Vivarium is so getting that exemption

It's still early in the decade, but increasingly less so with every passing moment.

We've all just started watching movies from the fifth release year of the 2020s, which means there are only five more to go. The fact that most of us have seen only a handful of 2024 movies is what allows us to still think of this as the early part of the decade. A year from now, we will be officially midway. If the 20s were our age rather than an agreed upon convention for denoting the passage of time, first established more than 2,000 years ago based on the birth year of a person who claimed to be the son of God, we'd be calling ourselves in our mid-20s already.

And for an obsessive list maker like me, it causes me to ponder the paucity of serious contenders for my #1 movie of the 2020s. 

It makes for a very interesting contrast with the 2010s. At this same juncture last decade, four of my eventual top five movies of the decade had already been released, and all four of my top four. Only my #5, Tanna, still had its release on the horizon, in the year ending in 6 (2016). Three of the top four were all from the very first year of the decade (2010). 

I can't see the movies of the early 2020s dominating in this same fashion, unless it is going to be a really weak rest of the decade. I've named a #1 film in each of the first four years and I've loved those films, but each time I've anointed one of them, I've recognized that it was not a serious candidate to finish the decade at #1 -- and my secret hope was that none of these four titles would actually penetrate my top ten. They were the best of their year but of course that's all relative.

This is where Vivarium comes in.

I rewatched Vivarium on Friday night for the first time since 2020, having set myself the goal of scrolling until I found a heretofore undetermined title for my Friday night viewing. It didn't take long on Amazon Prime to see Lorcan Finnegan's film pop up and decide it was time for my third viewing. 

Vivarium was, technically speaking, my #3 movie of 2019. This was because I saw it at MIFF in 2019, well in advance of the rest of the viewing public, who saw it on its wide release in 2020 or sometime after that on video. But I gave it five stars without hesitation, and if I had just seen it in 2020 like everyone else, there would have been no doubt of its appropriateness to be ranked alongside all my other 2020 films. In fact, I feel pretty confident that it would have been my #1 movie of 2020, ahead of I'm Thinking of Ending Things. (Though how interesting would that have been as a 1-2 punch of noodle fryers.)

And as I thought about it, I thought Vivarium might actually have taken each of the next three #1s as well, if it had been released in those years. As I write this, I don't actually know whether Vivarium is ranked above or below those movies on my Flickchart, so let's find out right now in real time. I'll list each as a hypothetical duel based on the rankings they already have, rather than making this decision as though it were a live Flickchart duel, and you'll see which one is higher when I present the result: 

Vivarium vs. I'm Thinking of Ending Things - Ending Things wins, 182 to 355
Vivarium vs. Our Friend - Our Friend wins, 209 to 355
Vivarium vs. The Whale - The Whale wins, 227 to 355
Vivarium vs. Skinamarink - Vivarium wins, 355 to 408

Not a very conclusive result in what I was hoping to prove, since Vivarium is only fourth ranked out of these five films. 

But I think this does indicate an interesting subconscious bias on my part. I believe the first three #1s of the decade were added to my Flickchart after I had already crowned them the best of their year, meaning I was inclined toward a confirmation bias and to elevate these films into comparatively august positions on my chart. Skinamarink was, if memory serves, the only of these movies to be ranked before it was officially named the best of its year.

In any case, if these movies came up against each other organically, I could see myself picking Vivarium in any of the four duels -- especially now that my third viewing reminded me how great it is. The film may have suffered a mild setback in my personal feelings during that second viewing, in which I think I forced my wife to watch it with me, as that was something I did in 2020 a lot more than I do now. When she inevitably didn't like it as much as I did, I think it made me a little more critical of it.

No such problem on this viewing. I was audibly laughing at twisted absurdities and saying things like "Oh my God," especially anything and everything related to that bizarre little kid. Not really a kid, as Jesse Eisenberg points out at one point, with a resigned sense of loathing: "That's not a boy." In fact, one of my big takeaways about Vivarium on this viewing -- and we might go into mild spoiler territory here -- is that the things that are observing our two protagonists may not be aliens, but rather, AI. That likely wouldn't have been what Finnegan was thinking in 2019, but today, it seems like an obvious conclusion to reach. The ways they get this "boy" wrong are very similar to the way an AI creates humans with extra fingers. This gives the film a whole creepy new interpretation that the director mightn't have even considered, which is one of the things good art is capable of doing. 

I won't go into too many more details about the movie itself because the purpose of this post is not to synopsize Vivarium or specifically to try to get you to see it, if you have not already.

What is the purpose of this post, if I can finally get to it?

It's to remind myself that I did not initially consider Vivarium eligible for the best of the 2020s. Like Agora the decade before it -- a film with a 2009 release year in its native country, but that I didn't see and rank until 2010 -- Vivarium had slipped into that crack between decades, not quite a 2019 movie but not quite a 2020 movie, and because I compiled my best of the 2010s list after I saw it, I felt like it had missed out on its one and only shot.

Now, I think there's a plausible reason to reconsider it -- to call it a 2020 movie even though it is listed on my 2019 lists, and is definitively associated with that release year by my own rules for determining such things. 

You may recall, though it's more likely that you do not, that I considered the Vivarium question in my post for the best of the 2010s. Unlike the other three movies that narrowly missed consideration due to similar release year ambiguities -- Agora, Mother and Mr. Nobody -- Vivarium was the only film that missed because of a future release ambiguity (post 2019), not a past release ambiguity (pre 2010). Here is what I wrote about it:

"The last is a film that had only festival premieres in 2019, including MIFF where I saw it, but for most of the world will be a 2020 film, meaning I have decided to consider it for the next decade even though I have already ranked it in my 2019 year-end list. We'll see how I handle the release year in parenthesis dilemma ten years from now." 

Well there you go. Just as I didn't check my Flickchart rankings before starting this post, I obviously didn't read this previous post, or remember what I had concluded from it, before I started writing either. 

So I had already made the decision that Vivarium could not slip through the cracks between decades, that it would be considered as part of the 2020s, despite the aforementioned disconnect between putting a 2019 release year in parentheses whenever I mention the film, and then including it for a consideration in a decade whose other movies start with a 2 rather than a 1.

Well, maybe not whenever I mention it. As you will see if you are reading this post relatively soon after I've written it, I have decide to challenge my own sense of the rules by listing the release year of Vivarium as 2020 in my "most recently revisited" section in the right margin. It is an ephemeral choice, as it will be gone as soon as I rewatch three more films, but I do it symbolically, out of recognition that, indeed, I am making the decision -- or rather, reinforcing a previously made decision -- to grant an exemption to Vivarium for consideration as part of the best of the 2020s.

Because who wants to get to decade's end and have a top ten bereft of the sorts of movies that decorated that most elite tier last decade? Here is a reminder of those titles:

10. Under the Skin
9. First Reformed
8. The Blackcoat's Daughter
7. Inside Out
6. Like Father, Like Son
5. Tanna
4. The Social Network
3. Rabbit Hole
2. Spring Breakers
1. Tangled

As of right now, all of those movies are better than any of my 2020 contenders, Vivarium included. (And if Vivarium does make my top ten of the 2020s, that'll mean two straight top tens for Eisenberg, star of The Social Network.)

Here's hoping the 2020s will be a backloaded decade. 

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. 

Vivarium arrives

I've been impatiently waiting for my next chance to see Vivarium, which I saw at MIFF and which
occupied my #1 spot last year for a couple months, and coronavirus finally delivered me that opportunity.

I don't know if it was destined for a proper theatrical release -- I think not, unfortunately -- but the pandemic certainly scuttled any chance of that. It's recently debuted for purchase and rental on iTunes, and other similar platforms I imagine.

It's movies like Vivarium that allow us cinephiles to keep going with our fresh new movie conquests, without hating ourselves in the morning -- even if, in my case, I already saw it and counted it last year.

I wrote about Lorcan Finnegan's film last year at MIFF time, but I was very hesitant to reveal any of its secrets. I'm still hesitant, but the poster is starting to force my hand. As you can see, it's got the tagline "You're home. Forever."

I'll just say something along the lines of what I said last time, except the difference is that this time, you can go right now to iTunes to rent it. I'm not going to check my actual wording from last August, but what I feel willing to convey, and what is probably similar to what I said then, is that this is a must-see for people who like their mindbenders with a little dose of social satire and black humor. Plot-wise, it involves Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots as a young couple looking to buy a house, who are led by an odd salesman to a residential development where all the houses are eerie carbon copies of the one in the poster. And the clouds have a sort of fake look to them ...

The difference between then and now is also that I finally have some feedback from some other people I know who have seen it, one of whom is my wife from our viewing on Sunday night. She was actually supposed to be the one who saw it at MIFF, while I had to sacrifice my intended viewing two nights earlier to her scheduling conflict. But she ultimately couldn't go to her viewing so I went in her place. And couldn't have been more pleased with the turn of events.

If our roles had in fact been reversed, I doubt I would have sought it out now, as her response was considerably more measured than mine. She made the obligatory comments on its evident craft and moments of exquisite weirdness, but I was looking for her to be blown away, and she was not. I think that's in part because, like The Platform, it was a little too close to home in this time of quarantine and being stuck in a house with your own family members, at whom you're starting look sideways. In both instances she said felt her anxiety level increasing. For me, that's a good thing when watching a movie; her, maybe not so much.

Then I heard from a couple others on my Flickchart Facebook group today, after I posted about it. They both similarly praised it and were both similarly short of the full "go out and see this right now" endorsement I was hoping for. One said it was "a little on the nose" while the other said it was "not particularly original," and both criticized Eisenberg as miscast. I couldn't have disagreed more on all fronts, though I do think Poots gives the better performance.

So not everyone praises it as much as I do ... but who are you going to believe, them or me? I mean, you're not reading their blogs right now, are you?

I'm just glad it has arrived, that it's out there in the world and that I can now start to share it with everyone else, even if they don't all think it's the cat's pajamas.

Viva Vivarium.

MIFF: Eisenberg's new girlfriend and Dolan's new boyfriend

It used to be that Kristen Stewart was Jessie Eisenberg’s girlfriend. They have appeared in possibly as many as four and no fewer than three films together, despite no romantic entanglements off screen that I’m aware of. Maybe they just have good chemistry. In another industry he might have called her his “work wife.” (And let’s not be sexist; she might have called him her “work husband.")

Well, that pairing hasn’t happened since Woody Allen’s Café Society in 2016, so maybe it’s over. Or maybe they’re just seeing other people. In any case, Eisenberg seems to be a “serial monogamist” (to quote Four Weddings and a Funeral) as he has now taken up with Imogen Poots.

It seems to be only two movies together so far, but they are both playing at this year’s MIFF, so you tend to notice it.

It was while waiting for Lorcan Finnegan’s Vivarium to start Sunday night at Hoyts Melbourne Central that I made the connection. I knew Eisenberg and Poots were the stars of Vivarium, but I didn’t realize Poots was also in Eisenberg’s The Art of Self-Defence from director Riley Stearns. A tweet changed that. MIFF likes to post tweets of people who tagged MIFF with their thoughts on a movie they saw, and by “post” I mean use as a screen saver before the film starts, such that the tweets fill up the screen and occasionally change their relative orientation, as new ones pop up and old ones expire. (It’s not real time – they are curated for acceptable content.) In fact, I almost want to start tweeting again just to see my own tweet up there, though the odds are against me actually attending the session where they posted my tweet, if they posted it at all. And if I can’t see it, did it really happen?

Anyway, one person tweeted the reasons she was sold on Art of Self-Defence, and one of them was Imogen Poots.

That was a lot of time to spend on the fact that two actors happened to appear together in two movies in the same year.

I should be spending my time on Vivarium, a film I was going to see, and then wasn’t going to see, and then saw. Knowing it was some kind of post-apocalyptic film starring two actors I liked (the aforementioned couple), I put it on my original shortlist for its first screening on Friday night. However, my wife had to put the kibosh on that when it was revealed it would probably interfere with her own schedule that day, as she was attending meetings with sales agents for her own film that’s in the festival. But she was also interested in Vivarium so she bought a ticket for herself for Sunday night. (Which sounds underhanded, but believe me, it’s not – I make out far better on the whole MIFF situation as I can only go to movies at night, leaving her with a surplus of solo child caring, while she fits as many as she can into daytime sessions.) But then staying out after a long day of meeting with sales agents (and also squeezing in two daytime sessions) just did not seem very palatable to her, so she handed over the ticket to me.

After getting out I texted her the following: “I cannot thank you enough for getting tickets to that movie.”

Indeed, I am happy to say that Vivarium is now the top of the heap of the 50 or so films I’ve seen this year. It’s not post-apocalyptic the way I was expecting it to be. I won’t tell you too much about the story, because I didn’t know anything about the story and that was great. What I will say is it involves Poots and Eisenberg as a couple who go looking at a new home in a planned community – you know, one of those places where all the houses look the same. The sales agent takes them for this tour and then … well, that’s all I want to tell you. I’ll just tell you that it isn’t the kind of “zombies walking the earth” post-apocalyptic movie you might be thinking of, though “post-apocalyptic” is an apt enough description from a certain point of view. It’s a mind bender, and it’s just … so … good. I am currently debating whether to review it or not, but I’m not sure I could without telling a lot more about it than I want to tell.

In fact, it was so good that I made an extremely difficult decision not to stay for the Q&A with the director, who was present to introduce it. I hope some people stayed because Lorcan Finnegan deserves to be showered with adoration and intellectual inquisitiveness related to this film. But the fact of the matter is, the MIFF sessions don’t give you a huge amount of downtime between them, and I needed to get some dinner before my second movie of the night, so I made the rough choice of peeling away. (I probably didn’t need to get dumplings from my favorite dumpling place, but that’s what I had my heart set on.)

Once Vivarium got me out of the house I thought it made sense to kill two birds with one evening. And given my wife’s large quantity of extra, unused tickets, I had her get me a ticket for a film that hadn’t made my shortlist, but had made my longlist – that original list consisting of about 40 titles. It was at the Plenary again, the most remote MIFF location, but I’d brought my bike, so I ate my dumplings and zig-zagged through the streets with only a minute or two to spare before it started.

The film was the French language Matthias & Maxime, and it made it on to my longlist by virtue of being directed by Canadian Xavier Dolan, though I’d also like to think I support LBGTQ content. Dolan directed two films I like a lot, I Killed My Mother and Mommy, and yes, his mother fixation does factor into a subplot here. The film is only dipping its toe into LGBTQ, I suppose, as the two title characters are apparently heterosexual lifelong friends, who realize they may feel something more toward each other when one of them is on the verge of leaving Montreal for Australia for two years. (And if I were a slightly more shameless mentioner of coincidences, I’d have probably spent a whole post on how both of my two Sunday night movies had at least one mention of Australia.)

The actual inciting incident, though, is that they agree to substitute for two actors who flaked on a student film being shot by the annoying younger sister of one of their friends. Actually, Maxime agrees, and Matthias loses a bet. It’s part of a weekend at a lakehouse where their friends are partying and she’s making the movie. The only thing is, not until they’ve agreed to be in it does she explain the scene, which involves the two of them kissing. Perhaps realizing they have unacknowledged feelings toward each other, they’re quite resistant, but ultimately agree. And that’s when the problems start. (Dolan plays Maxime, which allowed for the “clever” mirroring in the title of this post.)

As with both of the other Dolan films I’ve seen, he’s true to the complicated dynamics and emotions between human beings, and it’s an interestingly explored subject. It didn’t hit for me emotionally, though, and I hope that’s not because I have trouble relating to a same-sex sexual attraction. Every time I see a movie featuring two men or two women in love with each other, and it doesn’t hit for me as resoundingly as I think it might, I wonder whether it’s just this particular story that didn’t land for me, or if I have trouble becoming emotional or sentimental about romantic love that is a different type of romantic love than the type I experience. Movies are complicated as they are supposed to be an empathy machine for people different from you (to quote Roger Ebert), but you are also supposed to see yourself in the characters, and it’s somewhere in the murky gray middle where I struggle to reconcile it. Anyway, that’s way too big of a matzo ball so let’s just leave it at “I thought this movie was good but not great.” (God, did I just write a whole paragraph that makes me sound homophobic? I hope not, because I’m not. I mean, I chose this movie, didn’t I? Ugh, it’s getting worse. I better just stop writing now.)

I’ve got a little MIFF break now until … well, tonight. Ha. My actual break was Monday, but I didn’t write this post until today, so … back at it on Tuesday night!