The Way Things Go? Or is it just the way things are.

Taking everyday common objects that are familiar to all of us (tires, garbage bags, plastic bottles) Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss create a self "perpetual motion machine" to demonstrate... well what exactly?

Apparently numerous things that are at first quite obvious and then after awhile more telling than we might not have realized. Within a giant warehouse a continual group of objects either roll, jump, spin in a linear fashion. Some are done by gravity, others by chemicals and chain reactions from a lit fuse. As much as the experiment is a look at coincidence and the idea of movement, it's what isn't shown during the 30 minute run time of this film that makes the images and movement we see more cerebral.

At one point a ladder marches down a plank, it almost has a life of its own. Cuts fade away mostly from acid baths that seep into the rest of the machine. Everything just keeps going to such an extent you wonder if a warehouse could be big enough to capture all this marble madness.

Are the artists trying to show us the banality of movement? The glory of chance? The repetitive destruction of the mundane? Are we as viewers being manipulated somehow for a reason, or are we just witnessing a great carnival act that is wild and entertaining? You could watch this over and over again and come up with something different each time. That is one of the films great treasures.

Another great scene simply involves a cup that is rolling from side to side on a plank. Somehow it makes its way to its destination. But how? Was there mathematical possibilities built into the plank or was someone manipulating it all off camera? The answer really doesn't matter but "The Way Things Go" just does more than show movement, it really does force you through it's repetitiveness to ask you what is it you are exactly witnessing and what are the film makers trying to convey? When faced with that question it's a wonderful place to get lost in.

At just over 1/2 hour, The Way Things Go is a hypnotic escape from our everyday lives.