The older we get, the more fascinated we are by time's elasticity, and history's ambiguity. "That moment in my past; what happened, exactly? And when? What did it mean?", we ask ourselves. The answers contain the meaning of our lives, the meaning we yearn to discover. Then, the challenge is to accept the truths revealed to us.
Steven Soderbergh's "The Limey" explores those three questions in a perfectly-filmed-and-edited blend of past action and present recollection. A man sits in the cabin of an airplane, remembering the letter and clipping he received, and the trip to Los Angeles which followed. One question resonates for him: the circumstances of his daughter's fate. 'Tell me about Jenny.' Wilson (Terence Stamp)needed to find out what had happened to his daughter, and flew to L. A. Events unfolded; now he's returning to England, and remembering.
Soderbergh uses the clips from "Poor Cow" (1967) to give Wilson's memories the vivid clarity that our own home movies convey. It's solemn magic to see and hear family members, lovers and friends of thirty years earlier. Alive and present in a living past. Soderbergh understands the importance for Wilson's story of seeing that past as it was, seeing Jenny as she was, so that we can see her charm, share his love for her, and share the urgency of his search.
And its this vivid use of the older film that makes powerfully clear the lesson Wilson discovers. Terry Valentine (Peter Fonda) answers a question, and Wilson realises that the answer he's been seeking lies in his own past. More than one man bears the responsibility for Jenny's fate. It's painful. We understand exactly why Wilson walks away, thoughts of revenge abandoned.
Some elements of the film lie outside Wilson's memory. Avery (Barry Newman), Terry Valentine's 'security director' hires Stacy (the superbly dangerous Nicky Katt) to deal with Wilson, and the sequences of pursuit are aspects we don't share with the English visitor. A formalist might ask how we can know about Stacy if Wilson doesn't, until they meet in a parking lot, but it's insignificant, because the flow of the story is so clear, and the plot details intertwined so cleverly.
Soderbergh's editing, with the overlaps, repetitions, and shifts from present to past, is the basis of that intertwining. He's created a convincing model of the way our memories work when we reflect on our lives - significant moments keep returning, being viewed from shifting perspectives, so that what seemed puzzling becomes clear; what seemed random now reveals its connection to our own choices.
I admire also the ways in which Soderbergh has cut moments of action to create the film's jarring rhythm of shock and stunned stillness. Violence erupts, planned and unplanned, and we know right away that we don't understand what's happened. It'll take time and much mulling over to discover the meaning of what we've experienced.
At film's end, we're back on the airplane with Wilson, wondering whether he can accept what he's learned. He seems not to; in the politeness of a brief conversation with the woman seated beside him, he says " I shouldn't have been there. It was these other lads should have been there in my place." Wilson's talking about prison, but to us it sounds as though he doesn't want to take responsibility for what's happened to his daughter, as if someone else was really to blame. That effort to dodge the implications of his own behaviour is the criminal's protective strategy, and it's reinforced with great irony when the young Wilson sings 'Colours' in the film's last frames. "Freedom is a word I rarely use without thinking of the time when I was loved". Wilson was loved, but he couldn't accept the responsibility that love entailed, and he's implicated in the death of someone who loved him. Now he's alone, high above the earth, in the pressurised tube of a transatlantic jet, forever about to land, never quite free of his past, trapped in the loneliness of his own making.
Steven Soderbergh's "The Limey" explores those three questions in a perfectly-filmed-and-edited blend of past action and present recollection. A man sits in the cabin of an airplane, remembering the letter and clipping he received, and the trip to Los Angeles which followed. One question resonates for him: the circumstances of his daughter's fate. 'Tell me about Jenny.' Wilson (Terence Stamp)needed to find out what had happened to his daughter, and flew to L. A. Events unfolded; now he's returning to England, and remembering.
Soderbergh uses the clips from "Poor Cow" (1967) to give Wilson's memories the vivid clarity that our own home movies convey. It's solemn magic to see and hear family members, lovers and friends of thirty years earlier. Alive and present in a living past. Soderbergh understands the importance for Wilson's story of seeing that past as it was, seeing Jenny as she was, so that we can see her charm, share his love for her, and share the urgency of his search.
And its this vivid use of the older film that makes powerfully clear the lesson Wilson discovers. Terry Valentine (Peter Fonda) answers a question, and Wilson realises that the answer he's been seeking lies in his own past. More than one man bears the responsibility for Jenny's fate. It's painful. We understand exactly why Wilson walks away, thoughts of revenge abandoned.
Some elements of the film lie outside Wilson's memory. Avery (Barry Newman), Terry Valentine's 'security director' hires Stacy (the superbly dangerous Nicky Katt) to deal with Wilson, and the sequences of pursuit are aspects we don't share with the English visitor. A formalist might ask how we can know about Stacy if Wilson doesn't, until they meet in a parking lot, but it's insignificant, because the flow of the story is so clear, and the plot details intertwined so cleverly.
Soderbergh's editing, with the overlaps, repetitions, and shifts from present to past, is the basis of that intertwining. He's created a convincing model of the way our memories work when we reflect on our lives - significant moments keep returning, being viewed from shifting perspectives, so that what seemed puzzling becomes clear; what seemed random now reveals its connection to our own choices.
I admire also the ways in which Soderbergh has cut moments of action to create the film's jarring rhythm of shock and stunned stillness. Violence erupts, planned and unplanned, and we know right away that we don't understand what's happened. It'll take time and much mulling over to discover the meaning of what we've experienced.
At film's end, we're back on the airplane with Wilson, wondering whether he can accept what he's learned. He seems not to; in the politeness of a brief conversation with the woman seated beside him, he says " I shouldn't have been there. It was these other lads should have been there in my place." Wilson's talking about prison, but to us it sounds as though he doesn't want to take responsibility for what's happened to his daughter, as if someone else was really to blame. That effort to dodge the implications of his own behaviour is the criminal's protective strategy, and it's reinforced with great irony when the young Wilson sings 'Colours' in the film's last frames. "Freedom is a word I rarely use without thinking of the time when I was loved". Wilson was loved, but he couldn't accept the responsibility that love entailed, and he's implicated in the death of someone who loved him. Now he's alone, high above the earth, in the pressurised tube of a transatlantic jet, forever about to land, never quite free of his past, trapped in the loneliness of his own making.