The gift(?) of Garland

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Just kicking off: ALEX GARLAND TIME!

Sketchy, starters:

What he's done for Cillian: He's given our Mr. Murphy the gift of uncertainty. Having seen "28 Days Later" and "Sunshine," I for one watch Cillian's movies with a sick, twisty feeling in the pit of my stomach. Will his character survive? Will he end up both alive and dead? (Honest to God, Garland ought to start a company called "Schroedinger's Cat Productions.") Will some almighty eff-up come flying in out of left field to torpedo the plot? Said sick-twistiness applied even to my first viewing of "Watching the Detectives," for crying out loud.

So: Garland. Idiot? Savant? A bit of both?

Discuss (or don't. Plenty of comfy seats in the lurker section!). Trust me: I'll be back to rant if no one else will.

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Okay, LET'S RANT.

*****

I keep thinking that if it weren't for the hyperkinetics-- that is, if Danny Boyle didn't so obligingly shake the camera-- the flaws in Garland's scripts would make Mount Rushmore look like a plastic model in a snowglobe. Case (one of a million) in point:

In "28 Days Later," Jim sees a commercial jet fly overhead. How is it the soldiers have never spotted such a jet-- even though commercial airliners follow fairly set flight paths?

(Yes, I am nitpicking. People who get paid to write scripts ought to take the time to de-nit their work, or hire someone competent enough to do the de-nitting for them. If you want to close your proverbial eyes and go "La la la, Danny and Alex are God, I'm not listening," feel free.)

In "28 Days Later," the soldiers have no plans beyond "Send more cops--"-- oops-- "Please drop by. Oh, and bring us your delicious womenfolk. Thanks, all."? No attempts to get to the coast? No attempts to make radio contact with the outside world-- despite the fact that they have power, they've obviously looted enough electronics equipment to start their own global discount chain, and-- OH, LOOKIE!-- there are commercial jets flying over? (Think about it: Selena sews up a "HELLO" banner, and she and Hannah and sorta-living-sorta-dead Jim got BOTH a jet and a helicopter dropping by. West and his men can't get a single message to the outside world? Or is this just Garland saying that the world assumes that soldiers are automatically evil and not worthy of rescue? Thanks, Alex.)

AND NOW, A MESSAGE FROM THE GOLDFISH: "The Thames is RIGHT. EFFING. THERE, you bipedal yobs--*gasp* *choke*"

Let's swerve blindly over to "Sunshine," shall we...?

In "Sunshine," we've got science. We've got pseudo-science. And we have utter flipping hooey. A radio "dead zone" near Mercury...? When Messenger just flew within a hundred and forty-two miles of the surface and sent back pretty pictures? You must spend an awful lot of time, Mr. Garland, looking in the mirror and practicing saying very silly things with a straight face.

I would like to propose a test for present and/or future Garland scripts. Let's call it the "Lancaster-Douglas test," or maybe the "Bogart-Hepburn test." Think of Burt and Kirk in a manly-man movie of the late Forties to mid-Fifties. Something set aboard a submarine, say, or a big Technicolor battlecruiser. Or think of Humphrey and Kate in "The African Queen." Then say, "I volunteer Capa," "I'm going to change course all on my lonesome, without having anyone check my math," "Swimming-pool-sized vats of computer coolant are the new 'in' thing," or "I know we have to save the world and all, but there's a completely unprovable one-in-a-bajillion chance that two bombs are better than one, so screw the years of planning and the nonexistent chain of command and let's stop at that other ship even though it's an incredibly stupid idea and maybe we could wait to see if our bomb works first and then come back for the other bomb later if it doesn't, but if we don't do something incredibly stupid, the plot will never get underway" to any or all of them. Then hold onto something. Tightly. You might want to close your eyes, too. You're about to get hit with the almighty anvil of old-fashioned common sense.

It might be the wildest of guesses (actually, it's not: it's the purest informed egotism), but I think Garland has zero use for that almighty anvil, let alone the intelligence, discipline, or professionalism of his characters. "Dumb" propels his drama. His catalysts are the purest "Friday the Thirteenth" teen dimwittery: "Hey, let's go through the tunnel!" "Hey, let's go in that diner for no good reason!" "Hey, let's stop at that derelict spaceship!"

Hey, Alex, let's not.

More to come. Heh.