Wired Mesh

Going From This Land Here to That in a Sailor's Suit and Cap

Charles Taylor is always an interesting read, in part because he is so often profoundly wrong. (He once memorably insulted Anthony Lane and praised "Showgirls" in the same sentence, which should be rightly considered some sort of heresy.) But he has a pretty accurate essay in today's Salon on the new cinema of alienation and dislocation. I have no idea why he feels some need to fit a Tomb Raider movie into his argument, but I think he's right in saying that today's most memorable movie heroes are not those who are comfortable in the world (a la Bogart) or challenging it (Nicholson), but simply lost in it.

As opposed to the visual frenzy and clutter of most of our movies, the recurring image in many of these pictures is someone sitting in a room -- Lee Kang-Sheng in his bedroom in "What Time Is It There?" or Johansson in her hotel room looking out at Tokyo through a pane of glass in "Lost in Translation" or Samantha Morton in her Shanghai dwelling, more a cube than an apartment, in "Code 46." They all look as if they are trying to work up the nerve to venture outside. And when they do, there's a sense that they are on the verge of drifting away.