Oh, the Possibilias!
I’ve seen the multiverse extravaganza Everything Everywhere All At Once twice, once with critics at a press screening and once in a theater full of delighted civilians. Both times I had the same reaction: I really like this, and I am really glad it exists, and whenever it doesn’t land it’s mainly because it feels like my brain has been dropped into a very strong blender. Which is really what you want out of a movie!
So while it’s not my favorite film and didn’t hit me with quite the emotional wallop as most people seem to have experienced, I really enjoyed it. (Enough to go back a second time.)
I’m not here to recommend that film, though; I’m here to say that if you like that one, you should check out something else by the filmmakers: an eight-minute, choose-your-own-adventure style short film called Possibilia.
Alex Karpovsky and Zoe Jarman star as a couple who are going through — well, something. A breakup? A renewal? A reconciliation? It actually depends on you and how you interact with the film, because Daniels (the collective name under which directors Daniel Scheinert and Dan Kwan work) filmed a host of possibilities — you see what they did there — that you control with your mouse. Go ahead, take a gander, right here.
I love this for a lot of reasons, not least the sheer creativity of the endeavor; interactive films are still kind of hard to come by, and especially at this level of expertise. Also, it will break your heart a little and warm it a little and make you laugh and wince and maybe cry a tiny bit.
Daniels are pretty good at doing this. Their previous feature was Swiss Army Man, perhaps most memorable to me for being the movie with “a farting corpse,” as it was known at Sundance 2016. At the time I was still working for Christianity Today; I did not carve out time for the farting corpse movie, the corpse being played by Daniel Radcliffe (aka Harry Potter) and the other guy in the movie being Paul Dano.
Eventually Tom watched it, loved it, and cajoled me into watching it, and it really is wonderful. It’s a film with an absurd premise that also manages to be deeply and oddly moving, and so original that you feel like they’re poking your brain.
That combination of factors, the sentimental and the absolutely bananas, are richly present throughout Daniels’ work (they direct music videos too, which sort of explains it). What I love about Possibilia is that it’s kind of serious, so you can see how their goofier impulses translate to a slimmed-down narrative, with no farting corpses or hot-dog fingers or googly eyes. Yet they’re all of a piece: you can see the creators’ sensibilities shining through, trusting their audience to come along for the ride rather than just giving the audience what they want and expect, which is the dominant M.O. in big-budget filmmaking today. And they have a huge, huge heart.
(Although, for the record, Everything Everywhere’s budget is a very modest $25 million, and you’ve got to figure a lot of it went to that raccoon.)
I love these kinds of movies, and get sad that they’re getting harder and harder to make and put in front of the potentially adoring public’s eyeballs. So if you have a chance, watch Possibilia, then trot on out to your local movie theater and see Everything Everywhere All At Once if you still can (or pre-order it for when it premieres on streaming), and then go watch Swiss Army Man, which will cost you a few bucks or a Showtime streaming subscription. They’re not going to be able to keep making these movies if people don’t show up. But more than that, they’re a rollicking good time.
Been writing
Another wild movie! I wrote about The Northman, which is just so much movie, and how it’s great that it doesn’t fall into the “modern man in a medieval movie” trap.
Two colleagues and I wrote about Frank Peretti’s bestselling Christian fantasy-horror novels from the 1980s, Piercing the Darkness and This Present Darkness. Which super messed us up as kids.
I watched two Godfather movies (that’s about 6.5 hrs of young Al Pacino, not complaining) and ten full hours of Paramount+’s new series The Offer, a scripted series about the making of The Godfather, and then I wrote about how The Offer is a TV show that can’t stop ragging on TV for being boring and limiting and movies for being transcendent. Weird flex, but okay!
Been reading and watching
We’ve seen five of six episodes of Under the Banner of Heaven, based on the John Krakauer book; I think one or two of them are now on Hulu. I have very mixed feelings about it, but there’s no denying it’s riveting. And also that it makes me think about how fundamentalists of all stripes have more in common with one another than with the religions they ostensibly belong to.
I’ve been sort of all over the place with reading, because I’m in the midst of prepping a summer course and also trying to tie down some research for several pieces and for the (next) book. It’s a big mess.
But it’s worth noting that there was an interview with Heroes of the Fourth Turning playwright Will Arbery on the Paris Review site this week.
Odds and ends
I am actually in Albany this weekend, visiting my family. Thanks to my aunt, who can pull strings in the performing arts around here, we saw a Selected Shorts performance at the University of Albany on Saturday night, and one of the stories was by Lauren Groff. When I say I sat bolt upright!