Joe does something. Older Joe is visiting his own past, and the only tragedy he cares about has already happened. This gives us a good chance to look at the old "kill Hitler as a child" time travel question. Since Joe doesn't pretend to be noble or heroic his answer is pretty clear. If killing a few kids will keep his wife from getting killed, he's absolutely going to do just that. The "Kill Hitler" problem has been asked many times before, most memorably in a Twilight Zone episode, where a woman traveled back to kill Hitler and succeeded, not realizing that Hitler's nanny would replace the baby with a similar one destined to be the Hitler we know. Limited perspective is certainly a problem it wouldn't hurt to be careful about.

Of course Old Joe isn't happy about it, but Willis is very good at playing an unstoppable guy doing things he doesn't necessarily enjoy doing, but has to. He even knows that two of the three kids are totally innocent, but that doesn't compare with his own tragedy, a woman saved his worthless life, he got her killed, but has a second chance.  He doesn't see any choice there at all. How Willis manages to kill kids and still be sympathetic is a mystery to me, but he pulls it off. He's also the best there is at casually shooting buildings full of bad (worse?) guys without breaking a sweat, and he's true to form here.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt looks a little different, made up to resemble Bruce Willis more closely. He certainly studied Willis too, as his mannerisms and speech patterns coincide with the older actor.  The younger Joe, isn't the dangerous man he would later become yet. He's simply a former vagrant who was given a shotgun and told he could be something more. He's fascinated by his older self, but would gladly kill him for a way back into his old job. He gave up a friend to keep his money. He's more forward thinking than most Loopers but still has a lot to learn. Still, it's easy to believe that the younger guy becomes the older one. All the machinery is there, it just hasn't clicked yet.

Emily Blunt elevates what could have been a standard damsel in distress role into a pivotal one. We learn that her relationship with her son is a lot more complex than you might imagine. She isn't shocked to learn that her son could become a monster one day, but she protects him anyway. She doesn't come from Older Joe's future. In her mind, many things are possible, and she hopes that being there for her son will produce a better future. She's the contrast to older Joe much more than young Joe is. Young Joe is the mediator, although it isn't against his nature to kill the kid himself should he believe that he is a monster. And of course, being an abandoned child, he can relate to the damage losing a parent can cause. Joe from the present could go either way.

As good as all these actors are, the standout is Pierce Gagnon as ten year old Cid. He shows us both the blind rage and the insecurity than can exist in any ten year old. He can be cruel and sincerely sorry within moments of each other. After one particularly bad tantrum, we see his mother pick him up after he raged himself to sleep, and he then tell her he's sorry and give her a hug for all he's worth, and we can't help but believe him. He can be a monster and he can be very sweet. Like most ten year olds he goes back and forth depending on what has happened to him. Certainly young Joe identifies with him a lot, himself a kid who saw a shotgun in his hand as a far better alternative to the life he'd been living.

This is a movie about the things that people are willing to kill and die for, and what gives life meaning. It's hard to choose between causes when they're all, on some level, well meaning motivations. When you have something that's so important you're willing to die for it, it can look like you have no choice at all, especially when life is as grim as it is here. A man puts a gun in your hand to take you off the streets, so you go to work for him. A man comes looking to kill your son, you protect him. The man who took your wife from you and caused untold suffering is in front of you as a child, you get rid of him. Everybody has a good reason, and no one's trying to be the bad guy, but everybody in this scenario can't get what they want, not as long as everyone's a victim of their own circumstances and willing to defend their present, and "something of their own." to the death.

Rian Johnson gives us an exciting story that satisfies (at least to me) all the problems attached as soon as you start using time travel. Although the sci fi set up allows some futuristic elements, this isn't A Blade Runner kind of future, rather a world like our own only amplified at certain points, both good and bad. There is more  advanced technology, but fewer people have it, as the poor are plentiful, and now labelled "vagrants." a step or two removed from feral cats. But still, the mob uses guns that hold bullets and time travel machines are the pay off to the old gun control arguments, with only criminals using them. In "Looper" however grim the future looks, the past is not a place that many people want to go, but rather something everyone tries as hard as they can to forget about. And the future? Well, no reason to hurt yourself rushing there, it's certainly no prize either. Maybe in the present there's something to live for, it typically boils down to "what would I sacrifice for what's mine?" Here, it can take some drastic circumstances to figure that one out clearly.

There Will be Blood

What About it?


(for a summary of the film, click on "What Happens?" at the bottom of this post.)

There Will Be Blood is an extraordinarily single minded film, mainly due to Daniel Plainview, the central character. Although there are many characters, with their own developments, there is nothing that happens here, unless it is of concern to Plainview. He isn't a character who pops up often, strong, unyielding, smart and seething with rage and hatred for humanity. Even when he's being polite, the menace remains, not far at all from the surface. he's a forceful man, so much so that he is never required to use force and only does so because it somehow pleases him. The interesting thing about him is, he is for the most part, simply a businessman. Financial success is the only thing he really cares about and he's certainly a very capable force in it's pursuit, not willing to be stopped by even a broken leg with a long walk ahead, or even the most fundamental human attachments. Yet for all that determination, Daniel Plainview is not inhuman, while far away from being a warm and doting father figure, he does, in his own way, form an attachment to H.W. When H.W. confronts him about going out on his own, Daniel tries to dissuade him, although his acerbic manner is not at all what H.W. will listen to. Plainview's revelation seems very much a response to being stung. In his coming to grip with this, Plainview seems not unemotional, but someone who would control his emotions, just as he does his oil crews.

He does seem to have some need for "family" which he as not examined in himself. His humoring and acceptance of Henry, the fake brother, also shows this. He includes Henry in everything despite the fact that his presence has little value. H.W. was present in a similar manner earlier, but the boy's "sweet face"  was at least an undeniably useful tool. Plainview understands the power of family, although he feels no such bond. His constant representation of himself as a "family business" attests to this. We know little of Plainviews's early family life, except that he left it as soon as possible and has no interest in talking about it. When Henry mentions his sister Annabelle, Plainview seems to respond warmly, yet his own father's death doesn't elicit a change in tone. Just before he kills Henry, he asks "Do I really have a brother?"  with what appears to be deep interest, enough to put off killing Henry for a few moments.

Daniel despises falsehood, although it is a big part of his own image. His instant hatred of Eli, is the most direct example. Every liar in the world, is in a sense his "competitor" and Plainview's proudest accomplishment is that he is the smartest about it. "Inferior" falsehood angers him more than anything else. He doesn't flinch when killing Henry, or at the end when battering Eli. For him, this destruction is a need and compulsion, to crush his competition. This also comes up in his meeting with Standard Oil. His threat to cut Tilford's throat could be seen as a direct response to Tilford's feigned concern over Plainview's family. The idea of God, to Plainview is a tremendous falsehood, which makes hatred of Eli, especially intense.

While Daniel is certainly a capitalist, his capitalism serves his anarchist philosophy. He sees "nothing to like" in people and will only allow weakness in the interest of serving his ends.  His main desire is to have enough money that he can isolate himself completely from the world. His distancing from H.W. shows his intolerance for weakness or defect. Although because being a human being, he cannot completely embrace this position, he does seem to have concern for H.W.'s welfare. His coldness stems as much from his not knowing how to deal with H.W.'s condition, as from the weakness, however.  He attempts to speak to the boy, as if one of them is just not trying hard enough to speak/hear. Like family the concept is one he doesn't fully understand and doesn't have the patience to explore, as it keeps him away from his focus, the pursuit of more money, his means of isolation. Plainview is strong, smart and relentless. His main failing is that he isn't capable of a broad understanding of people or concepts that do not serve him. To him, they are obstacles which can't be crushed, and so can only be abandoned. Daniel Plainview sees himself as the ultimate authority on the world, and as such feels no need to check his anger. He accepts it and is very aware of the "building hatred" that comes with his approach.

The cumulative effect of it is finally unleashed on Eli, the living person he appears to hate most in the world. Eli acts as if they are peers, and this is not acceptable. The two have a long history of each man understanding the other's deceptive nature. Yet, they are not peers because while Daniel would claim to be his own authority, Eli credits God. Plainview's response when Eli asks a bonus "for his church" is telling. "Good one." he says. It's easy to imagine Plainview as an Evangelist, if he hadn't found silver one day.  Eli breaking his role, and then his grovelling, is what assures his doom. As Plainview demonstrates when he claims that he himself is "The Third Revelation." and that he is "the chosen one." because he was the smartest. Eli comes to represent everything that Daniel despises in humanity and existence. He doesn't however, realize how much his hatred is part of his reason for being. Plainview enjoys his cruelty. His smirk while playing along with Eli, just waiting to reveal that he has beaten him as well as his amazingly contemptuous remarks, all come without much effort. He savors this destruction, and when it's finished, he realizes that he himself is finished as well, as he tells the butler. With H.W. gone, and Eli destroyed, and no "family" left, he is left with the problem of "what would I do then?" as he asked the reps from Standard Oil at one time. He has no more appearance to maintain as he has earned his isolation.  He exists to make money, and to destroy his competition and both of these pursuits have come to their conclusions. So at that point, Plainview is lost, destroyed himself, although he may continue to live.

The film itself is a work of art. Although it's a period piece, it still feels relevant, mainly because of the great attention to detail and Plainview's impossibly large figure. P.T. Anderson, as usual uses the soundtrack to interesting affect, not relying on traditional background music, but using the background to drive the mood to a fever pitch. The environment feels authentic, the oil operation incredibly large, while the houses and spaces people otherwise inhabit are typically very small, until Plainview's house at the end. The movie Plainview's dialogue is incredibly sharp, showing us that as well as being physically imposing, this man can flay you with his tongue. Daniel Day-Lewis' performance here is truly one of a kind. He fills in the skin of this flawed monster, showing unimaginable menace with his inflections and his offhanded glares. He realizes that slapping Eli in public is far more humiliating than a regular beating. Even his choice of abuse shows the man's contempt. Every step the character takes is a reflection of the man. Despite it's vast settings the film is very much the tightest of character studies. Although the other actors involved all do their jobs impeccably, Plainview absorbs everything. Paul Dano as Paul/Eli is also quite good here, although like everyone else, he is diminished by the film's centerpiece, coming across as a weak contrast to Plainview. Where Plainview is large and effortlessly loud, Eli is slight and has to work for any volume, resorting to cheap theatrics to convince. Eli's deception is not convincing and he is so much weaker than Plainview, there is no doubt that he'll be destroyed.

 There Will be Blood is certainly about Greed, deception, capitalism and false prophets, but not entirely. It's also about the difficulty of sustaining those absolutes. While it would be easy to believe that Plainview's character is unstoppable, he is not. It's his own force that destroys him. He enjoys "building the hatred" but there is nothing in the world that he loves. Isolation only gives him more space to drink and pass out wherever he likes, his money assuring that this will not be questioned. He spends much effort to be larger than life and can't possibly cope with the person he's built being contained when there is no destruction left to savor. Plainview can only hate humanity through its representatives. As such, he doesn't hate the church or God, he hates Eli, because he can be destroyed.
He can't destroy "family" or his need for it, so he settles for Frank and H.W. In the end the only thing that can bring him down is his own impossible weight, and it's in a sense, his amazing greed which consumes him. Whether the final scene is reality, or fantasy entirely produced by Plainview's own mind could be debated. I chose to view it literally, as the entire film is Plainview's experience. And the confrontation is very much his reality in any event. It's a fitting ending, as a hatred as great as his could only come from having himself as it's object. In some strange way, it's his own doom that he savors, satisfied in some small part that he himself performed it. He has exactly what he wanted, isolation from the world, muttering on the floor of his private alley having destroyed everything that was false within his reach.