Dec 25 2008
Plot Devices: The End of the Beginning
I don’t know whether to categorize this as a blurb or a criticism, so I’m slotting it in both categories. You see, I just watched half of this god awful movie, “Love in the Time of Cholera,” and noticed a pattern in the exposition of some crappy and not so crappy movies like “Babylon A.D.” with Vin Diesel as Vin Diesel (because that’s all he ever is) and “Citizen Kane.” They start at the end of the story to draw you in, possibly because they are aware that the actual story itself is concentrated drill-in-forehead. I would almost call it a cop out and a form of sentimental bathos that’s trying to trick us into caring for these characters, or at least snagging our attention in place of a flimsy introduction, but I see potential in showing us the end at the beginning.
Actually, I have seen it work. “Citizen Kane” didn’t say too much with it’s classic “Rosebud” line, but it was enough to beg the question “Who (or what) is Rosebud?” where as “LitToCholera” gives us the entire end of the movie by showing a guy die and another guy come up to the fresh widow confessing his enduring love for her. She told him off, which made me laugh a bit, but that was the end. The whole end. I really didn’t need the rest of the movie to explain these characters and why they are the way that they are because I already know that ones a dick and two of them were happily married. I could briefly mention why “Babylon A.D.” was bad, but I didn’t actually see the movie, so I don’t really know the story. Still, I could hazard a guess that it had nothing to do with communication problems and everything to do with Vin Diesel “getting some” in every sense and really, I don’t need to see it because I can see, from the constant advertisements, the crux of my rant.
They (that is, the bastardy producers and advertisers) bank on you going to see the movie out of morbid curiosity by telling you that Vin dies (from the looks of it in a fiery explosion). At that point, I don’t really care about the character. To be fair, I don’t think that I would have cared for the character even if they hadn’t mentioned his untimely death in the commercials, but I do feel the whole “ending at the beginning” method of foreshadowing renders most stories moot because there’s nothing to twist at the end or shock me. He’s gonna die and I know it. I don’t care how he got there for the most part. I didn’t even care what “Rosebud” was either, but Citizen Kane was a good movie after it’s foreshadow foe paw, so I let it slide.
