How to tell a lie and really mean it – The Movie Filter

Of course it is a writer. It had to be. In the new comedy The Invention of Lying, from The Office and Extras creator Ricky Gervais, the comedian plays a writer living in an alternate reality where no one has ever uttered a single untruth. No tall tales, no exaggerations, no distortions or fibs. And no lying by silence, either. Everyone in the film speaks their minds, airing every grievance and desire with complete honesty and no filter to catch the drivel. The cast is loaded with comedic talent from Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Jennifer Garner, Jonah Hill and Rob Lowe, but there in the center is the star, our original liar, our writer, Ricky Gervais.

There is a precedent for flagrant writer-as-liar depiction. For instance, in Mike Nichols’ terribly underrated heartbreak drama Closer, Clive Owen’s sharp-tongued alpha male challenges his romantic rival—Jude Law’s insecure, obituary-trafficking weasel—by shouting him down with an escalating series of derogatory terms. “You liar!” he screams before finishing with “You writer!” Apparently, there’s only one thing less reliable than a word spoken, and that’s a word written.

But if we look far down the spectrum of trust, all the way on the end, on the pole opposite from the unbelievable journalists are positioned the sage innovators: Eli Whitney, Thomas Edison, The Wright Brothers, Steve Jobs. Americans revere inventors and adore their inventions, especially if they happen to be gadgets. But really, lying has always been the ultimate gadget. The first sin was instigated with a lie. Eat of this fruit and you’ll be like God, the Serpent said, cracking open a big can of Fat Lie No. 1 right there in the Garden. And then on down through history the world has overdosed on them because the large ones get us out of jams, and the little white ones, well, they can make someone’s day, can’t they?

So it’s sort of a freak show to see a film set in the fictional world where lying has never existed. It also reminds me of Jim Carrey in Liar Liar, a flick I thought was hilarious when I was 16, but now think maybe I was lying to myself. Still, how funny to consider something that comes so easily to us as a trait that has to be invented. Anyone who has spent more than five consecutive minutes with a toddler knows that Human Truth Deficiency Syndrome is as natural as breathing.

Believers see this state of untruth as a consequence of sin, the constant struggle for a God-centered life when Man has separated himself from the Holy. The New Athiests label lying as an advanced cognitive ability developed over eons for survival. If that’s the case, 500 years from now our great descendents just might be those with the most gigantic lying mouths of all time. Oh goody. Politics should be lots of fun then. But in Invention, The Gospel According to Gervais depicts lies, no matter how uproarious they are to an audience, as uncontrollable fires that burn as far and wide as they can and, ultimately fail to get him what he really wants: love. To find that, no lie, all he needs is the truth. The Invention of Lying debuts Sept. 25.

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