1255 Night Moves

[hearthesilence]

Well, if it's a match for a vintage IB Tech print, I could give them the benefit of the doubt, but I'll wait and see how the rest of it looks.

[therewillbeblus]

There's a fascinating connection between Moseby's story about following his dad, the fallout with his wife, and the mystifying ending to this film. Moseby's enveloped in mysteries in an attempt to locate some certainty - a character-appropriate response to being abandoned as a child without a sense of safe space, trust, and permanence. He uses detective skills at a young age to locate his father, but notably doesn't approach him. He wanted something tangible but stopped when things were going to get too vulnerable, when he might get hurt. In the end, Moseby returns to seek truth - but the motive is ambiguous: Is he delving into a more vulnerable space, and is the consequence of the finale a confirmation that Moseby was right not to approach his father, that going too far into an intimate space with other players can only yield pain? Or is he avoiding vulnerability - leaving his wife, just as things were going to get more intimate (and by consequence, more challenging to rectify) to dissociate through his work.. Or would the more vulnerable thing to do be leaving the mystery open, and he's returning to seek that permanence he pretended he got from watching his father, and that he would pretend to get from finding the culprit here? Would that actually give him what he's looking for - a meaning - or just serve as a fact he can hang his hat on, which is essentially meaningless to his honest human needs?

Does Moseby dislike Rohmer films because they're too slow? No. His job is to be patient, to stake out, wait, drum up bits of information, to move slow. He dislikes Rohmer films because the characters talk and talk as they get more and more vulnerable, and don't resolve their problems in a tangible way. They are comfortable leaving these intangible emotional and philosophical pieces of information there in the ether, or Rohmer trusts that we can hold space for that as viewers as his characters struggle to. Harry Moseby cannot trust himself to do that.

I never really liked this one too much. It always felt slight and intentionally confounding without offering much to really invest in or care about. Now I'm starting to think it's some kind of masterpiece, belonging next to The Long Goodbye in terms of its narrative style and thematic character reveals