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Owlwise's Replies
I agree with you!
Perhaps I should say, it convinces for me, in that I'm not taken out of the story to comment in my mind that they're not realistic. The willing suspension of disbelief in order to enjoy the story, in other words. And with this sort of thing, it's a very subjective experience, of course. :)
I loved them as a kid in 1963, and I love them just as much today.
Roger Ebert once wrote something to the effect that stop-motion brought more of a dreamlike, otherworldly, yet also realistic feel to a fantasy or science-fiction movie far more than CGI could. The stop-motion figures were tangible, having actual weight & presence. I've watched special effects advance for decades now, and I still think Ray Harryhousen is The Master. Everything he animated has personality that endures & convinces to this day.
Roger Ebert once said something to the effect that he liked stop-motion because it had a certain otherworldly, dreamlike quality that could actually enhance a fantasy or science-fiction film.
And in Duncan Jones' <i>Moon</i>, he preferred practical models for his vehicles in order to give them tangibility & visible presence, while using CGI sparsely but precisely for effects like moondust disturbed by the wheels of one of those vehicles in motion.
I-I-I-I-I like this interpretation very much. :)
At the end of the final episode, there's no need for a second series. As to whether it's open-ended or not, I leave that to each viewer. For me, both open-ended & closed. Some questions are answered, some are rendered unimportant, some remain to keep the viewer thinking about what they've just seen. The series has said what it wanted to say.
Not trying to be clever or coy (I'm neither). But if you do wind up watching it, I don't want to spoil anything for you.
There is an ending, but it's not typical. I'd call it real ... well, as real as anything can be in the world of The Prisoner. :)
Mine too. :)
If you enjoyed the movie, odds are good that you'll enjoy the book as well. Hope so, anyway!
For me, not knowing how to end it enabled them to dive deep & come up with one of the best—maybe even <b>the</b> best—endings of any TV series. It's what made an already brilliant & challenging show an absolute & enduring work of art.
But different strokes, etc.
That's definitely part of it. The other part is that they want him to give his reasons because any act of compliance from him will be the crack they need to break him ... or so they believe, anyway. And he's not going to give them that opportunity under any circumstances.
All the more relevant today in so many ways.
"Now you're hep!"
"Hip ... Dad."
For me, those two episodes are among the finest in TV history.
"Now hear ... the word ... of the Lord."
Why he resigned isn't really the point of the series. As more than one No. 2 states, it's simply to get No. 6 to cooperate by revealing just one thing. It could be anything. But if he does reveal it, they believe that they can then completely break & control him. The series begins as a spy story, but swiftly becomes a complex allegory. And it's all the better for that.
For me, the ending is one of the most daring & shattering endings of any TV series or film. Yes, it was thrown together at the last minute—that's one of the things that makes it work so well, because it's an unmediated outpouring of the Unconscious, with all of the themes & metaphors exploding onscreen, completely dispensing with the expected cliches & "proper" endings in favor of leaving the viewers puzzled, dazzled, wondering, thinking, feeling in depth.
As the creators said, this isn't a James Bond type of story, with everything resolved neatly & tidily—it's an intensely personal expression of McGoohan's psyche, & outlook with Kakfa, Beckett, Orwell, Huxley, Theater of the Absurd, Surrealism & so much more all thrown into the mix. And I'm thankful that they went that route. Nothing since has matched it.
Just my reaction, of course.
What did you think of it?
But thrown together brilliantly, I'd say. Which is why it remains so fascinating & thought-provoking to this day. It's pouted white-hot from the crucible at the last moment, so to speak. The pressure of not knowing how it would end & facing an imminent deadline brought out the best from everyone, with the material emerging from the Unconscious. No carefully pre-planned, pre-conceived ending could ever have matched what we got.
Yes, sometime shortly after it was published. And as good as the movie is, the book is even better, as it has many different stories interwoven together that the movie had to eliminate or at best refer to with a few seconds of footage (Houdini, etc.). Not that I fault the movie for that in the least, as they took the primary story & followed it beautifully through to the end. The transition from page to screen almost always requires some changes, after all. I was not disappointed by those changes in the least.
Jack Lemmon is an actor worth watching. You might want to check out some of his films.
I'm afraid you're right. Audiences back then were assumed to be reasonably intelligent people with actual attention spans & didn't need to be spoon-fed.
Yes, that too. :)