Just Look at It Straight, Why Don't You

Perspectives and media

Sicario, Y tu mamá también, and all the rest

Listen, in matters of perspective, well, it all depends on how you look at it. So there’s a strong chance you won’t see things the same way I do. But hear me out.

Is it the men or the women?

Sicario is a movie about a cool guy who shoots people. (I’m avoiding spoilers here.) That’s why they made a sequel about him, right?

Y tu mamá también is a movie about the coming-of-age of two young men. That’s why they appear at the beginning of the movie and at the end of the movie, and the third main character doesn’t appear in either part of the movie.

Here’s my perspective: No.

Sicario is a movie about a woman who is trying to figure out what is going on, just like we are, throughout the movie. The sequel was made because people didn’t understand the first one and just liked watching guys shoot people.

Y tu mamá también is a movie about a woman who is trying to make sense of her place in the world and the effect she has on the world around her. Understanding the effect requires that we see the young men of the movie at the beginning and at the end.

This is where you argue, I’ll assume.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell

As the heading says, sometimes it’s hard to tell.

Is Children of Men about what the world would be like without hope? Is it about immigration and the cruelties we inflict around that? Or is it about the process by which a man goes from the utmost cynicism and nihilism to hope for something more, hope so strong he’ll sacrifice himself? Or is it about the kinetic action of trying to jumpstart a car while going downhill from a farm?

My perspective ends up somewhere around the whole cynicism-nihilism-hope thing, though I do think the jumpstarting part is great.

Is Blade Runner 2049 about K or about Deckard?

Is Lord of the Rings about Frodo or Sam?

Some of those questions are worth thinking about. Some of them probably aren’t.

It’s worthwhile to argue

No one really has the “real answer,” even if you find the director or screenwriter opining about that in some YouTube video or DVD extra. But I think it is still worthwhile arguing about these things.

Perspective means so much. We wouldn’t have The Tombs of Atuan if Ursula K. LeGuin decided to stick with the perspective she’d used in A Wizard of Earthsea. And what you take away from something can depend very much on the perspective you take on it.

I’ll just add that some pieces of media do seem to grab us and say, “You need to have more than one perspective.” Like I always seem to, I’ll exhort you once again to watch Riders of Justice. Mads Mikkelsen is a kind of center around which much of the film rotates, but it is an ensemble, and the film seems to deliberately challenge those who watch it to look at more than one perspective. The religious person who sees and hopes for meaning behind the tragedies of life and the irreligious person who sees meaninglessness. A person with this kind of trauma and one with another. You’d better look at all of their perspectives, it seems to say.

So you’ve heard me out, I guess.