{"id":6446,"date":"2011-04-05T15:39:56","date_gmt":"2011-04-05T20:39:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=6446"},"modified":"2011-04-06T08:09:34","modified_gmt":"2011-04-06T13:09:34","slug":"source-code-review-and-a-podcast-with-director-duncan-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=6446","title":{"rendered":"Source Code review and a podcast with director Duncan Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The following is a review of Source Code<\/em>, but I also conducted an interview with director Duncan Jones, which you can listen to at the bottom of the page.<\/p>\n

If anyone\u2019s ever watched an airplane edit of a film, they know that often changes are made which make no sense within the logic of the movie, but are inserted to make sure the viewer isn\u2019t reminded in any way that they are indeed inside of a contraption that could crash and burn at any time. One of the most unique examples that I\u2019ve ever come across was oddly enough while I was on a bus, which would also use airplane edits of movies, while I was watching Get Shorty<\/em>. While the deletion of the copious profanity that is key to the film\u2019s dialogue was expected, what I hadn\u2019t considered was that a scene where the weasely David Paymer character is supposed to have died in a plane explosion (he ends up just missing boarding the flight). In the original version of the film, his wife identifies his luggage and she immediately bursts into tears. In the case of the airplane edit, because showing an airplane actually blowing up might make the viewer uncomfortable, the scene was adjusted. You\u2019d think they\u2019d just awkwardly delete it, but instead, voiceover that sounded nothing like John Travolta<\/span><\/a>\u2019s lead character was added, the explosion excised, and the airplane had been changed to a train blowing up, making the luggage identification moment more ludicrous than anything else that was intended <\/em> to be in the film.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>One wonders what airplane edit maneuvering might have been done to Duncan Jones\u2019 Source Code<\/em>, in which Jake Gyllenhaal\u2019s character Colter Stevens is repeatedly sent back in time to re-experience the last 8 minutes aboard a train before it is blown up by a bomb planted by a terrorist. The train blows up so many times that there are moments where Colter looks impatient right before the immolation, knowing that he can\u2019t stop it, and that he\u2019s going to have to repeat the process anyway.<\/p>\n

That conceit may make Source Code<\/em> sound like a less comedic version of Groundhog Day<\/em>, but, considering that Colter is being sent back in time as part of a military experiment to determine who the terrorist was; the film\u2019s closer cousin is Tony Scott\u2019s D\u00e9j\u00e0 vu. <\/em>In that film, the outlandish premise (in which a cop, Denzel Washington, can go back to a certain place in time and is advised by scientists as to his goals based on footage lifted from camera all over the city of New Orleans) required so much exposition that it put a lid on Scott\u2019s normal visual overload in films like Domino<\/em> and Man on Fire<\/em>. Source Code <\/em>has a major advantage over D\u00e9j\u00e0 vu<\/em> in that Denzel\u2019s character is working within a grid, but still trying to cover an enormous amount of territory but in Source Code<\/em> Colter Stevens is specifically assigned to study this one train, and so we become intimately familiarized with the location at the same time.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>That makes it easier for us to take the need for Duncan Jones to dole out the exposition on a constant basis. Colter\u2019s character is in the dark too, and each bit of information is seen as world-altering, because if we were in his shoes, we\u2019d think the same thing. The specificity also accounts for the efficient running time of Source Code<\/em>, pre-closing credits it\u2019s under 90 minutes, while D\u00e9j\u00e0 vu <\/em>is so overwhelmed and distracted by story threads and explanations that it runs over 2 hours. Jones managed to really hone in on the confusion in his first film Moon<\/a><\/em><\/span> as well and here, and while there are other characters in Source Code<\/em>, they\u2019re just information conduits for Cole [Moon <\/em>was a one-man show for Sam Rockwell].<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a shame then, that despite the fact that Source Code<\/em> had smoothly motored along for almost the whole film, that someone chickened out of what was initially a very poetic and emotionally satisfying conclusion. The premise we\u2019re given is that Colter is entering a computer program that can recreate the last 8 minutes of someone\u2019s life, so he\u2019s re-entering someone else\u2019s memories. Once we accept this idea, then we can accept the movie if it obeys its own rules. But Source Code<\/em> doesn\u2019t obey its own rules and decides to hop onto the time travel track where future events can be effected, undermining the film\u2019s construct. Was it because the other actors in the film, military scientists played by Geoffrey Wright and Vera Farmiga, would never have signed on if their roles were simply going to be expository?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>When I interviewed Duncan Jones about the film, I asked him that very question and he emphatically denied it, and said the script had always been designed the way we see it in the film, but he didn\u2019t have a plausible explanation for the change of heart within the story. Maybe that explains why Geoffrey Wright walks with a limp and a cane throughout the film (we are never told why), simply because he needed something to do while going through the rote and dry story points. Farmiga\u2019s character looks pained throughout, but we can understand why once we are told the reasons that Colter has specifically been chosen. Farmiga\u2019s character is very similar to the one played by Deborah Kara Unger in David Fincher\u2019s The Game<\/em>, where she manipulates the main character through one phony experience after another. The Game <\/em>was also cold and focused until it packs the emotion into the final 10 minutes, but at least there the explanation is what makes the emotion a necessary outlet, and we\u2019re still left wondering what was really going on after the movie ends. Source Code<\/em> is also cold and clinical (if we learn anything, it\u2019s that, just like in Back to the Future<\/em>, time travel gives you frost bite), but the emotion tacked on at the end is just that, tacked on. In Source Code<\/em>, <\/em>we don\u2019t wonder anything at the end except why we didn\u2019t leave the theater at the 80 minute mark.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Podcast below.\u00a0 For those who haven’t seen Source Code<\/em>, beware that there are many spoilers. In a way this qualifies as a mini-rebuttal of some of the points I made above and also my reinforcing some of my positions. Also, I make fun of Sucker Punch<\/em>, which I saw a few hours after seeing Source Code. <\/em>Rather than review Sucker Punch<\/em>, I will re-direct your attention to this Youtube clip,<\/span><\/a> an HD version of Garbage’s video for their song “Special,” which is a much more succinct version of what Sucker Punch <\/em>was trying to do, and considerably less headache-inducing. Anyway, enjoy the Duncan Jones interview below.<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Download the full interview.<\/a><\/span>
\n(Right-click, Save Link As…)<\/em><\/p>\n

\nhttp:\/\/www.regrettablesincerity.com\/audio\/DuncanJones.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

Podcast: Play in new window<\/a> | Download<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is a review of Source Code, but I also conducted an interview with director Duncan Jones, which you can listen to at the bottom of the page. If anyone\u2019s ever watched an airplane edit of a film, they know that often changes are made which make no sense within the logic of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[3334,1862,4276,2358,165,4431,4764,7718,6141,7714,7720,7715,6156,4561,2421,5373,335,4427,7717,5207,4717,140,4993,4424,2886,7713,7721,7719,6171,1527,754,3336,1377,6203,5827,7012],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6446"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6446\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}