The element of surprise

We got to see some pretty cool films today, huh? You don't need to answer that. It was rhetorical. Because we all know they were pretty awesome.

There were some key differences, I thought, in the case of the first two films and the last one. And no, I'm not referring to the fact that the first two were live action pieces and the last one was animated, gorgeously so. I'm talking about the way the stories are told.

Take the first film, Devotion. It presents what seems to be a clingy, obsessed, ADD man talking with the woman of his desires, and in the end he ends up being a dog.
The second film, The Routine, shows the daily rituals of a woman and her child, and in the end it turns out that she lost her husband to the 9/11 attacks.

In both works, there is a secret hidden in the stories. A surprise of sorts. But they don't just hit you out of nowhere, leaving you going 'Whaaaaaaa?'


Pretty good example of a 'Whaaaaaaa?' face

 Once the reveal is made, if you haven't already connected the dots, it all makes sense. The man's irrational behavior and social interaction. The woman wearing man's clothes and listening to a recorded message several times. Their actions were all clues pointing to the secrets within the films, and these clues tie everything together in the end. Some of their actions are so obvious that you can even tell what the secret is before it is explicitly stated.

I love this kind of storytelling, the kind that makes you think and pay attention to figure out what is really going on. The Sixth Sense is a good example (and I probably would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't watched 50 First Dates before it, which has characters discussing the ending -.-'' Regardless, it was a great movie and built up the suspense about the secret very well). Another one, one of my favorite movies, The Prestige, hid the surprise so well that I couldn't figure it out until the necessary moment in these kind of works when the movie slaps the secret in your face (and boy, did that one surprise me. I totally recommend it, it's spectacular, and one of Christopher Nolan's more neglected works).

However, whenever I really want to think about a good work that has a surprise in it, I always turn to possibly my all-time favorite animated short, a Taiwanese work called 'Out of Sight'. Not only does it have a surprise (which, the first time watching it, I didn't get until the end ^_^;), but it also effectively gets the audience to see the world the way this little girl does (I won't say anymore to avoid spoiling the surprise). Anyways, its adorable, and I posted it down here. Please watch it. I promise it will be worth your time (I should know, I've watched it several times)