Things Are Not As They Seem

I think we live in a world where increasingly things are not as they seem. Many are uneasy, uncertain as the world is changing on many different levels in many different ways. Truth is becoming relative. If you don’t think so, well good for you and if you do think so but you are not in the least bit concerned well good for you too. I think.

I am not going to list all the things going on and which are good and which might be calamitous but I will cite just one. Three years ago the idea of working from home in a capitalist market driven country like ours for people who didn’t control a machine or work in a shop was just that - an idea. Sure some folk were starting to negotiate some levels of working from home maybe based upon seniority, or family or just being important enough in the overall scheme of things to be able to do what they wanted. But for most of us it was not possible even if we were interested.

But now, well how the world has changed. As someone far closer to the end of my working life than the beginning this stay at home thing has brought and continues to bring a wide range of emotions. I like it in general but not in every which way and I can see the downside to it as well the advantages. Obviously when companies said it could not be done well that was not quite true. Turns out you can and with no real impact in most cases to the bottom line. The issues may be elsewhere though both for the employees and the employers.

So in the spirit of change I have taken in a book and a movie that focus on change but even more so feature that disturbing feeling of unease that things might not be as they seem and all this change just may not be for the better.

First of these is the totally out there, wildly in your face, nonstop movie the aptly titled Everything Everywhere All At Once. This inventive mash up of parallel universes Sic- fi, Martial art action, existentialism, animation, cultural identity and family drama is not only hugely fun but brilliantly crafted and features great performances  from its predominantly female leads. Intriguingly it also carries real emotional resonance and big dollops of black humour amongst the special effects and fight scenes. For the first five or ten minutes you could be forgiven for thinking it is going to a serious family drama with an edge like Parasite. Then it turns out to be much much more and indeed nothing is settled and no one or thing is what they seem.

There is an evil being attempting to destroy the multiverse and only an overworked laundromat owner with a tax problem can help. There are dangerous bum bags and unusual nunchakus, poignant rocks and some very different Bluetooth earpieces.  Michelle Yeoh and Stephanie Hsu as mother and daughter sorting out their own issues whilst also feuding between dimensions are fantastic. Ke Huy Wuan as the dad, James Hong as the patriarch and the Tallie Medel as the daughter’s girlfriend are also perfect.  And a big thumbs up to an almost unrecognizable Jamie Leigh Curtis playing very much against type as a dowdy public servant who turns out to be part of the problem with the universe or is that universes. My only criticism is maybe the mayhem goes on for fifteen minutes too long but that could have been because the action, the pop cultural references, the multiverses and the actual emotional aspects of the movie were just wearing me out. Gotta say not everyone is going to dig this but as a nonstop, one of a kind I loved it.

If Everything Everywhere All at Once is a nonstop rollercoaster then Alexandra Kleeman’s novel Something New Under The Sun is a far steadier but even less comforting experience. Set some time real soon in a scorchingly hot California that burns with endless bush fires, movies are still being made. Or are they? A troubled starlet and a screenwriter come together because the movie set and LA itself seem to have a secret agenda. This book reminds me in some ways of the California noir style of books and movies especially Polanski’s film Chinatown and also the Coen Brother’s Barton Fink and The Big Lebowski. There is environmental disaster, corruption and an obsession with water but in this case synthetic water called WAT-R which is what everyone drinks in LA. There are additives in the water, some used as sales features but there are other ones that may not be so good for you.

This inventive novel carries an increasing sense of unease especially since most people seem to care little about the things happening around them. They are either resigned or strangely blind to the fires, the weird activities on the film set, the big picture, anything except what is on the screens of their mobile phones. In this sense I am reminded of The Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, on the surface everything is normal but everyone has been hollowed out. And anyway in a city like LA and an industry like movie making what is real and what and is manufactured and what in the end is the difference. Does anything therefore really matter?

It’s a slow burn and Kleeman’s writing is up to it for most of the book nailing the feeling that everyone is just sleepwalking to some new horror. The angst and cynicism of the millennials, the feeling of being a stranger in a strange land, the obsession with fame and money, it all reeks of a JG Ballard style dystopia. Her descriptions of the landscape are vivid and the millennial dialogue is spot on but the leads are really clichés with enough twist on them so that initially you want to go along for the ride.

Then about two thirds of the way through though when you are really looking for the book’s slow burn to flare and things to escalate our leads start to do some amateur sleuthing, a smart move as our starlet made her name on teen detective movies. Just what is it about WAT-R?

Some stuff happens but really not enough and just when you think the smolder is finally going to turn to flame we suddenly switch to the minor plotline where the screenwriter’s wife and daughter have fled the family home to a commune to mourn the destruction of the environment. Is it too a smokescreen for something else? The family is split, things are going to shit but is anyone going to shrug off their inertia and self-absorption and make the effort to help?

Interestingly the longer the book goes on Kleeman’s descriptions become more ornate and start to approach Cormac McCartney in style. I presume this is deliberate but this is where the problem with the book lies. For every good bit about it there is something else that disappoints. Despite the strengths mentioned above, in the end the book, like most of its characters in it just seems to wander off, lost in the heat haze.

Photo by Jeremy Bezanger on Unsplash