Bafflement & Confusion

Watching movies is not always fun for the elderly. Old people sometimes have trouble following complex plots. Bafflement and confusion may often result. "Who's that fellow, then?", "Didn't this bit happen already?", "Isn't he the bad guy?", "Why are they doing this bit again?"

Personally, I consider myself to be quite the sophisticated movie-watcher. After all, I watched 'Memento', the film that starts at the end and goes backwards, and understood it perfectly well. However, this was a few years ago. In the intervening time, I worry if I too have become too old to understand modern movies.

Today, for example, I watched a movie, the name of which I have already forgotten.. The Defence, or The De-something or other. Ah, that's it, The Departed. A film which came highly recommended for featuring much lovely scenery from Massachusets, Boston, and also for starring Marky Mark, although sadly without the support of The Funky Bunch.

The Departed is a long film. Two and a half hours, in fact. It is (and I counted) 17 minutes before the name of the movie even appears on the screen, so important is telling the back story. It seems to be a movie about a boy who grows up in a town of organised crime and then goes to work for 'da boss' by being in the police, where he informs of upcoming raids, etc, while simultaneously also having gone to prison and then comes back out so that he can work undercover for that boss.

That is the same guy, isn't it? Maybe this is one of those sophisticated movies that keeps moving forwards and backwards in time. That guy has a beard sometimes, but then other times he doesn't, I guess that's the undercover disguise bit. Hold on, now he's in the police office and has called the boss in the same room where he's also undercover. Hang on, is that not the same guy? No, hold on, he must be the same guy, I just got confused, I'm sure... What? Aah, crap! It's not the same guy! Not only are both of those guys actually DIFFERENT people, but what is more, I'm now an hour into the movie. Added to which, I'm not sure which one of them is Marky Mark. They both look like that guy from The Bourne Identity.

Why do they have a movie with two guys who look the same as each other? Why does the story have them BOTH attending the same therapist? Don't they know that could confuse a stupid person? (As apparently it did today.) Why can't movies be easier to follow? Couldn't they wear name badges, or something?Couldn't they use each other's names more often or something?

I got to the end of the movie, eventually, and once I got some idea of what was happening, it seemed rather good. Although I remained baffled as to which one was Marky Mark, though. Of course the end credits revealed that he was neither, and in fact that was someone else, the other police guy who was rude all the time. The one who wasn't Martin Sheen. Huh.

I'm not normally this dense. Maybe I'm just getting old. Maybe I have an odd brain condition that causes me to forget names and faces. Or maybe I just glanced away from the screen at enough important moments to mess me up.

Maybe I should watch it again. When I have another two and a half hours to spare. :-)