I saw most of a movie last night on the telly. The name of the movie is “The invention of lying” (if I remember correctly, which is always a bit of an issue). After I was able to get past the confusing question about why the main character has a different (English?) accent than the rest of his friends, neighbors, and most of his family, and why none of them at all seem to have a Lowell accent (which, since it is near my home, I immediately recognized as the locale where the movie was shot), I found the movie mildly amusing.
The plot of this movie is simple: it takes place in a world which is notable in that its inhabitants (in addition to possessing wildly inconsistent accents and speech patterns) cannot say anything other than the truth. Anything anyone says is taken as absolute truth, because nobody can say anything that is not.
The protagonist discovers, under a great deal of duress, that he has a unique gift: he can say things that are not true. In fact, he can say anything at all, no matter how ridiculous, and everyone will believe him, because everyone else in the world takes everything at face value.
That would be an interesting premise for a comedy, but this movie is not so simple. There’s another aspect to this world, which is even more important: not only does everyone speak the truth, but they do so without any apparent consideration for the consequences of their utterances. They do not have unexpressed thoughts. The simple kindness of not telling someone the truth about how ghastly their outfit is, or that their parents are old and about to die, or that they don’t like working with you, is impossible. They say whatever is on their mind–no matter how cruel, nasty, or inappropriate. For example, when the protagonist thanks a woman he has invited to dinner for joining him, she says, with a smile on her face, that he is unattractive (both physically, financially, and emotionally), she is out of his league, extremely unlikely to ever talk to him again, and he will probably not get even so much as a goodnight handshake from her–and he accepts this as a fact, although it hurts him to hear it.
This movie is about more than the invention of simple deceit. It is about the invention of white lies; the invention of sensitivity and the art of choosing ones words for the benefit of both the speaker and the listener–an art that we seem to be losing.
