the groundhog day project

”Anything might have been anything else and had as much meaning to it” --Tennessee Williams, “The Malediction” The thought is a complicated one—and I’ll get to it below—but first, I like the idea of that quotation given what I’ve been doing with this blog a lot, lately; I’ve been sublimating my interest in Groundhog Day with other—albeit thematically-related—films. The discussion continues, though the angle is twisted. Tonight it was Mr. Nobody , a film that doesn’t deal in a time loop but does deal in disjointed time and alternate realities based on choices—a lot like Run Lola Run , Sliding Doors , Blind Chance . Nemo Nobody (Jared Leto) is the last mortal human in the year 2092 (maybe), and he is either being hypnotized by a guy with facial tattoos or being interviewed by a reporter using a tape recorder he “borrowed” from a museum. He’s recalling his life, especially certain moments where choices led to his life changing one way or another (or sometimes another). He’s tellin...

I was watching Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Blind Chance ( Przypadek ) earlier tonight. It’s basically Run Lola Run structurally, with a little more of the gravitas of Sliding Doors — and I did not expect to use the word gravitas in connection with Sliding Doors . I like the movie, but that just wasn’t a word I would have put to it —a slow-paced alternate-reality story about, well, chance and choice in decided one’s fate. It starts each of its three segments like Run Lola Run does, minor variations that don’t really mean anything, but those lead to more significant opportunities in the life of Witek (Boguslaw Linda) when he a) makes his train and meets an old communist and joins the Communist Party, b) misses his train, knocks a guard to the ground and receives community service which eventually leads him into an anti-Communist group and religion, or c) misses his train but has no altercation with the guard, meets a girl on the platform and goes to medical school. It got me thinkin...