The Third Man

If nothing else, The Third Man is dissonance. I wonder if I, or anyone, will ever grow, or has ever grown, past the age of being a child. While writing this, I find myself at the uniquely myopic age of 18: I'm a freshman in film school, I live away from home, I have a total of $9 and 53 cents in my bank account and the only "food" I've eaten today has been half a bag of gummy worms. However, a new hallmark of this semester has been that, for the first time in a very long time, I've had all my class assignments completed before they were due, leaving me with a cozy amount of time to myself that I can spend ogling at a screen, crossing various movies off my to-do list and slapping my hands against a keyboard like a monkey at a piano as I attempt to write scripts that, most likely, will never find their way to the eyes of anyone else (and most likely shouldn't.) This new era of having free time, improved focus, and being responsible in regards to my time-management has done wonders for my mental health and college experience in general. It's a step closer to gaining the "control" over the completely alien life of becoming an adult in a world I don't understand. But even still, intrinsic with my time in college thus far, has been the ever-looming and controlling shadow of finding myself little more than an interloping imposter. "I'm here, but I shouldn't be." How long will it take until, by the incredible friends I've made, I'm found out to be nothing-more-than-and-exactly-just a passing charlatan? (A "Hack writer who drinks too much and falls in love with girls," to borrow from Holly.) It is there, in wondering how long it takes them to find the peace and the satisfaction their aspirations surely have promised, that one reaches the inevitable and horrifyingly real revelation, "I have no idea what I'm doing." With that, one quickly becomes engrossed in observing every person who passes by as someone who has their life "together". That sentiment eventually extends to friends and family and acquaintances as you observe the lives that you've always been closest to, but under the new lens that says "They must have everything together." But then you learn that they don't and suddenly it's like ASDFGHJDHGFC cuz NO one knows what they're doing and we're all just making it up as we go? If nothing else, The Third Man is dissonance. From the perpetually obscured and starkly shot imagery that lulls us into finding rubble beautiful, to Anton Karas’ cheerfully-disturbing zither score that might as well be Harry Lime himself plucking the strings of his ephemeral spider-web, Vienna being held together by a collection of four different police forces from four different countries, most of which can scarcely communicate with the locals- let alone each other, or to Holly’s projections of a Harry that doesn’t exist (and likely never did), every character, every scene, and every bone of The Third Man teeters on contradiction. The directing is meticulous and the performances are specific. Greene himself is confused and his writing isn't written to answer his questions, but simply come to terms with the fact that he's confused. None of the characters truly find an answer to what they seek- Harry's intricate law-evading plans of faked death lead him to his actual death, rather than away from it. At the end of the day, Holly is still without a dollar to his name, and now with one fewer friend. I hadn’t seen it quite like this before, and I wonder if maybe I’ll only see it like this while I find myself as I am today, and even still, in that viewing it’s very difficult to draw a conclusion as to what it’s all trying to say- especially when there’s not really a character in its entire duration that is presented as someone worth aspiring to. If no one knows what they’re doing, where does any one person’s “power” come from? Calloway argues that heroes and villains aren’t as concrete as the characters of Holly’s novellas and Harry simply sees people as dots worth $20,000 each (free of income tax.) Not knowing what you’re doing is scary and vulnerable and naked. But it's an inherent vulnerability and nakedness shared by everyone. And maybe that’s the first step to realizing something else. I promise I'm going back to goofy quips after this that was stressful