The Game (1997)
Allegedly based on the real-life puzzle/treasure hunt that has been held annually for 36 years in San Francisco and Seattle, this film bears little resemblance to the descriptions I've read of those games. I grabbed it mostly because it was a David Fincher film, but also for a reason I prefer not to--shall we say--elucidate at this juncture. Or any juncture. Or at all. Let's leave it alone, shall we? Anyway, this is probably the most poorly received of Fincher's films (okay, barring Alien³, I guess--or Panic Room, which I've yet to see), at least publicly. Critics were all right with it (or even quite happy) but it didn't catch on in general. I don't hear much bile spit about it, nor do I hear praise or shrugs (however audible they may or may not be) tossed at it. Still, Fincher's a director I respect more and more all the time, and will happily give his films a go either way (I've even got Panic Room waiting in the wings of my enormously out of control DVD collection).

Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas) is the son of a wealthy businessman who committed suicide by leaping from their large estate's roof at 48, right in front of Nicholas' eyes. He's been dissociated from emotional reality since that point, completely enveloped in business and ignoring his ex-wife Elizabeth (Anna Katarina) and brother Conrad (Sean Penn). It is his 48th birthday as the film opens, and Conrad makes a cryptic offer to meet him for dinner via an old, lame injoke routed through Nicholas' assistant. This being the one connection Nicholas is willing to go with, he takes Conrad up on the offer and meets him. Conrad hands Nicholas a card with the number for "Consumer Recreation Services," and tells him this is his present, that he has enjoyed this service himself--knocking down Nicholas' guesses at its identity ("An escort service?"). After a battery of tests that Nicholas reluctantly agrees to, he's met with the image of a fallen body in front of the home that has stayed in his hands since his father was alive, mimicking his father's own fate. Angry, Nicholas brings the "body"--a clown doll--inside, and finds that he was not rejected from "The Game" provided by CRS as he believed. He's now led from place to place by intentionally abstruse clues, albeit ones that seem to find their use quite naturally in Nicholas' regular life. At first annoyed, Nicholas rapidly finds himself fearful of where the Game is taking him, and his fear is repeatedly given cause, only to have it removed.

There are two primary components of this film I feel are worth discussing (or, more accurately, want to discuss): first, Fincher's approach to the story and Van Orton, and second, the hotly contested ending (and its quality or lack thereof).

The thing that caught my eye first--and it was trained by seeing Fincher's careful eye in prior films, which is fed by my understanding that he is a meticulous perfectionist of a director--was the way the film opened. Scored (by Howard Shore) with minimalistic music, but strong enough to carry a feeling of distant, sad memory, is a carefully cut set of 8mm "home movies" of Nicholas' early life. It's bright and sunny, and filled with his birthdays as a child, his brother, his father, their home--and interspersed are elements of his father's suicide. It cuts from this to Nicholas at home. His house is silent, the only sounds coming from a financial television show and the echoes of huge hallways and rooms as he moves through them alone. Douglas' face betrays almost no emotion, and his interactions are clipped and brief. They aren't unfriendly, generally speaking, but they are not warm. Sometimes they're short and snarky, but even outright anger is unusual. When speaking to his wife he is flat and cold, cruel even as he cuts her off and shows a total disinterest in her. The way this is worked together is brilliant: it works in that way that I appreciate, the way a friend of mine has always appreciated music that I never could. In the way that he hears separate instruments, I have one part of my brain looking for technique and ideas and approaches and another actively and emotionally engaged, running separate threads for separate purposes. So long as they never bleed into each other (though if this were done in an interesting way, I suppose I might like that), I am quite pleased. When the part that is looking for technique has to work hard to see what's at work, but finds it easily with a firmer hand, I am impressed. This is what Fincher does: it's so easy and smooth in approach--even when wildly stylized--that you don't see it coming unless you stick a hand right in it and feel around. I don't doubt that, based on his reputation and what I've seen of his work, he spends a lot of time and effort on this, but the results are worth it regardless.

What he manages to succeed at here is to make the film exactly what it is supposed to be for the viewer who comes in unaided by desires or preconceptions about what the film is or "could" or "should" be. Those expecting complete honesty from the film are going to be sorely disappointed. Those looking for outright realism will as well. It's not really about either of those things: it's about a man being faced with his greatest fear, and what that does to him and the people around him, and how it can be used against him, or how he can use it. It's not something everyone will be interested in, or that will work for everyone, but Fincher does it exactly right for what it is. I didn't feel betrayed when it chose the path it did; nor should any viewer, but we are all saddled with preconceptions that are the fault of endless reading and viewing, or with too-strict desires from the same. It's difficult to discuss in detail without revealing it, but I don't really even want to discuss it enough to give it away for anyone. Suffice it to say, the film does pull a good sucker punch on you, or maybe two or three, toward the end. You might see part of it coming, or even all of it (my mother never ceases to amaze me on this front--I wonder how she enjoys anything always predicting the ending just as she wonders how I can enjoy things while analyzing them), but it's unlikely you'd have all of the back alley turns in mind, and they're all important to the film and its concept as a whole.

I'm not sure what I expected of this--disappointment, surprise or shrugging, but I think it was a slow-burning surprise that I got out of it. A good one.