Review of the film "The Prestige"

The director Christopher Nolan is known for being able to combine a cerebral approach to filmmaking with an ability to stage effective action sequences and to bring out the dark nuances of his source material. During the early part of his career, he produced intriguing films such as Memento, a film that stood out for the way in which it, quite literally, pieced together a puzzle out of the elements of a protagonist’s fractured (and short-term) memory. In his second and more commercially-successful stage, he was invited to take over the reboot of the Batman franchise, and he did so to much acclaim. His films captured the dark undertones of a character that reclaimed once again the dark menacing quality of a vigilante who assumed a certain nightmarish quality. It was certainly a change of pace from the way the franchise had been evolving of late, having been overtaken by a certain camp quality that robbed the character of this tormented quality and rendered it more one-dimensional, like a cartoon character. Nolan rescued the Batman.

During this time while at the helm of the Batman franchise, the director was enlisted to adapt and bring to the screen Christopher Priest’s award-winning novel from 1995, The Prestige. This was bound to thrill many fans of the book, for the director and his cerebral style seemed suited to the material.  Priest is known as a literate writer who delves as much in horror as in science fiction, and it is a pleasure to read his graceful prose.  This novel is set at the turn of the century, an imperial age in which London was the seat of a vigorous empire and in which mass entertainment was evolving to meet the demands of a new proletariat that craved illusions and magic acts. What else but magic could encapsulate the tenor of the time, and the dramatic transformations under way?

One is drawn to ask, what is magic if not spectacle? We audience members are all willing collaborators in these illusions, and to share them with an audience is to relive once again those episodes from deep in our primordial past, when small tribes cowered in caves protected by fire and looked out to a sea of gleaming eyes that gazed back intently, dangers that needed to assume tangible and symbolic force and were incorporated into our stories. As with any artistic creation, the audience is a necessary participant, and we are forever creating that nighttime ambiance of dancer and menace, for however charming lighter illusions may be (card tricks, intersecting chains and coin tricks), they don’t feel compelling unless there is the suggestion of risk.

In this work, we had the portrayal of an obsessive rivalry between two magicians, a rivalry that seems innocent enough in the beginning, but that takes on a successively darker edge. We need the evocation of darkness, and an early death provides this element, one that feeds a self-consuming obsession that serves as the impetus for the final culmination of the show, the final illusion. We depend on the evocation of mystery, and the tone of the film portrays this succession of events in a way that reveals hidden layers of deception. The diaries, in particular, serve as effective mediums to underscore the way in which these characters deceive not only themselves but the others, a framework that involves the audience in the mystery that is bound to be revealed on the last page.

The actors Hugh Jackman, portraying the lanky magician Robert Angier, and Christian Bale, the more frenetic Alfred Borden, are cast as the two doomed protagonists in this rivalry. The film captures the atmosphere of this period, of a cloudy London and an impossibly distant Colorado, and of a public that seems somehow more innocent, more trusting. It is a period piece, but the moral ambiguities as well as philosophical reflections are eternal, for they lie at the basis of all artistic endeavor.  Magic shows are still taking place in theaters, and we have an earnest public that reveals an enormous appetite for these shows, a public that in a way needs figures such as Angier and Borden.

We all know that magic acts are “fake”. The public back then knew it as well, and yet we also appreciate the value of a good illusion. In this film, we see the elements that are involved in the staging of these acts, and how danger and suspense formed such an integral part of these spectacles. Much of this film, as mentioned before, takes place in dark interiors, in cluttered rooms filled with props, and on dark stages (and a dark laboratory in Colorado) where this lack of light evokes a dreamlike quality. It seems logical to affirm that seeing and appreciating an act of magic is akin to dreaming, and it also evokes a certain innocence that takes us back to a simpler time. We are transported, if only for a short moment, away from the sordidness of the everyday working world, for what defines the reality more than the necessity of work, and the humdrum rituals that so beset us into a style of existence that we must term “unconscious” living? But magic can also be cheapened, for magic serves as a form of symbolic language at work, and there is a grammar involved that needs to cohere with the successful combination of the requisite elements, of articles and conjunctions and the artful deployment of verbs and the suitable matching with adjectives. It is a form of showmanship that is united with craft, and the deployment of metaphors and symbols that allude, in the end, to the dynamics at play within the human heart.

It is natural that the film, as does the novel, hinges on the implied brotherhood between the dueling magicians. One, Robert Angier (played by Hugh Jackman) is a lanky and somewhat mild character who from the beginning seems too hesitant, and who never seems to convince the audience is anything other than a figure with movie-star looks, until we see the transformation in the end. The other, Alfred Borden, played by the ever-brooding Christian Bale, seems much more manic and unfettered, and as evident in the film, has been seduced by the illusion. Perhaps he sees in capacity to transform and deceive and seduce others a craft that is capable of providing a sense of coherence, but this is an insight that only comes to the audience at the end of the film, when the full nature of the illusion at work is revealed.

The viewer is struck by the way in which this innocent rivalry between two likeable figures quickly takes a darker and more tragic turn. And once again, this situation can’t help is invested in ancient allusions, in particular, to the rivalry between the biblical figures of Cain and Abel, a rivalry destined to become destructive.

Within this ancient drama that is being played out, we see the intercession of a morally ambiguous figure, that of the stagecraft who would seem to be pulling all the strings, the figure of the 19^th century reclusive scientist, Nikolai Tesla. It is fitting that we should have a dark wizard introduced, for he has already assumed a legendary quality as the purveyor of a dark secrets and insights, a forbidding figure who will take a prominent role as an intermediary between the humdrum world of homo economicus and the dark world of magic. The character is a compelling one, and is played by David Bowie, the rock star who always did have an enigmatic quality.

Tesla is also in a way an auteur. He creates works of art, and not simply technology that is the commodification of magic. As portrayed in this film, he is almost an acolyte for a new religion, a Promethean figure, a new Frankenstein, if we appeal to the powerful myth created by Mary Shelley. There is also an otherworldly character to this portrayal by Bowie, and one must remember that the historical Tesla was involved in his own destructive rivalry with another wizard, he of Menlo Park and the light bulb, Thomas Edison. Rivalries have two sides to them, for they point to a bond that is just as strong as brotherhood, and just as capable of ending destructively.

The pace of the film is one that gradually works up a crescendo, another scene of destruction that is prefigured, as so many other episode are, by preceding scenes. Just as Tesla’s estate in Colorado is burned down by the agents of Edison, so will Angier’s end, in a sequence that will provide the final key to the mysteries involved, while failing to shed any light on the real obsessions at play. We know at the outset of the film that Alfred Borden is witness to the murder of Robert Angier, and we are held in suspense because the evidence would seem to suggest that he was the architect of this act. For this, Borden has been convicted and sentenced to die. But are things really the way they appear to be? What is the real nature of this murder mystery?

What we have, then, is a peeling back of the mystery and of the illusion, so to speak. In retrospective episodes that recreate the sequence of events, as well as through narration provided by the reading of the respective diaries of the two magicians, we come to understand that the Borden character has been framed. And yet, throughout this film, there is also the powerful secret that seems to tie the two characters together, the secret that becomes an obsession, a hidden presence that haunts them both.

Illusions seduce us, and as such, they are capable of provoking jealousy, rage and the release of dangerous energies. The wife of Angier is killed during a performance, in an act that seems to have been caused by an act of recklessness on the part of Borden (but with the collusion of the woman herself). There are, then, repeating acts of destruction.  The wife of Borden will hang herself, the magician Angier will himself be killed in a tank of water, and the magician Borden will also die by hanging. There is a symmetry at play, a mirror-like quality that suggests powerfully that illusions are only a reflection of projected internal processes at work.

Violence and creation, the two sides necessary for the crafting of an illusion; is this not an unstable edifice? What can sustain an illusion if not our collaboration, and the rivalry between the two magicians Borden and Angier forms a much deeper bond than any that their spouses or any of their personal relationships could have wielded to tie them down to the humdrum illusion of modern industrial society. Their shared illusion is one of disputed power, and the belief that they can somehow seduce the other, for they are courting each other, at the same time that they are wounding and discrediting each other. That is the nature of this rivalry, one that engulfs them both, that enchants as well as liberates a more depraved side to each other. Angier becomes more and more desperate, while Borden becomes more and more cocky. It is a suicide pact.

The revelation of the secret at the end is one that conveys a powerful visceral thrill. It was a haunting ending, as I recall, from the novel, one that was unexpected for it revealed a degree of inhumanity that was unexpected. It is captured well in this film ending, although it has been altered from the novel. And it is the perfect frame upon which to end the film.

This work, then, portrays the elements of an obsession writ large. I would have loved to see more of the Tesla character, one which could have occupied a greater role in the film because of all the magicians in this film, he is the true wizard, a doomed figure as well, hounded from one place to the next, never at rest. Of the two actors, Hugh Jackman seems to be somewhat more tentative in his portrayal of Angier, without the emotional resonance that one comes to expect from a tortured figure. He lacks the menace of the despair of Christian Bale who has made it a point of portraying tortured characters, in the Batman films as well as others.  Michael Caine appears, once again, as an earnest counselor, a friend and collaborator, and in the end, a moral arbiter.

We have, then, the portrayal of a simpler time, where collective spectacles had not lost their lustre and had not been cheapened by the spectacle of expressions such as “reality” programming.  But the ancient mysteries of the human heart still find scope for their development, and the audience can’t help but wonder if, indeed, as Freud was to show in the 20^th century, the human psyche isn’t as much a crafted work of illusion as the card trick.

Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013

Review of "The Constant Gardener"

The theme of corporate malfeasance is an enduring one. It is tied in to a sense of economic disempowerment, as we take note of the fact that corporations are growing ever larger as well as distant, carving out more of an autonomous role for themselves at the same time as they create ever more demands on workers.

During the waning years of the disastrous Bush administration, we saw the incredible hubris that characterized corporate America, in the guise of Wall Street. An unprecedented economic crisis was ushered in by our biggest banks and financial institutions, and it seemed for a moment as if the whole edifice of modern capitalism would implode. This was only a moment, one that witnessed the collapse of financial stalwarts such as Lehman Brothers, and the dizzying prospect of similar fates for other institutions. It was only because these banks hold such a firm control of the economy, one that obligated the public sector to step in and provide massive bailouts, that this prospect was narrowly avoided. The damage to our economy was considerable, however, and our economy shrunk dramatically.  There were massive job losses and untold economic assets evaporated or were severely pared back, assets upon which so many average workers depended. Such was the case with my meager retirement savings which experience losses.

And yet we seem to have returned to the previous status quo. Our form of predatory capitalism that has taken form during the past fifty years, and in which capital movements have become much less transparent as facilitated by globalization, seem to have returned with the same swagger it had before. Our biggest companies continue on the trend towards growing monopolization, and no one was ever called to account for the malfeasance of Wall Street during the last economic debacle. Nowadays, corporate control over our political structure has tightened, and both parties, not just the most obstreperous and unreformed conservative sectors, but both parties, continue to kowtow to big money that is wielded by these ever-expanding autonomous entities that demand lower taxation, less oversight and more public subsidies. With a conservative supreme court that put a blessing on this process with its Citizens United decision, shadowy money has hit Washington like a tsunami, and meanwhile, the economy continues to linger in a semi-moribund state, compounded by the shenanigans of the Tea Party and stunts such as closing down the government.

Our corporations are growing much too big, and they are not helping us to expand our economy to create opportunities for all workers. We have, instead, a samurai class of executives, those who command incredible salaries, and who fashion themselves as saviors of the economy, at the same time as they continue to slash work rolls and peel back worker protections and benefits. It is no wonder that we have such an incredible distrust of our corporations.

In the 2005 film The Constant Gardener, based on a novel by John Le Carré, we have another fable about corporate malfeasance. It ties in to the idea of predatory institutions that will brook no restraint, but also, into guilt over colonialist practices of the past. The main thesis would seem to be that these practices never really were finalized with the end of colonial regimes, and instead have become privatized, with new agents.

It details the life of a young idealist couple, Justin and Tessa Quayle, played by Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz, who are forced to confront evidence of this exploitative and colonial regime, which is translated now to the economic realm, but which nonetheless continues to hold sway over the undeveloped countries of the world. Justin Quayle is a member of the British High Commission, and as such, has lived a life of comfort and blissful ignorance, protected as he is by a cocoon. He is confronted and challenged by an idealistic woman, Tessa, who is probably much too earnest to seem plausible, and as such has a dreamy quality, but who in the film challenges him to see how this life is woven out of a tissue of deceits and lies.

They are working in Nairobi, Kenya, and while Justin is seduced by the idealism of his wife, he still believes in the possibility of using official channels. He is somewhat indifferent to the suffering he sees around him, but his wife isn’t, and in a story that becomes as much an expose as a thriller, he is forced to confront the evidence that big corporations, in the form of big Pharma (pharmaceuticals), are holding illegal and inhumane drug trials for an experimental drug developed to treat the upcoming tuberculosis plague that is forecast for the near future.

The stakes, then, are very high. We have shadowy entities that are operating for profit, are deceiving government agencies and, in the most dreary way, have already suborned these agencies into collaborating them by appealing to a renewed form of economic nationalism that is, in reality, not nationalism at all, for capital recognizes no national ground. There are drug trials taking place, and drugs are being distributed to what are termed “dispensable” people, the poor of Africa. The data from these illegal and inhumane trials are furthermore being massaged to support claims of effectiveness and bolster the prospects of these big pharmaceutical companies.

These are shocking charges, and it is in reality not far removed from other charges that have circulated in the media during the past several decades. We know, after all, of the way that coal companies have evaded oversight and thus escaped being held to account for mining disasters, and of how BP (British Petroleum) cut costs and received favorable terms for drilling in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, with disastrous results. We have the case of the fertilizer plant explosion which leveled an entire town in Texas recently, and other notable instances that come to mind, those that are situated in undeveloped countries, in which industries, from textile industries in Bangladesh that have created unsafe working conditions that have led to dreadful disasters to Bopal disaster in India, where roving capitalism creates unsafe niches of economic activity that imperil the local populations.

It is this evidence of conspiracy that leads to the pursuit of Justin, who is determined to discover the truth after his wife is murdered. In the depths of his grief, he experiences a change that is tantamount to the one we see in the protagonist in another recent film, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and we see him questioning his privileged world view. He is pursued, not ostensibly by government agencies, but in a far more terrifying prospect, by private organizations that operate with little oversight. There are, indeed, private armies, and a whole apparatus that has been bought and paid for by these groups.

The end was never going to be a surprise. The pursuit was breathtaking but also short, and we have a protagonist who discovers secrets and see his own illusions being stripped away. This takes place over breathtaking African panoramas, as planes transport us over other crisis areas, from teeming urban slums to the barren plains of southern Sudan. This is a vast land, and life is vulnerable even in the best of circumstances.

We have, then, a protagonist whose destiny is akin to that of a tragic character. He is blinded by his own delusions, and little heeds the warnings he is given by his wife, and the signs that are provided by the colleagues who are all, in various degrees, compromised. Revelation comes slowly as he pieces the details together, and as he does so, it is evident that he, too, will be killed at some point, and that the corporate samurai will find a way of evading accountability once again.

And this is part and parcel of an ongoing Hollywood critique of our modern day economic and political edifice. We have a political system that is dysfunctional, and is also thoroughly compromised. We have a western colonialist world view that has been transposed to corporate entities, where massive corporations carve out parts of international economy to create bases of operation, where profits are hidden, where money flows in shadowy ways to private entities and ends up financing both Tea Party entities and the Karl Rove creation known as “Crossroads America”, but also, to the Democratic Party as a way of compromising the entire edifice of our government. At the same time, we have the relentless spiel about how government should mimic business practices, as if our government should be run in accordance with the same authoritarian structures that characterize the average company, where employees can be fired or displaced or demoted on a whim, and discrimination is allowed, as is the case for companies that currently hire people based on their social or religious or other criteria (a practice they can’t sustain if they receive government funding).

That Justin and his wife would be sacrificed, as well as the noble black doctor Arnold Bluhm who tries to aid them, is unavoidable. If this fable was intended to shame the populace into demanding more accountability from corporations, it seems to have had no effect whatsoever. We remember that this movie was released in 2005, and the great Bush implosion followed shortly thereafter, displacing many and causing a foreclosure crisis that has continued to have enduring effects.

The fact is that no one was called to account. The message rings on deaf ears, for the most part, even though there is the sense that at times a reaction is provoked, such as was evident in the Occupy Wall Street movement. We bury our unease because we all seem to suffer, if I may say so, from a lack of imagination to see that things don’t have to be the way they are, and we don’t have to live in a Dollarocracy (a term I heard on a recent Bill Moyers program), as our political system has become.

Sadly, it seems as if Globalization has resulted not in the exporting of development to the rest of the world, but the importing and accentuation of underdevelopment in our own country.

Letter to my niece Sofia

Letter to my niece Sofia on the occasion of my latest birthday

Perhaps the best way to start this letter is to say that I’ve always felt old. I’ve come to understand that with age comes a certain degree of detachment, as if I were compelled to evaluate not only the events of my life but also the changes I am undergoing as if from a distance. I think of it at times as a meta-experience, a way of stepping out from reality and from the story that is unfolding as it were to comment on the production, on the action, and on the way we all respond to stories. It is the author who views himself as a character, the playwright who inserts another play in the work in progress, or the character who recognizes the landmarks that liken his or her predicament to a narrative or fictive formula, with thrilling or at times uneasy consequences (with regards to the latter, I have only to bring up the case of Augusto Pérez, the character in Miguel de Unamuno’s famous novel, or nivola, “Niebla”). It is a way of recognizing that we are passing through certain stages, and each experience, each encounter, leaves me with a feeling at times of sadness and regret.

The reason I am writing this to you is that I today was my birthday, and these events aren’t becoming any easier to countenance. We go through these charades with the obligatory enforced hilarity, or at least, that is how I have come to perceive my birthdays, feeling this immense pressure to have it be a sublime apotheosis, for on your birthday popular culture tells us that we are supposed to mark them in some way as special days, in a spectacle I have come to refer to as “competitive indulgence”. Is it your 15^th or 33^rd or 60^th birthday? What did you do to make it different from all the other birthdays?, says a voice inside, the voice of rampant consumerism that reduces everything to a compulsive spectacle of consumption and acquisition. My birthdays are considerably lower-keyed, but I try to go along with it, the jokes about how many more items I have crossed off my “bucket list”, about how I will soon be 50, and have I gotten what I truly wanted? I don’t know what kind of a spoilsport I am, but I have to confess to you that with each year I find these celebrations becoming almost unpleasant duties. I try to put on a good face, but the fact is that the years are passing by much too quickly, and even though I am still in my forties, I already feel weighed down.

Sofia, I see you now, four months old and smiling each time I hold you, and I reflect on the children that I didn’t have. I wonder at times how you are going about piecing the world together, and what a confusing jumble of impressions it must offer to you. It may be that we all carry a primitive memory of our time in the womb, and of floating in a dark, liquid abyss, hearing the pounding of our mother’s heart mixed in with the sensation of mysterious voices coming from afar. After birth, I imagine that the overwhelming sense is that we are shockingly alone, having left the maternal matrix and finding ourselves beset by light, the bitter, pounding sensation that we can’t reconcile with the peace we had before. I wonder how you greeted the light, and what it took to open your eyes and begin to make sense of the world around you.

You are much more aware than you were before, but you are still a creature of appetites and primal urges. You are scared, I understand, and confused, and you wake up at all hours of the night, and never seem to sleep for more than an hour at a time. I have seen the toll this takes on your mom, my baby sister Irma, who wakes up with hanging pouches under her eyes, and who struggles to find the energy she needs to go to work in the morning. But what exhausts her more than anything else is the prospect of not being with you during the day, and I’m sure that you miss your mother’s hugs as well, and her voice, and scent, and the memory of the time you spent when you and she were one.

I see a little of myself in you, even though we are separated by so many years. I’m still bewildered, still searching for solace as the years flash by, and still haunted by a past that, now, I find myself recreating in essays I write, reflections that carry a heavy note of regret. I’m not sure I can remember what I feel you might still remember, the memory of oneness with the being who nurtured you so recently, but I am well able to imagine the anxiety you feel at the prospect of separation. I’ve been so used to being independent all my life, so willing to go off and venture to different places, and I’ve had my own calamitous experiences that I’ve kept to myself. However, I look at you, and see you being held by your grandparents, my parents, who are in their late sixties and early seventies, and may possibly not live to see you as an adult. I hate to use the word “poignancy”, but that is what I see, and I regret that I haven’t been as close to my family as I should have been, and the echo of the loss of my parents, which I hope won’t come for many years yet, makes itself felt.

When we were kids, growing up in the 70s and 80s, it was difficult to be a Mexican-American. We felt like the despised minority in this town, located on the outskirts of Los Angeles, an ethnic group that didn’t merit recognition in our schools or in public culture. I don’t think you will experience that sense of being a barely-tolerated outsider, you won’t experience the frustration so many of us felt but weren’t able to express when we were younger, when we would celebrate the pageant of European immigration to the United States, the myth of Ellis Island and the welcome extended to the “poor and huddled masses”, but found no similar dignity accorded to the pageant of Mexican immigration to the United States, nor any acknowledgment of the contributions of our forefathers. I wonder what you will learn when you are in school, if there will be more balance, now that Mexican-Americans are the majority of the student body in our district, the district where you will surely grow up, in a region (the Southwest) where the Latino population is growing and big states such as California and Texas will soon be majority-Latino states.

We suffered from low self-esteem, and we were our own worst tormentors. We Mexican-American kids were so creative in the insults we could hurl at each other, employing all the pejorative terms that were directed at us, but also employing others that somehow sounded worse because they weren’t used by our Anglo counterparts, but had been created by us, by our community, to belittle ourselves. It was one thing to be called a “wetback” by our Anglo peers, but there is no way, I suppose, to communicate the ferocity of a term such as “chúntaro” that we used to hurl at each other, with the suggestion of animal-like simplicity, unless you could see the sneering expression of those who used it. We used it with each other, Mexican-American kids buying into the message of racial and cultural inferiority, and holding no other dreams than to one day escape our working-class surroundings and, I am embarrassed to say it, transcend our ethnic origin. That was my experience.

By and large, we did make progress. One of your aunts and me, your oldest uncle, became college graduates, and by now, a few of your cousins are well on their way. I know that when I return to college this fall, teaching my three classes, I will probably see my students in a new light, hoping to see in them a forecast for your own future. I have always been able to connect in this way with my students, and I see them recapitulating so many of the mistakes I made, but also, hopefully, making their own discoveries and deriving joy from their experiences.

Your mom didn’t go to college, and I always thought she would be the next to do so. It disappointed me bitterly when she chose to find a job after graduating from high school, especially given her achievements, she having been a particularly thoughtful and mature student. She was the outstanding 3^rd grade student of the year, as commemorated in a statue she received in the 90s, an early achievement that filled us with so much pride. I couldn’t help comparing it with my own relative anonymity during my years of public school attendance, and the way I used to hang back, furtively reading books on Greek mythology or Charlie Brown anthologies while the fourth and fifth grade kids kicked me as I sat at my desk, or chanted vicious ditties at recess. I think your mom had a much more positive experience in grade school, and she certainly seemed to show signs of well-adjusted and confident. I hate to think that the spectacle of an older brother who was still pursuing graduate degrees in his thirties, and who hadn’t settled down by then, might have discouraged her, and I hope it doesn’t discourage you, Sofia.

I don’t know what the world will hold for you in the future. I am reminded of a line from one of William Butler Yeats’ poems, about his visiting schoolchildren, he being the venerable old Irish poet of his age, and remarks that in a humorous way that he felt he was being considered as little other than an “old scarecrow” by the young students who knew nothing of fame of a poet, at least nothing that could compare with the image factory of heroes and (idle) idols that was being mass-produced in Hollywood.

                   And I though never of Ledaean kind
                   Had pretty plumage once — enough of that,
                   Better to smile on all that smile, and show
                   There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.

                   (Among School Children)

I’m not an old scarecrow, and to paraphrase another verse from another poet of the English language (Alfred Lord Tennyson), the verses that proceed as follows:

                                Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
                                Death closes all: but something ere the end,
                                Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
                                Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

                                (Ulysses)

Where the last verse would hardly seem to apply to me, the son of farmworkers, but that I chose to appropriate because I can’t help but think that there was dignity in the spectacle of people such as my grandfather and father, and migrants of all epochs, who venture out in search of a quest, one that makes them akin to the heroes of the classical age, the Odysseus who traverses the metaphorical wine-red seas of the Agean, or in this case, the endless expanses of the Sonoran desert. I don’t feel old yet, I’m still in my forties, and I feel as I write this that I am perhaps I am being imprudent by quoting great poems, but I try to tell myself that as I grow older I have come to understand the sentiment expressed in these verses at a deeper level, in a way that is much more profound than that which characterized my first reading of these verses, back when I was a teenager at Corona High School, looking forward desperately to the day I could take flight. What I hope to communicate to you, Sofia, is a sense of hope, and an appreciation for art, and an attitude, remembering as I do the things that gave me solace back then, as a young Mexican-American who couldn’t even use the term “Chicano” to identify himself, but who still felt hope in the prospect of making a difference.

From the looks of it, though, it would certainly seem as if we have mucked it up, though, with the world stumbling from crisis to crisis, with the Middle East in flames (with revolts and rebellions in Egypt and Syria), and a class divide that is growing ever wider in the United States, a dysfunctional political culture in Washington and with the prospect of an environmental catastrophe in the near future. Would that we could all scramble back into our mother’s wombs, I say to myself from time to time, which is as you will come to know, is just a figure of speech, for literalism is not given to people who are reflective.

But if we did, we would miss out on so much. I hope I have communicated to you the hope I feel that our society is changing, and that we will have the tools to be able to forge the identity we want to assume, for yes, identity is not a given, it is something that we have to claim for ourselves, and mold, until it expresses the scope of our dreams. And we would miss out on the beauty of every day, on the mundane events that we so often overlook, on the sight of your grandfather singing to you songs of the Mexican radio pioneer Cri-Cri that he heard in Mexico when he was growing up, as he holds you in his arms, and of cousins who are two and four years old, rambunctious little boys who eat macaroni and chicken nuggets and drink punch and pester me to inflate water balloons, but who also reach out and caress your cheek when they see you.

Did I tell you that a week ago, after hearing the constant coverage on the news about the annual Perseid Meteor showers that take place during the middle of August, that I spent half an hour for several days sitting outside after midnight, craning my neck up at the stars hoping to catch a glimpse of one? We may be located an hour’s drive away from Los Angeles, but alas we suffer from too much light pollution, and this makes any such enterprise a chancy affair. I saw the few stars whose light was more pronounced either because they were closest to us or because their intrinsic brightest was able to actually break through this haze, and I couldn’t help but reflect on the light from each having crossed vast distances that I can’t begin to imagine to reach me. We are mortal creatures, perhaps something like moths, with little deep-felt understanding of the immensity of the world, and of the beauty we behold, but attracted nonetheless to the light.

I didn’t see a meteor, try as I might, but the same impulse came to me on the night of my birthday, when a feeling inside told me that I should walk outside and give it another go, even though the meteor shower was no longer projected to be at its peak. I was born shortly after midnight, and when I stepped out, the first thing I saw was what looked like a flaming fireball streak across the sky. It took only a few seconds before it was gone, but I can’t tell you how encouraged it made me feel, and how thankful, for it was as if I my existence had been acknowledged and somehow dignified by the spectacle.

That is how I feel when I see you also, Sofia. You are still very young, and you have many experiences that await you. I can’t promise that they will all be pleasant, for you will certainly suffer in ways that are both similar as well as different from the ways we have suffered. But I hope to be with you when you become an adult, and hope that you will carry with you as well the memory of fragile pleasures, those moments like the passage of a meteor overhead when you feel connected, not only with your mom and your family, but feel yourself a part of this wonderful and poetic universe.

You see, we never did leave the womb after all!

 

Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013

Review of the film adaptation of "The Road"

Let’s dispense with the preamble. We’re talking, after all, about the film adaptation of Cormac Macarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Road, a novel that I reviewed several months earlier in this blog. Given that we are talking about two distinct art forms, and that each relies on a vocabulary of techniques that are distinct, we can start from the beginning with an acknowledgement that liberties will be taken. Such is always the case with any kind of adaptation, and all the more so when bringing a literary work to the big screen. It may very well be that there are critics who are predisposed to find an adaptation unworthy of the original work, asserting as they do a purist’s point of view that I can’t help but find presumptuous. It is very much possible that an adaptation may actually invigorate and improve upon the original work, and I can quite honestly draw attention to two films that provided a much more esthetically pleasing experience for me: Bladerunner, the film adaptation of Phillip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and 2001: A Space Odyssey, based upon a short story by Arthur C. Clarke.

To begin with, I can be blunt and say that the movie adaptation of The Road has a certain hypnotic quality. It reflects the tone of the original, but and conveys this with visual imagery and with sounds as well as sequences that convey the enormity of the collapse envisioned in the novel. The cause of this collapse is not revealed, and wouldn’t in any way have contributed to the story, but it is suggested in a sequence towards the beginning of the film that involves recurring dream sequences. This is necessary, perhaps, to provide a contrast and to adequately gauge the personal loss of this character, the father who is guiding his son on a desperate journey to the coast.

In terms of sequences and the interspersing of scenes, the movie takes pains to evoke an idyllic past that seems to torment the character. We have no similar sequences for the son, only for the father, who is growing more and more desperate as he is overcome by hunger, by coughing fits and by a sense that his son is perhaps much too vulnerable. We see scenes that are relayed as moments of peril, in which any other encounter with another human being represents danger to them both. This is very much a paranoid state of mind, and it is to the credit of the film that we see that the father, who is at the center of the film, seems to have lost faith in anything approaching a viable and cohesive society. It is his son who preoccupies him, and the fate he fears will befall him once he dies.

There are moments of suspense, and macabre encounters along this voyage. The slow and trudging journey along the road (and one can’t help but ask, if other human beings are so dangerous, why expose themselves by traveling along this selfsame road, filled as it is with endless reminders of other failed journeys, of cars that have crashed into each other, cars that are arrayed like crime scene sketches?) is interspersed with moments of sheer panic. There is very little moral ambiguity, and instead, the colors of this film, the persistent of a gloom that is both oppressive as well as soporific, convey in a real sense the dilemma. They are isolated, and the father is in need of illumination. He is as much lost as his son, an earnest boy who seems maybe too innocent for his own good in such a world.

The pacing of the film matches that evident in the book. It is a slow slog through the countryside, and it seems as if they will never reach refuge. The dialogue is, as well, muted, with the father mouthing meaningless platitudes to try to comfort a son who questions him more and more as the journey proceeds. What could possibly lie on the coast? What hope can they possibly find when it is apparent that there is no longer a moral underpinning for humanity? It is all too common for survivors to eat other survivors, for otherwise, there is no food, and the pickings are very, very scarce.

The sequence of episodes seems at times a little abbreviated. They proceed like flashes, perhaps suggesting moments of lucidity during what is otherwise an unconscious struggle to keep moving and to avoid detection. The movie omits the sequence with the pregnant woman who loses her baby, one that would seem to presage what will happen to the father as well. But the family makes an appearance in the end.

 

Part of what I found so entrancing about the film were the grand visuals of destruction and decay. There is a certain majesty in these scenes, with empty buildings and vast bridges deserted, silent, and lonely. It was an accelerated decay, but these scenes have a power that reminds me of similar sequences in other dystopian works. I am thinking, for example, of the dramatic scene with the grand and mysterious buildings that is encountered by the Time Traveller in H.G. Wells’ novel, or the description of vast California cities beset by fairs and lights that are slowly winking out, in the novel Earth Abides by George R. Stewart. These scenes were only suggested, if at all, in the novel, pointing once again to the possibilities offered by cinema.

The desperation and weariness of the characters is conveyed adequately by the actors, especially, by Viggo Mortensen, who projects an almost feral intensity in moments of danger, but who is otherwise muted. There is no room for snappy dialogue in a movie such as this. Instead, we have prose that sounds at times sententious, but is mostly elemental, with a poetic intensity. I imagine that most of the time the father and son do not talk very much. They are both weighed by weariness, sadness, and the only sustaining fiction that the father is able to provide for the son, that they are the “good guys” who will find a way to overcome obstacles and will survive. Don’t we all need such fictions at times?

What does the road signify? It has to symbolize something, does it not? I would hesitate to say the obvious, but by virtue of the fact that the movie, as well as the novel, are constructed by these notions that shelter is not to be found, not in abandoned cars, not in seemingly abandoned houses (one of which houses a horrifying discovery, a collection of mutilated and tortured humans who are used as food), and not in hidden shelters that are subject to discovery. Shelter is not found under waterfalls either, nor in the wilderness, nor even by the side of a road, hunched as they are under a tarpaulin to keep dry under the rain. The possibility of shelter is related to the possibility of finding stability, of not having to move, and what we have is instead a world in which terrifying tremors split the landscape apart, tremors the likes of which have never been seen before. No, the road is survival, but it is also a way of purging themselves so that, for example, the child becomes much more saintly than could have been imagined in such a world. It is, then, a theology.

In the end, the movie is haunting but it seems to be compressed. It is a function, of course, of the medium, and the move is relatively short, lasting approximately one hour and forty minutes. The final sequence represents a culmination that was, at once, irresistible, but is also more hopeful that we could have been led to believe. That is takes place next to the ocean, that mirror of human identity, that offers an opportunity for rechristening, lends itself to the idea of a theology. There is even an allusion to faith, for the child is asked to trust the man who offers to take him in at the end. I would assert, however, that perhaps this final scene is nothing more than a final conceit. The overpowering gloom and despair of this road would certainly seem not to promise the possibility of deliverance in the end. The fact that there is a beetle, and that a flock of birds is seen, seem to be an element of fantasy. It would be all the more logical of the child had shot himself after losing his father, and that this final scene was a final comforting illusion as he prepared to end his journey.

But we need to have faith, is it not so?

 

 Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013

Jewels of our Youth (Review of "The Castle of Cagliostro")

 

 

Crime capers come in different hues and flavors. Some are comparatively light in nature, all the more so when they involve charming or bumbling or in other ways memorable characters and the crimes portrayed don’t involve too much overt violence or suffering. Think, for example, tales of jewel heists, and the whimsy of the first few movies in the “Pink Panther” franchise, or the roguish charm of the team of thieves assembled in quintessential casino-heist movies such as “Ocean’s 11”. Others, of course, are much more dispiriting, involving as they do not so much a cat-and-mouse game but sequences of anguishing and senseless violence and suffering. The fact is, of course, that crimes take different hues, ranging from the more personal in nature to those that are depersonalized, with political and moral and cultural issues being present in different degrees. Regardless of the nature of the crime, of course, we have stories that incorporate different background elements, but that serve as well for frameworks in which we question the nature (and institutional apparatus) that accompanies such a broad concept as “justice”. Who will cast the first stone, and who will render a verdict that surely impinges not only on individual transgression but also on the limitations of society?

The animated feature “Castle of Cagliostro” is an early film by famed Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki. It was first released in 1980, and it skirts many of the issues raised above with regards to the nature not only of transgression but of justice. It is, instead, a caper, an adventure that makes use of memorable characters to present a quest that is, somehow, justified because it doesn’t portray graver transgressions nor question institutional limits. It affirms, for example, the bonds of friendship, and the chivalric notion of lending a helping hand to the less fortunate (in this case, the imprisoned princess), and the ideal of stealing not to change a political system or order but instead merely to obtain a personal level of security that is portrayed in a sense as the just reward for the intrepid. We don’t have, in other words, the dramatization of a dark fantasy that involves the sabotage of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, such as is offered in the third Christopher Nolan Batman film, nor a film that questions the basic premises behind American foreign policy in the Middle East, such as “Syriana”. We have, instead, a “buddy” film, where the thief, the charming Lupin from the comic book series, assembles a team in order to undertake a new venture: solving the mystery of the counterfeit money that was stolen from the casino, a mystery that furthermore seems to involve peril to the innocent young princess of Cagliostro.

There is airiness in this film that is reflected on several levels. First of all, in the nature of the quest, one that is undertaken in a chance fashion. Lupin and his friend are on a never-ending ride through a European landscape that seems idyllic, even if there are gangsters that rush out of a casino in hot pursuit, shooting in frenetic fashion. This is a landscape of leisure, not of political turmoil or poverty or failed foreign policy intervention, it is a landscape that is immaculately manicured, with beautiful coasts, seaside villages that are postcard-perfect, jagged mountains and pristine lakes, and middle-class people who are engaged in perpetual tourism. Maybe that would be the ideal way of divesting this crime caper from any form of moral ambiguity? It is an adventure story, a quest that involves a protagonist that captures as well an earlier sensibility, in which innocence rather than cynicism is at play.

We have, then, an ambitious and world-renowned thief by the name of Lupin who is forever being pursued, but whose exploits don’t represent a fundamental threat to the stability of society. He escapes all traps through a combination of wits, physical dexterity, charm and the use of convenient tools and devices which are not as high-tech as those rendered famous in the James Bond films, but that nonetheless border on the magical. Witness, for example, the way in which he conjures up disguises and produces implements such as the gloves and boots that enable him to climb vertical walls, the automaton that fools the guards during the wedding scene or the special rocket engine on his trusty car that allows him to outrun carloads of gangsters, zipping as he does in death-defying sequences that seem more the innocent notions of a ten year old with a set of Hot Rods playing on a Saturday afternoon than a movie in which the laws of physical causality come into play.  There is magic involved, but one that takes on the faint veneer of scientific plausibility but without venturing into outright transgression, and it contributes to the dreamlike aspect of a film such as this one, that however much it stimulates the viewer with action scenes and various instances of falls that are inevitably interrupted in miraculous fashion (why so much emphasis on trap doors, cliffs, stars, gears, towers, etc.?), we have an airiness that seems to defy gravity and constitutes as such a willful suspension of disbelief and a submission to fantasy.

The plot, as well, is one that recalls an earlier age. It involves beautiful locales (lakes, coasts, an ancient Roman villa recaptured) that are also dreamlike and seem to have an almost scintillating quality. The characters, as well, conform to roles that are clearly marked, and that don’t admit to ambiguity or subtlety. We have the boyish Lupin, for example, who is the eternal 10 year old, seduced by quests, energetic, and all too eager to assume a posture of roguish disaffection that is easily discarded. We have, also, the innocent princess of the white hair and the enormous blue eyes, almost too earnest to bear, content to watch and maybe a little reluctant to believe in the prospect of her own salvation. And we have the middle-aged Count, the villain of the film, who wishes to marry the princess in order to further his plans to obtain a treasure that has been prophesied will come to the person who unites the two rings. He is sadistic, of course, and loves to sneer, and is worldly, playing the role of the archetypical taskmaster that would be played in fairy tales of Capitalism as the industrial manager who whips his workers mercilessly, except for the fact that he is quite effectively undermining this economic system by leaching off it, as well as corrupting politicians in order to do so. (So we do have some form of institutional or ideological criticism of the prevailing order, although it is muted.)

For the most part there is no moral ambiguity here when it comes to personal relationships. There are the exploited and there are the exploiters, and we have in this instance the portrayal of the thief (Lupin) as a stabilizing agent, one who is able to work outside of the system by reapportioning elements here and there (capturing treasures and jewels and other valuable elements that would be too concentrated among one group) and distributing them elsewhere, as he does in the famous opening scene where he hurls the bundles of fake currency stolen from the casinos out the windows of his car, mocking the instabilities of a system that also seems to be based on an illusion.  We have no tortured characters who encounter moral or intellectual quandaries, we have only pursuers and pursued, the plodding police detective and the sadistic Count arrayed against the free spirit, Lupin.

We also have a plot that is straightforward, and involves breaking into a guarded domain. There are no grander questions, just a challenge, a hero assembling a team to carry out a famous deed, as if we had a latter-day Jason and the Argonauts seeking to steal the Golden Fleece. And, make no mistake, Lupin is the hero, not only because he is an out-sized figure with extraordinary abilities, but because he charms us, and thus wins our empathy. We identify with him because we admire him and his prowess, even if he isn’t really like us. His ambition, which admits of no institutional restraint, is delimited in the end by a strong note of sentimentality, which does, after all, something that we share in common, even if we don’t have his abilities. Why is this sentimentality so important? Because it introduces a note of familiarity and restraint. He doesn’t take advantage of the weak, after all, the easy prey the way our economic system takes advantage of the poorest working classes. He goes after the big scores, those who hoard resources and treasures that they put out of circulation, those who resist being enchanted. But it is also furthermore ironic that, however great his powers of enchantment and seduction, he doesn’t ultimately take advantage, for example, of the women who fall for him. If he did, perhaps that would detract from his charm, and render him less of an adolescent with innocent appetites and more or a predator characterized by unrestrained lust. There is, thus, a basic prudishness in a character who is capable of scaling any wall and entering any tower, picking any lock and overcoming underwater obstacles, submerged as he is under the lake, but won’t have sex, an alternative medium of currency exchange, after all.

It is, then, an anime film which is restrained, one in which sexual tension is postponed for another age, in favor of adolescent fantasies. How else can we view the relationship between the thief and the red-faced middle-aged Japanese inspector, the “Old Man” who forever pursues him but who we know, deep down, has what amount to a fatherly bond with him? Or the team of friends that he assembles, the buddy with the Unitarian beard or the willowy and enigmatic samurai, who illustrate the classic form of male bonding that we associate with these quests? This is, very much, a film geared towards an adolescent sensibility, but also, one that has many charms for older viewers.

 

 

The animation, despite the beautiful backdrops, is someone static. We don’t have the fluid quality we see in current animation and big-budget films such as the Pixar classics or such recent Studio Ghibli films such as “Spirited Away” (the Academy-award winning Japanese film) or others by Miyazaki. Also, there are no real shadowy qualities that we associate with ambiguity, nor any real exotic or natural elements, and instead we have grand vistas, rooftops, lakeside scenes, and even a final sequence inside a tower that is packed with gigantic gears and that the protagonists have to traverse, in what would seem to be an homage to Harold Lloyd and the earlier silent films. The animation is at times somewhat jerky, and recalls the type seen in Japanese animation of the 60s and 70s that I remember so well from when I was a child watching series such as “Kimba the White Lion” and “Speed racer”.

It was an enjoyable caper, and it is the essence of such a film that the world is fundamentally unchanged after it comes to an end. It is a static film, where the villain is defeated , the victim is rescued or redeemed, and order is restored. There is no change in the situation of the protagonist in the end, who remains the same person. He is still being pursued by the authorities (the red-faced father figure who wishes to control him), he can still charm others, and he is still in search of his next big quest. And, of course, he can still count on the companionship of his friends who will continue to prolong an extended adolescent fellowship that views life as a series of never-ending adventures, one quest following another.  

I enjoyed the film for what it was: a paean to innocence and an earlier age, and to the dreams of a youthful period and a child who needed heroes. Which is that age? One we all had and we lost as we became adults and had to settle for what we found. The rich subtlety and visual imagery as well as personal dramas are burnished in a sentimental way, simplified like jewels that glitter in the afternoon light of our middle age.

 

 

 

Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013

 

"Once More into the Fray" (Review of "The Grey")

“The Grey” is an ambiguous title. Neither black nor white, it would seem to signify an intermediate state, one that escapes easy characterization. Such was not my initial preconception of this movie, one that was marketed as an action thriller when it was released several years ago.

My first impression of the movie, based as this was on the publicity material that was circulated, was that it was an action-oriented film that would take a fairly predictable course of action. I thought that we had already seen this type of movie, after all; a band of misfits, lost in the jungle, or the desert, or the ocean, forced to rely on each other in order to survive. Had we not seen this premise in movies such as “The Three Kings”, or the recent movie series “Lost”?

This film is premised on an ordeal that involves a plane crash in the arctic north under forbidding circumstances. We are introduced to an assorted group of characters that seem to be memorable, a motley assorted group of braggarts, vagabonds and anti-social types who seem to comprise a catalogue of the walking wounded. They are uncouth by and large, given to violence and hard-drinking, to bravado and to power plays, and they resemble much more a group of convicts on parole than the hard-working proletarian society they represent. There is no idealization of the working stiff.

After a horrific crash in which most of the passengers perish, and in which the lead character, an emotionally moribund man by the name of John, is seemingly reborn on an expansive white glacier, the few survivors are forced to confront the dire nature of their predicament. They are wounded, they are facing a storm, and there is little immediate prospect of rescue. The mental fog in which they and most of modern humanity lives, the “grey” of the title, is temporarily dispelled, and everything assumes a much starker and clear contour. They probably will not survive, barring a miracle.

I have to admit, I tend to be very mistrustful of Hollywood formulas. It seems I am regularly disappointed because, like many of the fairy tales that we grew up reading, these stories tend to be highly moralizing products that do just that, affirm the ideological values of the societies of which they represent the cultural capital that is most readily accessible and available. If the movies inevitably have happy ending, then they affirm the moral clarity of these societies and their respective institutions, even though, as we well know, in real life this is overwhelmingly not the case.

Instead of relying on the familiar formulas of typical action thrillers, this movie presents a sequence of encounters which become progressively more deadly. There is no modern Robinsinade here, no fable of political economy in which an individual or a group of individuals is stranded in the wilderness, only to impose order on their circumstances and build up capital (construct houses, exploit natural and human resources, etc.) in order to reconstitute the model of social capital that had prevailed in the societies they had left behind. it is instead a much bleaker film, with no celebratory reaffirmation of the illusions (the “grey”) that are so necessary to build hegemony, the willing acceptance of a power structure as a natural “order” that seems logical even if it works against the interests of so many, and for the benefit of so few. Why should we root for the underdogs, when it is the Alpha dog who we so idealize?

These men, then, all work for an energy concern up in Alaska, and they can all be characterized as underdogs.  Yes, we have a vocabulary of primate society that is already very familiar to us, and it will be accentuated during the course of this film, as we see the parallels between human and lupine society. These workers don’t lead, they follow, even if they resent having to follow, and snap at each other continually. They are the outcasts of society, not the model citizens who are obedient and who lead humdrum existences. They live in harsh conditions, working in a desolate energy facility in the tundra, not because they crave the comforts of  human society, but because they need the isolation, they need the intensity of the experience, and because they are outcasts. (Yes, one may argue they might do it because of the pay as well, but for these characters, they seem not to conform to the model of prudent capitalists who gather and exploit their resources wisely, but are instead, impudent in their lavish expenditures.) They are lone wolves, and as affirmed above, they are the human analogue for the society of predatory wolves they will encounter in the wild.

But the film is more than about establishing parallels between these two societies. The wolves, after all, are never fully individuated, and always seem much more eerie because they are characterized by more coordination and ruthlessness (they aren’t blinded by the illusions of civilization, by the “grey”). The pack of wolves seems to embody a much more symbolic function, for on a deeper level they point to a desolate private landscape, to psychosocial processes at work, and not just to the rapacity of a modern industrial economy that ruthlessly exploits workers. These wolves symbolize in a real way the fears and failures of each and one of the men in this group. They are the big bad wolves of our fairytales, but ones that eat away at them from the inside, knowing their frailties well and being able to exploit them. They gather in the gloom, keeping them under surveillance, following and provoking them. They are more than just elements of an evolutionary landscape that is dictated on hunting, they paralyze the men because they dissolve the illusions under which they live.

Thus, as it becomes more and more evident that the band of survivors will not prevail, the movie assumes a darker and darker undertone. Rescue will not be forthcoming, for they are injured, they lack food, and there is little chance of surviving the cold and the increasing boldness of the wolves that test their defenses, ambushing them one by one. There is no refuge, and their circumstances become increasingly desperate. Their only hope is to move away from the wreckage, and to find a more easily defended location. This is one of the truest insights they have gained, for as a few of the characters come to realize it, they are the fabricators of their own reality.

There is a gradual attrition that winnows their group until we move from eight to seven to six to, finally, one individual. This is, then, not a formulaic Hollywood epic in which the band  of men struggles and survives. It is, then, a hunt in which there is no last-minute salvation. It is more of a process of resignation, one in which the men are forced to acknowledge their fears and face them fully, all of this contributing to a dispiriting acceptance of the fact that they won’t win.

The wolves are merciless in their attacks, and they surround the men and torment them with their howling. Western civilization will not save them; it already had abandoned them, so to speak. The GPS beacon found on one of the wristwatches worn by one of the dead men will also, similarly, not save them, for there is no rescue operation that could effectively be mounted that could hone in on the signal broadcast by this device, and limited resources available to mount such an expedition. In addition, the conditions (a blizzard) work against their favor. And finally, their mutual cooperation is also a frail endeavor, given the burden of mutual distrust that they all carry, and their need to challenge their leader, for it was a given that the misfits of society are surly lot, and that as the “grey” is slowly dispelled and clarity imposes itself like a bracing baptism in ice-cold water, they (and we) become aware that we are all misfits. The band of men will lose almost every encounter with the wolves, while also similarly succumbing to the hazards offered by nature, with the men freezing to death, drowning or succumbing to terrible falls.

The film offers what might seem to be a pessimistic vision, but like the famous poem by Dylan Thomas (“Do not go gently, into the good night”), perhaps it does succumb to a Hollywood formula. I would like to view it, however, as a humanistic one, for it resides in the idea that there is one last hope. Perhaps we need to affirm once again that struggle itself is an affirming action that gives values to human existence. “Once more into the fray”, is one of the lines memorized by the protagonist, the last man left during the course of this harrowing ordeal.

It is a movie that leaves one in a pensive mood, but hardly embittered. It certainly shines with an honesty that is brutal but also clear, dispelling the gloom of the “grey” (the fog, the blizzard, the unconsciousness of modern day life) that blinds us ordinarily.

 

Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013

Review of "Primer"

 

 

The motif of time-travel is one that has long been popular. It continues to exert a pull on the imagination, in part because of our fascination with the past and with our formative period. A popular phrase that has entered our lexicon is the one that muses, “If I knew then what I know now”, and it shows part of this obsession with changing our past, if we could, or perhaps, of rewriting history, as if it were a matter of changing isolated events, and not appreciating instead the role of institutional processes that are much less difficult to pinpoint and neutralize. Would we really go back and assassinate Hitler before he rose to power, or prevent the assassination of Lincoln? These scenarios certainly appeal to our storytelling sensibility, and perhaps, this is the reason why this motif has been so durable, because of the dramatic possibilities.

In the case of the movie “Primer”, a film released in 2004 and written, produced and directed by Shane Carruth, we have a film invested in a creepy sense of paranoia. This is a low-budget film that tries to capture a sense of these dramatic twists and turns, one that is more heavily invested in dialogue and the portrayal of a culture that that is, perhaps, uniquely American. We have a question of hubris, of course, with inventors who are ethically challenged by the possibilities of their invention, and who are unable to conceive of the notion of restraint. This is a notion that I would associate very much with an American mindset, one that is predicated on risk-taking, yes, but also on the idea that predominates in a consumer culture, in which everything is reduced to a commodity that is packaged and sold to be consumed, and if it isn’t to our satisfaction, as in the case with all the inconvenient details of history, then we have the right to demand either a refund or a replacement. Yes, it amounts to that: this time travel machine is the ultimate commodification of history, wielded by two young inventors who have very little sense of restraint.

 

As the film proceeds we see two friends who gradually lose touch with reality. The movie, shot in a sort of bright haze that evokes for some reason the sheen we associate with past years (light is a motif in time travel stories as well), details the exploits of two friends, Aaron and Abe. They are a pair of twenty-something engineers living in the Silicon Valley, friends who do what everyone else does as part of the culture that prevails in that region. They work in tech firms by day, and gather together at night to work in garages, tinkering with industrial apparatuses, trying to achieve the next technical breakthrough, the next circuit board or industrial chip, that will allow them to attract venture capital and establish the next big technical firm. This has been the history of this region during the past sixty years, after all, and that is part of the mystique of Silicon Valley, or of any valley populated by the young who wish to overtake and surpass their elders. What happens, however, is that they make an accidental discovery that isn’t anticipated, and it brings about fascinating moral conundrums.

To return once again to the question of social values, what we have in Silicon Valley is highly competitive proving ground. We have a culture that is consumed, not so much by a detached desire to make scientific advances, but to develop technology that can be exploited by the market. The paradigm was set by the founders behind such companies as Hewlet Packard or Apple Computers, and it entails what would seem to be appealing notions of young entrepreneurs who struggle to innovate so that the rest of the masses can enjoy iPhones or other consumer items. The motivation is, of course, profit, and the story is an engaging one, of young risk takers coming into their own, of the new guard vanquishing the old guard.

What becomes evident here, however, is that the collaboration between the partners breaks down. Both Abe and Aaron quickly decide not to inform their partners of the discovery that their mechanism isn’t what it seems to be, and they work to exclude the others, in a gambit that is all too common in a culture that is highly individualistic and is, quite frankly, predatory. This may be the “greatest discovery in the history of humanity”, and one is chagrined to find that they quickly reserve it for themselves, proceeding as they do in a feverish pitch of what can’t help but seem greed. The corporate framework is thus one that is predicated on exclusivity and control, and even if they don’t know that the machine does, it is evident that it is doing something anomalous, something that is rendered in technical language that the writer has not bothered to simplify, thus investing it with an aura of mystery. (For an ex-engineer such as myself, it isn’t that mysterious, and I can sense the fact that they are talking about a machine that might possible produce more energy than it consumes, one that would violate the basic laws of thermodynamics, a seeming physical impossibility.)

But there is more to it than this. They may be outclassed when it comes to explaining the scientific foundation of what they have invented, but what is utterly clear is their obsession with corporate appropriation. And this obsession becomes all the more dangerous when they realize that they have accidentally invented a time machine. We have a dark fable, then, of scientists or, in this case, engineers, operating without moral or social restraint, situating themselves thus in a dark terrain that opens up all possibilities for danger.

Of course, it is only a matter of time before they upscale their prototype invention and experiment on themselves. Are inventors always so foolhardy? What is the nature of the obsession of these inventors? Do we have another parable of the mad scientists who transgress against nature and God, if we consider their names, those of two biblical patriarchs, Abraham and Aaron? The symbolic dimension is all too clear, of course, and we have entered into the realm of parables, another Tower of Babel, so to speak, where they will supposedly be inevitably punished, smote down from above. The nature of the problem is that which revolves around their faith in each other, and of course, it is expected that trust will break down between them, with somber results.

Both Abe and Aaron quickly hatch plans for get-rich schemes, positing being able to return to the past with winning lottery numbers, making the necessary purchases then returning to the present, to find themselves lucky winners but not having a memory of a time stream in which they had not been winners. This brings to mind all manner of fascinating problems, for when one thinks about it, they are slowly but surely risking detaching themselves from reality, that reality which is a mixture of chance and accident mixed with the institutional movement of social processes, those that have their own movement. This brings into question the supposed stability of their existences because, as noted above, once the changes are made, they lose any awareness of how things were before their actual interventions in the past. They lose it, that is, unless they take to wearing recording devices, and tape their conversations, preserving a thin connection with a supposedly previous reality.

They are penned in, so to speak, and everything is open to question, everything will be questioned, every mystery will include the possibility of having been instigated by their intervention, for as long as they have access to this time machine, it will remain a possibility that both (or perhaps one or the other, or maybe, they aren’t exclusive inventors of the machine, and someone else might have access to one) has stepped back in time and changed circumstances in their lives. And this worrying possibility becomes all the more evident when one of the friends confesses to the other that he did, indeed, build a secondary unit, so that he himself could undertake trips, unbeknown to his companion. Has trust broken down completely between them?

There is a refreshing lack of reliance on special effects in this movie. Had the director and writer had access to a much bigger budget, rather than the $7,000 used to film this project, then if might have been spent on aspects that detracted from philosophical speculations evident in the film. The dialogue is fascinating if at times a little too stiff, and the actors do seem a little too poised, not capturing the full nuances of the breakdown that occurs between them. We never have a sense of their lives outside of their own personal interactions, and this is in keeping with the way in which they become progressively isolated and insular, keeping secrets so to speak, and penned in by the moral conundrums dramatized by the suffocating boxes that represent, so to speak, their isolation chambers (these are the time machines).

There are not explosions, no car chases, no scenes of industrial accidents, no need for splashy special effects that would be a stable of big Hollywood films that deal with science fiction motifs, but that detract all too often from the personal drama. Instead, the drama is all internal, and the degree of paranoia and unease gradually ratchets up so that it quickly becomes evident that these two time travellers have detached themselves from reality, as they have from their social ambiance and their family members.  The unsettling aspects gradually increase, involving phone calls, and the sense of being followed, and even minor details such as the comment made by the wife of one of the friends that they need to call exterminators because there are odd sounds coming from the attic above the house. Are they sabotaging each other, and will they ultimately turn against each other? The situation quickly devolves at a fever pitch with two friends who look more and more exhausted, more and more strained, lacking in judgment as they proceed with their obsessive quest that involves, perhaps, a test of dominance between the two.

In the end it isn’t clear how it is resolved. What we have is an impassioned plea by the more sensible of the two friends to put an end to an untenable situation, to walk away and go and pursue their lives. The other one, of course, refuses. This is unsettling because, if we reflect on it, because it ushers in the possibility that, in such a circumstance, human judgment is not to be trusted, and humans are incapable of restraining themselves when given means of such power, a view that is very old, and that was captured not only in biblical narratives but also in the fable of Gyges, the man who becomes a monster because he discovers a magic ring that renders him invisible, as told in the fable by Plato in his The Republic. No one is safe in such a circumstance, and an individual were to come into possession of an invention of such unimaginable power. It is, then, a parable of overreach, and one that terminates in an unsettling fashion, with a seemingly mad protagonist who, like a modern day Faust, can’t renounce the power he has gained. Or, better yet, a new Dr. Frankenstein, pursued by his own demons, the monster he has created.

 

 

Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013