{"id":48837,"date":"2022-06-30T16:30:44","date_gmt":"2022-06-30T21:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/?p=48837"},"modified":"2022-06-30T16:32:12","modified_gmt":"2022-06-30T21:32:12","slug":"lie-to-me-mission-impossible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/2022\/06\/30\/lie-to-me-mission-impossible\/","title":{"rendered":"Lie to me: MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Mission: Impossible<\/strong> (1996).<\/em><\/p>\n

DB here:<\/p>\n

Filmmakers rightly consider themselves problem-solvers. They deal with budget limits, scheduling constraints, temperamental staff and casts, and balky equipment. Some problems come with financial demands; others are self-imposed, such as: \u201cTell a story confined to a single room.\u201d The artistic problems often demand solutions that guide viewers toward clarity, comprehension, and emotional impact.<\/p>\n

Suppose your story situation is this. Character A is telling a story, but it\u2019s a lie. Character B realizes it\u2019s a lie, but doesn\u2019t signal that recognition. This is really two problems in one: How do you tell the audience A is lying? And how do you convey that B knows but doesn\u2019t reveal that knowledge?<\/p>\n

These are at the crux of in an intriguing sequence in Mission: Impossible<\/em>. The solutions found by screenwriter David Koepp and director Brian DePalma show how even a straightforward \u201centertainment movie\u201d can pose interesting questions about cinematic expression.<\/p>\n

Spoilers<\/strong> ahead. But I bet you\u2019ve seen this movie.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The problem(s)<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The Impossible Mission team has been sent to Prague, purportedly to retrieve a digital disc listing all CIA agents in Europe. They don’t know that this assignment is a pretext for finding a mole, a rogue agent who is selling secrets to foreign interests. While infiltrating a state gala, most of the team is killed. Only Ethan Hunt, point man in the mission, and Claire Phelps, the wife of the team leader Jim Phelps, survive. The IMF chief Kittridge accuses Ethan of being the mole so Ethan, along with Claire, needs to flee. But out of devotion to duty he insists on finding the mole. He learns that the mole under the alias of Job has offered to sell the NOC list to Max, a dealer in covert information. The bulk of the plot revolves around Ethan\u2019s efforts to induce Max to reveal Job, which Ethan can do only by offering Max the NOC list\u2014while at the same time making sure that it doesn\u2019t really fall into Max’s hands.<\/p>\n

After a prologue, which I discussed in an earlier entry<\/a>, the film\u2019s first stretch revolves around the team\u2019s invasion of the embassy party. As the scheme collapses, we see the deaths of the team members. Through cross-cutting and a moving-spotlight narration, the film shows us the technician Jack killed in an elevator shaft, Jim Phelps shot on a bridge and tumbling into the river, Sarah stabbed at a gate, and Hannah killed by a car bomb. The effects of these killings are registered largely through Ethan\u2019s response. He hears Jack lose contact, watches video transmission of Jim\u2019s bloody hands, finds Sarah impaled by a knife, and sees Hannah\u2019s car explode. Later he, and we, will learn that Claire escaped.<\/p>\n

At the start of the film\u2019s climax, Ethan discovers that Jim Phelps is still alive. In a caf\u00e9, Jim explains that he survived the shooting and that he saw the killer: Kittridge. Kittridge is the mole, he claims. Jack brings Jim into his plan to meet Max on the Eurostar train and apparently give her the NOC list he\u2019s stolen from Langley.<\/p>\n

The twist is that Jim–Ethan’s mentor, friend, and surrogate father–is lying. He is Job the mole, and he has eliminated his own team, faking the attack on himself. Thanks to crosscutting, the first version of the attacks concealed from us the actions Jim takes to kill his colleagues. The narrative problems are: How and when to tell us of Jim\u2019s treachery? And how to represent Ethan\u2019s state of awareness? Is he misled by Jim\u2019s account, or does he doubt it? And what is Claire\u2019s role in all this?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Three solutions<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Singin’ in the Rain<\/strong> (1952).<\/em><\/p>\n

Every creative choice eliminates alternatives, and I\u2019ve compared classical filmmaking to selecting from a menu of more or less favored options. That menu can offer filmmakers ways of solving narrative problems. One choice for the M:I\u00a0<\/em>revelation is simply to present Jim telling Ethan his lies in the caf\u00e9. Ethan then can react in horror, leaving us to assume that he doesn\u2019t doubt him.<\/p>\n

This option was actually tried out in an early script draft<\/a>. Jim explains and Ethan, despite some hesitation (\u201cHold on, it\u2019s taking me a minute to adjust here\u201c), seems to accept his story. Only in their final confrontation on the Eurostar does Ethan reveal that he had long before figured out that Jim had betrayed the team. We had no inkling that in the caf\u00e9 Ethan was merely pretending to accept Jim\u2019s account. His awareness of Jim\u2019s scheme was held back as a surprise.<\/p>\n

Another narrative option appears in a later script draft<\/a>. This time Jim\u2019s explanation is accompanied by flashbacks illustrating his lies. He claims to have swum to shore, patched up his gunshot wound, and followed Ethan\u2019s trail. He then tells Ethan it was Kittridge who shot him and killed Sarah, and these moments are illustrated with quick flashback imagery. These are lying flashbacks. As a neat fillip, two of these shots replay Ethan finding Sarah\u2019s body nearby, as if to certify Jim\u2019s story. \u201cEthan just stares at Phelps, his eyes wide with surprise.\u201d Again, we\u2019re led to think that Ethan trusts Jim\u2019s tale, making the train confrontation a revelation of Ethan\u2019s outplaying Jim.<\/p>\n

We should remember that the Hollywood menu provides the lying flashback as an option, albeit rare. In Singin\u2019 in the Rain<\/em>, for instance, Don Lockwood\u2019s voice-over interview portrays his early career as one of refined show-business accomplishment. \u201cDignity\u2014always dignity.\u201d But the images undercut this by showing him performing slapstick routines in burlesque. Since this is a comedy, we can understand that the film\u2019s flashbacks are debunking his pretension. As for the second problem, that of conveying a listener\u2019s skepticism, the present-time scenes reinforce the impression of Don\u2019s puffery by showing his pal Cosmo\u2019s eye-rolling reaction. Still, the interviewer and presumably the radio audience are taken in.<\/p>\n

This second M:I<\/em> script variant doesn\u2019t include such hints that Ethan doubts Jim, so the problem of the conveying the listener\u2019s true reaction is bypassed. But the final film supplies yet another solution.<\/p>\n

After I drafted what you’ve just read, I heard from screenwriter David Koepp. I had written him to ask about the alterations, and he talked with De Palma about them.<\/p>\n

Brian reminded me that the intention of the scene was built around an idea \u2014 can we show Jim lying, and simultaneously see Ethan figuring out those lies in his own mind? \u00a0Without telling Jim that he knows it\u2019s a lie, Ethan is picturing for us what the truth must (or might) have been. \u00a0It\u2019s a cool idea, and, typical of DePalma, highly visual. \u00a0Actually seeing on screen versions of events that may or MAY NOT have happened is something we started playing around with in M:I<\/em>, and then did to a greater degree in Snake Eyes<\/em>, which we wrote right after that. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Neither one of us can remember in useful detail about why we might have tried several other versions first, but my guess is that the one with Jim simply verbalizing the lie was jettisoned in favor of images for obvious (and again, DePalma-esque) reasons, i.e., it\u2019s better to see something than to hear it. \u00a0The flashback showing Kittridge as the perpetrator was likely because we wanted to keep going for as long as possible with the character I\u2019ve come to call the Principled Antagonist \u2014 POSSIBLY a villain, turns out not to be, but always diametrically opposed to the hero and his goals.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was good to have my hunch confirmed, and to watch filmmakers sampling the menu of options from draft to draft. The final shooting script<\/a> presents the new variant. Ethan, not Jim, spells out the scheme in dialogue. This leads Jim to assume that Ethan accepts Kittridge as the culprit. But the image track shows Jim committing the crimes. As the script puts it:<\/p>\n

A reprise of PHELPS’s narrative only now ETHAN’S telling it and camera is showing the events as ETHAN sees they actually happened.<\/strong><\/p>\n

There’s still a potential obstacle, though. What if the viewer takes the flashbacks to show what really happened but doesn’t grasp that they’re Ethan’s imaginings? They might be only “the film telling us what really happened,” as in Singin’ in the Rain<\/em>. How to establish that we’re following Ethan’s train of thought while he lies during his dialogue with Jim?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How to lie to a liar<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s the sequence as it appears in the film.<\/p>\n