The Invention of Lying (***)

Years ago I read a novel called The Truth Machine by James L. Halperin that brilliantly extrapolated the results were a foolproof lie detector ever to be invented. This movie comically turns that premise on its head. Instead of lies being always detectable, no one thinks to tell one. Which, in turn, means that if one is told, no matter how absurd, it will not be detected.

It begins with a date. The gentleman, Mark, tells the lady, played by Jennifer Garner, that she is pretty. She tells him she’s just masturbated, and that he is sub-nosed and chubby. Since Mark is played by Ricky Gervais, this is true. Yet this begs the question, if lies cannot be told, does this require telling every truth? (It does in Liar Liar, somehow.) Is there something that actually requires the lady’s mother, when she calls, to ask a question to which the answer is, “I won’t be sleeping with him tonight. Nope, probably not even a kiss.” Apparently not, because other scenes show characters revealing truths that they were perfectly capable of not speaking for years earlier. And why, if such harsh truths are spoken routinely, does Mark’s boss hesitate to carry out his intention to fire him?

And if she was going to have to be telling him that she’d just masturbated beforehand, might not she have avoided doing so? But then, perhaps embarrassment over such things would be bred out of such a society. On the other hand, wouldn’t they stop asking each other “How’s it going?” when they really didn’t want to know? Some other tidbits are funny, but not really what would be likely in even a non-lying society. A Pepsi ad slogan is “When they don’t have Coke.” Mark’s mom lives in a place named “A Sad Place for Hopeless Old People.” Wouldn’t nursing home still work?

Having said that, I love presentations of hypothetical realities, even imperfect ones, and much humor comes from watching how people behave when the plot frees them from the need to observe social norms. As the title promises, most of the plot proceeds from when Mark realizes he can make up things. The funny part is not that he is able to tell lies, but that doesn’t even need to explain even ones that seem transparent. Of course , his ability to do so hinges precisely on everyone else’s credulity. In other words, he succeeds because no one else has a bullshit detector, and in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. The lies are not the source of bliss; ignorance is.

Simultaneously, I found the film clever and illogical. In this world, Gervais’s narration tells us, even fictional films would be seen as lies, yet hypotheticals—what would you do if you could change the world?—are apparently not. However, the ability to conjure up a what-if scenario is the ability to imagine something that isn’t true. And if people would not lie, then surely they would make mistakes, and thus say things that were not true, and so the liar might yet be caught, and thought delusional. Yet there are not even words for true or false in the world of this movie.

The clever part is there, though, because Gervais is the cowriter and codirector (with Matthew Robinson). (In his prior star vehicle, Ghost Town, he just acted.) For once, he himself plays the nice guy, but in the movie’s best scenes, as in his series The Office and Extras, the humor comes from unintended cruelty, like how Mark’s love doesn’t want to be with a guy whose children will be chubby and snub-nosed. Some people have criticized the character for being too shallow to be a worthy love interest, but I think the point is that even good people have this side, only hidden. Nonetheless, when Mark tells her how kind she is, the supporting scenes are missing, and Garner’s twin facial expressions—adorable smile and look of bewilderment, won’t convince you that she’s Mark’s ideal woman.

Too much of the last third is devoted to what ends up being a conventional love story, and is less funny. I would have rather seen how, say, politics would be in a world without lies, but I suppose a world with honest politicians would be so unlike ours that to show it would only highlight the tenuous premise. So no politics. But what Gervais suggests about the role of God in such a world is the most provocative thing about the film.

IMDB link

viewed 4/17/10 on DVD [Netflix] and reviewed 4/18/10

Ghost Town (***1/4)

If The Sixth Sense had been a comedy, it probably still wouldn’t be much like this. But that’s the idea, anyway. Misanthropic, pudgy New York dentist Bertram Pincus (Ricky Gervais) can see dead people because he was dead, too. Metaphorically, sure, but also, temporarily, during surgery. The city is purgatory to souls with unfinished business, and now Bertram is besieged by them, most persistently by Greg Kinnear’s character, a philanderer who dies cute in the opening sequence and wants Bertram to break up his wife’s (Téa Leoni) new relationship.

So, being an example of what I call the gimmick movie, i.e. the alternate-reality fantasy, Ghost Town must be compared to my favorite example of such, Groundhog Day. I think that’s the best one in terms of exploring all permutations of its premise (reliving the same day over and over), and doing do so cleverly. Now, this is not quite as elegant in its plotting or the way it explores the possibilities of its premise. The ending feels forced. It makes amusing sense that the dead have to wear the clothes they died in, but where are all the old people? Maybe only the young have unfinished business.

But overall the story engages, and there’s a similar sense of romance. Even though it’s the first starring role for Gervais where he hasn’t been the writer or director, it seems as if crafted in mind of his comic persona. Director David Koepp and co-writer John Kamps also collaborated on another fantasy, the underrated Zathura. Time accurately describes Gervais’s persona as “the cringe comedy of unaware arrogance.” In other words, he’s rude, but never smug. He’s too self-absorbed to be supercilious. Wherein lies the humor, as in Gervais’s TV roles on the The Office (the BBC original) and Extras. Gervais is a master of the pained expression. Yet there’s the sweet, but not too sentimental side, to the story; as also with Groundhog Day, it’s a woman who inspires reform. Mostly, this most inevitable transition is natural. Koepp takes the fantastic and makes it seem down to earth.

IMDB link

viewed 8/7/08 (screening at Ritz Bourse); reviewed 9/12/08