atelierpenny | Grappling with Mystery as a Genre

I've been watching many films on Tubi as of late. Nearly everyone in my household has an account on some streaming service and I am rather savvy about the piracy stuff, but it is somewhat of a hassle to plug my laptop into the HDMI and switch it over and get my USB mouse and all that. So I make do with the ads and watch films on there. Watching more films has become something of an unofficial new years resolution of mine, and I made the choice of starting with many films from the 30s and 40s, for the base reason that most of them are on the shorter end.

The first of these I watched was a mystery film (my gut tells me it was The Outrage from 1964 but that is the wrong time period and also I kinda hated the film). Tubi's algorithm has thus decided that old mysteries are what I'm here for, thus opening the app gives me nothing but old mysteries to click when I'm in the mood for a film.

Mysteries are a genre I have a somewhat strange relationship with. People often ask what sort of things I like or look for in any given piece of art, a question I have trouble answering. In my music journalist days, I tried to avoid having a mindset like this, as it felt somewhat silly to have an internal list of boxes to be checked as the sole element which determines if I like an album or not. Such a mindset is contrasted by a statement I've made a few times when experiencing more narrative works: Even if I don't get a lot from any given story, I will usually like it a lot if I really like even just one character.

Traditionally speaking, the genre of mysteries treats its characters rather oddly compared to much of the rest of fiction. We have our central detective, typically a strong character in their own right, but most of the rest of the cast merely serves the mystery above their own character. Characters will die by the killer's hands to further the stakes and danger, providing more key evidence. Or, they may be witnesses to key events and little more. To solve the mystery for one's self, often a selling point of the genre, you kinda have to emotionally remove yourself from the situation. That nice character could be a deceiving murder, this character may not be telling the truth because they're in love, and so on. I am not saying I hate mysteries as they're traditionally told and presented or anything, but I suppose I am just rather picky.

I had a similar experience when I was first getting into reading novel style video games, a genre which (at least in the English speaking world) has mostly mysteries as the most popular releases (i.e. Ace Attorney or Danganronpa). These games have fleshed out characters, yes, but the mystery solving is the main attraction.

In novel games, I find myself trending towards the stories in which the mystery is very present and often fun to think about; yet the character moments, relations, and interaction stand as the clear main meat. Seabed is one prime example. Much of the experience of Seabed is actually (probably) less enjoyable if you have been spoiled, so it will not be here. But the presentation of the game itself is the mystery. The player starts asking questions once the prologue is over more than the characters ever do. Takako has questions about her missing memories. Yet, rather than solving them with wit as a traditional detective would, she talks through her emotions with the people around her to “solve” them instead. Conversations Sachiko has with her nurse Narasaki about hallucinations feel like someone googling their problems trying to find whats wrong with them. The process of thinking through the mystery is done between two characters, heavily interweaving their own personalities into the meat of the plot. When big reveals and changes happen, they are so related to the core of the lives of these characters that one cannot possibly remove themselves and their emotions from the situation. Additional scenes in Seabed are unlocked as the reader continues reading. They often give crucial pieces of evidence to the mysteries at play within the plot, yet those are never what I remember when I think back on those scenes. I remember Sachiko's pure grief as she spills her heart out to Narasaki over her memories. In these scenes, no character sprites are shown, so you don't get to see anyone's face. But the pain in her words wrings tears out of my eyes every damn time I see them. The mystery is secondary, serving the wonderful plot and characters first and foremost.

I think perhaps my favorite of the films I saw have been The Third Man (1949) and The Lady Vanishes (1938). The Third Man's primary mystery has kind of a stupid answer, and one that is rather obvious past a certain point in viewing. However, much of the fun is in seeing the mental wringer the main two characters are put in. They both have a strong attachment to the case, with the protagonist having been “saved” by a job offer from the victim and the main girl having been in love with the victim. They both sorta know the answer a certain point through, but they can't admit it to themselves because it is killing them. They make awful decision after awful decision because of how hurt they are. It gives the film this strange aura. The score is nearly comical, as if laughing at the main two for their situation. Alida Valli, the main girl, is tortured mentally by her waning love and her desire to protect the villain in spite of everything. She is given an out, a way to escape a dangerous situation for her which is slowly creeping up and she just can't bring herself to care because of how detached she feels from everything at this point. It rules so hard.

The Lady Vanishes has its main villain using emotionally fuckery as the main weapon against the protagonists. Margaret Lockwood totally owns in this movie. She has a close friendship with an old lady on the train after being treated like pure dirt by every man in the movie up until that point. The woman is gone after Lockwood's character takes a nap. When she asks where her new friend has gone, everyone in the train acts as if her friend never was on the train, and that she never existed at all. Michael Redgrave's character, the deuteragonist, is kind of a meathead, and only sticks with the main girl because he has a crush on her and likes fucking with her. Iris, the protagonist, is totally alone, and she is clawing and screaming for someone to just take her seriously. I adore that she gets her out when things get hairy from a nun lady who couldn't give two shits about the plot, and from a lady who thinks her husband is a total moron for lying to the protagonist. The bonds between women are a threat to the men in the movie, who work to stop her. It's a really damn good film. Women sweep.