'The Music of Chance' is a uniquely American interpretation of absurdism; similar to what 'Two-Lane Blacktop' is to existentialism. The direction is straightforward, with an equally unembellished setting. There's no mistaking the movie taking place in the American northeast, before it's revealed through the dialog. There's not much creativity in any of the cinematic technique, save for a few shots of the landscape which are quickly shown to be a model, which caught me off guard the few times this occurs.

The KG review evokes the significance of numbers, but I don't think they are particularly relevant other than to create the false illusion of meaning, such as the fact that the two men owe $10,000 and subsequently must construct a wall of 10,000 rocks. The power struggles in the film are much more interesting and function on a more allegorical level, regardless of whether or not it's intentional on behalf of the filmmakers, which the KG review does evoke with its allusion to game theory.

Murks is in essentially the same situation as Pozzi and Nashe, but because of his relative security he chooses to side with his bosses even when he intuitively knows they're wrong. The absence of Flower and Stone doesn't matter because they're paying Murks, who's clearly willing to use his modicum of authority against the workers even though he's materially more similar to them than to Flower and Stone; the two bosses don't need to be physically present because the workers will fight amongst themselves. I don't really want to think of the movie in Marxist terms but it fits well: Murks could even be seen as the management, the buffer between the super-rich and the slaving workers.

The notion of chance is definitely more interesting and important, anyway. The actual loss of the poker game itself isn't entirely chance, because Pozzi and Nashe were indeed divided and Flower and Stone were colluding against their opponent. Despite their feeling of entitlement, Flower and Stone did acquire their fortune through chance. This enables their unreasonable perception of an ordered reality: one believes in the divinity of numbers, and the other creates a model of an idyllic society that according to his own words follows a twisted sort of Burkian logic in which everyone is content with his placement in life. That the hierarchical world view of Flower and Stone is as much a product of chance as their winning the lottery, since the former is contingent on the latter, escapes them entirely.

'Chance' being the operative word in the title, there's really no sense in attributing greater significance to the actions of the characters beyond their being gambles. Nashe gambles by choosing to pick up Pozzi, by following the stranger's plan, by betting away his car and temporarily his freedom, and finally by veering off the road. Each time a little bit more is at stake -- Flower and Stone, on the other hand, are much more conservative in their gambles, and after all they win their fortune in a cheap lottery, only put up a small amount of money in the card game relative to their vast fortune, and ate the same food at the same restaurant for eight or nine years, or maybe even eleven or twelve years! Nashe is lucky to get away with his life during his last major gamble, and subsequently, in his decision to go straight to Minnesota, finally decides to stick strictly to safe bets. At the very least he finally decides what he deems important.

One of my favorite scenes is when he slits Murks' grandson's throat with a spade, but unfortunately it turns out to be a terse fantasy.

7

I should be seeing this one in an hour or two. Have you read the book/anything else by Auster, by the way?



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Perception told me that you wouldn't be able to watch it until tomorrow, which is ok by me if you still haven't sat down to watch it yet. I haven't read anything by Auster, but seeing as you're a literature guy I'm looking forward to hearing about the connections.

I wasn't sure if I'd have time or not, basically my wife was supposed to work late and then she wasn't and so she wanted us to go out with some friends and then they couldn't make it so I went back and forth on whether I'd have time today or not. Anyway, I'm about to watch this.

I read (and really liked) the book and then didn't want to watch the movie too soon since if the book is too fresh it robs the movie of dramatic impact, it's been years so I should be good to go. Hopefully I'll remember enough to make some connections.



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Ah, gotcha.

Anyway, I'll still be awake late enough to at least make a response to your first post should you make one. I read the wiki for the novel, and there are some noticeable differences from the movie which you might interesting.

I said likely won't be able. Anyway, don't know if anyone will still be awake until then but I'll start watching now.

Nothing is a cliché when it's happening to you.

My mind just edits out nuances when I read. OK, I likely won't be awake at the time you've finished watching the movie.

Philip Haas' adaptation of Paul Auster's novel The Music of Chance doesn't take too many chances as it's essentially a faithful adaptation of the novel. Other than a quite different end and some differences in structure, particularly in that the novel's first section is conveyed in dialogue around the middle of the film instead of shown at the beginning, the narrative is basically the same. This means that the themes are mostly kept intact. Specifically, the film raises questions about luck and chance and their effect on certain individuals. Certainly it's true that the bizarre, mostly unseen antagonists-Flower and Stone-have benefited from some unlikely circumstances, particularly a large windfall from a lottery ticket and some good investments. It's equally true that Jack Pozzi suffers from some unlikely circumstances, specifically being blamed for the robbery of a poker game he was winning in and losing another poker game to a pair of unskilled amateurs. If this makes them avatars of good and bad luck respectively, then it makes Jim Nashe, the character with the most screentime, an avatar of ambivalence as he enjoys as many bad turns as good. Perhaps significantly, he's the one character who claims not to believe in luck. This suggests that a person's perception of his own luck can affect his life.

The Music of Chance lends itself particularly well to an allegorical interpretation. As Nashe and Pozzi become laborers for the underhanded Flower and Stone, it's easy to read Marxist ideas into this material, especially since they are so obviously being exploited by people who out to gain as much as possible from their suffering. The material also lends itself to existentialist ideas as it's largely about the choices these men make and how they might take control of their own destiny-or how their failure to act will imprison them.

From a cinematic standpoint, the film is rather conventional and straightforward. There aren't a lot of unusual visual or editing techniques and few images or sequences stand out as particularly memorable, save perhaps for the strikingly useless "wall monument" built by Pozzi and Nashe. There is also a short daydream sequence and a few shots that emphasize the power wielded by Flower and Stone as it compares the act of building the wall to the construction of the miniature city that takes up a large room upstairs. Still, in spite of the lack of cinematic innovation, this film manages to keep most of the ideas and odd situations that made the book interesting.


8/10

Also, it was neat seeing Auster in the last scene, I guess he approves of the vastly different ending.

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I had no idea that was Auster in the final scene. That's pretty cool. This revised ending strikes me as being more cinematic; I don't think cyclical endings work as well in literature, although I can't think of any particular examples at the moment. At any rate, the ambiguity of the original ending, and its relationship to chance, seems like a more literary technique.

The existential elements are very pronounced as well, which is mostly because of the series of fairly important choices and gambles that confront the characters. Pozzi seems more driven by impulse than reasoned decision, and from this perspective I find it best viewed from Nashe's vantage point. All of the biggest decisions of the movie are his. I remember now on the KG review that the uploader likened the story to Sisyphus, which is noticeable and the imprisonment elements that you mention are reminiscent of Camus' other work. I would call it an existential film, and it's so closely linked to absurdism that I don't know why I really distinguished between the two in the context of this movie in the beginning. Maybe because Flower and Stone so desperately sought meaning in the order of reality where none really exists, and that the two precisely with this ideology should strike rich through chance, while the more skeptical Nashe meets several ill fates through sometimes reasoned decision making, is utterly absurd (but at the same time almost tragically true to reality).

Interesting ideas about what literature does best vs. what film does best. Sisyphus is a reasonable comparison, especially with the rocks being so prevalent. Agreed on your point about Flower and Stone's absurd attitude.



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the film raises questions about luck and chance and their effect on certain individuals.

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Right. Although I'm thinking more of the effect on their outlook on life. Chance (previously experienced luck or bad luck) as a shaping force of their attitude and their attitude determining how to interpret that chance, with Nashe, Pozzi and Flower and Stone showing three different ways how to interpret it.

So the novel ends with the car crashing and that's it?

Nothing is a cliché when it's happening to you.

I hadn't thought of it in terms of absurdism, that's definitely a lense that seems to enrich the film. I also hadn't thought much about the numbers, though I think they're more...coincidental. I did find it pretty sad to see them working so hard for so little. I guess this shows how little chance Pozzi and Nashe ever have of really affecting the lives of Flower and Stone and how the deck is stacked against the poor.

I didn't know what to make of Murks, who was either very stupid or sly enough to attribute all the blame to his masters. His stupid mistake near the end certainly implies the former, though of course it seems very likely that he's untruthful at least part of the time.

Pozzi should have realized the odds weren't in his favor when playing against two opponents, especially given their ability to overcome temporary circumstances. I guess he got greedy, which might also explain why the people who beat him up at the beginning were so quick to turn on him.

I wasn't sure whether to take the chance as being just chance or part of some larger plan, which both the self-righteous Stone/Flower and the somewhat paranoid Pozzi did. I wish more had been done with paranoia here in general, or at least that it had been emphasized more.


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What stupid mistake did Murks make? Do you mean letting Nashe drive his car? I don't see the stupidity in that. I think fu summed him up very well, he wasn't really more than Nashe and Pozzi even though he was supervising them, he was a mere employee of Flower and Stone. He didn't really have anything to say, for any bigger decision he had to ask Flower and Stone and his biggest concern was to keep his dead-end job. Obviously he wasn't the brightest bulb, but that's pretty much a given, otherwise he probably wouldn't have ended up in this position. I think overall he "plays" pretty straight.

Why do you say Pozzi got greedy? Sure, for somebody with 10,000 dollars to play against two people to whom 10,000 dollars are peanuts isn't the most ideal situation even if he is a pro and they are not, but he had played against them once a year for six years and always won, so this was actually are pretty safe bet.

Nothing is a cliché when it's happening to you.

Don't you think Murks had something to do with Pozzi's beating/disappearance? He should have known that Nashe would be out for revenge for that.

Pozzi should have realized that playing these two guys alone on their estate would not be the same as when he had played them previously. I took it that he had previously only met them in a larger game with other people. I can't remember what exactly I meant with the word "greed," though.



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Very good film. Mysterious and very compelling.

My goal in life is to be brutally beaten by police and have it caught on tape.

Indeed. It's both compellingly mysterious and mysteriously compelling.

So does anyone wonder what happened to Pozzi? Who beat him up and brought him back to the lot? How? Why? Did he survive? Did he really get well and run away from the hospital? We are probably not supposed to know these things but I sure am curious, especially because I liked him so much, or rather I liked James Spader playing him, that guy was fun.

The names Flower and Stone = nature? Probably just to emphasize that our protagonists aren't so much in this predicament because of some evil people but because of chance and the laws of nature.

I thought Nashe would work his ass off for "the man" just to pay up his debts and to immediately die afterwards which he almost did but he got a second chance. He risks his life by recklessly driving only after he pays his debts, as if before this point he wasn't his own man and it wasn't his life to risk, as if he didn't have a right to do it. This reminds me of 'Fight Club', "it's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything", a lesson that is followed up by a car crash. Funnily Nashe first has to work to settle the balance before he can really claim that he lost everything and he is free to do with his life whatever he desires. Maybe this is also why he rejects the 50 dollars he won from the pool game, to stand at zero.

By chance you pretty much said all the other things I wanted to say so...there's nothing much left to say for me anymore. I liked it. I liked never knowing where it would go. I liked Spader in this role. I liked liking it. I enjoyed the pre-wall building section a bit more, though. I hoped for a bit more heady stuff, maybe numerological stuff or more about the philosophy of chance, like more actual talk about chance. But you and timmy mined the film pretty well, you extracted the gold nuggets and put them on the table.

7

PS: I think I've never seen a more extreme case of a visible boom mic in a professionally-produced film than in in the hotel room scene towards the beginning, and that wasn't the only scene where the mic popped into frame. Obviously the film was cropped when it ran in theaters and the full frame version apparently is the only one available on home video, but I thought I should mention it because I had a good laugh at that.

Nothing is a cliché when it's happening to you.

Even though Nashe turns out to be the central character, Pozzi is definitely the more fun one to watch. Murks and his equally dimwitted son probably pummeled Pozzi, which is why the son showed up in scenes thereafter and Nashe also recognizes that the grandson is the one who waived to him as Pozzi escaped. If anyone else were responsible, I don't see how the perpetrator would've known to drop Pozzi back off on the lawn, and in that condition I don't think he could've made it there himself. I doubt that Murks and son actually brought Pozzi to the hospital, so he was probably left for dead and buried on the massive property with the same shovel Murks used to fill in the escape hole. He wouldn't feel bad about his crimes because he's simply doing the boss's wishes by ensuring that Pozzi couldn't escape, just like he can't he vocalize a word against his employers when it's palpable that he knows it's wrong that they're charging Nash and Pozzi for the food.

The ending seems to me an extension of this theme: Nashe is gambling against Pozzi's murderers for their lives, as revenge for Pozzi's probable death. He doesn't need the 50 dollars, and gives it to Murks' son to, in a sense, play the next hand by getting him to put up the car for a ride. Nashe decides to put up his life on this final gamble, the one in which he goes all in. The original ending would make sense in terms of continuity, because Nashe loses more with each increasing bet until he presumably loses his life, but here we have a more cinematic and satisfying ending in which Nashe finally wins a hand and walks away from the game.

That's a great point about the names Flower and Stone. I totally didn't think about that, because upon reading the KG review I got it stuck in my head that Flower is a reference to the card symbol even though that's more in line with a slightly different reading of the film than mine. It could be seen that way especially considering that the two fat-cats completely disappear from the movie at the half-way mark, save for a few shots of Stone's god-like hand revising the landscape in his little model. After Pozzi and Nashe start working, they don't need to intervene much at all and let nature or chance simply take its course. (I wonder if this has any connection to burning the figurine, which is one of the only scenes that still seems mysterious to me in terms of its significance).

Oddly enough for me, I didn't think of the Fight Club scene even though the segments are practically identical. You're right at that point Nashe had given up everything, and gambled everything including his life. That being the only thing he retains after his year-long hiatus, he can finally return home after having given up everything else.

I didn't notice the boom, but my copy looks a bit fuzzy up top suggesting it's been slightly cropped. Or I just didn't see it.

True, the truck with the grandson driving by while they escape and the hole under fence being filled up again indicates that Murks (and his son) brought him back. I could possibly see them beating him up (although I think it's more fathomable that they went after him and while running away he got hit by a car or something), but I find it difficult to imagine that they would leave him for dead. But then they would have been the ones who brought him back to the lot and left him lying on the field badly hurt so they obviously didn't care if he would die and them bringing him to a hospital after doing that wouldn't make much sense. It's just that Murks seemed somewhat genuinely feeling bad about the bosses screwing them over financially, doing nothing about that is one thing but to actually kill for his bosses is a whole other level and I don't really see him as a murder, even with all the threats he made. But yeah, I guess he has to be.

With this in mind it makes sense that Nashe consciously set this revenge up at the bar. But the way I saw it when watching the film he wasn't after revenge nor did he even intend to deliberately crash the car. Obviously he drove recklessly and didn't care about his safety or about the safety of his passengers. When they entered the car he did tell them to put on their seat belts, though, which they didn't do.

I thought the whole figurine thing was mostly a way for the film to demonstrate the characters' different beliefs when it comes to the issue of luck and fate, Nashe bringing up that he stole it is a good reason to have them talk about those things and the fact that he stole it might even make the viewer wonder if this seemingly irrelevant action had anything to do with their bad luck. Also it's likely that fat-cat #2 noticed the missing figurine sooner or later and since they don't seem to have a lot of visitors and the glued-on figures usually don't walk off by themselves it would be pretty easy to figure out that Nashe stole it during his one-hour toiled break, so theoretically it could have been the reason for their a$$hole move of deducting their expenses.

I found it very difficult to miss:
http://tinyurl.com/bnx2m67
http://tinyurl.com/bwynjqn

Nothing is a cliché when it's happening to you.

That makes more sense, I didn't think about the possibility that Pozzi was hit by a car or something. This adds to the layer of absurdity, and it does make more sense given his character than Murks would simply leave Pozzi to die, realizing that taking him to the hospital in the first place would be a violation of his boss's wishes, rather than actually killing him. Either way, in Nashe's eyes both Murks and his son are responsible.


He seemed determined to at least give them a good scare, but also realizing that he probably couldn't overpower the both of them I think that Nashe consciously made his decision.

The KG copy that Timmy and I downloaded is cropped, so the boom isn't present.

That rip seems to be in 1.33:1 too, though. If it's really not in it maybe it was ripped from a cropped widescreen source that had been cropped again on the sides to make it fullscreen.

Nothing is a cliché when it's happening to you.

I thought it was Murks and son who had done it, I suppose it might have been the sheriff Flower and Stone bragged about being friends with. Pozzi was a fun character, definitely better here than in the novel.

More talk about chance would have been welcome. I like subtlety in general but here it would have been nice if things were less vague.

I missed the boom mic!



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I'd seen this because of James Spader. Hadn't read the book. But I really enjoyed this film. 7.5/10




Somebody help me, I'm being spontaneous!

This has been one of my favourite films since I saw it by chance on TV about 15 years ago. I don't want to bring out -isms, I did think it was an allegory, but I also thought in quite a simplistic way that it was about some men living out the dreams of other men. Which is pretty much how society operates. Reminds me of reading Tobias Wolff's autobiography, where he referred to serving in Vietnam as being In Pharaoh's Army. To a large extent the guys in Afghanistan are living the wet dream of a buzzcut Princeton wrestler, one Donald Rumsfeld, long after his retirement.