Page features various media reviews from a Catholic perspective
2001: A Space Odyssey (10/10)
An atheist film about God
Spoiler
2001 is a unique science fiction movie. I wouldn’t say it’s the best of its genre because it transcends the genre. The span of it is from the dawn of humankind to civilisation at its technological peak. The way it covers the ages that fill time between proto-human to spaceman is peerless – the famous match-cut of an animal bone thrown upwards. The directorial leap of logic allows the audience to instantly and effortlessly teleport into the future.
In that future (now 24 years into our past) lunar astronauts encounter something not of this world. For those unfamiliar with the film it is not a being with ravenous teeth and insectoid limbs or anything alien-esque in a scary monster kind of way. Rather it is simply a monolith. The same monolith that appeared among earlier hominids which advanced their evolution by conferring “understanding”.
At critical points in the proceedings, the monolith is seen – captured in the camera frame – from the ground up, looking like an uncapped pyramid pointing to the conjunction of sun and moon. I don’t know about other reviewers, but i felt the symbolism coursing strongly at those moments. What it is intended to mean you be the judge. The second half of the film is taken with the spaceship Discovery’s voyage to rendezvous with whatever is out there near to Jupiter.
Perhaps the most fascinating to today’s audiences is the battle of wits with the on-board AI – HAL9000 – which is very well-wrought; the dialogue is plausible, and provokes the thought – is this the chatbot in its final form? As i say it is a duel of wits which leaves all but one crew-member worse off in terms of mortality. Basically crew member Bowman has to resort to the native intelligence the monolith gave him millions of years past to engineer his own survival.
In the end it is left for man, a man, to make a 1 on 1 encounter with the enigmatic monolith, that: the object of enquiry, a solid block of “alien” as one might describe it, later allows Bowman to traverse through it. What is it? Ostensibly, a far in advanced of us non-human intelligence.
Here’s where audience participation doesn’t require throwing popcorn from the seating, just convivial discussion with friends after the film and/or heated discussion in the forums of the world-wide-web. Me?..my interpretation ain’t worth your 2 cents, but i’ll give you legendary film reviewer Barry Norman’s. 2001 is an atheistic film about God. I couldn’t agree more, but how to explain this assertion with reference to what you see on screen?..again – watch and you be the judge.
2010: The Year We Make Contact
The Killing (10/10)
A game lesson in Kubrickian irony
It may have been Kubrick’s first release as a cinema director, i am not entirely certain, in any case The Killing was a film that impressed me just by the use of certain conventions which appear to have fallen out of use now. Take for example the narrative that time-stamps proceedings and does make it a bit of a jigsaw puzzle. Nevertheless you’re not required to pay that much attention, it is not set-up as a real-time homework for the audience. Unless i am missing something and my suspicion that 50s audiences really did pay very very close attention to the plot is truer than i had thought!
What appealed to me in addition to an ironic and fitting ending (i.e. Crime really does not pay) is the use of two metaphors which i assume, rather dangerously on my part, that Kubrick may have mentally blended in his mind. It’s well known that Kubrick was a chess fanatic who used it as a motif in many of his films; but here find it blended with the idea of a jigsaw puzzle. If i attempt to synthesise the metaphors it makes me think of Microsoft Minesweeper.
At the outset, the conceptual reference point is of an individual piece of a jigsaw puzzle. Is the viewer intended to suppose that Sterling Hayden (the chief agent and planner of the heist) has picture of the perfect chess end-game scenario? Well a lot is resting on that the endgame that is being sought to be contrived exists in its opening. As it happens despite a slew of perturbing gusts and unexpected headwinds coming at different directions at different stages…it is very nearly mission accomplished.
Seemingly, this film seems to be insight into Kubrick’s attitude with respect to reality, IIRC he eschewed air-travel, you could sum it up in a pithy Arabic-to-English translation – “trust in God, but tie your camel”. After all by rights, for a carefully constructed plan that is nearly pulled off, a lot goes wrong with the plan in The Killing. And so it goes with all plans right?…a successful plan will carry through in spite of ad hoc modifications that take place as it happens, what compensates is a kind of providence…but here, it is a genuinely ironic luck.
Kubrick must be playing with the audience’s affiliation in this film, we are kind of rooting for a criminal here. But the criminal in question is a mastermind of a plan, has nerves of steel and has a loyal sweetheart. He has winning characteristics even though his mission is immoral.
In conclusion, back to that mixed jigsaw/chess metaphor. Theoretically: a unique jigsaw picture might be said to be contained entirely in just one piece. Find that the jigsaw’s picture exists in our anti-hero’s mind, or at least the critical element of it as one piece, but the assembled picture turns out to entail “apprehended by the law”. On his way to assemble the puzzle lots of random missteps occur, but still all the the same, the picture as a whole forms but it is not the picture imagined.
Rather like minesweeper, you can hit a bomb from the second click, and what if you succeed all the way to an end which is also hitting a bomb because it is unavoidable…. Not so much a hard-boiled 50s era thriller, rather Kubrick divulging his own curious outlook on reality. A compelling old-school heist thriller with much to commend it.
The Parallax View
Lucid Dream ~ Loosideu Deurim (8/10)
Inner Child Therapy
Spoiler
The second Korean film I have seen recently. Curiously, like Oldboy, it is a vehicle that carries a message. Not overtly though. There’s an invite to dig deeper, and by navigating around it there is found the invitation itself. To discover what is at the centre.
To begin with, the main character, is an investigative journalist, seemingly estranged from his child’s mom (who has “gone to America”: read as a figurative expression for “seeker”). At a funfair the child is abducted in mysterious circumstances. Circumstances would indeed be the right word, like what happens to you when life robs you of your childhood innocence is “circumstances”.
A point made by the film is the pursuit of truth at all costs results in casualties. Is the reporter culpable for the people who get killed in the process? A point further to this, did the reporter sacrifice his inner child for his vocation for truth at all costs?
Soon after his son is abducted, a trip to a sleep/dreaming institute. This scenario – lucid dreams as a powerful & useful means to an end – has featured in numerous films to-date. Hitchcock’s McGuffin in this film is the idea of Lucid Dreams. It’s not so much the concept, the concept has a reality but the technological hardware associated with it is designed to serve the plot rather than be plausible.
Lucid Dreams, are they “good”? If they are certainly not “bad”, then in this film it is just a means or contrivance. It’s like technology in other words – genuinely ambivalent. As technology they can be used by good and bad actors, the sign in the film which is given for when the main character is misusing lucid dreams are nose bleeds. Soo Goh is breaking his brain to get to the truth and he will die before he gets to it! Also, interestingly, but near-enough tangentially, he makes scant use of what makes LDs possible – Reality Checking.
What to make of this? The pursuit of truth as a solitary endeavour does not return “truth”. His real mission is how is he to re-discover his child? The child is the Father to the man, but the wisdom aphorism does not give you a how-to, in this film – at every juncture our character seeks and gets help. At every moment of peril he is saved, at every loss of hope he retains a filament of it.
At the end, his son has been kept in safe-keeping at a Catholic orphanage for 3 years. He has a Christian name but recognizes and can answer to his original name. If a film can indirectly convey a life-saving message what would it comprise of? Is the main character against a time limit?…what is his deadline?…what does he have to do before time’s up?
He is not actually against a clock, or any specified date. Rather, he believes his child is alive and holds on to this and seeks him out with all the help he can muster. Then he goes to work. A film about re-discovering your inner-child disguised as a sci-fi-y action-drama.
Pi
Gladiator(10/10)
Hollywood’s Debt to Rome
Spoiler
Ridley Scott’s Gladiator has passed into movie history, as one of those films that stands the test of time. Not just for the grand spectacle it offers but for a compelling mix of intrigue and action, on an epic scale. The cast is fantastic but the performances that stand out really belong to the “Romans”. Foremostly, Joaquim Phoenix’s amazingly warped Roman Emperor Commodus.
He and his on-screen sister (Connie Nielson) and father emperor Marcus Aurelius, played by Richard Harris. Aurelius who will be known for centuries after he has passed for his wisdom. The film is in effect a two-hander – the eponymous Gladiator of the film title and his antagonist Emperor Commodus. Joaquin Phoenix performance grabs every frame in every scene he is in. All in all though the movie is an interesting fiction – the film says as much in a nice piece of self-referentiality – for one thing it does not tally with history itself, so you could call it alternative history, a parallel universe’s version of 2nd Century Roman history.
Is there more to this purpose than just telling a great fictional story? I think so. If you took it at face value, a true tale from the actual Roman Empire, then there isn’t much to add to every other hero myth. It’s hardly necessary to mark the score-card, the real roman empire didn’t in fact succeed in subjugating the germanic tribes on its frontiers. The real Roman Emperor Commodus did not die in the arena, the character played on screen is a fictionalization.
In keeping with this film using history as a canvas, it paints another picture over the actual historical record, the funny thing is i watched this film close to its initial release, forgot about the film and then got the “wrong memory” about how it ended. In my mind it seemed fitting that Commodus would outfight Maximus in the arena, I think that would have upset audiences, maybe films are supposed to be like that, you only see one version of events so that it opens your imagination to alternatives – think in terms of if they had cut Scarface just before the ending he receives in the film.
Remember this film is set when the Roman gods were still ascendant in the empire, in other words it is pre-Emperor Constantine. Before Christianity got the better of paganism. In the beginning then, the film speaks of what is done on earth echoing in eternity, you are not gifted immortality but you earn it by courage. The images of Elysium – the Roman equivalent of Heaven, as home on a plain of golden wheat fields is very fetching. It makes me wonder about the handover in the empire from the Roman religion to Christianity.
The debt to rome isn’t just a rollicking good sword ‘n’ sandals yarn, but yarns of the alternative fiction variety that use Rome as the backdrop to storytelling in general. I.e. Every work of fiction that takes place in an empire needs the real Roman empire as a template. Think of Star Wars as an example.
But that’s by-the-by for what this film really showcases – the Roman “power ethic” – power wielded for power’s sake. Top of the power hierarchy – Commodus – who arranges the bread and circuses spectacle that demonstrates this. Commodus has casual disregard of the machinery of the Roman state, his statecraft is appeal to the public. He isn’t the Caesar of his Father, wise and thoughtful, what Commodus is is pensive and he is pensive from envy. Envy that reproaches anyone who does not respect his position as Emperor.
The murder of his father is the ethos of power-in-action, patricide in order to acquire power seems like a Greek myth, i’d say the idea has its origin in Roman myth – Romulus and Remus , which, if you google, is a right family drama involving the internecine struggle to rule absolutely. The nervous tension in the son who speaks of his most able virtue – ambition – not on the list of cardinal virtues btw but in a category of itself – is at its apex in that Father-Son dialogue. The tension that is later transferred to the brother sister relationship, find that there is no brake on excess in the name of power.
Finally to note that life was cheap in Roman times, which is an almost unconscious subtext to the film. Life was cheap, particularly if you weren’t a Roman citizen. Slavery (which still exists today) was a fact of life in this era, slavery supported the empire, human effort was the substitute for today’s automation. When Maximus is reduced to the servitude of the arena – under the guidance of former gladiator Proximo – it is not a cause for any reflection.
This seems like a superficial psychology within the film. Gladiatorial combat is the action-film version of life-is-cheap – but again it doesn’t seem particularly reflective, everyone who is trained for the arena has his own life at stake on every occasion, you see martial expertise but no visceral desire to live. It seems it is the Roman contingent who seem most alive, if only in terms of acting performances, the charged tension between Lucilla and Commodus, the dynamic between them and her son (his nephew) is menacing and spine-chilling.
To conclude, Joaquin Phonenix is in top-form here, it’s almost as if he has ambition as bad as a disease. The origin for his character is that he prized his Father’s love above all but never got it. Never having received love he is unable to express it either. I think Russel Crowe plays second fiddle to Joaquin in Gladiator. Maximus has all the attributes of courage, but He serves the plot and doesn’t bring much beyond a monotone performance to it.
Concerning those questionable virtues that are part of the Father-Son dialogue, as a counterpoint, everyone can be a soldier and serve a higher authority than themselves, the change in paradigm between the Roman period and today is that this virtue take on other forms than just martial combat. When Maximus brings all his war-fighting skills to bear and ends up facing off the malevolent emperor at the end, it made me recollect the curious scene of a robin red-breast seen early in the film – the uncaged bird seems to be a nod to the illusions every society suffers from, is Gladiator a case-study that to be free is to echo in eternity and vice versa?
Moon (2009)
Johnny Mnemonic (8/10)
The reason why your mind is shot..
Spoiler
Is today’s average viewer a little like a parody of the main character of this film, like a character lost in a digital reality ? How are you supposed to tap-out? This film requires of the protagonist to be a saviour, a proto-Neo as from The Matrix. But what’s the film actually about then? Well Keanu Reeves plays some guy who can use the internet, there is of course more to it than that, it’s a nice flashback to an era only people of a certain age will recollect now. The film foregrounds an early use of VR, and an interesting idea is what can unlock its grip – that key that unlocks (in this case) are nostalgia images from early 80s anime.
In the meantime Keanu Reeves IS Johnny Mnemomic – the guy who swapped real memories for digital ones – on the run but also on a mission; overloaded with gigabytes of encrypted data in his head. It seems the cost of being a carrier for a saving message is a sacrifice of who you are. Find that in the future, the putative future as imagined, everyone’s got ADHD because of the internet – it’s called the “Black Shakes” in the film – it’s paralyzing, basically the result is it means you’re only good for pulling levers on heavy machinery
Why is everybody addicted to the internet in the future ?..i don’t know – do you need it because it can’t exist without you? (or vice versa), either way it is the nature of the internet. To the plot, Big Pharma have the cure for internet addiction..but they’re keeping it secret. And the internet is in this film way worse than it is now..e.g. You’ll be dead, but corporations can use your data so they can sell stuff in their name using your voice..you never really die because your avatar will talk product for you when you’re gone.
The best part of this film…Henry Rollins and Dolph Lungren wrestling on a dirty grimey floor. Lungren is quite awesome as an insane street preacher, his job is to crucify people, he knows his bible from Isaiah to Isaiah. It could be an unlikely reference to blaspheming the holy spirit..as mis-use of the word of god, in any case, i was personally unmoved when seeing Henry Rollins get stabbed in the hand, the only thought that occurred to me was “if thine hand causes thee to sin”.
If i was going to go serious with themes of this film, business, tech and pharma, here they are in collective cahoots, their treatment for the black shakes is like recieving meds for internet addiction that only half works. There is a nearly comedy-gold idea in this – medication that enables to you use the internet – but stops the side-effects of becoming a menace to society. But i digress. It’s not clear what exactly the viewer is to make of the ending, does the internet explode or something ?..is there some kind of information apocalypse? If you “want out” do you get force-fed your own worst thoughts back to you?..there’s some of-its-day CGI to finish off the viewer, the Keanu Reeves character seems have fused with the internet, it’s all very murky, but of its era
Watch to see a snapshot of the internet as it was and as it was predicted to become
Barbie
Prince of Darkness (10/10)
Another one of those “Causality Violation” movies!
Spoiler
If you believe films get made for a reason, and that reason being because they have reality’s seal of approval on them. That the universe has used the machinery of civilisation to make “this film”. It has an imprint which says : “approved and fit to watch”, then a movie is an authorized work of art, it has official approval. Works of art aren’t just paintings, the screen is a canvas of sorts though, as are ideas (taken at the broadest level).
EXAMPLE from the beginning – dialogue that contemplates religion and science – in a stimulating way. Quantum versus Classical Physics. Quantum Physics – “atoms” to you or me. But what the heck is Classical Physics? This film won’t tell you, but in passing – the idea of the geometry of infinite space is discussed. Infinity as a property of space? How can John Carpenter get away with that? The director randomly throwing a grenade into the audience.
John Carpenter’s “Prince of Darkness” does a good job of juggling ideas, effortlessly so as it happens. There is the aforementioned, and the main subject matter of the film – Christian Religion vs The Devil. “Prince of Darkness” is a moving picture which is the creation of a new gnostic myth – a new myth created out of existing Christian clothing. Bear in mind: this is a horror film, so it is not a story about the saints of The Church; it is about the devil – and men & woman who come out worse-off out of encountering him.
Plot-wise, what happens? What happens is what happens to scientists. Scientists who are roped in, into a confrontation with the devil. They are an assorted grouping of graduates, a secular brotherhood of sorts. They meet another brotherhood entirely. A proper subset of the Church – titled – The Brotherhood of Sleep. This Brotherhood are custodians of a book which is the Word of the Devil. The Word of the Devil – not described as such in the script – but what it is nevertheless. It is a Palimpsest, to use a programming metaphor it is self-re-writing code. Through human agency it has re-written itself multiple times. When a woman-possessed types out on a computer screen, with incessant repetition: “i’m alive”, it appears as if the devil’s re-entrance into the world is firstly as pure information.
The book itself is written in Coptic – among the oldest languages known…a living language up to the 1700s. Coptic has descent from the time of dynastic Egypt, it was good for fashioning out new myths and 2000 years ago it was gnostic myths. If heresy is an ugly word to some, but if you take it as a polite way of saying “a lie about the truth” then this is a good way of intrepreting the plot’s message. The plot advances the idea that the Church has suppressed the truth. Because a lie told to children pacifies them. The lie goes like this : Satan is just a metaphor for evil. Well here Good John Carpenter uses artistic licence. Picasso: “Art is the lie that tells the truth”. The result is a revelation – in the format of a horror film – the idea of the real existence of the Devil is given air-time.
It may sound like a well-used-idea today. Horror films that rely on viewer suspension of disbelief about the devil maybe considered kind of hackneyed. But think about it though. Carpenter’s script is saying the disbelief is in fact unfounded, and he does this by use of a ruse. The ruse is this: we are not mature enough to accept the real existence of the devil and that is why the Christianity has metaphorized-away his existence. Thus the film uses suspension of disbelief to speak truthfully. “Art is the lie that tells the truth” as both Picasso and the director understand.
And what does the Devil look like? He looks like a flask of polluted water, the anti-version of the water of life. The substance of the devil imaged as water so polluted it is a radioactive green. Drinking/Imbibing this substance isn’t just bad for you. It’s transformative – it causes a person to assimilate the devil’s nature. The devil is scoping for a physical host – who as it happens to be – is a woman. To be a host organism is to be completely controlled by a parasite. Parasitism is often expressed in insectoid terms. And Carpenter does a good job of making insects even more repulsive than they naturally are.
Early on in the movie : the sun and crescent moon held in an unnaturally prolonged conjunction. And depicted on-screen :: the astrological sign for the planet Mercury – a symbol for alchemical transformation. The symbolism for alchemical transformation is richly metaphoric. If an omnipotent substance can change other substances into itself then this is the true “miracle” of alchemy. The idea of the inverse of transubstantiation is worked out in the film
John Carpenter symbolistic transformations are dumbfounding . E.g. A dove – an icon of divinity – is: given a profane transformation into that of sacrificed pigeon. The picture is of a pigeon nailed to a cross. Alsol see a troupe of unnamed characters – headed by Alice Cooper – whose composition is no longer flesh & blood, instead they are literally composed of cockroaches. The imagery is maybe too tame for modern audiences but was a gross-out for the 80s set.
And in a spookily good vision sequence bestowed to the ad hoc and re-formed “brotherhood of sleep”, they are granted a haunting precognition of the future. Which begs the question concerning dreams – precognitions or not? Since what you do in the real world modifies the dream to come it would seem that destiny can be avoided. The Destiny avoided or created is towards the end of last act of the film. After the point where it seems reality has reconvened its normal mode of operation. The main character suffers a false-awakening from a dream.
He experiences no_dividing_line between wakefulness and dream, which seems to be what happens when you undergo a personal apocalypse. The final frames of the film are like the film as a whole. Destiny dissolved into a modded replay of that unsettling vision: “This is not a dream – this is a transmission from your future is a warning to your present”. In the lingo of the script : a “Causality Violation”. The sleeper who awakens finds the outcome contrived to be avoided occurs in another form. It seems in a God-less film about the devil – all human effort is to no avail.
Two notable things about the film. Aspects of the film unrelated to its plot. The performance by Dennis Duns – “Walter” – is exceptional: for crass racial humour. In another film, by another director it would be considered misplaced. Here it telepathically breaks the 4th wall – infusing tension with the comical. Secondly: John Carpenter gives nods to Quatermass (that is Nigel Kneale) & John Wyndham, figures from British TV science-fiction. He name-checks them, an indication of his affection for their work. Kneale didn’t approve of “Prince of Darkness”. I could hazard a guess why. The combination of science and religion didn’t fly for him. If Kneale gave a qualified “Yes” to the supernatural, it was with an adamanant proviso – ‘just don’t say “God”‘.
SF – which is a genre in which God usually remains un-named (or un-nameable). The homage to Kneale that John Carpenter has given is that he has written him his gravestone epitaph. Not the title “Prince of Darkness”. But this work of fiction itself. The script is what Kneale himself might not have written but it depicts in ideas, the mixed-quandary of life and death and science and religion. Good reasons to catch this 80s flick. Great low-budget sci-fi movie.
Passion of The Christ
Waltz with Bashir (9/10)
A Waltz With Who?
As a work of art that incorporates elements of dream interpretation, imaginative fantasy, and of course the theme of memory and recollection and remembrance, it is not the first film about the unreliability of memory, even in war-time. First off – i’d give this film an award just for the soundtrack – i was really taken by the Israeli cover of “I Bombed Korea”, this war (like every war) has its soundtrack – a synthesis of one heard contemporaneously and one inserted in retrospect.
It doesn’t in any way belittle its subject matter, which is the Sabra and Shatilla massacre, that later in ME discourse became a shorthand for negligent oversight. The conclusion features a switch to live-action footage of that event, i had expecting a continuation of with an epilogue but realized the footage’s effectiveness later. Compared to film’s that have a punchline or coda to deliver by finish, well this was it in effect, and the jarring abruptness of the ending is well-crafted.
Since Waltz With Bashir is autobiography in film, the upshot, of a “return to reality” is Ari Folger’s work of re-assimilating memory which now continues into the real life present. The burden of being human is being a carrier for memory, that can mean either memory repressed or the power to bring it back to the surface and that is through the alchemy of film-making. The sound and style of the film is stunning, consider it a test case for visual recollection being best served through animation.
Most interesting is the wry post facto insight by the protagonist/director, that the break-up with his girlfriend seemed to immunize him from being too afraid to confront the past. Because? Because he had already first-hand experience of playing-yourself, which is those games people play in their heads when they entertain a world without them.
Could that be what unlocks the subtext to this film? A soldier can ill-afford to merely toy with the idea of their own demise out of self-pity, he can when he’s a civilian but when he’s a soldier things get real, and as coping measure at times of war it would be maladaptive. Ari Folger’s first-hand knowledge of the responsibility of being part of a company of soldiers meant he could quell this flight of fancy.
All-in-all a very thoughtful film about war-time conflict, and the subjectivity and unreliability of memory. Sadly it doesn’t “explain” much, as such i.e. There is no lesson to pass onto the next generation. Unless it is that films of this type are a model for how to process difficult experiences by holding the mirror back by turning life into art.
One final warning – there is an amusing scene of a soldier watching explicit German pornography – probably the only conditions were it could be viewed with detachment is in war-time. And that is the end result of successfully alchemizing life in retrospect, it becomes more than bearable, it is seen with detachment.
If only to find out what the Waltz of the film title is, watch this film.
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