Niklas' blog

What a hint. Ha!

I liked this film about two twin brothers, played by Edward Norton. They’re very different: one grows pot in his Oklahoma home and the other wants to attain more and more academic prowess. The first concocts hare-brained get rich schemes while the other drinks tea with scholars and speaks – when he has to – about his “eccentric” family. That is, until their paths meet again.

Bill Kincaid (scholar) suddenly gets word that his brother Brady has died, and hence he returns to Oklahoma for what comes next. He’s mentally not prepared to meet the rest of his estranged family, including his mother, played by Susan Sarandon. And what about his brother, anyway?

All in all, a nice film with a bunch of dark twists to it. It’s one of the better I’ve seen where one person plays several parts without it all becoming “Pink Panther” – kudos to Peter Sellers’ brilliant acting included – and hence leaving the audience with the sense of showmanship, but it’s also neatly directed by Tim Blake Nelson, who plays Brady’s best friend and is probably most well-known for his part in “O Brother, Where Art Thou?“.

SPOILER ALERT! Don’t read on unless you’re prepared for some spoilers.

I think this film had a lot beneath its shell. Besides the apparent connections with “Oldboy” (and Park-wook’s other films), an incestuous relation in this one really disturbed me, and also the subtle erotic theme that hung around all the vampiric, physical action.

The main actor, Kang-ho Song, is terrific in the rôle of the priest Sang-hyeon – coincidentally, “sang” means “blood” in some languages – who truly loved Tae-ju, played by Ok-bin Kim. Their relationship reminds me a lot of that between Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek in “Badlands“, where the girl appears psychopathic and the man is basically wrapped around her finger.

Their relationship is one thing, but the girl’s mother is entirely different. While moving, she is stiff, one-dimensional and taut, but paralysed, she says all through not moving, or through the wink of an eye.

Park-wook has really, really mastered his cinematography in this film, and owes a lot to Stanley Kubrick; there are a whole lot of beautiful shots strewn throughout the film, some for simple effects and some that require several glances and probably repeated views to fully catch.

The music is quite stock, using mostly strings to accompany the main thespian’s monoreaction; it’s a very good thing that the character is as withdrawn as he is. While he does very little and loses at that, he seems to instead be a person who thinks a lot. While his love-interest says and does a lot, her actions display very little thought behind it. In my humble opinion.

All in all, a very disturbing film that is not made for action, which isn’t even in the same dimension as most things that are about vampires these days; it’s magnificent, and repellant at the same time. It – thankfully – doesn’t delve into religion too much either.

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There’s more and more snow and ice pouring out onto the streets from the ceilings from the cracks in the pavement from the planes in the sky and the arms of the trees beneath them and no-one to wave goodbye or no-one to say hi just smiles and empty eyes and shies aways and dried-up days from the sunny whiskers of kittens. A business card to a real world is required to enter through these doors.

A user calls and speaks with me through the emergency phone IT hotline:

Niklas: IT, this is Niklas speaking, how may I help you?
user: Yes, my name is…there’s something wrong with my password.
N: Are you unable to log into the computer?
u: Well, yes! Wrong password! Wrong password!

I connect to the user’s computer-screen to see what the user sees; the user is logged in, but what appears to be wrong is that the city-wide intranet displays an error message upon logging in.

N: This error appears because–
u: It’s always like this! I can’t log in! The computer denies me. It denies me!
N: You are logged into the network, but this error–
u: I can’t work like this. I can’t!

I now apply the Zen-like approach: stay very, very calm until the person focuses.

u: there’s no way I can work like this! My work demands attention, and unless the computer is attentive enough [sic], I cannot…I…I don’t behave in a way that…I can’t. Why?

It seemed to me that the user was reaching critical mass. I was wrong.

N: I think–
u: No, it doesn’t think, we don’t think, hell, I don’t know!
N: The error-message that you see is due to a problem that another IT department is experiencing; you can still use your other applications and other web-sites that–
u: You always say that! You always do! What’s the problem?

Zen. Critical mass.

u: Why are things like this?
N: Well, some times things break, and–
u: Why do they break?

Zen. White dwarf. Nebulae. Implosion.

N: Because they can. Almost no things last forever.
u: That almost seems philosophical! How can you say that about computers?
N: Because computers are made by people, and they and the systems they run can malfunction.
u: But…but…why do they malfunction? I mean, why are things like this?
N: Because something that breaks does so at some point in time.
u: I…see.

Of course, tech support is sometimes equal parts psychology, detective work, voodoo and other times, actual computer tech work.