Looper

SPOILER ALERT

Rian Johnson’s Looper is a crafty film. It’s a movie that uses it’s effects sparingly in service of its story and characters. Not the other way around. It’s a rare sci-fi film that feels much more grounded in reality than many of its predecessors. That’s because Johnson’s future seems very close to our present. And he doesn’t fall in to the trap of trying to explain his movie’s technological logic. Time travel works. We don’t know how. And frankly it doesn’t manner. It appears fairly low tech.

There were two parts of the film that really left a mark on me. The first is when one of the Old Loopers, sent back to the past to die, escapes. He is eventually captured after his younger self, a Young Looper is also captured. Johnson produces a horrifying sequence in which the Old Looper begins to lose appendages. He frantically tries to make his way to an address which suddenly appears as a scar on his arm. He begins to lose fingers, a foot, his tongue, and his nose.  By the time he arrives he’s nothing more than a wiggling torso. It reminded me of a scene from the old Lone Wolf and Cub series in which a ninja is chopped to pieces, bit by bit, until he is hopping around on one leg with no arms, ears, or nose.

Soon after we get a glimpse of a room in which the Young Looper appears to be on a bloodied surgery table.  Johnson’s understands, just as David Fincher did in Seven, that what we fill in with our own imagination is often more terrifying than what is on screen. Why the Young Looper isn’t killed is briefly explained. The logic is shaky, and Johnson smartly doesn’t dwell on it. It’s enough to know that the Old Looper is forced to reveal himself in this grisly manner.

The second moment in the film that really got me thinking is when our lead, Young  Joe, first encounters his old self, Old Joe, and allows Old Joe to escape. Soon after Johnson makes an interesting editing decision.  When Young Joe is knocked unconscious during a chase, Johnson cuts back again to the moment Old Joe first appears from the future.

At this point Young Joe kills Old Joe with no problem. Joe goes on to live his life. We see him as he ages 30 years, is eventually captured, and sent back to the past to be killed by his younger self. We then see how this Joe escapes from a young Joe, and starts his own quest in the past. The movie soon returns to the moment Young Joe loses consciousness from earlier in the story.

This was an interesting choice. Johnson could have stuck with Young Joe from the beginning of the film, followed him as he killed his old self, aged, went back in time, and escaped from his younger self. Instead Johnson starts with Young Joe not killing Old Joe and then cuts back to show us a reality where Young Joe kills Old Joe. Why?

I believe it’s for two purposes. Instead of creating a strictly linear story line following a Young Joe from present to future to past, Johnson’s editing decision creates two distinct Joes. Young Joe, who does not kill his older self, is a different person than Old Joe. In an alternate reality Old Joe, when he was young,  did kill his older self. It’s these two Joes, young and old, “innocent” and guilty, that are at odds through the movie. The second purpose of this edit actually allows us, the audience, to time travel within the space of the movie. If Johnson didn’t provide this cut then technically we would always be moving forward in linear movie time even if the characters move backwards in clock time. You can bet this editing choice was debated vigorously by the filmmakers.

Looper deserves another viewing. Not because there are little clues or idiosyncrasies to discover. It’s a good movie which delivers. And that’s enough.