Death, Rape, and Secret Societies (the Halloween Special)

**********THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR House on Haunted Hill, Alien, AND Insidious**********

Most people who know me, or who have been reading this blog for a decent amount of time, know that I love horror movies.  Horror and thriller movies are possibly my favorite films.  I spent quite a while just trying to figure out what it is I liked so much about this genre and while I haven't completely figured it out I have come up with a few things.  For one, in a good horror movie everything is interesting, especially the setting.  In some of the very best horror movies, and certainly my favorites, the setting is a character all its' own.

Take my favorite horror movie of all time House on Haunted Hill (1999) in which the titular house is a very interesting, and frightening character.  The entryway is a gigantic and beautifully creepy room in what I can only describe as "modern Gothic" with a magnificent and terrifying stained glass window in the ceiling (which is obviously going to shatter and nearly impale someone).  There is a staircase down to the labyrinth of the basement with disturbing dissected creatures, twisting stone hallways, cobwebs, ghosts, ghouls, torture rooms, vats of blood, and a "scare chamber."  The last part of the house, the attic, is filled with all sorts of clockwork and mechanical, weighted devices for controlling various parts of the house.  The house on haunted hill is a magnificent work of design and really comes alive in House on Haunted Hill.  Now, to be fair that isn't the only reason I like that movie, but I have a soft spot for labyrinthine films such as Cube, Hellbound: Hellraiser 2, Triangle and any film that shows me a beautifully realized, otherworldly place.

But, settings are not the only unique and fascinating aspect of horror movies.  To quote Clive Barker, "what are these stories but extended dances with death, refreshed now and again by a change of mask, a change of step" and he's right.  Horror movies all deal with the idea of death, either directly (someone is going to kill me) or indirectly (fighting spirits of the dead).  In order for these movies to scare us they need to both prey on our unconscious fears and force us to confront something we don't understand.  The idea of death is nearly universal in horror movies but some movies play on other fears.

Take, for example, Ridley Scott's iconic 1979 film Alien which plays on not one, not two, not three, but at least four things we unconsciously fear.  First, there is death: the Xenomorph (as it would later be known) is a vicious predator and it's going to hunt down and kill the members of the crew.  Already we're fighting for survival and fearing death.  Then there's the faceless Weyland-Yutani corporation which considers human life expendable, we have fear of big business (a fear that has worked its' way back into our horror movies recently, but we'll get into that in a bit).

Now, for the third fear we get into the meat of the movie, what really gave it it's punch, so to speak: Ridley Scott's Alien is about rape.  Without getting into too many specifics, nearly all of the iconography in Alien is either phallic or yonic.  The Xenomorphs as a species reproduce via forced oral rape, they then gestate inside a person for a period of time and finally burst through their chest, killing them.  This is clearly playing on the fears of rape and unwanted pregnancy.  Then, look at the design of the aliens themselves, they were created by H.R. Giger and are almost literally an exercise in seeing how many phallic objects he could fit into a single creature.  We have the extended penis head, the extended penis tongue, the four penis barbs coming out of the aliens back, and finally the tail which is sharp and used to penetrate things, specifically people.  The Xenomorph is a collection of penises which gained sentience and decided to rape and kill.

This leads us into our fourth fear: emasculation.  Who is the main character of every traditional Alien movie other than the xenomorphs?  Ellen Ripley.  Ellen Ripley is a strong, confident, capable, independent, loving, and maternal woman.  Ellen Ripley is the embodiment of femininity and yet, while pretty, she is not hyper-sexualized.  This is what we call a character and she is everything we could have hoped for in a character.  Generally speaking women get raped in the real world.  What worse way is there to break someone then to dehumanize them so much that, to the rapist, they exist for no other reason than to rape?  A rapist takes the generally enjoyable act of sex and intimacy and turns it into a horrible reminder.  Rape breaks people.  It is absolutely crushing.  Which is why Ridley Scott decided he was going to rape every single man who sees his movie.  The xenomorph physically rapes the male characters, it emasculates them, it forces them to deal with troubles that were primarily exclusive to women.  The xenomorph even forces an unwanted pregnancy upon the men which ultimately kills them.  This was all intentional, and it worked.  When Alien was released it was absolutely terrifying and emasculating.

Like all movies, horror movies are products of their time.  A horror movie will not generally work as well on an audience from a different time, this is one of the reasons why so many older horror movies don't scare modern audiences and neither do many of the throwback "remake" movies either.  However, there is one genre of movie in particular which is terrifying audiences today and that's the paranormal haunting movies.  While I can't pin down exactly when this started, the first movie that comes to mind is Paranormal Activity (the first, and only good one).  Some of the scariest movies of the day are these paranormal haunting movies; Paranormal Activity, Insidious, the Conjuring, A Haunting in Connecticut, and, like their predecessors, these movies play on the unconscious fears of the audience.  So, what is the biggest fear of the modern film audience?  Big business (told you I'd get to it).  But, not just big business, big government, and any faceless entity we, as a population, don't understand and don't want interfering with our lives.  Take the recent NSA scandal (for those of you don't know, to put it simply the government is spying on anything and everything you do).

How are these organizations structured?  There isn't one evil face to point to and say "that's it that's what we have to stop" (no matter what those people who think Obama is the anti-christ say) but culminations of people.  And none of the people who work for these corporations are evil, they're just greedy and selfish.  But these government entities and big corporations are so complicated and convoluted and we don't understand them, but they exist and they're watching us.  Now, lets compare that to the horrors in modern scary movies.  From watching the first (and only the first) Paranormal Activity the audience doesn't know what's going on throughout the entire movie, not at the end.  They have some idea, a girl gets possessed and kills her boyfriend, but that's not it, all throughout this movie you don't know what's happening, how many evil things there, or how many of the small hauntings throughout the movie will really affect the characters.  All they know is that an invisible force is watching them and interfering with their lives, just like big business.  Consider Insidious, the hauntings here come from not just one demon but a group of dark spirits.  It's a large, mostly disconnected, and very convoluted faction of ghosts and demons that want the child's body.  None of the ghosts are evil (the demon is but that's not really the point) they all just want the child's body for themselves; they're greedy.  And throughout the movie all we know of them until the end is that there are faceless monsters interfering in their lives.  That sounds suspiciously similar to the way people think of these big, faceless corporations.

I know this has been a long article but the point is that horror plays on our unconscious fears, it can show us terrifying and beautiful worlds, and it can help us deal with our insecurities and fears.  A good horror movie can change you and help you, or it can frighten you and crush you.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Credit to Clive Barker

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/clive-barker-why-i-once-645017

The Monolith in the Room

This article is going to be quite a bit different from my previous ones, whereas normally I talk about specific aspects of films and film making techniques, today I want to talk about the world of a movie character.  Specifically, what if the worlds within the movies are real, and what if the characters can see the cinema screen?  This was initially inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey (yes, I'm still talking about that) and the interpretation I read about it that makes the most sense is that the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey is actually a cinema screen.  I'm not going to go in detail into why I consider this to be an accurate interpretation, Rob Ager goes through that in depth on his website (www.collativelearning.com check it out), but what happens in the movie because of this and what it could mean for other movies.

Consider for a moment how most films are structured: the camera only shows the audience the important events.  This makes plenty of sense, if your movie character is driving cross country you don't to show the countless hours of boring driving, you want to show the few sporadic, wacky events that drive the plot.  This also means that most of what isn't shown is not particularly important.  Of course there are exceptions to this, in a murder mystery the details of the murder aren't shown, but rather recovered later through hours of boring detective work.  But, by and large, the important events are shown on screen and boring stuff is cut out or sped through.  Now, lets take a look at "The Dawn of Man" segment in 2001: A Space Odyssey: the pre-humans are living out their lives, boring, content, fighting over water and eating grass.  Nothing out of the ordinary happens, even the jaguar attacking one of them is still pretty run-of-the-mill for their life.  The monolith appears.  On the surface it appears as if the monolith is speeding up evolution, increasing the thinking ability of the pre-humans so that they stumble upon the idea of using tools, in this case a bone club to smash in the brains of other pre-humans or tapirs.  This use of tools leads to not only dominance over the rival tribe but also to the eating of meat, which was the defining factor that really allowed our brains to grow.  However, what if the monolith didn't cause them to figure out how to use tools.  What if the pre-humans were already going to figure out tools on their own and the monolith, much like a movie camera, was only there during the important parts.  Well, this casts the entire rest of the movie into a different light.

Think about the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey now when Dr. Dave Bowman goes through the monolith, through the stargate, and lives the rest of his life in a human zoo, finally dying and reemerging as the evolved being the Star Child.  That only makes sense though if the monolith is still a device to speed up evolution, but what happens if it represents a cinema screen?  Dave Bowman literally flew his spaceship through the cinema screen and broke out of the movie.  This explains why he was able to watch himself in third person in the zoo.  At the end he doesn't die and become the Star Child, he becomes the director of his own movie.  Dave Bowman essentially becomes a god in his world, able to change events as he sees fit, just like a film director.

Taking this train of thought to other movies, what if the characters in any movie can see the monolith, but the director is simply not letting them acknowledge it?  I know it sounds a bit crazy but going under the assumption the worlds movies portray are real, what would that be like?  As a movie character you would live your entire life knowing that nothing was really important if the screen wasn't present, and once it did show up you would instantly know that something important and potentially life changing was about to happen.  I think that would cause some serious psychological stress.  Of course there is another option and that is your life skips over anything with the cinema screen present.  You would live your life from important event to important event and everything else would be so much brainwash.  Here are some clips from the show Doctor Who that do a great job showing this kind of life.

Granted, in Doctor Who the woman, Donna, was actually in a virtual reality simulation, but the idea is the same.  Living life from one important event to another and skipping over the boring stuff would be awful.  Life is defined by monotony.  Movies may be fantastic adventures in every form imaginable, but having a persons entire life condensed into an hour and a half of important scenes is not the way the real world works.  And what of Dave Bowman?  The would-be movie hero who becomes a god in his own world.  Would that really be a good thing?  There would no longer be any mystery or wonder, nothing to discover, because he could literally change the course of human history in his world he wouldn't have anything to live for.

Movies are amazing, but it's a good thing they're not real.

Movies of the Future

After seeing Elysium this week I started to think about my favorite science fiction and science fantasy movies.  I actually tried to come up with a list of my favorite sci-fi movies of all time, and it took significantly longer than I expected.  I was basing my choices purely on my own enjoyment of those films and disregarding their influence (if a film's influence were to be factored in Star Wars would always be the number one spot seeing as it changed the face of Hollywood and film making forever).  What took me so long about the list was not that I had too many movies I wanted to put in the top spot, but too few.  I know plenty of sci-fi movies that I love to death, but so few of them I think are honestly worthy of a "top 3" or "top 5" list like this.  That being said I still managed to put together a list of my top 3, although I only think one of these movies is actually truly deserves to be on this list, these are the best three I could come up with.

Oh, and Blade Runner is not here because, although I have seen it, I saw it in less than optimal conditions and saw an inferior version of the film.  I'm only counting movies I have actually seen and feel comfortable speaking about.

3.  Ghost in the Shell
I've written about Ghost in the Shell before, so I'll keep this one brief.  In the future a government controlled anti-terrorist group called Section 9 patrols the internet, but not in a "the NSA is watching everything I do" way.  When almost everyone on the planet has cybernetic implants of some kind hackers can become terrorists, and it's up to Section 9 to track down these hackers and stop them.  The leader of this unit is Major Motoko Kusanagi (my favorite female protagonist in an animated movie) and she is tasked with tracking down a hacker known as the Puppet Master.  He has only been encountered online, so she attempts to trace him back to his physical body.  Things get hairy from there and the film turns into a meditation on humanity, individuality, and the separation of man and machine.  Ghost in the Shell is absolutely superb and probably my favorite animated movie of all time.

2.  The Matrix
This is the one everybody knew would be on this list, not just because I've written two (part three coming soon) articles about it but because I talk about it a lot.  The thing is I can't really explain in words what The Matrix means to me or how important it is to me personally.  Not only is it an incredibly important film that came out at exactly the right time for the world, it came out at the right time for my life.  Living in a digital world has become the norm: everybody has a cell phone, everybody has internet access of some form or another, and everyone has computer access.  The internet is undoubtedly one of the most world changing inventions mankind has ever seen.  Suddenly, problem solving is no longer a matter of figuring something out based on retained information, but a matter of how quickly the information can be obtained.  An argument over something can be solved now, not by providing evidence, but by looking up the answer online.  Wikipedia is probably the most accurate encyclopedia we have ever had, it's updated constantly, and it's completely free to use (if you have internet access).  The world has changed, and we have to adapt.

The Matrix showed us the drawbacks of this.  Information overload is everywhere, and a lot of it is false: not only do we have to be able to find the information we need, we have to make sure that the information we find is correct.  This has always been an issue, but it is especially important in the new digital age because anyone can post online.  An even more important issue, however, is that the internet provided unparalleled communication.  Now, all of the lies of the government and corporations come crumbling down, people can no longer hide anymore.  Every scandal of every CEO is now on the internet, every time someone steals money from large groups of people, every time injustices are committed by people in power, the internet tells us about it.  Think about the most recent NSA privacy issues and how, both through and with the internet we have revealed one of the most important injustices ever committed against the American people by the American government.

Distrust is everywhere and the world that we see, the world we have been told about from television, big corporations, and the government is all a lie, just like the Matrix.  The world we thought we knew doesn't exist, and the truth is ugly.  The Matrix predicted the future in a much more subtle way than one might initially think from watching it, but it has stood the test of time and is an absolute triumph of modern film making.

1.  2001: A Space Odyssey
Quite possibly the most beautiful film I have ever seen, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey is an absolute masterpiece.  Visually, it is perfect.  Made in 1968, if someone had showed this movie to me and told me that it was put together from footage of an actual space mission I would have believed them.  this movie is so dark and empty, yet so mesmerizing and real.  It's boring as hell, but that's the point, real space travel is boring.  Everything happens in slow motion because you have to be so careful in space, there are so many variables, and zero gravity causes tons of issues.  Watching this movie today, I am at a loss as to how they could make this work in 1968.  And, the ballet music background for the slow connections of the ships in space, synchronizing their movement so that they can properly dock is a slow and arduous process, but it is also a dance.

2001: A Space Odyssey is also a terrifying movie and it is significantly scarier than Kubrick's other, often cited masterpiece, The Shining.  Our first shot of the monolith, at the dawn of man, is incredibly striking.  All we see are organic and natural shapes, monkeys, tapirs, rocks, bones, etc...  Then the monolith appears, perfectly straight, solid black, and standing upright. It towers over the creatures nearby.  The contrast between what we've been shown and what we're being shown is beyond unnerving.  To me, this opening scene is downright terrifying.  You watch, as the monkey-men tentatively reach toward the monolith, and the buildup is excruciating because you know something bad will happen when they touch it.  But, they get closer and closer to the strange black object and you find yourself gripping your seat, until finally they touch it, and pull away instantly, then touch it again.  Nothing happens.  The monolith sits there and does nothing; the monkey-men touch it, decide it's of no concern, and leave.  Then everything starts to change.

The sound in the movie is of particular note.  Kubrick loves using orchestral pieces in his movies, but 2001 has the most fitting soundtrack I know of.  Brilliant scores of jubilation and triumph accompany some of the most iconic footage ever put to screen, and even more important than the sound is the silence.  So much of this movie is pure silence or near silence with only the most minimal sound, such as a man breathing in his spacesuit while the void of space fills the nothingness around him.  This movie is truly awe inspiring, and I believe that is part of the point: to appreciate the universe for the wonder and mystery that it is.  Man is insignificant, but the universe is beyond massive.  We watch in wonder as man goes from his humble beginnings to finally reaching the stars, and yet there is more to discover in this movie.

2001: A Space Odyssey presents us with so many questions, it challenges us to answer those questions and yet, it does nothing to aid us.  I have read so many film analyses of 2001 and I think every one is right.  This movie means something to different to each of us, just as the meaning of life is different to each of us.  Some see it as self fulfilling prophecy, only working because it makes itself work, others see it as a look at the function of film in society, some think of it as a comparison between man and machine, and yet others see it as the ascension of man to the heavens.  This movie asks us to stand in awe, to marvel at the magnificence of the universe.  2001: A Space Odyssey is a complete mystery and that's what makes it so damn beautiful.

Elysium

WOW!  So, Neill Blomkamp may very well be the best science fiction writer/director since Ridley Scott.  His first feature length film, District 9 was one of the best films of the year and maybe even decade (so far), his sophomore effort Elysium is every bit a follow-up.  While the two films are not connected in terms of story, we can start to get a good sense of Blomkamp's style by looking at the similarities between the two films.  The action scenes in both remind me of the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan: gritty, dirty, gory realism.  Blomkamp uses shakey-cam quite a bit, but never enough to make you sick, and he doesn't commit the cardinal sin of shakey-cam which is using it to hide bad directing.  Make no mistake, Elysium is absolutely one hell of an action flick.  Characters get torn apart, people get blown up (and not the cheesy fireball and chunks of scorch blown up either, we're talking concussive blasts shredding people and spraying gore everywhere), one of the major characters even gets his face blown off and we're treated to a nice close-up of the aftermath.  But, it isn't a problem because there are machines which can heal any injury.

The heart of the story is about the separation between Earth and Elysium, a colonized ring world orbiting Earth.  Earth is a desolate planet, full of pollution and decay.  The cities destroyed and overcrowded.  The people tend to have dark skin and speak mostly Spanish, while on Elysium everyone is white and speaks either French or English.  Only Elysium has the magical "cure everything" machines, and the people of Earth often try to illegally access Elysium for the medical care.  Okay, so Blomkamp isn't particularly subtle with the message, but who cares because he HAS A MESSAGE.  So few movies are actually about anything, and while that isn't particularly a bad thing, it's the ones that really know what they want to say that stick with you.

In terms of story we have Matt Damon as Max, an ex thief trying to go straight who lives on Earth, he gets in an accident at the factory he's working at and only has five days to live, so he straps on a robotic exoskeleton and goes to town trying to break into Elysium.  Oh, and Sharlto Copley as Kruger, a deranged mercenary with big sword and a lot of explosives, is trying to stop him.  I'll stop the synopsis there so as to not give too much away but it's safe to say not all is as it seems on Elysium.

This movie has a great story, a very relevant message, and awesome action.  This movie has a freaking cyborg ninja, and it's AWESOME!!!  I cannot say enough how much I liked this movie.  Elysium is probably the best movie of the year, certainly the best of the summer.  GO SEE THIS MOVIE!

9.5/10

The Matrix Part 2

***WARNING THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE MATRIX, THE MATRIX RELOADED, AND THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS***

When I wrote up part 1 of my interpretation of The Matrix I originally intended to only do two parts, one for the first movie and one for the sequels.  Upon watching all of the movies again I realized that my initial estimates of two parts was far too short to analyze all the symbolism in these movies.  I will do my best to keep from dragging these out but I have a lot of material to cover because these are very dense, symbolic movies.  I also intend to separate the themes into categories to help keep myself on track and make things easier to read

Systems of Control

What is the Matrix? Control. The Matrix is a computer-generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this. (Holds up battery)

The final conclusion Morpheus draws to explain to Neo the what and why of the Matrix is that it controls us so we can be harvested for energy.  However, the explanation of the Matrix given in the movies does not fully explain everything that happens.  In all of the movies it is clear that people jack in to the Matrix via a long spike inserted into the plug at the base of the skull; it is safe to assume this spike works by sending and receiving electrical signals to and from the human brain thus acting as a redirection.  Our brain sends movement signals to the body which are received by the spike and transmit to the Matrix to which the Matrix responds by sending the appropriate response signals back to the brain.

A system like this makes sense in a lot of ways but there are a few problems: first, and most important, is the fact that if you die in the Matrix then you die in real life.  Morpheus explains this by saying, "the body cannot live without the mind"  and thus if you die in the Matrix your mind dies and then your body with it.  But the brain does not die when your five senses tell you you're dying, the brain dies when it is deprived of oxygenated blood.  For now though lets assume that Morpheus is right in his conclusion, that still doesn't explain what actually happens in the movie.  The first time we see bodily damage from the Matrix is when Neo is in the jump program and manages to face plant into a road, this busts open his lip and he bleeds a little bit, when he wakes up from the Matrix his lip is bleeding.  That isn't possible with Morpheus' explanation; the mind can't simply will a person's lip to split open like that.  Some might say "what if he bit his lip at the impact?"  To which I would respond, "except that later on we see Mouse get shot multiple times and this not only causes him to convulse but it causes him to cough up massive amounts of blood."

There are also other things that throw the idea of jacking in to the Matrix out the window: for example in The Matrix Reloaded, Neo manages to destroy sentinels just by thinking about it, the same way he would in the Matrix, and he does this again in The Matrix Revolutions, taking on the entire defense of the machine city.  He also goes into a coma and is connected to a sort of limbo between the Matrix and the real world, which doesn't make any sense.  How can he be jacked in to the Matrix in any form without the metal spike?  And we know it's connected to the Matrix because Neo talks to programs on their way to see the Marovingian, an extremely old and powerful program within the Matrix.  Plus, when Trinity, Morpheus, and Seraph come to rescue Neo they take him from the limbo back into the Matrix itself and then he jacks out of it having inexplicably gone from comatose to physically jacked in at some point. The movies explain this by claiming that Neo touched "the source" which allowed his powers as The One to extend beyond the Matrix, but we are never told what the source is or why it exists.

The only adequate explanation of this is that the humans never actually leave the Matrix.  What they refer to as the Matrix is a virtual world and what they consider the real world is another part of the same virtual world.  Many video games deal with parallel realities and it would be no problem to create two separate worlds.  This theory also fits very nicely with the explanation we are given by the Architect when he meets Neo.

The Architect tells Neo that the original Matrix was designed to be a perfect world and that every human would be happy, however no human truly accepted the program and thus had to be unplugged and killed, which is a waste of energy for the machines.  He then explains that while later versions of the Matrix were designed to more closely resemble the imperfections of the real world as it used to exist, the final method of getting people to accept the program was to give them a choice between the Matrix and the real world at a nearly unconscious level.  Unfortunately, while this is the most successful method of making people accept the program of the Matrix it is also inherently flawed as a very small percentage of people will still not accept the program.  The Architect refers to these people as anomalies and states that the emergence of an anomaly among the crop of humans is the emergence of The One; Neo is the anomaly that did not accept the program.  However, this is not an adequate explanation either because several people never accept the program completely which is how they come to find the resistance who have been unplugged and escape the Matrix themselves.

Where the theory of dual virtual realities comes in is that the choice changes.  Instead of choosing between the Matrix and the real world, the people are choosing between the two virtual worlds.  This explains why people can reject the Matrix naturally without being The One, and what makes The One so special is that he rejects both worlds.  Even though his dual rejection of reality is on an unconscious level, the choice was on an unconscious level as well and thus Neo gains the ability to control things in both worlds as The One without knowing why.  This dual virtual reality theory also ties back to both the speech given by the Merovingian and the themes of the first movie.

Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without.

The Merovingian directly tells Neo that some choices are useless, such as choosing the Matrix or choosing the real world because either way they are still under control by the machines.  Everything starts to make more sense when we realize that there are two virtual worlds and nobody ever actually escapes.  People are given a choice of accepting the Matrix or finding their way to the real world, but either way the outcome is essentially the same.  Nearly everyone accepts one world or the other and thus the system of control that is the Matrix becomes a perfect balancing act.  A balanced equation.

In part 3 I'll talk about the idea of a balanced equation between the two worlds and within the Matrix itself.

Thoughts and Ramblings on "The Matrix" Part 1

****WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POST HAS MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR THE MATRIX, THE MATRIX RELOADED, AND THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS****

For those who don't know (and if you don't know you shouldn't be reading this) The Matrix was a 1999 science fiction film written and directed by the Wachowski brothers and starring Keanu Reeves, Lawrence Fishburne, and Carrie-Anne Moss.  The film was a hit and managed to earn close to $500 million at the box office due to its extremely well choreographed action scenes, ingenious new camera techniques for filming said action scenes, and mind-bending story about mistrust and the internet that came out right as the internet was exploding.  Today the film is fondly remembered and considered one of the best science fiction films ever made.  The sequels to The Matrix are not as fondly remembered.

One of the key elements of The Matrix that helped it make it's lasting impression is just how well it predicted the future; not necessarily on the surface level but on a more symbolic one.

"What is real? How do you define real? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain."

Within the movie this represents the computer system feeding your brain information so that you believe you are in a place you're not, doing something you're not.  However, within a real-world context this is a reference to the media: nobody can be everywhere in the world at once, it isn't possible.  So when we want to get our fix of news we turn to either the internet or the television and news stations that report what's happening in the world.  But, what if everyone told you a lie, if every source you looked up told a story that never happened you would believe it was true, and why not?  The news has never lied to you before, at least not to your knowledge, but that's the point: nobody can be everywhere, nobody can know everything, and if all your sources of information lied to you, you would have no way of knowing if it's true or not.  But, The Matrix takes this one step further:

"It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. … That you are a slave, Neo.  Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind."

Morpheus is referring to how humans are being used as batteries for the machines, but in real life it is a representation of the way society is set up.  News outlets constantly feed you lies, people with money make decisions, and you have no ability to impact the world.  Morpheus says it blatantly: "You are a slave."  Think about that.  In the movie people aren't used for labor, they're used for energy.  On just the surface plot he could have said "That you are a battery," but he didn't.  The word slave was specifically chosen for its connotations and definition.  Regular citizens in a society are slaves, we're simply here to keep the machine of progress running.  We're the worker bees, and despite what we're led to believe, individually we have no influence over the world as long as we follow the path laid out before us.  Movies entertain us, the media lies and keeps us scared, advertisers sell us things, and we work day in and day out.  The system of our society is entirely set up to keep us blinded from the fact that we're just workers and will never be the queen bee.  As evidence of this just look at the distribution of wealth in the United States.  When the top one percent of the population controls forty percent of the wealth in the nation, do the individual workers have any ability to influence the world?

Within all of this a savior rises up among us: Neo, the one, the new man.  The Jesus allegory is not subtle, in fact one of the other main characters is named Trinity, obviously representative of the holy trinity, and we even have a Judas to betray our savior.  Look closely at the way the characters are portrayed outside of the Matrix: they wear ratty clothes, they eat gruel, they sleep in bunks, and generally live in poverty.  But they are free, they may live in poverty but no longer do they have worries about who controls what.  If there's a conflict in Africa the news would be all over it, people would watch it continuously, those who had "unplugged" themselves would say "that's in Africa, there's nothing I can do, so why worry about it?"  The answer is to simply reject the Matrix, or ignore the news.  Who cares if there's a conflict in Africa?  Who cares if the president had sex with someone?  Who cares about a man in another country doing something we think is wrong?  When you start to notice all of the lies being fed by the news, the advertisers, and the government you realize the best way to fight it is to ignore it.  Don't buy that new car, don't donate $200 to that shady "non-profit" organization, and don't waste your time worrying about the government because nothing you can do will affect it.  By rejecting the influence of the system you become free in a sense.

Of course the system is still there, and you can take a look at all of the people who are still stuck in it:

"The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system, and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it."

Consider the kind of people who actively participate in this system: the idealists, the addicts, the people controlled by fear, even people who have strong opinions but don't choose a political party.  We're given choices to vote on gun rights, abortion rights, gay marriage laws: all things that seem important and indeed are to those who fall into those categories, but consider how little it actually affects the government or society as a whole.  We are so distracted by choosing on these small freedoms that we are blind to the fact that we are still slaves.  The small choices in our everyday lives keep us stuck on the track of the good worker bee while the system tells us how we feel.  The only way we can truly be happy and free is to live for ourselves and those we love.  Completely disconnecting ourselves from the world and living a simple life free of all the lies and crap that we've been fed.  Focus on what makes us happy, not what makes us feel superior, and live a simple, fulfilling life.

The Matrix is an intense visual and philosophical trip, even on its surface narrative that played on the fear and paranoia of the internet just as it was exploding.  Then the Wachowski brothers made sequels.  The sequels to The Matrix were both a big departure and a direct continuation of the original.  Most people don't consider them as good as the original movie, and I agree, but they aren't as bad as some people claim either.  The movies use a familiar framework and explore new ideas based around the world the Wachowski's created.  And, I'll explore those ideas in Part 2.


Special notice should be made to Rob Ager (www.collativelearning.com) for his analysis of the symbols and themes in The Matrix.

Ghost in the Shell

Ah, Ghost in the Shell, a memento from my childhood, though I didn't understand the complex plot and boring political banter at the time I still loved it because it represented something special to me: night.  I used to sneak out of bed in the middle of the night and watch anime on the movie channels of satellite TV as a child with the volume extremely low.  Anime always came on late at night for some reason, probably partly due to the mature nature of what was shown and the fact that most anime fans were night owls anyway so Showtime could successfully market to them without alienating the mainstream watchers.  Whatever the reason, as a child anime symbolized late night (at the time roughly 1:00-3:00 AM which is early for me now) because late night was my time.  Everything was silent and dark and only the flicker of the big CRT TV with the volume barely audible from a foot away (I didn't want to wake up my parents and be sent back to bed) and in a way those nights were almost romantic in their nostalgia.  I ran across a few gems of the medium as well at the time such as Bubblegum Crisis, Gunsmith Cats, Cowboy Bebop, Ninja Scroll, and of course Ghost in the Shell.  One of my favorite things about Ghost in the Shell is that it truly is a science fiction movie (rather than a science fantasy movie like say Star Wars) [for anyone who does not know the difference science fiction is always focused on technology including how it works, how it changes things, and how it fits into our lives, science fiction is almost always based strongly in reality on current or potential technology, whereas science fantasy tells a story in a futuristic setting and simply explains "magic" by saying "because science!"].

As a child I liked Ghost in the Shell because it represented freedom, it represented maturity, and most of all it represented staying up late without my parents knowing.  On top of that the unusually dark (for my experience) science fiction setting was an interesting change and the cool gadgetry of the world intrigued me. As an adult I like the movie for different reasons (although those original reasons still apply too, go staying up way too late without my parents knowing even though I'm an adult!), mainly because it has an extremely interesting plot despite being a bit over-complicated by political banter which is used to set up the background story.  To put it simply: Ghost in the Shell is the anime equivalent of Blade Runner.  What I mean by that is they both ask similar moral questions.  But, for simplicity the plot revolves around a group of counter-terrorists who specialize in cyber terrorism and are led by Major Motoko Kusanagi, who is probably my favorite female character in anything ever.

As a character Major Kusanagi is very quiet and stoic, she talks during the movie with the people who are around her because she knows and and trusts them but seems to rarely talk unless necessary and when she does she is very efficient with her words.  She doesn't have much respect for authority but she does have respect for those around her, including her superiors and her subordinates.  She respects people rather than positions.  The word efficient is probably the best way to describe her because her personality is like a well-oiled machine (which is intentional but more on that later).  Watching her in action scenes is incredible because the animators made sure to imbue her with a sense of power and, again, efficiency.  The way she runs: taking steps just long enough to not be cumbersome and not moving any other part of her body, the way she shoots: double tap with straight, realistic aiming, and pinpoint precision, and everything about her scream perfection.  She is someone who is very careful with how she moves and controls herself and makes sure every action is perfect, almost like a machine.  This is interesting because she is a machine!  Mostly.  She has part of a human brain inside of a cyber-brain enclosure that provides increased thinking and information processing capabilities as well as networked links to connect to the internet, and the brain is stored inside an entirely cybernetic body.  The title suddenly becomes clear here, Ghost in the Shell is in reference to her, the partial human brain is where her creativity, instinct, and human soul come from, i.e the ghost, and the cybernetic body is the shell.  However, in the world of Ghost in the Shell fully cybernetic and partially cybernetic humans are the norm and the only thing that sets her apart from most people is that she has a extremely expensive body with a lot of capabilities because she works for the government in a job where she would definitely need those enhancements.

In fact, nearly everyone has some sort of cybernetic enhancement in this world, even Togusa who is the only member of the anti-terrorist team that is almost entirely human (his only cybernetic enhancement is a brain augmentation that allows him to connect to communication systems such as the internet).  The movie adequately explores the dangers of these enhancements through a practice called "Ghost hacking" in which a hacker will break into the cyber brain of an individual and either take control of the persons body or mess around with their memories.  Both instances happen in this movie, in one situation a senators assistant is hacked into in order to force her to assassinate the senator and in another instance a mans memories are replaced which leads him to committing crimes he doesn't realize he's committing.  The movie, and the TV series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex investigate the possibilities both good and evil in great depth.

As far as plot goes Section 9 (the aforementioned anti-terrorist team) is given the assignment of hunting down a hacker known as The Puppet Master.  The name The Puppet Master comes from the fact that he ghost hacks people and uses them as human proxies to ghost hack other people.  He has a whole series of these ghost hacked puppets which he uses to commit various crimes and due to the way he has some puppets hack other people to turn them into his puppets he is very hard to trace because even if the team captures a cyber brain in the process of being ghost hacked it will only lead to another puppet.  The setup is both eloquent and complex and the sort of person who could control such a system must be incredibly intelligent and calculating, a great foil the the Major herself.  So what we have is a spy thriller about a cyber criminal, but it is also a great personal journey for Major Kusanagi because she has been in a cybernetic body so long that she has no memories of when she was a human.  In fact, she doesn't even know for sure if she has actual human brain cells in her cyber brain and so throughout the film she is seeking an answer to whether or not she really is human.  One particularly good scene involves her going scuba diving with one of her close friends and subordinates, Batuo, after having seen someone else with the same cybernetic body as her earlier in the day which made her question her individuality.  She states that she can let herself go when she scuba dives and the conversation that she and Batuo have about both their individuality and their cybernetic bodies is extremely well presented.  She really comes across as someone who has been so focused on making her professional life perfect that she forgot who she was on a personal level.  She is an extremely strong, independent woman who knows her place in the world, but doesn't know who she really is or if she is even human.  She is quite a well developed and subtle character.

The movie also has a few action scenes that are sporadic but extremely realistic in their presentation (based on the rules of the world) and while the movie does have several scenes with grotesque violence, the violence is there for a reason, not just to shock.  Ghost in the Shell is outstanding and, considering most of the scenes are incredibly simple, they work perfectly.  Overall the main character is extremely interesting as is the villain, and both are products of the well-realized and eerie world of future Japan.  This film is an absolute must-see for any fans of science fiction, crime drama, or action.

Verdict
9/10

Donnie Darko and Donnie Darko Director's Cut: Part 2

Last week I talked about the fairly good, if overly confusing, movie Donnie Darko.  The biggest complaint I had was that the movie did almost nothing to clue the audience in to what was actually happening in the plot or why it was important.  The Director's Cut not only completely solves this problem, it does so without losing the feeling of mystery that the theatrical version had.  The Director's Cut also takes the characters that were so good in the theatrical version and makes them even better while it cryptically reveals why everybody is acting so quirky and unusual.

The biggest strength of Donnie Darko Director's Cut is that, while it reveals enough information to figure everything out, it reveals it slowly and deliberately.  On top of that, it still leaves enough out that the audience has to draw their own conclusions about specifics, however they now have the tools to do so.  Plus, this movie doesn't skimp on the importance: in an early scene Gretchen says to Donnie "Donnie Darko?   What kind of a name is that?  It sounds like some sort of super hero."  To which Donnie replies, "What makes you think I'm not?"  In the theatrical version this scene just comes off as harmless flirting because we never know what is actually going on, however in the Director's Cut, especially when watching it for a second time, the audience may chuckle a bit as they get the joke.

I know the article isn't very long this week, but honestly there isn't too much to say about Donnie Darko Director's Cut that wasn't already said in the review of the theatrical release.  The movies are very similar to each other, the Director's Cut just tells us the plot, and unfortunately I don't want to talk about that too much so as to not spoil it for anyone.  Needless to say, Donnie Darko Director's Cut is an extremely good movie with quite a complex and very compelling story.  For any fans of cerebral thrillers and science fiction movies I highly recommend Donnie Darko Director's Cut.

Verdict,
9.5/10

Donnie Darko and Donnie Darko Director's Cut: Part 1

Donnie Darko is a movie I saw three years ago for the first time.  I remember watching it twice and even after the second watch having no idea what the hell was going on in the movie.  The overarching plot about time travel didn't seem to make any sense, there were a few things here and there that I caught on to but overall I had no idea what to make of it.  That being said I still enjoyed Donnie Darko because of its characters and interactions.  It had a great cast for its time including Jake Gyllenhaal, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Noah Wyle, Drew Barrymore, Patrick Swayze, and even a young Seth Rogen.

Jake Gyllenhaal is the titular Donnie Darko, a teenage boy who is extremely intelligent but has some rather serious emotional issues.  In the beginning of the film Donnie is a rather unlikable character, seemingly being a jerk to whoever he talks to be it his parents or sisters.  During one early scene in which he smokes a cigarette in front of his younger sister, he threatens to put her hamster in the garbage disposal if she tells their mom about the smoking.  However, as the movie progresses we see that Donnie is actually very likable (at least to me) by being extremely intelligent and logical.  In fact, he seems so out of place with the rest of the characters except his would-be girlfriend Gretchen.  Another early scene shows Donnie hanging out, drinking whiskey, and shooting bottles with his two friends; the friends are talking about a gang bang scenario involving the Smurfs and Smurfette with Papa Smurf filming (this is not a movie for children as it shows "average" teenage guys talking among themselves and as such many of the sexual frustrations of being a teenager are apparent through conversation and other means).  Donnie then proceeds to explain to them in explicit detail exactly why this scenario would not be logical or even possible in the world of the Smurfs.  Donnie has a bit of a rough start but he shortly makes up for it by showing how he is simply an average, albeit very intelligent, teenage boy just trying to find his place in the world and by the end reaches the point of being a strong and respectable, even likable character.

Jake Gyllenhaal gives a phenomenal performance as the awkward teenage boy but he isn't the only strong character.  Jena Malone does an exceptional job in the (more important than you might think) role of the girlfriend while Patrick Swayze does his usual thing as a cheesy '80s public speaker and self-help author.  Drew Barrymore is an English teacher who almost cares too much and Noah Wyle is a science teacher who has a fascination with time travel and guides Donnie through a decent part of the movie.  There are many other characters I could talk about as well that are all very well developed but I think you get the point.

As great as the characters are in Donnie Darko the plot suffers heavily from too much editing.  Think for a minute would you, of any great movie or book you read which had unusual occurrences and strange events that seemed to make no sense but were actually revealed to be extremely important in a handy wrap-up of what happened at the end.  Now, imagine that wrap-up were completely cut out and the viewer is left trying to decipher the incredibly obscure rules of this fictional world.  That's the biggest flaw with Donnie Darko.

The plot of the movie revolves around Donnie and his continual changing perception of his world.  Early in the movie he sleepwalks out of his bed following a 6-foot tall, creepy looking rabbit named Frank.  Frank lures Donnie out of his bed to a golf course where he proceeds to tell Donnie that the world will end in exactly 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds.  Right about the time this happens a large jet engine falls out of the sky and crashes through the roof of Donnie's house into his bedroom.  If Frank hadn't lured Donnie out of the house he would have been killed by the jet engine.  Throughout the course of the movie Frank asks Donnie to do illegal and dangerous things, things that never physically hurt anyone but that cause other things to happen.  No I'm not going into any more detail than that.  Interesting setup, right?  The problem is that we, the audience, never know what to expect: we have no idea what the goal is, what is at stake, why it's important that Donnie do these things, and where the people of the town all fit into the equation.  And, the answers are never revealed.  The ending is incredibly ambiguous, not as to what happened, but as to why and how it happened.  Nothing seems to make sense and things start happening apparently randomly in the last third of the movie with little or no explanation as to the character motivations other than Donnie's.

Now that we have the strongest and weakest aspects out of the way lets talk about how the movie looks and feels: fantastic.  The whole movie is shot with an off-putting blue lens which does an excellent job of keeping the audience with a feeling of isolation in this world.  All of the characters act a little bit off as if they have something bothering them but don't know what it is.  On top of that there are a few character turns that were completely unexpected but make total sense.  Finally, the whole film was shot as if it were a horror movie, making common use of the empty space technique (I'm sure that isn't what it's actually called but it's where the camera shows a sudden clearing of empty space, an example would be a person leaning down below the camera from a closeup so that the audience has a sudden chance to see the monster standing behind them with claws ready to disembowel).  Every frame of Donnie Darko was shot with a love and care rarely seen in movies and everything feels precise and needed; unfortunately we needed a bit more to actually understand what's going on.

Overall Donnie Darko is a very good movie, but not great, and it's on Netflix.  Normally I would give my recommendation and say "go watch it" and I still say that to the lazy moviegoer who just wants to watch something unusual and refreshing but for those of us willing to go out and find a particular movie I have something better in store for you so you should skip out on Donnie Darko.

Verdict,
7.5/10

This was getting very, very long so I decided to do it in two parts.  Part 2 will cover the movie you should watch if you're willing to go out and find it: Donnie Darko Director's Cut