Suspension of disbelief is a phrase used by Samuel Coleridge in 1817 to describe the willingness of a consumer of a fictional narrative to accept said inherent implausibility of the narrative. The film industry puts a lot of time and effort into ensuring that viewers accept the unfolding narratives before them, but sometimes they trip up over a detail – things like glaring lack of chemistry between leads, slipping accents, and a low special effects budget can really strain a viewer’s abilities of self-immersion, though they’re likely to just laugh and forget about it later.
The heroes and villains within a story, however, are much less accepting of a little glitch in the matrix. Here are five in-universe examples illustrating how inattention to detail can ruin a complex series of machinations and lead to violence, trauma, and death.
Side Effects (2013)
Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara) begins taking the antidepressant Ablixa after her husband (Channing Tatum) returns home from prison. She suffers sleepwalking as a side effect of Ablixa, culminating in stabbing her husband with a kitchen knife. Her prescribing psychiatrist (Jude Law) struggles with his unravelling public image in the aftermath of the case, and finds that there’s more than meets the eye to the young widow’s parasomnia.
Stephen Soderbergh’s final movie before his hiatus is a well-crafted mystery, but with some conspicuous rough edges. Two key romantic leads have absolutely zero chemistry with each other. Soderbergh orchestrates his reveal with a tell-not-show approach that compromises the elegance and simplicity of his accompanying montage. Catherine Zeta-Jones’ makeup artists have saddled her with particularly severe eyebrow plucking and evil-coloured lipstick.
Nonetheless, Side Effects remains a surprisingly effective, if slightly amateurish, psychological thriller.
Inception (2010)
Dom Cobb (Leonardo di Caprio) leads a team of well-dressed professionals to implant an idea inside a sleeping businessman’s dream to dissolve his dead father’s company. Unfortunately the deeper Cobb delves into his target’s daddy issues, the more of his own tragic past he encounters, in the form of his deceased wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard).
It’s not entirely clear how the process of inception works, but Cobb repeatedly emphasizes the importance of attention to detail in the convincingness of a dreamscape, down to the weave of the carpets. One misplaced thread is all it takes to activate their targets’ subconscious defence system, as the businessman Saito tells us in the prologue.
And indeed, director Christopher Nolan doesn’t skimp on detail. He had a $160 million budget. He used Memento (2000) and The Dark Knight (2008) as practice for directing Inception. But so dazzled was I that the first three-quarters of Inception seems nothing more than an exercise in the extraordinary. By the time we reach Cobb’s final confrontation with his wife it feels of no more importance than a fuzzy photograph in a forgotten dream.
Paycheck (2003)
Michael Jennings (Ben Affleck) does lucrative but somewhat unethical contract work for large engineering firms. Upon the conclusion of his contracts, he has his memory wiped, and huge sums of money transferred to his bank account for his trouble. After one such contract, he receives an envelope of knickknacks instead of some very profitable stock options. This upsets him very much, but no more than the armed thugs who are now chasing him about the research he doesn’t remember doing. How sad.
The joke is that Ben Affleck directed Argo (2012) so that everyone would finally forget about 2003, in which Paycheck, Daredevil, and Gigli hit theatres. Well, Paycheck really isn’t so bad. I thought it was at least as entertaining as National Treasure, if a good deal less chaotic. I’m totally willing to overlook its checklist-like approach to plot devices. Hairspray as flamethrower? Check. Single ominous bullet? Check. Attempted seduction failed by slipping contact lens and inadequate knowledge of baseball? Check.
Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995)
Hans Gruber from the original Die Hard (1988) has a brother (Jeremy Irons) who calls himself “Simon” and wreaks revenge on John McClane (Bruce Willis) by sending him all over Manhattan to solve logic puzzles with Samuel L. Jackson.
Die Hard 3 is actually my personal favourite of the whole franchise because of the inherent absurdity of the tasks set upon McClane by a man who takes inspiration from children’s rhymes. Watching him traverse the city in a combination of wifebeater, sandwichboard, and frazzled nerves as he comes to the conclusion that he’s got to accept that he’s a walking weirdness magnet. How is it any more unusual from locking a man in a building full of terrorists, or allowing him to single-handedly restore an airport to order?
“Simon” and his small private army simply can’t keep up with the resilience that McClane’s built up over the years. Referring to the weather as raining “dogs and cats” and handing over a pill bottle with the approximate location of Simon’s hideout shows that he needs more practice.
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Colonel Hans Landa (Christopher Waltz) is a Nazi officer in World War II. His mission is to hunt Jews. Across the Atlantic, Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) assembles a team of eight Jewish-American soldiers. Their mission is to scalp Nazis. In Paris, Shoshanna (Melanie Laurent) operates a cinema, and plans to burn down the building with Nazis inside at the premiere of a propaganda film. As tends to happen in films like this, their three missions collide .
Supposedly Quentin Tarantino’s self-appointed masterpiece, Inglourious Basterds is bold and beautiful. Why do I even try to describe it? The film goes from contemplation to detonation in seconds. Covers are blown over the wrong finger gesture for the number three. A key character’s heroic sacrifice turns out to have been for naught. I would be angry at this movie if I didn’t have so much fun watching it. As it is, I’m just frustrated at how I couldn’t track down the shade of eyeshadow Melanie Laurent used as Shoshanna.
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