Looking for more movies with seemingly complicated plots which...aren't.
April 3, 2019 3:58 PM   Subscribe

I'm a big fan of movies with seemingly labyrinthine plots which turn out to be fairly straightforward, and/or where what is initially presented as the central plot/mystery/driving event turns out to be unimportant or tangential, and/or just kind of peters out without any sort of definitive closure.

A few examples of what I mean:

The Long Goodbye
Miller's Crossing
Inherent Vice
The Big Lebowski (and other Coen Brothers movies like Burn After Reading; no need to suggest any of their films, I've seen them all)

What I'm *not* looking for (in this particular thread): "puzzle box" movies or films based around twists that undo everything that happened before, movies where the plot is just flat-out really complicated (eg. The Big Sleep).
posted by The Card Cheat to Media & Arts (32 answers total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
Memento?
posted by Freelance Demiurge at 4:01 PM on April 3, 2019 [2 favorites]


Perhaps this TV Tropes entry might have some examples.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 4:04 PM on April 3, 2019


The Last of Sheila
posted by cali59 at 4:08 PM on April 3, 2019 [2 favorites]


The Lego Movie 2 has a song that the queen sings about how not evil she is. Other parts of the movie plot get complicated; there are some universe/space/time things that happen.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 4:17 PM on April 3, 2019 [2 favorites]


The Spanish Prisoner comes to mind. Mind you, there are plot holes. Picnic at Hanging Rock, perhaps.

Though I may be misunderstanding your criteria.
posted by BWA at 4:19 PM on April 3, 2019


The entire Janeane Garofalo plot of Romy And Michelle's High School Reunion
posted by Mchelly at 4:26 PM on April 3, 2019


L'Avventura
posted by tavegyl at 4:34 PM on April 3, 2019 [1 favorite]


I think Malice fits your description -- it's ostensibly about how there's a serial rapist at the college campus where Bill Pullman is a dean. He's married to Nicole Kidman, and then their old pal Alec Baldwin shows up...and it finally turns out the movie's not really about the search for a serial rapist after all. (That plot line does get a definitive ending but it's totally tangential to the real goings-on.)
posted by BlahLaLa at 4:47 PM on April 3, 2019 [2 favorites]


Maybe Broken Flowers?

I like how in this movie, the main character sets out to figure something out and there seems to be potential for repairs of past mistakes, but instead of things becoming clearer as he goes, things become more and more opaque and unknowable.
posted by vunder at 4:48 PM on April 3, 2019 [2 favorites]


If you like horror, then The Pact is an example of there being a simple and elegant explanation for what had seemed like a clusterfuck of scary goings-on. (Not a tedious overexplanation or a groany twist.)
posted by Beardman at 4:52 PM on April 3, 2019 [3 favorites]


You might like Once Upon a Time in Anatolia? It's a Turkish movie that's ostensibly a murder mystery, although that doesn't really go anywhere definite, and it's kind of like nothing happens yet a lot happens, and it's almost 3 hours long, and it has some of the nicest cinematography I've ever seen. Who knows, give it a shot!
posted by mannequito at 4:53 PM on April 3, 2019


After Hours is absolutely positively totally completely what you are looking for. Plus Teri Garr and Cheech & Chong.
posted by googly at 4:58 PM on April 3, 2019 [6 favorites]


Blow-Up.

You might mistake it for a puzzle box. At first.
posted by jamjam at 5:00 PM on April 3, 2019


Response by poster: Blow-Up, After Hours, Picnic at Hanging Rock and L'Avventura (even though I didn't really like it) are definitely good examples of what I've got in mind, and The Last of Sheila sounds promising!
posted by The Card Cheat at 5:07 PM on April 3, 2019


Lucky Number Slevin?
posted by Merinda at 6:10 PM on April 3, 2019


I cannot think of such a movie right now, but the novel Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco is the absolute paragon of this.
posted by Caxton1476 at 6:31 PM on April 3, 2019 [1 favorite]


Seconding Memento.

The movie is presented in a complex non-chronological order. Black & white scenes appear chronologically, but they are interwoven with color scenes, which appear in reverse order.

Back when VCRs were still a thing, I once spent an entire day reconstructing the timeline of the movie on another videotape. Record, rewind, record, fast-forward, record again. When I played back the result, I couldn't believe how simple and obvious the plot was, especially in light of how the driving force of the narrative turns out to be completely insignificant.
posted by danceswithlight at 6:41 PM on April 3, 2019 [2 favorites]


Predestination is a great opportunity to watch Ethan Hawke and Sarah Snooke competently unravel a twisty time-travel narrative with little effort on your part. The performances and dialogue are spot-on.
posted by prinado at 7:23 PM on April 3, 2019


The Prestige?

It's about two competing magicians who spend their lives trying to one-up each other. The movie tells you in the first scene that the whole thing is an illusion and how that illusion will be laid out and completed, and sure enough, that's exactly what it does.

There's a big central mystery about how one of the magicians has this famous impossible trick the other magician is desperate to figure out, but the story is really about pride and obsession and how far each magician is willing to go.
posted by mochapickle at 8:53 PM on April 3, 2019 [1 favorite]


The one-season TV serial Lodge 49. All sorts of things that look like mysteries, connections, alchemy, disappearances and reappearances, revelations ... all explained in the last couple of episodes as either ordinary events poorly understood, or delusions, or wishful thinking.

(For that matter, another example would be the Thomas Pynchon book The Crying Of Lot 49 which the TV show is alluding to.)
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 11:26 PM on April 3, 2019 [1 favorite]


If anything, that undersells The Prestige. I usually describe it as Wolverine (Jackman) vs Batman (Bale) in a battle for the soul of stage magic in 19th century London, with Alfred Pennyowrth, the Black Widow, Gollum, and David freakin Bowie as Tesla as a supporting cast, where Thomas Edison might well be the true villain of the entire story.

No, really, it’s that good.
posted by Ghidorah at 11:30 PM on April 3, 2019 [5 favorites]


Yes, but reserving some of the reveal is the point of the entire movie... So.

I’ve got another: Hot Fuzz. Simon Pegg is a newly promoted police sergeant assigned to a sleepy hamlet with an abundance of gruesome murders. He brilliantly pieces together an elaborate set of connections between the murders, only to discover that the real motives are much simpler than he could have imagined.
posted by mochapickle at 11:42 PM on April 3, 2019 [4 favorites]


21 Grams. The plot is presented out of chronological order (so like Memento, but without an in-universe reason for why) but if you think about it chronologically, it's very simple.
posted by daisyk at 1:26 AM on April 4, 2019 [1 favorite]


Another Mamet film, Homicide, comes to mind.
That's how I remember Eyes Wide Shut too.
posted by heatvision at 4:18 AM on April 4, 2019 [1 favorite]


Sandra bullock / Premonition

It’s a movie told out of order but at the end you’re like: so that’s all that happened?
posted by St. Peepsburg at 4:54 AM on April 4, 2019


The recent version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy with Gary Oldman.
posted by doctornecessiter at 5:22 AM on April 4, 2019


The Hippopotamus might fit this bill. Without giving too much away, it unfolds like an Agatha Christie-style mystery, but it doesn't end like one.
posted by helloimjennsco at 7:33 AM on April 4, 2019 [2 favorites]


Seconding MALICE! It's such a fun movie! I watch it a few times a year (yes, its a family favorite)
posted by Dressed to Kill at 8:28 AM on April 4, 2019


It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but I remember Eyes Wide Shut being this way. Tom Cruise’s character thinks he’s being drawn into a malevolent conspiracy by a secret society, but in the end, there’s no conspiracy and it really was just a club for horny wealthy people.
posted by ejs at 8:28 AM on April 4, 2019 [3 favorites]


Response by poster: Thanks, everyone!
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:49 AM on April 4, 2019


The Game might fit your criteria.
posted by toastedcheese at 10:40 AM on April 4, 2019 [1 favorite]


I'm not sure whether the movie version of The Name Of The Rose fits in this category, but the book certainly does.

MAYBE Foucault's Pendulum as well, but that's iffy.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 6:09 PM on April 4, 2019


« Older Podcast That Would Be Interested In Buckminster...   |   Where to stay in Key West in early May? Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.