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

Review of "The Duel"

We are only a few weeks into summer, and the heat and humidity are already overwhelming. We would like to think that these conditions will slowly build up to a culminating point, sometime around Labor Day weekend, after which there will be a release, and we will have some sort of relief. Logically, that is what we should be able to expect, is it not so, as we plan the change in our routines, and go on living our life in accordance with the unconscious rituals that tend to define our lives. Things will calming go cycling on, over and over, season after season, in a familiar fashion, if we are lucky not to be jolted by unexpected changes, by seasons that, lately, have been defined by more episodes of more extreme weather, by wild veering from one end to the other, by tornadoes where we haven’t seen them before, by droughts that last for decades and that break temperature records, especially out here in southern California where I live, and by breaks in the routines that seem to be more alarming the more we age.

The reason I began this way is because I recently Steven Spielberg’s action thriller from 1971, The Duel. It is advertised as the director’s debut feature, or at least, the one that brought him to the notice of studio executives. It is based on a story by Richard Matheson, the prolific writer who recently passed away, and is set in the open expanses of the Southwest, in a landscape that is utterly familiar to me, having been raised as I was in the inland valleys and deserts of California. This movie is structured as an almost allegorical confrontation between a middle-aged man and an unknown assailant driving a giant, rusty, decrepit truck. To me, it seems fairly compelling that it has to do with the depiction of a mid-life crisis, but perhaps, maybe that is due to the fact that I am projecting my own experiences on the movie.  I am aging, and it roils me inside to recognize how much my life has changed, and how there is a level or urgency that I had never perceived before in my life.

The film begins with footage of the road. We have a progression of roadscapes that detail the trip from an urban metropolis, with all the confusing jumble of mega highways, past the mountains that ring Los Angeles to the north, and then, to the open landscape that traverses hills and dry expanses of open terrain. It isn’t quite open desert, but it feels just as lonely, just as forlorn. The desert is a beautiful but also pitiless landscape, a please where we can’t hide our illusions, but it is, also, a hypnotic landscape. It was and certainly still is for me, and I treasure the memory of my drives through those open spaces.

As the protagonist, a character named David Mann, played by Dennis Weaver, traverses this landscape, he seems to relish the opportunity to surrender to the road. The blank spaces complement his mood, because the fact is, he has familial and professional obligations that are weighing on his mind. These conflicts are simmering under the surface in an ocean of disquiet, but perhaps it is because they aren’t immediately evident (or because he has bottled them up inside) we feel that the film has a certain psychological edge because the truck, of course, has to symbolize something. It is the unconscious, perhaps, the exteriorization of those conflicts, the fears and anxieties that need to take concrete form?

 

 

What ensues is a duel that seems as much improbable as thrilling. We never see the face of the driver, because it makes much more sense to leave that antagonist as an anonymous character defined by a perverse and mysterious need to torment and run down our protagonist. It is, of course, no accident that the truck is announced to be hauling a cargo that is “flammable”; it is also no accident that it is a weathered truck, still hardy, but definitely not new. In a very real sense, it is the representation of anxieties and torments that beset the protagonist and, by extension, all of us, especially as we age. The truck is the vestigial and primitive inner self, the one that operates on a deep and primal level, that screams out to us that we won’t make it, and shows us why by sabotaging us.

There are all manner of obstacles, but it becomes all the more evident that the truck represents an abstract concept. All else fails, including the radiator belt for the protagonist’s orange car, as well as his judgment and his inability to convince others of the danger he faces. But the truck lumbers on, overtaking him constantly, tormenting him in nightmarish confrontations that occur in plain day, on winding and lonely roads that resemble at times erotic brown landscapes, sinuous curves, with chasms that will ultimately be filled by one of the protagonists in this duel. It is a contest to see if a man of middling prospects can somehow hope to extract from vitality from his life, and confront those inner demons, those fears that take different concrete form.

There is a curious episode in this duel. In one scene, he will drop by a small gasoline shop, where he will be attended by a frumpy old lady who has a collection of snakes and spiders that she keeps outside. It isn’t enough that he is being pursued by a maniacal truck driver, he also is being challenged, so to speak, in his masculinity (let’s say, virility and vitality) by an old lady who not only pumps gas in his car, but also opens his car hood to evaluate the state of his radiator hose. Could the psychic dimensions of this threat as he is emasculated by an “Eve” with her rattlesnakes who attends to him not in the Garden of Eden by next to a dusty gasoline stop be any more obvious?

That this truck can muster the speed that it does as it barrels in on the protagonist is a source of wonder. We can feel the threat, the sense of a destiny that is hardly to be averted, the punishing weight of a massive truck that represents an irresistible force. It stops from time to time when our protagonist tries to leave the road, or signal for help, and it charges in on him, without our ever obtaining a clear view of the driver who, I should assert once again, can’t represent anyone other than himself, that deep inner self that is scared and that asserts itself by embodying this primitive and destructive force that he seems to need to visualize, but can’t.

David Mann is a sympathetic figure, and as he becomes progressively more desperate, speaking to himself and imploring his car to go faster and faster as he is being pursued, despite the leak in the cooling system that overheats his car, we see a man who also stops trying to intellectually understand the scope of this problem, and instead, meets it head on, as an emotional force, something irrational, something that can’t be understood on any other terms. It reminds me very much of the final conflict we had seen in Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel, A Wizard of Earth Sea, where the character stops running from the shadow and instead decides to confront it, realizing as he does that his antagonist represents a part of himself that he hasn’t been able to reconcile.

In Spielberg movies we are used to seeing a denouement that emphasizes a reconciliation of a sort, after navigating through all manner of perils. He does have a penchant, perhaps, for the Hollywood “Happy Ending”, but in this case, the ending is much more somber, even if the protagonist survives. He is left to ponder the meaning of the combat he has just participated in, and to reflect on how his outlook has changed. The final scene of the film has him silhouetted against the backdrop of a setting sun, ironically confronting his survival but doing so within the framework of a day that has ended.

This film is a thriller that, in a very real way, is structured as a race against time and over obstacles that pop up and threaten continually to derail him. We have the long and coiling snakes that he is somehow miraculously able to avoid, but also, the long and coiling trains that pass by, and against which he narrowly avoids being crushed. The radiator hose (another long and coiling shape) ruptures in a pivotal scene, and of course, the roads twist this way and that as they coil along the low hills of this desert landscape. It seems to me to be, once again, a film about an everyman’s mid-life crisis (the name, once again, is David Mann), one that won’t necessarily leave him at peace, but will at least disabuse him of certain illusions of rationality and comprehensibility.

The movie doesn’t answer why but, like the long slog through the summer, and the shimmering heat that lies like ghostly presence on the landscape, it gleams with the aura of inevitability, of glasses that, like those of the driver, focus inward, not outward.

 

 

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