Film Noir is typically a subgenre of mystery. It's one that grew out of the trauma of World War II, a generation that had witnessed the utter, shocking evil that humanity was capable of inflicting upon itself. It's a cynical and bitter genre of storytelling that would later be echoed in the cyberpunk genre and has formed a kind of riff upon which other genres can build themselves.
It is kind of funny, though, that the genre became so prominent around the same time that post-War prosperity in America led to the sanitized suburban "Father Knows Best" and "Leave it to Beaver" optimism.
Noir is all about twists and turns, and betrayal is one of the key tropes that pops up within it. Sherlock never has to question whether Watson will be loyal to him and the mission of solving the crime, but in a Noir story, nothing is promised. We might have our heroic detective to trust, but everyone else is fair game.
And thus, it's a little funny that John Sugar has built his life around these tropes. He's so in love with the golden age of Hollywood (though he's not limited to it, at one point describing John Carpenter's The Thing to his doctor).
Following the case of missing woman Olivia Siegel, there are elements that don't really add up, moving parts here and questions that remain unanswered. That's fine, though. That's the genre.
Let's go into spoiler territory. Oh, and just to warn you, there will be spoilers for The Prestige as well.
The Prestige is one of my favorite movies. I think it's Nolan's best (I actually thought Oppenheimer was a return to form, though I've wrestled a little with my enjoyment of that film over my half-Japanese-American friend's objections that it doesn't really touch on the Japanese perspective at all, which is a whole other post to write and maybe one that I'm not the person to speak on). That is not Noir (taking place about 35-40 years before the genre's primary time period) but it is a movie all about the twists and turns, replicating the feeling of watching a magic trick.
In The Prestige, the biggest twist of the movie is that it is, in fact, a science fiction story. We can feel very clever if we figure out that Borden was actually a pair of twins the entire time, but that twist is misdirection to distract us from the fact that Nikola Tesla built Angier an actual replication machine that he has used in his teleportation magic trick.
Sugar plays its cards very close to the vest for its first six episodes. We know something is going on with the "Polyglot Society" that Sugar belongs to, and that Ruby appears to run. Obviously, Ruby has been his handler and agent, but the way they talk about his PI business, it's clear that they are all up to something else. Among his friends at the society are doctors, anthropologists, and people of other professions.
And we get a plausible explanation: that they're a bunch of spies. There's even a rumor going around (and the premise of one of the Siegels' films) that a group of ex-spies got together to form a secret group to pursue their own benevolent (or malevolent, depending on whom you ask) goals.
Given Sugar's seemingly endless wealth, his extreme competence, and his proficiency in what seems like every language, it would make sense that this guy used to be some hotshot at the CIA, MI6, FSB, whatever.
But no. It's far weirder than that.
This is a twist that got spoiled for me by an AV Club article before I had really heard much about the show. It's a shame, because I wonder how I would be reacting to the end of episode 6 if I hadn't known what was going on.
Sugar, after a rough day in which he realizes that Ruby lied to him and actually warned the thugs he had just killed that he was coming, takes a moment to "go home" briefly, pulling out the little drug kit he carries with him. We've seen him take the drug before, but we cut away before we see its effects.
But we also see that the syringe, bottle, and kit, are of a strange design, a weirdly crystalline material housing everything. And he also injects it into his neck, which... look, I don't do drugs, but I don't think that's typical.
However, this time, we stay with him. And first, we see his eyes turn bright blue. Then, slowly, his skin shifts, his hair vanishing, and we see looking back in the mirror what is presumably some kind of humanoid alien.
Yes, this is a sci-fi show, fellas!
Now, the AV Club reviewer seemed to hate this (I didn't read the article, but the sub-headline gave away the fact that he's an alien). But I guess going in knowing it, I've been looking for clues. And honestly, it's very subtle. But it does sort of make sense in retrospect. John's construction of his personality around Hollywood movies is the sort of thing one would do if one were new to human culture. The early thing about his body metabolizing alcohol 50 times faster than the average person makes a whole lot more sense if he's not human. And, maybe I imagined it, but when one of the thugs shoots at him in the house off La Cienega (not actually super far from where I live) he appears to bat a bullet out of the air.
Now, with this reveal out of the way, I have no idea where we go from here. I'm about 99.9% certain that Ruby and all the other "Polyglots" are fellow aliens on some mission from their home planet. It's why John has to go see Dr. Vickers, a fellow member, rather than some hospital. What's their purpose here on Earth? Are they just trying to study the culture without revealing themselves in a kind of Prime Directive way? Or is their intention more sinister? It seems, for example, that they might have been the ones to abduct (there's a funny word) Olivia.
I guess the question is this: is the show's quite excellent Neo-Noir vibe cheapened by this twist? I'm reserving judgment. Again, the show plays this twist so close to the vest that I can understand people feeling that there's a version of the show where it's just a straightforward mystery. Obviously, that's not actually true because this is the first season, and so this was surely part of the DNA from the get-go.
But do we then find the central mystery overshadowed by all of this?
Again, I need to watch the rest of it to really get a sense. I still think that the show's production and particularly its editing (not just the interspersed old movie footage, though I do kind of like that) is really remarkable.
(Huh, just remembered that there's a part where Sugar, wounded from his encounter off La Cienega, struggles to recall Neo Noir classic L.A. Confidential, which had James Cromwell in it. Bit of a celebrity paradox, isn't it?)
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