[Toast and Kent love a time loop. We love watching them, thinking about them, wishing we were in one...Maybe we ARE in one, just one that lasts the length of our entire lives, and we come back with only a barely intact sense that we may have done all of this before. Maybe by the end of (this time round) we'll have deconstructed what it is that actually makes a good time loop versus a bad one...? Who knows. Maybe we do. But probably the next loop.]
2021, Ian Samuels (Sierra Burgess is a Loser) -- Amazon
How did the Loop Begin?
[Kent] There's no secrets here Toasty, we've both seen the movie...and if anyone is reading this who hasn't seen the movie... well...watch the movie first. These aren't spoiler free reviews...they're more exploring the subgenre with recaps.
The loop begins, we find out, because Margaret willed it into existence. Apparently. We don't rightly know if there's something more technological/scientific at play or if it's just a cosmic event that happened to coincide with Margaret's trauma.
I'm still trying to decide if I prefer a Time Loop story that starts in media res or if I prefer a character discovering that they're in a loop. It's interesting that 12:01 PM, ostensibly the first Time Loop story, also starts this way.
[Toast] At this point in my loopy viewing habits, I do rather like the in media-res, as we the viewers already know it is one, so we might as well have some fun with the concept, which they do.
Oh crap, I think that means you might have to watch Boss Level which is very much about starting mid-loop, with him narrating where we are and how he feels about it. I will re-watch with you. I guess they cannot all be great movies, in fact I expect a good number of them will not be.
What was the main character's first reaction to the Loop?
[Toast] Given that we join him mid-loop, we don't know. But he has adjusted rather well. Sure, he has bouts of philosophical instability, which he unloads on his ever-losing-the-Boss-battle best friend but for the most part, he seems well adjusted. But there is that waking wistful look at his mom going to work, which we later learn is due to him not seeing her again before the loop ends, and therefore not having seen her for a long long time.
[Kent] So, again, advance spoilery talk...but Mark is the main character for the first two acts until he realizes he's not the main character of this story, Margaret is. And then we follow Margaret for the final act. We don't get to see either of their first reactions to the Loop.
Mark noted that it took him time to notice the loop had happened, he said from the fact that there was "no new Doctor Who". For Margaret, although not explicitly said, it's likely that it was her mother (who passes away each evening during the loop) is still alive.
[Toast] While I do think the whole "who is the real main character" is rather clever, when we are presented with the movie, Mark is definitely our main. I didn't catch that he took a couple of loops to catch on, but yeah that is so on track for being a teenager in the summer.
It must have been quite the shock for Margaret to awaken that looped morning to find herself the only one grieving her mother's loss. Might have even taken the call from the doctor (her brother IIRC ?) to alert to as to her wish coming true.
WHY did the main character get put into the Loop? Can someone else be brought into the Loop?
[Toast] Despite having this as a template question, I gather that very few of these stories will involve being able to manually manipulate the confines of the loop. In this case Mark has no idea why he is in the loop. While he has put some thought into it, fueled by his knowledge of other time loop movies (meta awareness is key here) but he really has no idea. He's a teenage boy, after all.
[Kent] Such a teenage boy. Of course his initial focus is to kind of try to "meet cute" a young woman with a British accent who intrigues him...
[Toast] But then Margaret shows up, interrupting one of his usual interactions.
[Kent] But then Margaret shows up... and like a teenage boy, his affections shift on a dime.
[Toast] Margaret is also in the loop, and after some initial chase given, the two connect. It is now assumed Margaret has been in the loop for as long as Mark, likely years, considering his "thousands of times" comment.
As for why Mark is in the loop, well blame Margaret. I absolutely love love love this topsy turvy timey wimey play on Main Character vs Supporting Character. Mark thinks he is the main, when it turns out he is just the supporting cast. Margaret created the loop through a massive amount of grief generated by this being her last day with her mother. And she is still deeply caught in the grips of said grief, despite learning to enjoy the earlier part of the day with Mark, wherein the two build the titular Map of Tiny Perfect Things.
That thing is a wonderful idea of finding those perfect
moments in a given day, such as seeing the janitor take a brief break
and play the piano beautifully, such as an elderly couple enjoying her
win at solitaire, such as being there for an eagle's swoop & take of
a fish, such as the moment the kids turn on the lights in their
treehouse. There are so many perfect moments in a day, but they last but
a moment never to be seen again. Mark and Margaret get not only to find them, but see them again and again.
[Kent] I love [love love] it too, especially that once he realizes it, the film switches perspectives. I mean it very much withholds a lot of Margaret's life, her secret phone call at the same time every day. It tries to imply another guy in the picture, but I knew it HAD to be more important than that. I had assumed [correctly] a dying parent. Margaret wants to hold onto the day, to say goodbye to her mother but never for the last time...and yet in the process, she needs to find something to move on for... and I really liked that Mark wasn't that thing. Instead, together, they find the thing worth making life worth moving forward... tiny, perfect things... and Mark (an aspiring artist) starts creating a map of them every day. (As a former artist, I can only imagine how frustrating it is to create the same thing over and over again every day only to have it erased from existence... like when I would write a block post for an hour or put hours into a book chapter and then something would happen with the computer and the whole post would be gone...I mean, the next iteration is usually always better, but, yeah, so frustrating...but I guess you get accustomed to the non-permanence of things).
I loved that the message of this film is about finding the small random joys of life AND taking time to appreciate them. The thing about a Time Loop is it slows you down, restores time to a chaotic life...allows you to learn new things, to breathe, to look at people and the world differently.
[Toast] Just connecting on that musing about losing your art everyday. Funny, I do my little flash fictions but I rarely actually reach back and re-read them. It's more the act of writing out the story from my head that I enjoy, as opposed to actually doing something with the story. So, my art is preferred as transitory.
How long is this time Loop? What resets it? Can you force the reset?
[Toast] From about 7am-ish to exactly midnight, the amount of time it takes for Mark to wake up, right to the end of the day. I am assuming it actually starts earlier, but Mark always joins it waking up. And we can assume Margaret's mother passed away moments before, every night, for thousands of nights. And Margaret's wish for this last day to never end affects her entire universe plus one.
The movie never gets dark enough to explore the idea of death resetting the loop, so we can never do anything but assume it does.
[Kent] Right. The loop is 24 hours but since Midnight to 7am-ish Mark was sleeping it just goes on as usual without him. I always wonder if someone in a loop is ever able, with an aware brain, to force themselves to wake up earlier. I also wonder...when they're sleeping, are their brains dreaming the same thing every time... OR is it that the Loop is literally only from the time they wake up...but then both Mark and Margaret can't be waking up at the exact same time...right?
Anyway, there's a couple of flirts with death, but no, neither actually die to force the reset.
But something you said Toasty, mentioning "death resetting the loop" immediately after mentioning Margaret's mother passed away makes me wonder...did the Loop happen because Margaret's mother died? Was Margaret's mother's death the cause of the Loop (like how in 12:01 how Barry maybe electrocuted himself at the same time the particle accelerator fired...).. is death the key to Time Loops?
[Toast] Ooooo, this might bring upon another trope that many of them draw upon. Will have to make note on the forthcoming watching to see if we can head-canon it.
How long does the main character stay in the Loop? Does it have any affect on them, their personality, their outlook?
[Toast] Its been thousands of days for Mark, so I would say at least a couple of years. A lot changes in a couple of years in the brain of a teenage boy, and girl, but he does not seem affected all that much. Nature vs Nurture analog, in the aspects of immortality? Is our age reflective of our environment or, especially when bodies are young, reflective of chemistry and biology? I always felt Margaret showed more the effects of years locked in grief passing, and it imparted a sort of maturity, one that Mark never caught. It is his lack of said maturity that actually allows her to begin enjoying the day(s) again. Not until Mark becomes a boy spurned of his first love, do we see any major emotional change in him. And not until she breaks from her own emotional loop, does she get to experience some growth.
[Kent] Absolutely Toasty. It's that concept of how you feel physically on the day of the loop can affect how you approach the loop. Like Mark is a young and vital teenage boy, and he's full of vim and vigour. And even though his brain has theoretically aged a few years, he still thinks like a teenager...his brain hasn't finished developing yet. His skills are improving...but...here's a question on Time Loops where your body stays the same but your brain advances... is "muscle memory" a brain function or literally a body function? Should Marc be able to draw better, play the tuba well... should someone be able to learn the piano, when their body is reset every day. You could do nothing but go to the gym every day for a thousand days in a time loop, but it doesn't mean the body you wake up in after a thousand days would be stronger than the body you were in on day one...
[Toast] Can you imagine what it would be like it you continued to age as the loops happened? Eventually someone would go, "Isn't your hair significantly longer than it was yesterday?" But I truly think they just don't want to deal with the metaphysics of mind vs brain.
[Kent] Margaret is full of grief and sorrow, but she seems grateful to be in the loop, and even though she does certain things, her reason for being in the loop is to spend more time with her mother on her death bed. She has purpose in the loop. Mark doesn't...until he realizes that the purpose of the loop is to support Margaret through her grieving.
[Toast] There was also that bittersweet moment when Mark's "annoying sister" points out he just doesn't pay attention to anyone but himself. Sure, he thinks he's the main character, but he doesn't even seem aware of the truths in his own family, that his sister is rather astute, that his father's midlife crisis is not as stereotypical as it seems. Is Mark growing? Not because of the loop, but because of people in the loop.
[Kent] I loved that scene of discovering self awareness (like Scott Pilgrim... +1 life!). And that's a great point that it's when he finally starts paying attention to the other people in the loop, that they start reacting differently and the Loop starts changing for the better and he realizes thinking less about himself can have an even more positive impact. Mark when we first encounter him seems like a good kid...as he has this perfect Pee Wee Herman-esque routine in the morning of helping everything, but his whole objective is to wind up at the pool for a meet-cute with the cute British girl...only to have a completely other meet cute fall upon him.
And yeah, it's not even Margaret that changes him, but his kid sister. Love that. The soccer game moment was my first teary moment.
What about the other people in the Loop? Are they aware? Can they become aware? Does anything happen if they become aware?
[Toast] Nobody is aware. Mark tells his gaming buddy every day, but that's as far as he goes in sharing. There are hints that he wants to share, but I gather he tried that earlier on, and is just not on the ball enough to build the list & order of details that would allow someone to catch on quicker.
[Kent] I just get the sense that Mark, by the time we meet him, is completely over
trying to tell people about the Loop, so he only bothers when it's
necessary context for the story he's telling or the thoughts he's trying
to work through. Margaret on the other hand, she has her own purpose
for being, and I get the sense that before Mark she was just filling
time between the moments that really mattered to her.
What does the main character think about the other people in the Loop? Are they real? Do they matter?
[Toast] This is teenage romance light fare, so I can safely assume Mark thinks of everyone as real people despite his awareness of lack of consequences. He really loves his family, despite his self-centeredness, and he really does interact with his community, helping out and making their days lighter.... to a degree. Once Margaret appears, she becomes the center of his world. But both of them do see the world they live in, and its people.
[Kent] I do like the conversations that Mark and Margaret have, which are a lot like these exchanges you and I have about Loops, thinking through the Loop and what happens in them and about whether they should do anything that would be absolutely terrible for them should the Loop suddenly end. But there is a specific mention of being gods among all these people. But their attachments to the people in the Loop still matter to them...and they try to be, generally, kind to the others around them. They're good kids. I'm waiting for the story where an utterly deplorable person gets stuck in a Loop.
Most memorable event in a Loop? Most surprising event during a Loop?
[Toast] The school gym moonscape. Entirely unrealistic as it means Mark spent days if not weeks, preparing what he was going to do and then spending every waking minute building the bloody thing, up until he presents it to Margaret. And that tells us that they don't spend every loop with each other, once they catch onto each other's presence. Good days and bad days, lonely days and full days. While not explicitly said, there are a number of events that tell us they sometimes just don't connect, and take entire loops working at other things. But that moonscape and the MST3K style entrance dungeon made of cardboard is just lovely, almost like the set designers from Dave Made a Maze found new work.
[Kent] Ah! I thought the same thing, BUT, Mark does explain that he bribed some art class or department to create it. It's still far fetched logistically, but makes more sense that he paid other people to do it quickly rather than do it all himself...but then he could have played it out a couple dozen times over to get it optimal (he did mention that he'd practiced the water bottle tossing trick to catch the closing door that gets them inside the school). But yeah, there's many "the logistics of this are improbable" moments, but why not go along with them for fun... so I do.
I liked them demolishing the "model home", just utterly wrecking this not-so-perfect perfect thing. I also liked the moment of the petite girl skateboarder showing up all the other skater punks. And taking a plane to Tokyo and when he hit midnight, going against the spin of the earth it reset. Some comic book logic happening there. A lot of little things I liked.
[Toast] I said this when I was watching the scene, but I don't appreciate the destruction of the model home as much as I would have when I was a teenager. I wonder if its a peculiarity of teen years, to have that fantasy of destruction as I had it very strongly for years. But now, not so much.
How does this stack up in the subgenre?
[Toast] I think this was a fine, if not perfect example for the collection. Like Palm Springs it assumes a viewer awareness, if not fondness for the subgenre. And while it does play on one of the stronger tropes (perfectly interacting with the day) it takes that idea one step further in the titular map. I also love the very mystical vs science explanation of the loop vs most other movies. All in all, I love this one.
[Kent] Me too. It's not without its flaws, and yes, Palm Springs having released last year does sort of cast a shadow over it, it's a Time Loop movie that understands Time Loops, as well as introducing a second aware person in the loop (see also Russian Doll). While Palm Springs showed a sort of animosity towards the Time Loop, this one approaches it as a gift, which I really don't think we've seen yet, one where people just embrace the Loop as something positive. Oh to be young.
I went into it kind of dreading what a teenage romance time loop would look like, but I didn't catch on to why I knew the screenwriter's name until I had already bought into the film. Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians, is one of Adj's favourites in recent years, so whatever it is about that tale of magic and fantasy that she keys into seems to also be injected in this film. I'm guessing a thoughtfulness and respect for the genre. (Funny that the first example of the subgenre was based off a short story, and the latest is also based off a short story... if we were tackling these in order, we might think we were in a loop).
I thought the "Map" would wind up making this... too cute, like the film would be only about teens and their cutesy adventures, but the map is just a device, sparingly used and has larger thematic resonance (as well as a crucial story purpose). This one I worried about its white male entitled-ness at first, but I like that it's part of the story, of learning to be less me-centric. We need more stories of people learning to be less me-centric.
No comments:
Post a Comment