Mute - Cyberpunk Sound and Fury, and Light

Just saw Mute on Netflix, latest movie from director Duncan Jones, of Source Code fame, and starring mainly Alexander Skarsgård (True Blood, and Big Little Lies) with supporting acting by Paul Rudd and Justin Theroux. Wikipedia reports that Mute "drew unfavorable comparisons" to Bladerunner, but that's just dumb (the comparisons not the report), since there are no androids that I know of in Mute.  There are all kinds of cybernetic body enhancements and replacements going on - like in The Six Million Dollar Man - and the flavor is definitely LA cyberpunk, even though the action takes places in a future Germany.

Germany is no accident in Mute.  The hero, Leo, is Amish, and he's mute because his Amish mother didn't allow surgery on her son when his neck was injured in some kind of boating accident, or in some accident in the water.   (By the way, although I suppose a given Amish bishop could tell his followers not to accept modern medical care, that's not something that most Amish do.  It's a common misconception that the Amish say no to all technology, when in fact they carefully pick and choose - see my The Amish Get Wired - Wired? published in Wired way back in 1993 for more.)

But back to Mute, Leo's Amish heritage is a good touch, because it helps him fit into this brave new world in Germany (Amish are of German descent).  The movie is superb on detail in this future, including Leo not being able to order food - which could be delivered to his dwelling, when he gets home, via droid - because he's mute, and the ordering app can't respond to anything other than voice.  And the violence, though sometimes a little hard to take, makes some logical sense in this future, in which most body parts are as replaceable as the parts of your car.

The plot is a little obvious and slow at first, but tightens up with a strong wave of well-motivated developments at the end, and a dedication to Jones's father David Bowie and his childhood nanny Marion Skene.  Recommended for fans of Bladerunner, The Six-Million Dollar Man, and Banshee - and, hey, you can see it for free on Netflix if you're a subscriber.

                     more Amish in science fiction

            more science fiction with David Bowie

Looper: Close Knit Time Travel

What better way to start of the new year than with a review of a fine time travel movie - Looper, which came out this past Fall.  I almost never dislike a time travel movie, so to say I liked Looper is no big deal.  But I more than liked it, and think it's a minor classic in what I think of as the close-knit time travel subgenre.

Big throttle time travel movies entail stopping an event - or trying to stop it - that literally destroys or shakes up the world.  12 Monkeys, the best time travel movie ever made, in my opinion - and also starring Bruce Willis, the big name star of Looper - does this end-of-the-world business par excellence. Source Code and Deja Vu don't involve apocalypse, but the time traveler strives to prevent events that would kill lots of people.

Close-knit time travel movies focus more on human relationships.   The Time Traveler's Wife is a strong example, as is The Butterfly Effect, and, for that matter, Peggy Sue Got Married.  Looper would be on the violent end of this realm - people get killed, and crime abounds, but the heart and soul of the story, as we're correctly told in the last scene, is love, of husband for wife, and mother for son.

The set-up is a 2072 world in which the mob has to find a better way of killing people, because bodies and their histories are too easily traced.   The fortunate invention of time traveling provides a solution - send the body back in time 30 years, where it can be killed, and nobody in the future will be the wiser.  The only loose ends are the killers 30 years in the past.  As they grow older, they provide a growing cadre of witnesses to the mob boss's executions.  But there's a solution to this problem, too:  when the killers get older, send them back so their younger killing selves can kill the older version.  Why would the youngos do this?  Their older versions are sent back with a ton of money, which allow the young killers to live high on the hog for 30 years.   Given the impetuousness of youth, it's a safe bet that this system is working.

But not that safe, and Looper tells the story of what happens when the older version of the killer - Old Joe - breaks free of the death cycle,  and comes to see that the best way of staying alive and saving his beloved wife is to kill the mob boss and end the whole insane business.   This requires meetings between Old Joe and Young Joe, and we get some good time travel epistemology here. Old Joe knows that his very meeting with Young Joe will change who Old Joe is and what he remembers.   In an excellent scene, he explains that all of his memories are now fuzzy, because they're in jeopardy of being erased or replaced by the interaction of the two Joes, and they become clear only at the moment that young Joe actually does something.

That kind of carefully plotted time travel reasoning always wins me over, and shows that the movie is worth watching.   The resolution of the movie is heart-rending but also in good logical shape in the way the future is changed so it does not have a Murder, Inc across time.

Of course, as is the case with all things time travel - and its most endearing quality, I'd say - there is and can be no ultimately satisfactory resolution.  Because if the sending of people back in time to be killed is stopped, then there would be no old or young Joe, because there would be no looping killers, and therefore no movie.   But, hey, this can't be helped when you jump onto the horns of paradox.

Meanwhile, on the acting ledger - Bruce Willis is ok, Piper Perabo (of Covert Affairs) is ok too, but it was little Pierce Gagnon who just stole the show.



Praise for the novel...

"...challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"...a fun book to read" - Dallas Morning News

"resonates with the current political climate . . . . heroine Sierra Waters is sexy as hell . . . . there's a bite to Levinson's wit" - Brian Charles Clark, Curled Up With A Good Book at curledup.com 

"a journey through time that'll make you think as it thrills ... so accessible, even those generally put off by sci-fi should enjoy the trip." - Rod Lott, bookgasm.com

"Levinson spins a fascinating tale ... An intriguing premise with believable characters and attention to period detail make this an outstanding choice... Highly recommended." - Library Journal,*starred review

"Light, engaging time-travel yarn . . . neatly satisfies the circularity inherent in time travel, whose paradoxes Levinson links to Greek philosophy." - Publishers Weekly

"A thinking person's time travel story... I felt like I was there." - SF Signal

Source Code: Fringe Travel

No Fringe on tonight, so my wife and I went out to see Source Code, which turned out to be a good stand-in for Fringe.   Source Code is in fact a pretty good science fiction movie, with a plot that was a little bit bare bones, with the result that we the viewers had to figure a little too much out, almost on our own.  But a pretty good story, nonetheless.

Here's what I think happened:

Colter (a pilot from Afghanistan) wakes up in Sean's body - alive, well, and awake - on a train approaching Chicago.  He's sitting across from Christina.   He doesn't get how and why she knows him, thinks he, she, and/or everyone around him is crazy.  Before too long - 8 minutes, to be exact -  the train blows up and kills everyone.

We soon learn that Colter is really now on a mission - to find out who set the bomb that blew up the train.  His mentality is able to go back into Colter's body on that train, via a new process known as "source code".   He can be sent back for 8-minutes, to the same time, as many times as necessary - though it takes an emotional toll on him, as noticed by Colleen Goodwin (his direct supervisor, who is concerned about this) and Dr. Rutledge (head of the project, who cares only about this mission).  It is this going back as many times as necessary that has led to some characterizations of Source Code as Quantum Leap meets Groundhog Day.  Source Code also has some echoes of 12 Monkeys - same gritty feel in parts (just like Fringe) -  but it really has little in common with time travel.

We're eventually told by Rutledge that the source code creates an alternate reality - Colter in Sean's body on the train - and the plan is that if Colter can get the name of the bomber to Goodwin and Rutledge, they can use this to stop a much worse potential explosion, which we learn is a dirty bomb that would take out a big piece of Chicago.

It takes Colter most of the movie to get the bomber's name.  By this time, he's fallen for Christina, and wants to save her, and, while he's at it, all the people on the train.  Rutledge insists that can't happen - the source code is about influencing the future (stopping the big explosion in Chicago) not about changing the past (stopping the bomb on the train).    After Rutledge gets the name of the bomber, which leads to his being stopped before he gets to Chicago, Rutledge wants to erase Colter's memories of this and send him another mission.   Goodwin, who has more empathy for Colter, defies Rutledge and sends Colter back one more time - presumably so he can at least die feeling somewhat fulfilled, by calling his father (who thinks his son Colter was killed in Afghanistan), being with Christina one last 8-minute time, and saving her and everyone on the train by defusing the bomb.

Now we get into somewhat speculative territory.  Here's what I think happened on that score:

On this last mission to the train, Colter has indeed stopped the bomb from going off on the train - in that alternate reality.  This apparently allows that reality to continue, not only with all the original passengers on the train, but with Colter (in Sean's body), so that Christina and Colter live happily ever after, beginning with their kiss on the train that was not followed by the train exploding.

In our reality, Rutledge is furious that Goodwin defied him.  But in the alternate reality - which is now continuing beyond 8 minutes, because Colter stopped the train from exploding - Colter is able to send Goodwin a text that shows that he is not only alive in some sense in this alternate reality lab, but that another reality (our reality) had successfully sent him back to this reality - that is, the reality in which Colter was sent back numerous times from our reality - if you're still with me.

So, all in all, a pretty good story, as I said, but maybe having more in common with Fringe than any time travel story, and a bit short on clear, scientific or pseudo-scientific explanation.

And also a little short on at least one ethical issue: what happened to Sean in the alternate reality?  True, he would have died anyway, without Colter's intervention.  But now Christina thinks she's with Sean, when in "fact" she's with Colter, because in this "happy" ending Sean no longer exists.

***

Hey, if you like science fiction movies that are really about time travel, see Back to the Future, 12 Monkeys, or Deja Vu.    Or check out this low-budget 2002 short movie by Jay Kensinger, adapted from my 1995 novelette published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact Magazine ...  "The Chronology Protection Case" ....

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