ACCOZZAGLIA

[Preface: This is going to feel repetitious for me, since I just meticulously wrote most of this entry before being stymied by my underachieving little iBook laptop. I can't get angry at it, since it's encumbered by only 192 MB and less than 300MB in hard drive capacity for things like virtual memory. Still, bear with me as I try to remember everything I just typed out once before.]

This evening, I had the opportunity to watch the film, Code 46, for the first time. Overall, I really enjoyed the premise of the story, which reminded me a lot of a genetic hybrid between Gattaca, Lost in Translation, and Blade Runner, peppered with an ever-slightest bit of the Firefly series. Also, having Tim Robbins as a primary cast member was a bonus (along with the woman who starred in Minority Report, whose name I honestly don’t know, and the fact that I can easily look this up in Google but am not doing such makes me a lazy lass). Because of him alone, I wouldn’t mind watching this film again.

However, when the final scene ended, I felt like the story had ended abruptly, as if there was a lot that was left unexplored and neglected. I understand how sci-fi films and stories have a propensity to be only as long as is needed for the scientific or ethical dilemma to play out itself before coming to a close. I also know that character development is usually not an author’s primary concern when setting out to make a sci-fi story. Sure, exceptions abound. But that isn’t where I’m going here.

As the closing credits began to roll, still reeling from this sense of dissatisfaction (not unlike my sex partner rolling over to snooze while I forlornly stare at the ceiling, just before pulling out a vibe to finish what got started), I started to think about how the story could have continued. Of course, this was never the screenwriter’s intent. Then, I took note of a nice touch made by the art director responsible for the credits appearance: the four proteins responsible for the makeup of DNA — G, A, T and C — appeared, in animated, schematic form, to the left of the casting and production credits.

Then something strange happened. I juxtaposed the incomplete nature of the film with how the four proteins, positioned to compose an implied four-cell square matrix, appeared on the screen. And I began to wonder whether anyone had ever tried assembling four separate stories that could stand alone singularly, but wouldn’t comprehensively work until the four were pieced together in such a way that they could fit together as naturally as G, A, T and C interlock flawlessly with one another.

In essence, it’d be a modular motion picture.

So, I threw the idea out to chitah, who immediately mentioned the Bleu, Blanc and Rouge trilogy, which I’ve never seen before. He noted that the trilogy encompasses three separate stories that bleed into one another by using the same time line — each told from a different primary character’s perspective. In other words, it’d be a little like how Night on Earth was arranged, though that was condensed into a single film, tied together by the archetype of taxi drivers.

But I’m thinking of something that is time irrespective, and wouldn’t be some kind of installment saga, like Star Wars was. It wouldn’t even have to be science fiction, much less all sharing the same genre. The way the stories would work is that each component (be it four, three or more — just not two) could stand alone as its own story and would generally work well à solo. But for someone to grasp the key gestalt of the overarching story, they would need to see all four films. The order of how those films would be viewed is irrelevant. To watch all but one won’t give them a hint as to how the final portion will play out, either. In other words, no foreshadowing could be gleaned from watching the other parts. The fourth part will always surprise the viewer in how it locks the other three into a perfectly balanced unit.

I’m sure that I’m not the first, or even the thousandth person to think about this idea. But I’m now compelled to give this more consideration as an idea that, if devised, conceptualized, thought out, and executed wisely, would be a fascinating way to tell a story. Maybe it’s been done scores of times in novels. I wouldn’t know, since I don’t read books all that often, if ever. I am also hardly what anyone would regard as an avid film buff. But still. I’m curious to explore this idea further.

What do you think? (And yes, the film mavens are welcome to give their thoughts here).