Strong Recommendation: Code 46
The most amazing wet-dream of a movie for any middle-aged man whose been on a business trip to Asia, dreamed of seducing a 25-year-old gamine girl and loves a frosty mix of high-tech gadgets described in a polyglot argot of French, Spanish, Arabic, Urdu, Mandarin and Management cant:
Gracias
De nada
Pour quio
Ni-hao
Tiamo
Salut, ca-va?
A bientot
It’s filmed in a wash of color where faded dreamscapes bleed into daylight as nighttime activity leads to harsh indoldent noon clarity.
See subway trains and international planes; dreams and waking time; marble halls and security stalls; jet-lag and coffee; noodles eaten in backstreet booths.
See them shelter from a rain of sunshine ‘neath a shared coat at dawn.
See toll-booths on the city borders where the Outlanders hustle a living from the limousine liberals.
See the corporate architecture of tomorrow-land juxtaposed with shady dives where the cognisati meet with divas and fantasy unfolds into reality (what else is travel actually for?).
See the hero hack his way into corporate strongholds with empathy-virus enabled intuitive riffs on bespectacled high-class call girls in reception areas we half-recognize, half-abhor. “Tell me something about yourself.”
See deserts segue into cityscapes which segue into interiors of silken pajama-game intimacy: from the wide-open high-way to the squishy midnight my-way.
See the fever of love mingled with repulsion in Arabian one-night cheap hotels where wrist straps best science and the heat oppresses the unworthy.
See technology embedded in the soul.
See mystery ennobling the role.
See tomorrow, today.
See the most beautiful scenes ever filmed (53 minutes into the movie): mind-reading an amnesiac, driving an SUV on a dark desert highway. Shadow and light play and a soundtrack to sleep on echo’s still.
Hear dialog that will infest dreams you’ll have long after the final credits roll:
William: I always wondered why the coyote didn’t just go out and buy a Road Runner. He had enough money to buy rocket-powered roller-skates so he had money to buy a Road Runner.
Maria: How did you do that?
William: What?
Maria: Y’know I was thinking something and you heard me–that is weird.
William: Intuition – I can feel what you’re thinking.
Maria: No, I don’t believe in mind-reading, it’s all a trick.
William: It’s not a trick. It’s a gift.
Maria: What am I thinking now?
And
Maria: You have a kid?
William: Yeah?
Maria: Chico or chica?
William: Chico.
Maria: I bet he’s special.
William: He *is* special.
Maria: Everybody’s children are so special. It makes you wonder where all the ordinary grown-ups come from.
See it all end for her in headscarves and Muslim wilderness, over against his corporate bleached white sanity preserved with selective memories of adventures past. Domesticity at the end of the tunnel. Cover preserved.
Go rent this movie and blow your mind!
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Wow, Grimpf, were you stoned or just plain old inspired? Great Ginsbergian word flow, though I still don’t have much idea what the movie was about. But who cares who poetry like that?!? BTW its “cognoscenti” not “cognisati”. Time to get back to writing the Great Post-American Novel! I know its in their waiting to come out!
By James Haig on 01.13.07 11:48 am
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