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Rarely does a movie make a philosophically interesting mistake, but “The Invention of Lying“, which I just watched on DVD, is an exception. In the world of the film, no one is supposed to have any concept of lying, and the film’s conceit is that the main character gains lots of power by inventing lying, with unintended consequences. There is an interesting screenplay on this theme that has yet to be written, but it’s not this one. The problem is that “The Invention of Lying” makes a conceptual error that renders it not just difficult to swallow, but completely incoherent. The error is to confuse lacking a concept of lying with lacking a concept of falsity. To lack a concept of lying, one need only never have intended to lie or ever thought that one has been lied to. But to lack a concept of falsity, one must also have never noticed oneself – or anyone else – making a mistake of any sort. One problem for the movie is that while it would be fairly easy to “buy” a world of the first sort, that’s certainly not the case with a world of the second sort. But, more importantly, if one were to lack a concept of falsity, one would also lack a concept of truth (which is defined, in part, by its opposite); and lacking a concept of truth, one would lack a concept assertion; and lacking a concept of assertion, one would lack a concept of communication. But the people of this world communicate constantly, even compulsively, and clearly are aware of what they are doing. So by being presented with a world full of communicative people that lack a concept of falsity in addition to a concept of lying, we are presented with a world that makes no sense at all (and this makes a willing suspension of disbelief, at least for me, impossible).

Intelligent comedies are hard to come by these days, and those that do get made often aren’t widely distributed. This is certainly true of Sam Mendes’ “Away We Go“, which didn’t get within 50 miles of Oshkosh during its theatrical rounds. But ever since his “American Beauty”, I’ve thought that Mendes is one of our better directors. “Revolutionary Road” certainly didn’t deserve the derision it received from many critics, but that’s another story.

“Away We Go” recently came out on DVD, and while it doesn’t rise to American Beauty standards, I’m happy to report that it is funny in the same sort of biting, satirical way. Like many “dramadies”, its tone is intentionally varied, but it’s also a little uneven, with several supporting players going way over the top while others play it more naturalistically. This is true even of the protagonists: Maya Rudolph admirably holds the film together with a straightforward performance of the pregnant Verona, while John Krasinski (her lighthearted and extraordinarily loving boyfriend) comes dangerously close to caricature with his Burt. But the film made me laugh, and its undertone of melancholy gave those laughs extra depth. Here’s the trailer (which, like most trailers, makes the film look more conventional than it is):

You probably know the story by now, so I won’t belabor it. To mark Roman Polanski’s unexpected arrest by Swiss officials, here’s the original trailer to “Chinatown”. If you’ve never seen the film, I can assure you that it is much better than the trailer, which is nevertheless charmingly kitschy-

“The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill“, one of my favorite nature documentaries, is as much about humanity – mostly in the form of one very individual human – as it is about parrots. I recently saw it again on PBS’s Independent Lens, and I highly recommend it. Here’s an excerpt, featuring an apparently flummoxed onlooker:

While I love watching a well-made film, most of the ones I see do not stay with me for more than a couple of days. Like most of my dreams, they hardly make a dent in my memory. Like jazz, they seem best appreciated in real time. So when a film sticks with me for more than a couple of days, I figure it’s worth recommending – especially given the lack of quality offerings this time of year.

The first is Two Lovers, directed by James Gray and starring Joaquin Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow. This is a deliciously uncomfortable story to watch, mostly due to Phoenix’s performance, which is the most interesting I’ve ever seen him give – a stark portrait of subtle neurosis. Similarly, Paltrow plays a vacant air-head with an authenticity that’s impressive, given that in “real-life” she’s anything but. Isabella Rossellini also does a fine job as Phoenix’s mother… you never quite know, until the end, whether she’s the source of Phoenix’s problems. And the choice that Phoenix makes at the end of the film is so ambiguous, you can simultaneously view it as both amazingly life-affirming and depressingly resigned – quite a writing job by Gray and his partner Ric Menello.

The other film that I can’t help but smile about every time I think of it is Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino. I’ve never been much of an Eastwood fan, although I liked “Million Dollar Baby” and “Mystic River”, and admired his Iwo Jima epics. I’ve also never much liked movies that self-consciously used the histories of their actors to make their thematic points. But here that strategy works beautifully. Eastwood’s previous characters – mostly purveyors of violence (for all the best reasons, of course) – reverberate throughout every frame of this film, and the climax is Eastwood’s very effective way of commenting slyly on his whole career. The effect of the whole is exponentially greater than the sum of the parts.

Okay, I might have this all wrong, but isn’t there a huge plot hole in The Reader?  If not, can someone please explain to me why the script goes to so much trouble to stress that the Kate Winslet character is found especially guilty of her crime because she confesses to having written a certain document (it is implied that the document must be written in her own handwriting), and then suggests that she can’t write at all, but keeps on treating her as if she’s more guilty than the others?

By the way, except for this huge glitch (if it is such), I enjoyed the film a lot.  Winslet’s performance is indeed Oscar-worthy.  I don’t think that the political criticism leveled at the film (i.e., that it portrays a concentration camp guard too sympathetically) is true.  After all, the film portrays her  not only as a docile concentration camp guard, but also as a pedophile who has left deep psychological scars on her victim…  In fact, if the script is suggesting that she voluntarily accepts responsibility for a document she did not write, it implies that she herself recognizes her own guilt more honestly than the others.

UPDATE 2/23/09- Apparently the Oscar voters agreed. Winslet won.