Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I think we’re over the hump now – February has nearly ended, the skies are clearing, and we’re even getting some occasional warm days to remind us that nature isn’t always a villain. Meanwhile, the COVID-delayed holiday release bounty is now in full swing, with Dying Light and Horizon already released, and Elden Ring looming in the near distance. So lush is this bounty that my house has actually decided to hold off Horizon, as there will likely be no time for anything but Elden Ring for the next month or so. Let me know if you’d all be interested in some game design thoughts for next week, but for now, let’s charge through some excellent films!

Our first feature of the week was Nightcrawler, a delightfully twisted neo-noir production starring Jake Gylenhall as an outsider who discovers a passion for filming desolation. Night after night, he races around Los Angeles with his police scanner on, hoping to catch some juicy footage for the morning news. Eventually, having come to understand the finer points of TV news hysteria, he even tries his hand at directing the city’s murderous underbelly.

Nightcrawler is a deliciously cynical film, centered on a man who is never quite capable of evoking a convincing human being. Gylenhall’s Lou watches self-help tapes and reads online tutorials, teaching himself not just the mechanics of filming and cinematography, but also the technical back-and-forth of professional conversation, as well as the specific muscles to flex in order to present a smile. The results are always mechanical and terrifying; Gylenhall does a terrific job of presenting someone without true human feeling, and when he angrily retorts “what if it isn’t that I don’t understand people, but I don’t like them,” you know this is the keystone to understanding his entire worldview.

Outside of Gylenhall’s performance, Nightcrawler offers both a generally excellent thriller, and a scathing indictment of the 24 hour news cycle. Coached by one station’s news manager, he learns to seek violence without context, uninhibited by any of the moral hang ups thwarting lesser ambulance chasers. Over time, it becomes clear that what he is selling is fear: he goes out into the fields of LA to tend his crops, and returns each morning with a bounty of bloodshed, violence without purpose or meaning, purely intended to stoke the base resentments of Los Angeles’ most fearful and credulous news watchers. Gylenhall is a monster, and through his passion and dedication to his work, we see how news media has designed the perfect job for someone who hates society and wishes to dismantle it. Truth and understanding are out, “vicious crime waves” are in.

We followed that with another movie rife with righteous fury, the tragically still-timely Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. In James Stewart’s breakout role, he plays a boy scout troop leader who, through an unlikely sequence of political chicanery, ends up being promoted to replace his state’s junior senator. Mr. Smith travels to Washington under the auspices of his political idol, the senior senator who was once his father’s best friend, and is immediately dazzled by the grand monuments of his nation’s capital. Unfortunately, this is Washington, and so Smith’s honeymoon comes to an abrupt and savage halt as he learns of the true engines moving beneath Washington’s vaunted exterior.

Though it came out in 1939, nothing about the American political engine has fundamentally changed in the last eighty years, so Mr. Smith’s jabs feel as hopelessly salient as ever. As Smith quickly discovers, it is actually the country’s economic titans who pull the strings of our elected representatives, with the pomp and circumstance of the senate ultimately serving to obfuscate the very corruption it was intended to prevent. And beyond the larger strokes of purpose and power, Mr. Smith also spends plenty of time really getting into the weeds of senate action, breaking down the various approval steps for any bill, and reveling in the theater of filibuster for its dramatic final act.

It’s easy to see why this film made Stewart’s reputation. Our lead is dazzling throughout, presenting a convincing transformation from starry-eyed idealist to hardened political statesman, and selling his every line with a conviction that makes you certain he’ll one day be president. Jean Arthur is equally compelling as his world-weary partner in anti-crime, and given this is a Frank Capra production, it’s no surprise their shared material sizzles with romantic tension. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is pointed, propulsive, and extremely funny; the years fall off this timeless political satire, for better and for worse.

After that we checked out The City of Lost Children, an international collaboration directed by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet (who’d later go on to direct Amelie). Lost Children is a marvel of production design, presenting an intricate and fantastical city full of innocent strongmen and mischievous children, where mechanically modified men creep through alleys and steal innocents from their beds. The film’s aesthetic falls somewhere between a Terry Gilliam production and The Nightmare Before Christmas, with Ron Perlman starring as “One,” a simple-minded man who just wants to rescue his little brother.

As an actual narrative experience, Lost Children is scatterbrained and a little undercooked, more roaming through fantastical vignettes than building towards a larger statement. That seems to be something of the point, though; rather than any of its specific characters, the star of Lost Children is its dazzling production design, with every new venue serving as a distinctive aesthetic surprise. Overflowing with whimsy and seemingly envisioned as a playground for prop designers, Lost Children never rises to more than the sum of its parts, but sure has a lot of interesting parts to show off.

Our final feature was something genuinely original, the fascinating My Dinner with Andre. The film stars Wallace Shawn and André Gregory, each of whom are playing quasi-fictionalized versions of themselves, as they meet for dinner after some years apart. Shawn is a struggling playwright, while Andre has lost faith in the theater, and has instead spent the last several years exploring experimental methods of personal enlightenment. Over dinner, the two talk about Andre’s diverse experiences, and then discuss the purpose of theater, as well as the spiritually and intellectually impoverished nature of modern society.

That covers the entire film; there is no dramatic incident that changes its course, and no cathartic resolution to the preceding drama. And yet, in spite of lacking a “plot” in the traditional sense, My Dinner with Andre still possesses a clear sense of dramatic progression. Initially, Wallace Shawn is simply fearful of an awkward dinner engagement with a man he’d been avoiding, and thus presses Andre for questions to avoid discussing his own experiences. As a result, we receive an extended portrait of Andre’s adventures in experimental theater, riding along as he pushes the boundaries between performance and experience to no clear end, all in pursuit of something authentically human.

Andre’s experiences are compelling, but their value is doubtful to both Shawn and Andre himself. In the film’s second act, Shawn is finally drawn in by Andre’s speeches, and the two trade reflections on the inauthenticity of both our social and private lives. Here, the two find clear and substantive connection: they are each attuned to the degradation of personal philosophy and artistry in the age of mass media, and they each also lament the profound insincerity of American social engagement. In the throes of their dissatisfaction, they find common cause, and for a moment it seems like they might truly be capable of mutual understanding.

But of course, genuine mutual understanding is impossible for even the most kindred of souls, much less two people as different as Andre and Shawn. In the film’s final act, their discussions shift towards prescriptions, at which point Andre’s philosophical desolation and Shawn’s dogged humanism diverge. The “climax” of the film, such as it is, involves Shawn laying into Andre’s self-indulgent spiritual awakening, and protesting that the disappointments of modern living demand some degree of indulgence and inattentiveness – unless you tune out some of the suffering of the world, you are incapable of operating within it. The two find some points of agreement even within this philosophical divide, but neither exit as a “victor,” and neither meaningfully change the other’s mind. Their meeting adjourns as it begins, in expository ambiguity, leaving Shawn alone with his thoughts on the long ride home.

Doesn’t that sound fantastic? My Dinner with Andre is just as bold and rewarding as it sounds, digging deep into the philosophical divide between two thoughtful friends, and through doing so finding a universal yearning in the extreme specificities of their situations. Andre’s assorted vignettes are each alluring in their own way, and the man is a master storyteller, with his gesticulation and pauses serving to effortlessly realize his adventures. The film’s script moves with the cadence and circularity of genuine conversation; either man might at some point pursue a tangent in a seemingly fertile direction, but their particular passions and philosophy of living always resurface, coloring their words in the radiance of personal experience.

The points on which they disagree are understandable, as the argument they are undertaking has no clear resolution; in the era of mass entertainment and isolated humanity, it might simply be impossible to live with dignity, honesty, and purpose. Their stabs at diagnosing or addressing this condition are inconclusive, but in their very conceptualization of it, they at least provide a sense of validation or recognition to anyone similarly struggling. Finding the universal or “authentically human” in the granular specificity of individual experience is what I consider one of art’s highest callings, and My Dinner with Andre doesn’t just provide that, it also interrogates the very validity of that instinct over the course of its discussions. An absolute feast of a film, and surely one I’ll be thinking about for some time to come.