Borgli on the brain

Don't know who Kristoffer Borgli is??

You should.

You might not have loved the movie that brought him to our attention in the U.S., because I know Dream Scenario had some detractors, but hopefully you at least became aware of him through it. He's just followed that up with The Drama, the new Zendaya-Robert Pattinson film that I like almost as much.

I deepened the dive two days after seeing The Drama with his film immediately prior to Dream Scenario, when he was still making films in Norway, which is called Sick of Myself. That leaves only one Borgli feature (2017's DRIB) that I have yet to see.

I don't usually see consecutive films by the same director, but that did happen on Tuesday and Thursday of this week. And wouldn't have, except that one of my writers brought it up in this ongoing Facebook chat we have going with two other writers and ReelGood's former editor. 

He recommended it, which turned out to be the right call. I don't think I like Sick of Myself as much as I like Dream Scenario or The Drama, but I like it enough to give it the same rating I gave the other two (4 out of 5 stars). 

The thing I like most about these films? You can tell they are from the same director but only just, and only in ways I'm having trouble trying to explain. I think you could say all of Borgli's films that I've seen are the end result of some high concept social experiment. Or maybe that they depict one of the options in a game of Would You Rather? They are only mildly surreal looks at some mildly absurd scenario, and they examine how the characters would realistically react to such a scenario. That might not even be the right classification for Sick of Myself, in which character reactions are slightly more satirical, but they're all in the same neighborhood without directly shouting out each other and begging to be compared to one another.

For example, when I saw Dream Scenario -- you know, the one where everyone in the world simultaneously starts dreaming of a character played by Nicolas Cage -- I loved it, but still reserved a part of my brain that said snidely "This guy might just be the latest person to attempt to rip off Charlie Kaufman." In fact, I even wrote a post about it.

But The Drama has nothing about it that would evoke Kaufman, and yet I can still tell it's Borgli. The concept of this one is that a couple questions their upcoming wedding after a revelation she makes in the days leading up to it. That doesn't sound particularly high concept, but the high concept is what the thing is that she reveals, and we spend the rest of the movie debating ourselves whether it's disqualifying or not. It's a highly unexpected and unusual thing, and if you want to read me reviewing it while dancing around that spoiler, you can check that out here. I don't actually have a filmmaker in mind who might have influenced the making of this film, and that's exciting in itself. 

Sick of Myself? I wasn't planning to review this, unlike the other two, because it's from 2022. So I hadn't considered whether I would spoil things about it or not. Let's just say it's about the crazy, self-destructive lengths to which a personal will go to be noticed, either within their relationship or independently of it. And I suppose it made me think a bit of the films of Ruben Ostlund, though that could just be the Scandinavian connection.

It's notable alone to like three consecutive films by the same director, about the same amount, especially when that same amount is in the four-star range on Letterboxd. It's then more notable to say that each of these films balances a profound sense of the absurd with a real honesty in the way its characters interface with each other around that absurdity, without the films directly resembling each other in style.

And the fact that he's a new discovery makes it all the more exciting, and really prepares me for whatever he might make next. 

So yeah, I've got Kristoffer Borgli on the brain. And if I'm not running out to rent DRIB, it's probably only because I really don't expect to find this one -- having already been surprised enough already to find Sick of Myself available to rent on AppleTV. 

Charlie Kaufman movies that don't involve Charlie Kaufman

When you saw the trailer for Dream Scenario, your first thought may have been "Oh, this must be Charlie Kaufman's latest." The presence of Nicolas Cage, star of the Kaufman-written Adaptation, might have cemented that impression.

Of course, if you follow Kaufman with any degree of closeness, you'd know that Dream Scenario could only represent an earlier incarnation of the writer-turned-director. His 2020 film I'm Thinking of Ending Things -- which was my #1 of that year -- certainly indicates that he's on to much less accessible fare.

In his film about a man who suddenly starts entering everyone's dreams, even the people who don't know him, Dream Scenario director Kristoffer Borgli is certainly successful in the homage he's paying to this earlier version of Kaufman. If you want to know how successfully, you'll have to wait until my rankings are up on January 23rd. (Or, wait a few days until I write my review, which will be linked to the right.)

What I can write about today, without spoiling my impression of the film, is that it reminded me that we have a whole subgenre of films that seem as though they should have been written or directed (or both) by Kaufman -- and that Dream Scenario feels like the first we've gotten in a while. Just as soon as I venture the idea that these sorts of mindbinders might be approaching extinction, though, I think of a second one from this very year, in addition to Dream Scenario.

Here are the ones that immediately came to mind, in no particular order. In order to narrow things down a bit, I'll limit this to the time period Kaufman was actually working. 

Stranger Than Fiction (2006, Marc Forster) - Will Ferrell can hear the woman who is narrating his life as she speaks. An existential conceit straight out of the Kaufman playbook, released during the peak period of Kaufman's influence on popular films.

Cold Souls (2009, Sophie Barthes) - Is it possible Paul Giamatti has never actually appeared in a Kaufman film? He's Kaufman's perfect schlub. Here he plays an actor trying to disentangle his emotions from the emotions of his characters, who pays for a service to have his soul placed in cold storage. I can only remember this being a bit disappointing. Anyway, shades of Synecdoche, New York all over this. 

Fingernails (2023, Christos Nikou) - Here's that one from this year. People in relationships have the ability to test whether they love each other by having a fingernail torn out and analyzed. The low-fi analog technology in this film is very reminiscent of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, as is the theme of star-crossed romance.

Vanilla Sky (2001, Cameron Crowe) - I think the cold storage of Cold Souls got me thinking about the ending of this film, which I won't spoil even though the movie is now 23 years old. It's just the sort of intricate script with high concept elements about identity that Kaufman would have dreamed up, though I actually have this ranked higher than any Kaufman film on my Flickchart, so kudos to Crowe for that.

The Truman Show (1998, Peter Weir) - This is a bit of a cheat in that it came out a year before Being John Malkovich. Kaufman was working in television but he had not yet made a movie. But the premise is similar to Dream Scenario in that the world revolves around a single ordinary man, so if Dream Scenario is like a Kaufman film, so is this. 

Click (2006, Frank Coraci) - If it were someone other than Adam Sandler in the title role here, I think this story about a man who literally fast forwards through his life would strike us as more of a Kaufman high concept mindbender. As is even with Sandler, it's pretty poignant and potent at certain parts.

Vivarium (2019, Lorcan Finnegan) - Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots are trapped in an apparently empty neighborhood of identical houses from which there is no escape. The title suggests they are being watched for their reaction. Very Kaufman, and Eisenberg is another who should play a Kaufman surrogate at some point.

Her (2013, Spike Jonze) - It feels like a technicality that Kaufman is not actually involved with this. Jonze directed two of Kaufman's films, so this is sort of a cheat. And while we're cheating anyway ...

The Science of Sleep (2006, Michel Gondry) - If I'm going to list the future work of one Kaufman collaborator, I should list the future work of another. 

Swiss Army Man (2016, Daniel Scheinert & Daniel Kwan) - A buddy comedy between a suicidal man and the talking corpse that helps him find a reason to live? Yep, Kaufman could have written this.

Ruby Sparks (2012, Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris) - While we're already on Paul Dano, this is another one in the Stranger Than Fiction/Adaptation neighborhood, where a written character comes to life and tries to make a Kaufman-like schlub with writer's block happy. 

Moon (2009, Duncan Jones) - I'll let this stand in for a whole category of films featuring clones, as a clone gets at the existential concepts in which Kaufman always dabbles. 

It's becoming clear I could go on for quite a while listing films that narrowly qualify, with diminishing returns. But instead I'll wrap it up with the thought "You get the idea."

One thing I'll say, though, is that even when they fail, they fail in interesting ways. If someone wants to try to make a Charlie Kaufman movie, I'm always game for it -- and I don't want us collectively to forget how to do it, especially now that Kaufman himself doesn't want to be quite so on brand as to have a whole genre unto himself.