The Usual Suspects, Keyser Soze, and the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled

Last night, I decided to watch the movie The Usual Suspects.  I had seen it along time ago, though I can't remember when that was (it's an older movie - 1995).

Spoilers ahead (some major ones given the nature of the film, which is based on mystery and a major plot twist, so fair warning).

I am not sure why I watched it.  I actually didn't have a great feeling during most of it.  This was probably for a couple of reasons.  First, one of the lead actors and the primary narrator is Kevin Spacey.  Spacey ends up playing the role of a very unreliable narrator and a master manipulator, and will ultimately end up as the film's arch villain:  Keyser Soze.  I will get to the character in just a minute, but the actor Spacey himself turned out to be not that great of guy.  So, watching him play this role was disturbing in a way I hadn't anticipated.

Second, the film itself won an Oscar for Best Screenplay, and it considered a classic among many fans for its 'intelligent' storytelling.  I put that in quotes because watching it now many years later, I felt that the movie was just a trick.  Based on the twist at the end, you realize that the entire movie plot is one big fabrication told by Soze, which is fine, but it breaks some of its own rules in setting this up, or at least isn't consistent with how this is portrayed to the audience.  There are many scenes that Soze isn't a part of, and would have had no knowledge of in recounting to the police, but they are presented as fact and I think almost intentionally used to make the audience forget that all of the flashbacks themselves are based on Soze's story.  It is a sleight of hand that feels as manipulative as the character of Soze himself.  Once I realized this in this watch through, the story wasn't so impressive.

Also, what the twist does for the movie is to make what you just watched irrelevant.  There are a couple of things that can be substantiated based on the police finding things, the mention of certain characters by more reliable characters, or the word of the Hungarian in the hospital, but other than those remarkably few things, the audience is left with the realization that a great deal, if not most, of what they have been watching was made up, and there really isn't any other purpose than to show Soze as an evil, manipulative murderer.  That is all you really know at the end, when it comes down to it.

Lastly, I watched the version of the movie that was streaming through the channel AMC, which was highly edited.  Language and I am assuming a significant amount of violence was edited out.  So if you see the actual version, that would just be something to be prepared for as well, or at least warned about.

Anyway, with that, I don't think it was a complete loss in watching the film, and of course, it starts here on this blog in looking at names.

Keyser Soze, Roger "Verbal" Kint, and the Devil

Keyser Soze is set up throughout the movie as a master villain - a being that strikes fear into the heart of even hardened criminals, but is shadowy and mysterious.  He is also repeatedly referred to as the "the Devil", both directly and indirectly.  I mean, a lot.

When they bring the Hungarian into the hospital who is then questioned by the FBI.  The Hungarian is terrified of one person:  Keyser Soze.  He calls him the devil repeatedly in Hungarian, for example this is one translation of part of what he says: 

"He is the Devil. You've never seen anyone like Keyser Soze in all your miserable life, you idiot. Keyser Soze. Do you at least understand that? Keyser Soze. The Devil himself."

Verbal Kint (who will end revealed as Keyser Soze) repeats a line a couple times with respect to Keyser and the Devil.  It goes:

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

It is a line that proves to be one of the themes of the movie, but Verbal Kint actually does something slightly different by convincing special agent Kujan (the man who has been interrogating him) that the 'devil' does exist, but that Verbal isn't him.  Kujan states to Verbal at the beginning of their interrogation that he is smarter than Verbal (who has taken on the disguise as being a slow, disabled person), but Verbal wins their battle of wits at the end.   Kujan eats up everything that Verbal tells hims to arrive at the completely wrong conclusion.

Let's look at names.  "Soze" is a Turkish word which means literally 'to drown in words' or 'one who talks too much'.  Given previous posts on Saruman and the power of his Voice (and thereby words), including just my last post on Willy Wonka talking about the silencing or 'gobstopping' of Saruman-Slugworth, this obviously caught my attention.  Particularly since I have also identified the Devil - the one over this World right now anyway - as Saruman, and here we have the name of a Being labeled as the Devil whose last name has something to do with talking, words, etc.

Keyser is a form of the German Kaiser, which means 'Emperor or Ruler".  Putting those together we have a pretty fitting name for our Saruman - the Ruler who drowns in words' or "Ruler who speaks".  Something like that.

Verbal's name (which is a nickname) is pretty straightforward:  "Dealing with words", per Etymonline.  In the internal universe of the movie, it is meant to serve as a clue or hint that Verbal is in fact Keyser Soze.  Here he is, hiding in plain sight, with even a name tying him to the the Devil, and no one takes notice.

Verbal Kint is the name that Spacey's character goes by throughout the movie (we only learn his identity as the shadowy Keyser Soze at the end).  Verbal is the first thing that stuck out to me (and later Soze), given my previous posts highlighting Saruman as our modern day devil, but also as one you uses his Voice.  Saruman would be said to be "Verbal", in that is the primary source of his power.

Kint doesn't really yield anything for me - it means something like 'small child', but nothing about that grabbed me or had any meaning, at least right now.

Kobayashi!

The name Kobayashi made its appearance in my post The Wrath of Saruman-Khan and Free Willy!.  In the movie Wrath of Khan, the opening scene is a simulation, where a Star Fleet crew is attempting to rescue a ship named the Kobayashi Maru that is stranded in the Neutral Zone.  

There are two layers of deceit that are experienced as part of the opening scene.  First, the crew itself finds out the apparently the Kobayashi Maru never really existed - it was a phantom ship or some trap that lulled the crew into the Neutral Zone, after which they are then slaughtered by enemy Klingon warships.

The second layer of deceit is the one that audience experiences - up until the end of that scene, we are not actually aware that this is a simulation.  Things on the bridge are blowing up, people are laying around 'dead', and it seems like something that is real.  It is not until a door opens and Captain Kirk walks onto the bridge (with light behind him, casting him as a silhouette, and holding his book about Xanadu), that we are made aware that this whole thing was not 'real'.  Phew! 

It is important, I think, to recognize this fact, though.  Things were 'not real' at multiple levels of that scene, but that is eventually revealed (by the entrance of Kirk and his Book).

Anyway, to my utter surprise, the name Kobayashi also made a fairly central appearance in The Usual Suspect.

Keyser Soze apparently has a right hand man, who goes by the name of Kobayashi.  As with many/ most of the other names in Verbal-Keyser Soze's story, this name was completely fabricated, and in fact the role of this other mysterious character cannot be fully known given the unreliability of our narrator.

As one of the twists at the end, we learn that Soze has merely pulled this name off of the bottom of special agent Kujan's mug.  Kujan has been drinking coffee facing Soze, and Soze saw the name on the bottom, and wove it into his story.  Here is a still shot of the coffee mug that Kujan dropped after he realized he had been totally duped by Verbal, and that the story he had just been told was completely unreliable and mostly fabricated:

The mug shatters, much as the illusion that Kujan had that the conclusions that he reached as a result of Verbal's tale were correct.  Kujan's reality is literally broken, and he finds out tool late (after Soze has already left the building) that he has been tricked.

Why does this matter?

Well, here is one thought:  We also live under a false narrative told and expounded by a Being (Saruman, or whomever it turns out to be) who is a master at lies and manipulation.   We cannot - I don't believe at least - figure a way out of that 'unreality' on our own.  To pretend that we can, I think, can put us on the same ground as Kujan, who was so convinced he was smarter and more powerful than 'the Devil', and was so sure he had landed on the right solution on his own, despite having been expertly steered to the exactly wrong conclusion.  

I don't think we are smarter than him, in our current situation, as I have tried to emphasize, even as I explore various possible story elements.  Those story elements, though, if you have noticed, still center on this notion of Stones and Stories, or the need for these things in order to move forward.  I just don't see any other way forward and clearly that remains on my mind.  Even as I write about different analogies, stories, characters, etc., it all still seems to come back to that.

And even that might be an illusion, or all completely wrong.  Kobayashi, as I went through in that Wrath of Khan post, could be Elvish (I know it is also a Japanese name) for "To gather once upon a time".  That is the crux of my story - to gather together as it had been a long, long time ago - but what if that is an illusion just as the things that were called by that name in these two movies were?  Again, it could be.  I don't currently believe so, but we are all in the same fish bowl together, so when it comes down to it, my reason for believing that isn't any better or stronger than your reason for perhaps not.  My view is that the Devil would love for that aspect - that one in particular - to be perceived as an illusion, something that isn't possible.

But, 'restoration' is one of the primary messages of the Book of Mormon, and to restore can mean to 'bring back to a former and better state'.  My personal belief remains that Jesus has prepared a way for that to be a reality for us, and that would mean a family restored back to each other again.

Anyway, that is one message I tried to cobble together in my mind after watching the film.  Maybe a stretch, but I didn’t want the fact that we had a Being called the Devil whose name was also associated with speaking, as well as the appearance of Kobayashi, go to a complete waste.