Ayoade on Top

by Richard Ayoade

The in-flight entertainment? I guess that depends on your capacity to withstand pernickety prose in a quasi-literary sub-genre that’s hard to define, let alone shelve.

Please also make sure your seat is back and that the folding trays are in their full upright position. Because it’s not the crash that’ll kill you, it’s the trays.

We remind you that this is a non-smoking book. If this book starts to smoke, it means you are on fire. Ask a non-vengeful colleague to assist.

If you want to succeed, the film bravely asserts, put on a short skirt and go into the service industry! It won’t be long before you’re picked out for even greater things, like higher-paid work within the service industry! Because if you’re hot, you’ll reach the top! And if you’re a little heavy or have a squinty eye, maybe you can work behind the scenes, where you won’t spook anyone.

Top is a rare, breathless work of honesty, directness and integrity, a film that celebrates capitalism in all its victimless glory, and one I can imagine Donald Trump himself half watching on his private jet’s gold-plated flat screen, while his other puffy eye scans the cabin for fresh young prey.

Lord, this onion’s layered.

The title comes up, over a darkening sky: VIEW FROM THE TOP. A whole world has been built; a backstory has been painted in but a few brushstrokes; sixty seconds have slipped by in what seems like mere minutes.

If Orson Welles had had this gift, Citizen Kane might still be remembered today. He could have clarified that weird ending with a simple line of VO, saying something like: ‘And that’s when I, Citizen Kane, realised how much I loved sleds.’

When my parents weren’t watching the news, they were either waiting to watch the news or recovering from watching the news. The news confirmed their feeling that things were terrible everywhere, and there was nothing anyone could do about it apart from keep abreast of developments. I’ve avoided the news ever since.

this would be the best birthday of all time/space – an intimate table à trois, partially reheated food, sophisticated conversation across the generational divide and easy access to the A12.

leaving me with no option but to flick through the Daily Mail. But before I could start feeling subconsciously oppressed by Brussels, my dad stood

The elegance of the camera move almost threatens to distract us from its symbolism.

Sisyphus is going places, it’s just that the route is quite up and down.

Cinema helps us to remember that although we all have the right to shine, some of us must shine in the background, out of focus, and not too brightly.

It’s also to the film’s credit that the motif of Donna working in the baggage department (while working through her own ‘baggage’) never feels arch, but merely thematically on point.

At first glance, Paltrow looks like she wouldn’t set foot in Big Lots even if it were the only viable place to shelter from acid rain. She hates conventional retail so much she’s set up her own company to filter out anything non-bespoke and named it after what Stephen Baldwin’s smile seems to be wallowing in.* For Paltrow to enter an establishment without being offered ionised cucumber water is unthinkable. But it is Barreto’s job to make us think the unthinkable. His camera cranes down (high/low vs up/down) as Donna extols the virtues of a particular piece of luggage to a customer (‘nylon twill with DuPont protective coating’). ‘This is the bag you use when you fly?’ asks the customer, somewhat provocatively. Donna is forced to admit she’s never been on an aeroplane, but if she ever gets to go on one, this is the bag she’d like to take. It’s a moving exchange. It subtly reminds us that, thus far at least, her ambition to leave Silver Springs remains unfulfilled. But shortly two key events will propel her skywards. * Goop.

On 5 October 2018, after a lawsuit instigated by California’s consumer protection office, Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle website Goop was ordered to pay $145,000 for making unscientific claims about vaginal eggs. One of the most surprising things about this verdict is that, by logical inference, it must be possible to make scientific claims about vaginal eggs. It is also surprising that someone would want to pretend that there is such a thing as a vaginal egg. Vaginal eggs are the result of taking the name of a body part and placing it next to the name of a breakfast item. Vaginal eggs are no more real to me than penis toast or anal pancakes. As my mother would always say to me, nothing that can hatch belongs in your vagina.

According to Business Insider UK, ‘The eggs are each about the size of a narrow ping-pong ball – around 1.2 inches wide and 1.7 inches tall* (a bit smaller than the colourful, plastic kind at an Easter hunt).’ Two questions press: Why did they think we couldn’t imagine an egg without first thinking of a ping-pong ball? Why are people playing table tennis during Easter-egg hunts?

And as my mother always said, ‘The last thing my vagina needs is more bacteria.’

‘When a trip to the sex store left product designer Peder Wikstrom disenchanted, he decided it was time to disrupt the industry.’ I’ve never visited a ‘sex store’, but I’m surprised that anyone who has would go with the expectation of enchantment. The USP of a sex store is not the renewal of one’s faith in the sublimity of the human soul.

I always find this idea of people bringing ‘cheekiness’ to anything, let alone erotic implements, one of the most off-putting ideas imaginable. I don’t know that you can insert anything into yourself in a ‘quirky’ manner. If you’re going to insert, insert, but don’t kid yourself that you can insert something that has inverted commas around it – those things are going to hit the sides.

Goop is a place where you can buy a ‘kid calming mist’ (a cross between a humidifier and a riot cannon) and a ‘psychic vampire repellent protection mist’. The latter is to be sprayed ‘around the aura to protect from psychic attack and emotional harm’. Which is crackers. How can you spray something around your aura when you are already within your aura? You would have to get someone else to spray it on your aura. But who can you trust? Everyone’s psychically attacking you!

Donna balefully asks whether Boulay’s undisclosed co-conspirator is Linda from Lawn Chairs, before Boulay admits that it’s Brenda in Barbecues. This exchange feels like a rare misstep and seems to veer from the reality so carefully established thus far. While the badinage is undoubtedly witty (this is an Eric Wald screenplay), are we to believe that people are only hired at Big Lots for their alliterative potential? Why, then, isn’t Donna in Dinnerware? Or at the Denim Bar?

It is one of the strengths of the screenplay that if ever there’s a chance of thematic ambiguity, someone will verbally intervene and, bluntly, restate the theme. The phrase ‘business is business’ will haunt us later. It’s a phrase that’s hard to refute, much like the phrase ‘genocide is genocide’,

Were we to think about whether we know of any famous flight attendants, we might rob ourselves of the opportunity to enjoy the narrative.

if we all just decide to believe, we can make it through. It’s this ‘groundless’ belief that we should – as it were – keep watchin’ that makes the experience of Top so touching. Complicity is created, binding the filmmakers to us, its limited audience.

the only thing ‘Don’t Stop Believin’’ asks of us is to persist with our current belief. As regards what we should believe, the song is silent. Journey don’t care who we are; we could be Satanists, as long as we’re consistent. How long should we keep believin’? If you think Journey are going to be prescriptive about that, you don’t know Journey. But the question remains. Do we maintain our ‘belief’ for the duration of the song, or until we lose brain function?

But this big-haired Icarus will modify her beliefs. As she grows, she will come to realise you can fly only so high, and if life is a lock, the key is moderation.

Spendlove says View from the Top is about chasing your dreams, but I disagree. I think the film is about coming to realise that the dream that helps you be your best self is already in the centre of your own heart, if only you dare to believe (i.e. no chase required). But how do you find the centre of your own heart?

He sits behind a cluttered desk, made to look chaotic by a conscientious art department.

If I had to wear clothes that tight, I would have to start buying my talc wholesale.

(the term ‘stewardess’ is hopelessly dated, but we must bear in mind that Top was released in 2003, before feminism finally found its footing)

Fact is, a commercial aeroplane is one of the most restrictive environments in the world. Want to know the difference between a commercial aeroplane and communist China? You can smoke, guff and make consensual love in communist China without fear of reproach! Once a plane is in the air, you can’t even leave it! I’ve tried! They won’t let you! You have to wait until ‘they land’.

Barreto establishes Donna’s unease without making fun of it, finding the sweet spot between her legitimate concerns about Sierra Airlines’ operational anomalies (pilots asleep in the cockpit, fuel dripping from the fuselage, black smoke billowing from the engines, etc.) and the fact that the genre (up-tempo, star-driven cabin-crew dramedy) absolutely prohibits the death of its protagonist.

How can a film show a lawyer mastering her craft? She carries stacks of books, she drinks coffee, she stares at books while rubbing her eyes, she eats Chinese takeaway from the carton, she lays her head on the desk in tiredness, she wakes up with an egg roll affixed to her cheek, she puts her hair up in a bun, she acquires horn-rimmed glasses, she starts wearing less revealing cardigans, she wins the case, she is rewarded by a romance with the less flashy of the two men who are sexually interested in her.

Cinema is much better at showing us the rules of a game, and then allowing us to watch people play by those rules. That’s why there are so many great movies about Scrabble.

When I buy Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, the acquisitive part of me is buying it for the deluded part of me that thinks I’ll read it one day, while the archivist part of me keeps it on a shelf with all the other books I haven’t read, so that one day it can present a logistical problem to those who survive me.

And call me uptight, but the thought of falling to my death has seldom given me a boner.

Air France had the slogan ‘Have you ever done it the French way?’ But how can you fly in a way that’s particularly ‘French’? Does the plane wear a beret and leave a trail of Gauloises fumes? Are the in-flight announcements underscored by an accordion? Are other planes, especially if they’re on their gap years, inexplicably attracted to them? What is so specifically French about these aircraft? Are they just giant winged baguettes? Or is the advertiser trying to suggest that the French cabin crew may well … well, what exactly? Why don’t they just call it Caligulair? ‘Our seats are wipe-clean for a reason …’

Chekhov’s old dictum hits us with a Proustian gush: if you find a flare gun in the drawer in the first act, that flare gun is going to go off in the third. We file this information away in a mental drawer marked ‘Set-Up’. But Barreto isn’t about to task his audience with retaining information: this Chekhovian distress signal is moments away from a thrilling discharge.

By logical inference, Ryanair is certainly the most spiritual of airlines. With commendable consistency, they demonstrate their commitment to serving something other than mere people. But will Ted Stewart be able to serve Donna’s needs, or will he be the Ryanair of love interests?

But this is not the time to invoke a misreading of Nietzsche.

Another well-placed VO allows her to deepen the dilemma of Free Will: ‘Why can’t all choices be simple? Window or aisle? Coffee or tea? Not career or romance …’ In short, why can’t life be idiomatically similar to air travel? Yet for me, ‘window’ or ‘aisle’ isn’t a simple choice, and if I haven’t checked in online, it’s often not a choice at all. I like to look out of the window so I can be the first to see if a wing goes missing, but I also have a weak bladder and dislike hurdling over the prone.

For most of us, the title ‘Time After Time’ will evoke the 1979 film in which the author H. G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell) travels into the future to capture mass murderer Jack the Ripper (David Warner), who, to his sobering litany of barbarism, has now added ‘time machine theft’. But for others, the title is that of a song, the title of which was taken from the film.

How anybody can simultaneously believe in a loving God and moth is beyond my comprehension.

Sally Weston tells Donna to never let go of her dream. However, the Sally Weston Plan only works if your dream is to be an air stewardess and never ask the question, ‘And then what?’ If your dream is to see Paris, but only in very short bursts, or to hear the word ‘playfulness’ used to justify sexual harassment, then those dreams can absolutely work under the umbrella of the primary Becoming-an-Air-Stewardess dream, but that’s about it.

Winston Churchill said, ‘Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.’ But he never said anything about letting go of your fury. Fury is something you need, and if someone tells you otherwise, try screaming at them. They’ll often go quiet and start to cry. That’s when you know you’ve won.

There’s an unspoken rule w/r/t this in post-Reagan America: high hair = low class.*

My hair is sometimes high, but it is also wide, and post-Einstein/Doc from Back to the Future, any intelligence associated with hair width is offset by an assumed craziness: you’re the kind of customer who’s too dazed to wipe the soot from your safety goggles after a comical chemical explosion. ‘We’re close! I just need to recalibrate the metrics,’ you say, before collapsing onto an off-camera crash mat.

Sliding Doors is a film that asks us to have sympathy for someone who works in PR, and shows that whether you catch the tube or not, you will never get away from John Hannah.