On a recent weeknight, haunted by my prolonged neglect of our household Criterion subscription, I watched a 1997 David Fincher movie called “The Game.” I know: Likely choice for a crossword columnist! The plot follows Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas), a wealthy investment banker, as he struggles through the increasingly hellish dimensions of a “game” that his brother, Conrad (Sean Penn), bought him for his birthday. The rules are unclear, and the game’s boundaries are that of imagination, which is to say that everyone and anything could be part of it: a stalled elevator, a spilled drink, the anchorman on TV. How does one win? No idea. We never learn how the game is played, only that Van Orton seems to be losing it. The prospect of a game we can’t stop playing has made for many a thriller and horror film franchise, and at least one “Black Mirror” episode. In reality, gameplay of any kind requires commitment to a shared fiction and to the spirit of sport. No master puppeteers allowed! There’s a dedicated arena, be it baseball diamond or puzzle grid. Participation is optional, winning is a possibility and losing is low-stakes (depending on your relationship to competition). We can mimic the experience of never-ending play in language, as evidenced by the game one loses just by thinking about, but those paradoxes are more frustrating than they are fun. What makes play of any kind enjoyable is the ability to step not only into but out of the fiction — otherwise, it’s more of a purgatory than a playground. After a series of twists and turns that make us as rightfully paranoid as the main character, “The Game” crescendos to a truly outlandish final sequence that involves actors playing people playing actors, Van Orton’s brother faking his own murder, and a crash pad that catches Van Orton after he jumps from a rooftop and falls through not one, but two glass ceilings, landing in a grand ballroom where all his loved ones are waiting to shout “Happy birthday!” (Yes, really.) But even though all is well, and even as we watch a spiritually reborn Van Orton flirt with the woman we once believed to be orchestrating his ruin, an eerie uncertainty remains. And frankly, this was one of the things I appreciated most about “The Game”: Its commitment to dissolving our confidence in being able to tell truth from fiction. It doesn’t matter whether Van Orton is still in the game or not. The point is that we’ll never stop wondering. Solve Today’s Capture
Puzzle of the WeekThis week, check out the Tuesday, June 16 crossword by Brad Lively. In the Wordplay column, Sam Corbin wrote, “Today’s crossword, constructed by Brad Lively, certainly benefits from the use of circled letters for its cerebral yet goofy punchline. What was your experience with it? Did the theme strike you as particularly highbrow, or did it feel more like one long dad joke?”
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