Deus Ex Machina Goes to the Movies

Every now and then I just feel like writing about a silly subject, and today's the day.

The omnipresent Wikipedia defines (at least today!) Deus ex machina as "an unexpected, artificial, or improbable character, device, or event introduced suddenly in a work of fiction or drama to resolve a situation or untangle a plot." Examples are offered like the timely appearance of a rat to chew off the rope that binds the hero's hands, or an angel suddenly appearing to resolve a difficulty.

Bad movies do this a lot. Sometimes even the writers of otherwise-good movies get themselves into corners and the only way they can write themselves out is with some lame plot device. I just love Mike Judge's Office Space, for instance, but [SPOILER ALERT] all the tension around Peter, Mike, and Samir getting caught at their little embezzlement scheme just goes up in smoke (Ha!) when Initech's corporate campus inexplicably burns to a crisp. The Deus Ex Machina (DEM): the whole plot turns on our buying the idea of a competent 1990s software development company that has never heard of offsite backup. Yeah. The flaming stapler scene is hilarious, of course, but I find myself unsuspending my willing suspension of disbelief whenever I watch it. And I do watch it, every chance I get.

But anyway, OS was still a pretty good comedy. Now for a bad one, which also has the honor of being my eight-year-old daughter HoneyGirl's current Favorite Film Ever in the History of Cinema and Don't You Knock It if You Know What's Good for You (FFEITHOCADYKIIYKWGFY): High School Musical. The plot, such as it is: WASPy jock Troy and brainy Latina-next-door Gabriella both secretly long to try out for the high school music-AL (as the snotty, arrogant music teacher Ms. Darbus pronounces it) but figure what's the use since snotty, arrogant sister-brother singing/dancing sensations Sharpay and Ryan have always headlined every music-AL ever. Now commence all the scenes of Troy's team and Gabriella's geeks trying to keep them away from the auditions and each other, and the tension just builds - BUILDS! I tell you - until the big showdown between our star-crossed singers and the Sharpay/Ryan juggernaut. S & R are scheming, scenery-chewing villains, of course, but what's also quite clear is that they are demonstrably better singers, dancers, and choreographers (and costumers, to boot) than the T & G Amateur Hour will ever shape up to be.

Which makes the denouement all the more ridiculous. Ms. Darbus suddenly switches her support from the champs to the chumps, this because a crowd of kids inexplicably descends on the audition hall and claps louder for the latter than the former.

The DEM, of course, is this: since when have the great, unwashed masses ever known a thing about art?! Ms. Darbus has spent every one of her scenes thus far sniffing at anyone who would dare critique anything related to how she's running her music-AL, and now we're supposed to believe she's come around, and gosh, that Troy and Gabriella just sing with so much heart that it would be crazy not to put their names in lights.

And it isn't just her. The epilogue song-and-dance sequence features the formerly snotty and arrogant Sharpay and Ryan (their lobotomy scars having healed, I guess) just dancin' and singin' and grinnin' ear to ear about their disgrace. They just couldn't be happier for the jock and the geek! They've learned their lesson! There's no I in TEAM! Right.

Finally, The Caine Mutiny. The movie, not the book. Even my blogger profile agrees that I love the book, which is why I was so disappointed by the film. Perhaps because Bogey decided he didn't want to play Captain Queeg as Captain Queeg, the movie portrays him much more sympathetically. Instead of turning the ship upside down over some missing strawberries, not noticing that he's navigating in circles while he's admonishing a sailor with a shirttail out, or systematically persecuting Petty Officer Stillwell, he actually comes to his wardroom officers with hat in hand, acknowledging his commmand failures and asking for their help. They refuse, and an entirely different spin is placed on his later mental breakdown.

This is a DEM of a different sort: resolving the tension before it even has a chance to develop, by replacing a paranoid petty tyrant with a bumbling-but-humble neurotic who just needs a little help.

Those are just three examples. To my loyal readers (both of them): now that you've got the idea, please send me some of your favorite DEM movie moments as comments.