Friday Films: "Maybe We're All Here for a Reason"

This Sunday, after a six year run that brought its characters from Australia to an island, to Los Angeles and the 1970s, pulling in science fiction, big philosophical and religious themes, and more literary allusions than one can accurately count, the show LOST will come to an end. Since I started watching, about halfway through the second season, the show has been my absolute favorite thing on television, a constant source of debate, theorizing, confusion, frustration, and moments that made me stand up from my chair, pulled into the story and the characters in a way I have never before experienced in network television.

The end of LOST is kind of bittersweet for the viewers--I know I would love to see more, but at the same time, the ability of the creators to say when they will end the show has tightened the writing and given the story a lot of dramatic momentum (we all remember what happened in the third season, when they had to fill time). Ever since the end of the third season, the story has been hurtling toward this ending, and this weekend, we get to see if our faith in these writers, actors, directors and producers paid off. Which is appropriate for a show that has faith as one of its ultimate themes.

I think it's more than just the end of a story, though. It's the last of its kind in more ways than one. For starters, it doesn't look like anything else on television; it's filmed on Panavision 35mm film, which is why it looks so cinematic. The score, by Michael Giacchino, is always incredible (including the sounds at the beginning and end of the episodes, a high-pitched crescendo and a sudden bass drum note, respectively). But maybe the biggest difference between LOST and the sci-fi shows that try to piggyback on its success is the literary nature of the story, in two different senses of that word.

The first is the way the writers utilize many literary concepts: effectively embroidering the themes into the episodes, the structure of real-time and flashback, the use of foreshadowing and using lines more than once in different contexts (this was done to great effect this season, but to talk about that would spoil it). The other use of the word literary, though, is why it found such a devoted audience while other shows (The Nine, Flashforward) failed: the characters drive the story. We're interested in the mystery, yes, but what's carrying the plot along is ultimately the characters and the choices they make. And that's what makes the show so rewarding, in spite of the frustration and the cliffhangers and the occasional leap past believability: I care about these characters and I'm invested in them.

Will I be sad to see LOST end? Hell yes, I will. It'll be the end of an era of television. But I also think it's time to go. I hope this finale ends up being one of the great ones in television history, but more than that, I hope it serves these characters and their story well. I could make a lot of predictions and theorize a few more times before the last episode airs, but I think I would rather see where the episode goes. It seems that a big idea of this final season has been getting the characters to "let go," and I wonder if that's telling the audience to see how the season unfolds and trust the writers. They've never failed in a season finale before, and I don't think they're going to do so with the end of the series.

So to end this with my all-time favorite line from the show, "WAAAAALT!!"

No, wait, that's not right.

"See you in another life, brother."

Fiction Mondays: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

I mentioned last Wednesday that I was reading Murakami, and I have now finished “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World”. My head hurts a bit, because there’s a lot to wrap my mind around, but I think I liked it. It’s not as great as “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” or “Kafka on the Shore,” and it’s very much a science fiction novel, which I honestly was not expecting going into it. I never really think of Murakami as a sci-fi writer; he’s more of a magical realist to me, someone who writes about normal people who stumble into a weird, sinister other world. That’s all in “Hard-Boiled Wonderland,” but the protagonist is not at all “normal,” and the setting is a futuristic version of Tokyo where two kinds of computer specialists are warring over information. There are hints of advanced technology and a large portion of the story involves altering humans with a module that is implanted into the brain to run a computer program.

I guess what it seems like is a Murakami story set a few years later than most of his other work. While many of the familiar elements of his books are there (including a well-like structure that leads to a bizarre netherworld), they are warped and transported. The detail in the book that made me think of this was that the unnamed protagonist explains that he used to have a wife and a cat (another recurring Murakami element), but that they left him. First the wife, then the cat, exactly like in “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.” It could be the same character, ten years later. In that time, the world has gotten a little stranger, the weird parts of the earlier story becoming prevalent parts of society.

What I did really like was the structure of the book; it’s split into two sections, reality and myth. The chapters alternate, with the connection between them becoming more and more apparent. Strangely enough, I found myself thinking of the current season of LOST, with the narrative divided between an on-island timeline and a “flash-sideways” timeline. The writers of the show haven’t yet revealed how these two plotlines link to each other, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it worked out to be a lot like Murakami’s book, where the character has to decide whether to escape to his “real life,” or to keep living in the myth. Only on LOST, it isn’t so clear which is which.

Haruki Murakami is one of my favorite writers, and it’s been a while since I’ve read one of his books. His fictional world has become so familiar, and I was glad to be back in it, to see where he would take the story. There were a lot of unexpected things in this novel (and I don’t just mean all of the crazy sci-fi stuff; that kind of stuff is almost expected in a Murakami novel) and I loved the forays into old movies, Russian novels, and Bob Dylan songs throughout the book. I think I’m going to check out his nonfiction book, “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.” I’d be interested to see if he sheds some light on his own themes, the way Chabon did in “Manhood for Amateurs.”

I also started a new project last week: reading "Ulysses." I'm trying to space it out so that I finish it on Bloomsday, June 16th. That's the day the novel takes place, and it will require me to read about 50 pages a week. So far, so good. But don't worry: I'll be reading other books along the way. If you want to join me in this big reading project, let me know. I just finished the first section (The "Telemachiad") and now I'm onto the second part. And yes, I know it's another book with connections to LOST. But they've thrown so many literary references in there that it's hard to find a book that doesn't somehow connect.

Friday Films: Getting Lost

This Tuesday, ABC's "LOST" returns for its final season. I will be sad to see it end. What show has provided more discussion, more speculation, in its lifetime (okay, maybe the X-Files, but I didn't watch that)? The big mystery is: which questions will be answered? Which ones will be left at the end of the season? And most pressing: how will the season open? Usually the season premieres begin with someone going through their morning while a catchy pop song plays--who will it be this year, and what will the big twist be leading up to the title card?

I do have a big unified theory of LOST, but I'm not going to share it right now (and not because I'm afraid typing it out will somehow make me realize all of the holes in it). I will save that for geekier venues than this blog (they exist, I swear). But I will make a big prediction: the final episode will have a flashback, but it will be the Island's flashback--centuries of strife and war leading to the final confrontation. Whether this will be a big apocalyptic "The Stand"-like confrontation or a smaller one, I don't know.

So is everyone excited? I am. The show is like a big puzzle, and it's going to be interesting to see how the solution unfolds.

I'm going to wrap things up with two videos. One is the Thermals' song, "Now We Can See," which I think is about the show ("We were born on an island," "We still take the pills," "Our history was damaged"). And the other is a clip from LOST, of a brainwashing room called "Room 23." Note the similarities.






Spooky, right?