Tuesday

One of my favourite things about The Ring is that it is anti-psychological. I don't know if this is deliberate or not. The psychological film is extremely popular in Hollywood. It's rare to find one that avoids this scheme. The detective/journalist is the perfect character that drives these movies. He or she comes across a problem and searches for answers. He goes back to the origins of the problem to find out what is really causing it. Only he knows what the problem really is, whereas everyone else is only looking at the surface. Eventually he solves the problem, and along the way normally cures his own psychological problems too, as well as falling in love. What happens, however, in The Ring? Well, the main character is still a journalist, and she searches for the origins of the problem. She finds the well in which the girl has died and goes down into it in order to somehow release her and free everyone from the curse. However - and I'm going to ruin the ending here for those of you who haven't seen it - she fails. The psychological approach that she has adopted has no effect whatsoever. Instead, it is because she copied the tape that she survives. The curse continues, and (at least in the first film) it cannot be stopped. It goes round and round, like a ring. There is no way of digging out the problem and by uncovering it solving it. This is what I love about The Ring, and it is this approach that I'd love to see more of in Hollywood.