Mickey 17
to think, i almost missed this one. it took weeks of passing by it in the queue before i realized what it even was. and even then, even knowing that it was from the director of Parasite, you know — a great filmmaker — i was still a bit hesitant.
i mean, not to spoil anything, but… Parasite is kind of a bummer?
and there are moments in Mickey 17. moments that feel a bit like riding on one of those big scary roller coasters, the kind designed to make the rider feel like maybe someone in maintenance missed something in the safety inspection and the whole thing is about to go flying off the rails.
but unlike Parasite, it never does. at the end of the film the roller coaster returns safely to the station and the audience leaves their cars unscathed. all’s well that ends well.
the alien creature design, for instance. they are called “creepers” and they look rather frightening and disgusting — perhaps even murderous. but then, somehow by the third act, actually morph into feeling cute and cuddly? while looking exactly the same. it’s a clever bit of work.
there’s the biting social satire that punches hard — at technology, at authoritarianism, at the worst of what’s in us all, really. but not without also celebrating what’s good in us. what we might hope for our future. how we might be better.
and, you know, there’s just the premise of the whole thing. i won’t spoil it — if you can managed to watch the movie without knowing what you’re getting into like i did it will only add to the fun. but let’s just say that at the heart of the film is a truly dark, dystopian science fiction concept. and yet the script by Bong Joon Ho, with the help of Robert Patterson’s masterful slapstick performance, somehow manages to turn it into the funniest thing in the film.
i probably haven’t been this excited by a science fiction movie since Spike Jonze’s Her. which, if it was a satire (which i don’t think it is, although it’s probably fair to say it has some satire in it) i might pick as the better movie. but i would hate having to choose. they are both modern masterpieces.
Mickey 17 is what science fiction is meant to be. it uses the future and technology of tomorrow to not so much predict how the world will someday be, which is impossible, but to talk about the now. to give us, the people alive today, another way to look at our own behavior. to ask questions about where we’re going and what kind of world we want to live in. to see ourselves, to see society, to see our world, with fresh eyes.
i rarely watch a movie twice. even more rare for me: watching a movie twice in the same year. to be honest, i’m not sure that’s ever happened before. but i loved Mickey 17 so much, i sat down to watch it again just a few months after my initial viewing because i wanted to show it to my wife. (who also enjoyed it, although probably not quite as much as i did.)
in a year or two, i look forward to watching it again.