Hacker Cinema
The Spanish Prisoner
1997 · Film · 110 min
Directed by David Mamet
An inventor of a secret process suddenly finds himself alone as both his friends and the corporation he works for turn against him.
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10 comments on Hacker News
I liked Heist and especially liked the cast (Delroy Lindo and DeVito are excellent in everything I’ve seen them in as well) - but there’s something up with Mamets direction and cinematography that makes the movies look way cheaper and older than they are. Never understood it, not in Spartan or the Spanish Prisoner (another underrated film IMO) or Heist.
They are indeed still a thing. In my region there are lots of good movies that are simply not available for streaming. Even fairly mainstream movies, like The Spanish Prisoner for example. One could buy those movies on DVD, but that does not feel like a good option to me.
> But do films (or any art) have to "make sense"?
In a lot of ways I think it depends on your role, and the role of the film in your experience. If your role is to enjoy, then I hope the film was created with your preferred perceptive style in mind.
If your role is to write a paper on a film, maybe the make-sense films make that whole assignment much easier.
Solaris is a tremendous sensory experience on its own. You can pick up on a lot of the implications by interpreting the film's sensory output as metaphor. From facial expressions to positioning, texture, and sound / music.
A lot of people find that relaxing because the metaphor-extraction process is like a background process for them and it feeds their intuitive grasp of what's unfolding in the "big picture" of the film. They tend to take in and process much of life in the same way.
At the same time, not everybody enjoys that, and it will make some people downright uncomfortable. To be comfortable with a film, maybe they need to be able to piece it together logically for example, or at least be able to create by themselves an explanation/exposition of the contents where one didn't exist before.
Incidentally, I find the sensory-experiential/metaphorical approach (my go-to) much less fulfilling while watching films created by people who are more logical and detail-driven.
For example, I was rewatching _The Spanish Prisoner_ the other day and it was painfully clear that Mamet really wanted viewers to track his labyrinth of aphoristic details.
From a sensory-metaphor perspective there wasn't much to work with, and the film didn't seem to "make sense" from that intuitive standpoint.
But it's less painful IMO, and maybe even more pleasurable, when you know the kind of gifts and preferred perspectives the director is working with, and at least you're aware that you can make a decision to change your perceptive focus, or watch something else. That aspect makes sense to me, and helps me watch films that wouldn't otherwise make sense in this way or that one.
This guy is right about one thing. The Spanish Prisoner is a great film. The rest is gibberish.
The way this article is written I feel like I'm being conned while reading it. It's basically repeating the same thing for 90% of the article; talking about the spanish prisoner movie. Nothing about why zuckerberg is 'running a con' or what the con even is.
Then at the end of it, I'm supposed to believe that the con is the fact that libra, while potentially facilitating ecommerce and being generally a good thing, is going to kill bitcoin. Why is that a bad thing? If it's better at ecommerce than bitcoin is, then bitcoin deserves to die. It's not insidious to win at something if it's better.
I don't even know if I agree that Libra is a good thing, but the conclusions drawn here don't make any sense.
The movie plot has very little to do with the spanish prisoner scam. A good movie anyway, probably Mamet's best after Glengarry Glenn Ross and House of Games.
Interestingly, there is even a movie called The Spanish Prisoner (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120176/) from 1997 based on this type of scam. It is good and I recommend it.
This brings the movie The Spanish Prisoner to mind.
Very true. David Mamet has written some of the best "conniving/cheating" films, for example The Spanish Prisoner and House of Games.
I like that you ask for mindfck movies. They definitely hold a special place in my heart. A lot of the entries here have been very sci-fi. I tend to like more historical or present-day dramas with great acting that expose some sort of undesirable human behavior, but I snuck a sci-fi movie on the list ;). You can't take the nerd out of the cinephile!
There Will Be Blood - No "great movie" list is complete without a movie that stars Daniel Day Lewis. Go watch all his movies if you want to see what it's like to take acting to the extreme.
(M) The Spanish Prisoner - Probably my favorite suspense movie, along with a Hitchcock or two like Vertigo or Rear Window. This is one of David Mamet's best, in my opinion. All these random things happen in the beginning of the movie that make you question why they bothered mentioning them, and then the catalytic action ties it all together expertly.
Pirates of Silicon Valley - This is the lightest contribution on the list, but probably the most relevant to HN. For what it's worth, both Woz and Bill Gates have described their portrayals as fairly accurate.
Alien - Definitely plays out more like a space horror film than an action movie like the sequels, the acting and suspense is fantastic, not to mention the costume work that went into the alien on the part of HR Giger (if you want a true mindfck, skip the movies and go read his website--terrifying).
Grave of the Fireflies - I wanted to include an animated film on my list, but I really had trouble deciding between Interstella 5555 (Daft Punk's Discovery set to an anime with no talking whatsoever. Great concept) and a Pixar movie (personal favorite: Up). I went with this because I figured you've probably seen Pixar movies. Grave of the Fireflies is a super depressing Ghibli film about the aftermath of the Kobe fire bombings in WW2. The way the movie shows the horrible living conditions and bleak outcomes of the two main characters (the boy is in his early teens and his sister must be around 4 or 5--I can't recall). The movie manipulates your emotions more than any other film I've included on this list. I don't think I've ever had as strong an emotional reaction to a movie as when I saw this one.